A "Sex and the City" Evening, if Written by a Writer Like Me

I am tired this morning--but it's the good kind of tired, the kind of tired that comes from making the effort to see friends I've had for a long time.  They are members of my (lapsed?) quilt group.  One has moved to Gainesville, which is about 5 hours away.  One has just moved to an upscale apartment in Delray Beach, which should be about 45 minutes away.

We were meeting in Delray Beach, and I thought that our 5:00 meeting time meant we'd miss the rush hour traffic--HA!  Maybe there is no way to avoid being stuck in traffic in South Florida.  That seems to be my experience lately.  A trip that should have taken me about 30 minutes last night took me 90 minutes.

Because I am a more evolved grown up than I used to be, I put aside my grumpiness about it all, and we had a lovely evening.  It was good to see the upscale apartment, and then we had a fun evening having dinner out in the trendy part of Delray Beach.  It was good to catch up with each other's lives.

From the outside, we might have looked like characters in a TV show--like Sex and the City, but without the high heels.  Or the sex talk.  Or the youth.  OK, maybe nothing like Sex and the City.  Or maybe like the kind of TV show I would write, but no one else seems to be writing--what is the yearning of women at midlife and beyond, and not just career yearnings or relationship yearnings, although those yearnings do impact the other yearnings.

I am now weary of the word yearning.

Of course, the parts of my life that have brought me the most joy in the past week, the most contentment, those parts would not make good TV.  I have loved listening to some great NPR in the wee, small hours of the morning--yesterday I listened to this episode of On Point about great summer reads, and then I submitted library requests for some of the ones that sounded most interesting.  On Saturday, I spent the morning looking through poetry notebooks and making revisions as I typed poems into the computer.  Not exactly jazzy TV.

On Sunday I wandered through a beautiful garden center to get more milkweed plants.  That could make good TV.  But there's not really a narrative arc to that.

Last night I drove home--drove and drove and drove--watching the moon rise and thinking about how long I've been friends with my female friends (my dinner companions and all the other ones) and how long I've lived in South Florida.  Some part of me is astonished at the twisty roads I've taken.  I thought about how long I have left on the planet and what I hope to accomplish.  My creative work is never far from my mind, and planetary destruction, and the current political situation--all these thoughts swirled around.

And now, for the day ahead:  review of the binders in advance of the Friday Corporate audit and a Come Out of Your Chrysalis party for students.  And then, tonight, a Mepkin Abbey Contemplative group meeting that happens online. 

Onward!