it's snowing. and it's windy. I don't mind snow, and I don't mind wind, but the two together are too much, especially when it's the third week of April, wtf.

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a couple of weeks ago a bartender at the fanciest bar in Manhattan all but kicked me out after I (politely) informed him that he had made my Ramos gin fizz incorrectly. In my defense: i told the server that if they didn't know how to make it I would happily accept a gin and tonic. In his defense: I was goaded into going up there by R's uncle calling me a chickenshit because I was quietly drinking the heinous excuse for a Ramos gin fizz after I'd already sent it back once.

I was curious about how I'd manage with the uncle, who R worships, but who is famously unpredictable. But we had fun. R said his uncle asked him later, "does she always dance down the sidewalk after dinner".

After the cocktails, the three of us (me, R, and his uncle) went for dinner to a french bistro, where like a dummy i ate only oysters and french onion soup, and drank a great deal of red wine, and finished with calvados, and obviously the next day i was shattered. I lay in bed all day and felt fragile while R walked around Central Park and did cool art stuff with his uncle.

But that was just the physical stuff. I was already shattered by the previous week.

The Friday night before, 6 of us gathered to celebrate S's 40th birthday - her closest friends and her wife - at a lovely restaurant up in the Catskills looking out into a valley as the sun set. We'd just sung happy birthday and S blew out her candles when her phone rang and she slipped out to take it and I followed her on a hunch. It was her sister - their mom had died. Not exactly unexpected but also completely fucking unexpected at that moment. And also, ever. God. Raw grief is a tsunami. Of all the things I heard people say over the next few days, the one I'll remember is a wish for "strength as the grief moves through you". I think you know what that means or you don't.

Oh and fuck, the night before that, R drove E and I up from DC but then she and I left him in Manhattan and kept going to the Catskills for the birthday celebration weekend. As I was whiteknuckling it through an insane rainstorm, E said to me, casually, "so.. keep driving...but i don't think M and I are going to make it". I mean. Fuck. Last time we'd talked about it, just the month before, they were trying to have a kid. And okay, breakups happen and are almost always hard, but as I have reasons to know, breakups are particularly fucking hard to process when you're 41 and want kid(s). I'm so angry on her behalf, and heartbroken. So. It may have stirred up some stuff.

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beautiful things:
- E ordering a pizza right at the exact moment just before we drove into the Lincoln Tunnel so that we could pick it up on the other side- me, E, and R, just eating our large pie together in the car after our long drive from DC to Manhattan;
- Sitting in the sunshine working at S's kitchen table - her on one side, me on the other, and E on a call in the next room. S's wife was at work, her kids were at school, we left R in the City... it was just the three of us, like when we lived together in New Orleans more than ten years ago but also five minutes ago.

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R came with me to DC to check it out. i think he's going to move there with me when i go back in September. I don't have much to say about any of it yet but it feels both momentous and yet not at all a big deal.

10:07 p.m. - 2022-04-19