G day

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted and I apologize for that. I have been trying to think of a focus to grab onto for this post. So many brilliant, heartbreaking, physically painful and life altering events have been enveloping my entire existence. Graduation has truly been a whirlwind of emotion. At it’s worst, the kind of emotion that sends your intestines into spasms and has you bedridden for days. At it’s best; graduation has been a liberating, fulfilling, odyssey that has brought me a little closer on my quest to understand myself.

I’ll start with last night, because it’s the freshest thing in my mind. As I sit at the counter in this pancake house waiting for my beautiful uncle and his lovely family to arrive, I am rummaging through images of my father and stepmother laughing and joking with Hugo’s parents. It was truly a breaking of bread that went on last night. Let me back up,
I was really struggling with the most bestest awesomest celebratory way to spend my graduation evening (even though I didn’t walk). I finally decided that a simple (yeah right) dinner would suffice. At first I was thinking the whole shebang, friends and all of my 100 family members. The more I thought about that the more stressed out I was becoming about pulling it all together. Then it hit me, what I really wanted to do was take this opportunity to introduce Hugo’s and my parents. When will I ever have another occasion to introduce these people each other at my request, in a restaurant of my picking on an occasion that celebrates me. Hence, graduation-day-plan-A-and-only-plan-I-was-gonna-settle-for was kicked into motion, not without it’s bumps along the way (read: hours of me sobbing, yelling fits, arguments and compromises), naturally. Hugo and I were both worried –‘ would they talk politics and get into brawl’, ‘would our fathers come to blows about whose tomatoes were better from last summer’s garden?’ ‘Would my father cause a scene and cuz out the waiter’, ‘would they all hate everything on the menu and think the food was completely beneath them’. ‘Would they not speak?’ ‘Would it be awkward, painful, and a big ole’ mistake’? ‘Would he and I decide to break up three days later and really regret doing this?’ Oh wait… This was about the parents meeting.

G day arrives and finds us in a dimly lit, 30 year old, Cheshire Bridge Italian haunt named Alfredo’s. The waiters all acted Italian but I know for a fact that our waiter was Mexican! The rents are one end of the table, Ervin and the sisters at the other end. And SURPRISE… We were barely able to get any elbowroom in with the old folks. They were talking and laughing and my dad was drinking Valpolicella!!!! He was dressed in a corduroy blue blazer and white slacks. On a side note - The ridiculously embarrassed 13-year-old girl who once thought her father couldn’t understand, compromise or fit in anywhere got the best graduation gift ever last night, He was perfect, perfectly, presentable and genuinely there for me. They were there for me. It was the way I’ve always thought it should be with family. That was beautiful.

As far as someone cussing out the waiter, turns out I didn’t factor Hugo’s mom into the equation! It’s funny I’ve spent so many years of my adult life schlepping in restaurants to earn a living, and that generally speaking, when I go out to dinner with my family the waiter probably ends up spitting in one of our plates…I really do feel bad about this for the waiter even and totally understand if they spit in our food, were obnoxious! But we are good tippers and that’s the most important anyways.

SO everything is gliding along beautifully except and all of a sudden a fight starts to develop between Hugo’s dad and my dad, he and I start picking sides and…JUST KIDDING, it was nice, really, no-one fought! But there was a surprise, so we were all getting along fabulously and ruining our vision when all of a sudden…my mother…(outward smiling sigh with my head turned down and my eyes looking up) appeared…via a message from the waiter. One bottle of fancy French champagne, compliments of the-classiest-mother-in-the-world-who-really-wanted-to-be-there-but-couldn’t, later and I was as happy as a bug in a rug. I was probably much happier than the bugs that were most likely in the rug in that dimly lit 30 year old Italian haunt on Cheshire Bridge where the waiters tell you they’re Italian but really are Mexican and I had my graduation dinner and my whole heart felt happy standing in the parking lot with a beautiful bouquet of flowers, a hundred dollars in my pocket and a bottle of vodka. The End.

How I feel about Paris Today

Upon true completion of my bachelor’s I must say…I’m thinking a lot more about Paris than Chicago. I’m thinking things like, what’s holding me back, why not, you should go for it, and Paris would be Brilliant.