Proving Youth Isn't Wasted On The Young

Amid all of the growing up I've been doing lately I haven't had as much time to appreciate the perks of youth as I usually do. I love love love being in my twenties. I hope I'll love the rest of my decades as much as this. But when you spend a weekend like the one I just had, it's hard to believe.

As you may have read, I'm in the process of renting my very first, very own apartment. I've been decorating the place in my mind's eye ever since I first saw it, even before I knew whether we'd get it. It's hard to top one's first apartment, especially if one is 25 and has been living at home forever (despite a brief jaunt up to New York).

Saturday I spent showing my future roommate the place and then with my family at home. My brother and an army buddy came up for the weekend. Julia's best friend and her 2 1/2 year old daughter (who is becoming so much fun to play with) came for the week too. Our house was filled with the fun sounds of our family and those friends who feel like family and a child who demanded our finest shoes to wear and ice cream to eat.

That's her over the summer, wearing my pointy toed shoes, those are my barefeet in the background. Who could resist giving her what she wants?

After dinner of suprisingly good lasagne and vegetables that prove my mom was born in the fifties, I went to DC to hang with a friend at a party.

The party was at a friend of my friend's studio apartment. It says a great deal about a group of people that can hang out in a studio apartment and have a good time. It says that we're young and newly liberated and that we don't need a thing like space to have a good time. And it says that the host is an adventurous person who doesn't mind 25 people in an apartment smaller than my new room.

Mark joined me later and quickly became the life of the party, teasing the cute girls (of which there were many) and turning up the music so we could dance. By this point some people had left and so the rest of us joined the dance party that had previously been a single girl. We used Limewire downloads like our own personal jukebox. When the party winded down around 4:30 I gave the dancing girl, a new friend, a ride to the airport, since she was going to be taking the metro and bus in the same direction as me and Mark (who had passed the point of driving early on). Before we left DC she called to doublecheck that she was flying out of Dulles and discovered she was really supposed to be at Regean, so we dropped her off there and headed home at sunrise.

Or, actually we headed to Great Falls and the little hiking trails off of Georgetown Pike, where we climbed a muddy path, crossed creeks, and enjoyed a virginal spring morning by the waterfalls and the silent, silvery spread of the Potomac. After a breakfast in Great Falls we headed back to my place where we crashed while my family got ready to go to the zoo all around. Actually, Mark crashed, I don't know how. I was woken up by hairdriers, shouts of schedules, the smell of pancakes, loud shushes to be quiet! People are sleeping, and the little girl above running around looking like a grumpy angel.

In the evening we headed back to DC to get Mark's car and go to an open bar at Saki with house music. An open bar on a Sunday night from 10-11? Obviously I'm young. I realized this morning that I went out every night this weekend but the only money I spent on drinks was tipping the bartender at Saki. That's a great way to spend a weekend. This weekend is one for the history books or my future books.