Shift

We had dinner last week with two, very dear married friends of ours, Joe & Holly, and we discussed, among other things, home ownership and life insurance and how much gas cost when we started driving, oh, you know, ages ago.  So that happened.  We're those people now.  On the way home, we listened to NPR at a sensible level of volume and drove the speed limit.  Maybe not the last part.

This past weekend, we went to Atlantic City for the wedding of a law school buddy of mine.  We had a great time.  I had a couple drinks during the cocktail hour and then had one glass of champagne with dinner accompanied by lots of water.  We walked back to our hotel along the boardwalk after, my high heels in hand, while discussing what we should do next with our one night in Atlantic City.  Gambling?  Boozing?  Dancing?  The sky is the limit.  We can do anything we want. 

So we watched TV, fell asleep by midnight, woke up early, had breakfast, and drove the 3 hours home, stopping at Ikea and Trader Joe's on the way. 

I'm pretty sure that in my soul, I've always secretly been a 73 year old Southern woman named Pearl or Marigold or Georgia who sits in a rocking chair on her front porch drinking homemade peach iced tea, watching the neighbors, and muttering "bless her heart" under her breath.  I'd rather be home than do most anything and I do not handle my liquor well.  I mean, if you've had two drinks, maybe three, and you're 29 years old, you should not feel compelled to ask your husband to take a picture of you drinking, right?  Like this is so novel and I'm so cool, please document this moment?  You certainly shouldn't feel the need to Instagram that shit so others are aware of how cool you think you are, right?  That's so lame.  And yet:

 Y'all, Pearl doesn't drink much.  She's not very good at it.  Bless her heart.

There's something about being married that really speaks to the 73 year old woman in me.  Like the jig is up and I can go to bed at a sensible hour and I don't have to apologize for it.  Like I'm an adult now and everybody can know.  I can discuss home ownership and life insurance and the price of gas and I can be all up in that conversation like whoa because it's just so relevant all of a sudden.  Trying to budget and be responsible and take care of each other and make sure the other one will be taken care of and that our ducks are in rows and we're responsible for someone else too now and we're in this together so go team. 

So when the busgirl interrupted our conversation at that dinner with a "wow, it used to only cost $12 to fill up your car," the four of us were more than happy to be like "oh yes, the good old days."  It's pretty rare to be aware of the exact moment when you feel life shift, but I think that dinner was one of them for me.  Pearl and I are pretty excited about it.