Hello loyal readers- greetings from sort-of cloudy Kassel!
I've been thinking a lot about "home" recently, and in doing so I realized that in my attempt to re-cap the three months that I spent in the US last fall, I've left out an extremely important aspect. Because I have trouble remembering what I did or when things occurred, I have been relying on my calendar to remind me of what I did. But the problem is that I only made notes in the calendar of the out of town moments or appointments, not unscheduled get-togethers. Therefore, this doesn't include the time I spent with my friends in Rhode Island. My Google calendar didn't remind me of the times I called Missy to go get a drink, or when I had dinner with Courtney or met my book club for Cuban food. I call this post Blogwurst Beilage, which means "side dishes", but in fact spending time with my friends and family in Rhode Island was more of an entrée. Perhaps I am taking this whole "blog as meal" metaphor too far...
Anyway, as I said, being home with my friends was just what I needed after being away for a year. It's nice to schedule a weekend to visit others or to have visitors come from out of town, but I love being able to call a friend and say "want to meet up in an hour?" That hasn't been a part of my daily life for so long, it was strange to not have to schedule a skype date to talk with a good friend.
The first night that I was back in Rhode Island I went to a bar with Missy that has approximately 7,000 different types of beer. I've been there before, but I don't remember it being quite so magical. (Perhaps it was the jet lag) We met a friend of Missy's at the bar, and I tried some new beers that I'd never even heard of. I had to leave early due to being too tired to function, but it was a great way to be welcomed home.
A few days later, Missy and our friend Beth and I spent an evening babysitting for our friend Yvonne's two sons. Jack is 2 and Liam was about 4 months, and both are cute as can be.
We played outside...
Played in the closet...
And read books.
They are super neat kids, and since Lena has made me unafraid of babies, it was really fun for me.
Later in October Jack had his 2nd birthday party, and Missy was in charge of cake. She is quite talented with the fondant, and she decided to make a dump truck cake. I offered to help, which basically consisted of building a base for the dump truck. I'm not so good with the fondant. Everyone was impressed with the result, and rightfully so. It was a delicious dump truck.
The night before the birthday party I met up with my old friend Neil, who I haven't seen in ages. Neil and his fiancée Lauren live in Providence, in one of the most beautiful apartments I have ever seen. I met their dog Morgan, who is humongous but also tries to be a lap dog. I love dogs of course, so we enjoyed cuddling. Neil gave me a t-shirt that he made through his t-shirt company, Thirteen Star. It's an awesome shirt with Poseidon, God of the sea, rising out of the state of Rhode Island. (Rhode Island is the Ocean State, get it?) I've gotten lots of complements on the shirt, and some confused looks from Germans. Neil and I went to a few really cool bars in his neighborhood and met some of his friends. I also ran into a classmate from high school who was bar tending, and by that point in the evening I was a little "loosened up", shall we say, so I spent most of her time telling her how nice she and her husband are. (I met her husband at our high school reunion, I'm not totally insane.) After making a general fool of myself, we walked back to Neil's apartment and I fell asleep on the couch. It was a good night.
As mentioned, the girls got together for a book club meeting too. My friends from high school, Alice, Beth, Kathleen, Yvonne, Missy, Courtney and I decided to better ourselves by reading books and discussing them like educated adults. The rest of the group had read and discussed a book before I came home, which I was bummed to miss, but I hear that only one person actually read the book, so maybe I didn't miss out so much. The book that we read next was A Widow for One Year, by John Irving. I loved the book, and Courtney and I both finished it early and talked a lot about it. I think we were the only two to read this book, although others thought they might have once seen part of the movie. We're a dedicated book club, I promise.
I missed Oktoberfest in Newport this year, but I made it down there to have dinner with Courtney one night, and it was such a nice evening. I also had dinner in Massachusetts with Kathleen in her new home. I enjoy cooking with friends; it's a nice way to spend some time. You cook, you have some wine, you talk, you eat, you have more wine, and you talk. Of course, it's nice to go out for dinner too. Beth and I had a fantastic dinner at Red Stripe, which had become "our" restaurant in a way. (Two dates at Red Stripe makes it our place, ok?) Sadly, Red Stripe is closed. Maybe Beth and I should have eaten there more than twice. It was so nice to have time with my friends individually, because usually we get together in a group of 6 or 7 people. This tends to be the case with my friends from high school, since I'm a jerk and don't live in New England. I want to see everyone, so I make them all get together for a big gathering, which is awesome of course, but conversation with each person is limited. I was happy to have chances to catch up with just one at a time.
I also had dinner with two friends who I haven't seen in years, Whitney and her sister Devon. Through the magic of facebook, we reconnected and made plans to have dinner. I spent so much time with these two when I was young, they and their family are a defining part of my childhood. Our parents were friends, we went to camp together, they came to Martha's Vineyard, we went to Nantucket, Devon was close friends with my sister, Whitney and I went to pre-school together, we made board games and wrote stories and made music videos ... I could go on and on. I was lucky to meet Whitney's young son, who is handsome and alarmingly smart. He seems like a really clever kid, and I think she's in trouble. I brought one of the aforementioned board games, and Whitney had found one of the stories we had written. It was another night of making dinner, drinking wine, and catching up, and it was perfect. Somehow the time got away from us and I didn't get a chance to see them before I left, but when I come home next, I'm showing up at one of their houses.
I spent a lot more time with my friends in Rhode Island than just these few occasions, and often it wasn't even particularly noteworthy, it was just nice. Nice to be home, nice to see my oldest friends, and nice to not be scheduled.
I didn't intend for this blog entry to be separate from the others; these events aren't any less important or special. I suppose it's hard to put everything together in my mind, when my life sometimes feels very compartmentalized.
So, thanks again for reading, and when something exciting happens in Kassel, I'll let you know.
