If you had told me last year that this is how I would end up, that this would have been my life, I would have laughed.
Going into my freshman year I was going to be the life of every party. I was going to be single. I was going to be an honor student, a super achiever. I was going to be neat.
Well, one of those things held true—I made dean’s list both semesters and landed the most rossome editor position ever (and I’ve already got my eyes and heart set on my next position). But neat? Single? Life of the party?
Not even.
I’m just as disorganized. I still fall asleep the moment I open a textbook. And while I’m fun to be around I’m never going to be the girl to get the party started. Instead, there have been plenty of times that I opted to stay in with a glass bottle of wine and some Hulu. And I’m okay with that. I’ve accepted that I’m a messy, semi-wallflower with narcoleptic tendencies.
And I’ve finally accepted my less-than-single status, too, which may have been harder than accepting that this co-ed isn’t the hardest of partiers.
Because while it seems almost nothing has turned out the way that I anticipated, I wouldn’t change a thing. And it took a night in Milly to make me realize that.
Saturday night ChiChi invited her nearest and dearest friends (and some randoms) to her new, gorgeous, big, old house (which is decorated exactly like her parents’ house) to properly warm it. Of course, Twin and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
Twin brought Chihuahua. Green Bean and the Fertilizer were there with three of his friends from Boston.
We all went out to dinner at a place called the Pickle Barrel.
Then the ladies returned to ChiChi’s to pretty ourselves over a bottle of organic champagne I brought back from Paris.
The boys returned shortly after, along with ChiChi’s 2 roommates, so we mixed a tub of hunch punch and got the party started.
More people showed up later. We danced. We mingled. We drank.
I started my evening talking to an ex-Marine. We talked about men missing chunks of skull and the dangers of life after deployment (at which point I mentioned something Papa, always the insurance man, told me about military motorcycle deaths). Then I spent the rest of the evening talking to one of the Boston boys about their upcoming trip to Disney world, road tripping, cooking and being a crazy vegan. The more I talked with him the more pronounced my Yankee accent became. And when it came time to go to bed I threw myself on the most uncomfortable Ikea pull-out couch. The Boston boy happened to fall there, too.
Now before you begin chanting adulterer and demanding crimson “A”s, let me make fully clear that we did nothing, all of our clothes stayed on, and that I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
The next morning I woke feeling better than anticipated, downed my trademark hangover cure (warm lemon water and oatmeal), helped ChiChi clean a bit while listening to her gripe about her first 8am class the next day, then returned to the homestead.
So what did I learn from my 24 hours in Milly?
That my family and my roots are important to me. That I don’t dislike the Dirty Dirty as much as I always thought I used to. That I actually really like the Minimalist. That I really, truly and completely love food and that my current food-related ambitions are not ill-advised. And when I heard ChiChi talk about starting back to school I got a wee bit jealous. Jealous of 8am classes and papers and mounds of reading?
Yes. Because College is where I belong. College is where most of my life is now. Twin and ChiChi, and the rest of the gang, are always going to be massively important parts of my life, but College is now. And, as strange as this sounds, all the work that comes with it is just icing on the cake.
So, cheers, friends. To a good year past, and another good year to come.
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