anonymity.

Today's my mom's birthday. Peggy is 47. I called her up this morning to say "happy birthday," which I think she appreciated. I think she is kind of bummed out, though, and who can blame her? Her husband turns 50 this year, her eldest daughter (me) turns 20. Her youngest child is in high school. Shit, I'm weirded out about being 20. I don't know if I really planned to be this age when I was younger. College was kind of an ageless time in my mind, and after college it was getting married, having a boring job, and birthing children. Literally. Even though I have become one of those girls that coos at babies on the street, I don't know if I will ever have one. Or if I will be married and have one. Let's be realistic, I am totally the kind of person to adopt a child at age 35 if I have the means and am still single. 

My mom was telling me about the 50th birthday party she and my father went to last night. She met this woman there, who asked her where her oldest (me) was. My mom said, Oh she goes to school in New York. Apparently this woman became very excited at this information and said, My son just moved to Brooklyn! The woman asked my mom how old I was. My mother told her I would be 20 in August. The woman apparently said, What day? My mother, thinking this odd, said, the 18th. (By the way, this is my birthday. August 18th. Put it in your crackberries.) The son's birthday is of course on the same day as mine. He is 22 (currently) and thinking he is going to go to med school. He is also tall and, like myself, enjoys sushi. His mother then proceeded to text him with my phone number. My mother loved his response, which apparently was a rambling text message paragraph about how there was no way he was going to call some random girl, essentially just because she had a nice mother, was from Orange County, and had the same birthday as he did. I thought this was pretty funny. My mother apparently has his phone number, if I'm interested. I'm gonna pass, obviously. 

There is a huge part of me that is kind of sad that I am apparently old enough to be set up for dates now. I'll get over it.

I revel in the anonymity of Manhattan on a Saturday afternoon. Though NYU is such a big school, it usually feels kind of tiny, mostly because on a weekday during the day or a weekend during the evening, I always always always run into someone on the street. At least one person, typically more. Today after our Valentine's Day party, my best buddy Gilda and I went for a walk, ostensibly in search of cheap jewellry, though I knew that since she had no idea where the intended store was and that it probably no longer existed, we would just walk. And we walked all over school neighborhoods.

In my mind, I pictured running into one of my friends or acquaintances, any of them, and how that would go. They would stop, say hi. I would say, So-and-so, this is my friend Gilda. Gilda, this is So-and-so. They would be polite and I would say, Oh, see you in class, or just plain See ya. I don't know why I had to plan out this interaction. Maybe because they've never seen me walking very slowly with a 70 year old woman with MR and a walker... and the only people who have seen me do that are people who also do that.

But we walked around for an hour and it didn't happen even once. I didn't see anyone I had ever seen before in my entire life... and I am pretty good at faces. It was interesting. It was cool.

Tony and I are kind of in a fight. He's the kind of person who can't admit to being an asshole without being called out on it. And if you call him out on it, you're an even bigger asshole. So I didn't call him out on it and simply owned up to my portion of assholeyness. I'm so over it. In my opinion, if a girl says to you, Sorry I did that - I was drunk, that is your cue to say, Oh okay no big deal. Even if you don't really believe her and just think that's a silly excuse to get out of awkwardness, EMBRACE IT. You don't need to call her out, ask her how much she had to drink and how it was possible that she was drunk when you were totally sober and how much it usually takes to get her drunk. On this point, he and I diverge. Obviously.

So here I am listening to "Annie Waits" by Ben Folds, embracing my alcoholism and thinking I am probably going to drink one-glass-too-many and go see He's Just Not That Into You by myself because my friend Derek is sick and we had had plans. I think I am going to keep up my no-men, alone theme. The only people today who could corroborate that I am alive are my roommate and the people at the Best Buddies party... let's keep it that way. I'm having an anonymous Saturday. 

I bought a different kind of wine today - not Woodbridge. It was a dollar cheaper. It is called Walnut Crest. I kind of like it. A lot. I wonder if I am switching from Woodbridge. This would be a life-changing decision for me.