 Pajama Weekend |
 It's always kind of glorious to be in a place where the leaves actually change color in the fall. Keeping that in mind, I decided that there was really no place I should be this weekend other than Washington, D.C. I knew that Melissa would be in town with her husband and would be visiting with Elizabeth, and I knew that the fates had ordained that I be there, too, when I got the last minute opportunity for a really cheap fare in my inbox. So I surprised them by announcing that I would be crashing their weekend! And I'm really glad that I did. We really do not see each other often enough. We had a wonderful time. We went to eat at Matchbox on Friday night with Greg and Annie (Melissa's friend from The Usual Suspects), and it was great to see both of them again.  I realized that Annie and I met on the last night of my vacation the country where she lives, and we met again on the last night of her vacation in the country where I live. She was just as delightful as I remembered and had on the cutest coat I've ever seen to boot. Greg is still smart and funny and seems to have really great taste in TV shows. If only we could bring him around on The Sound of Music! After dinner, we decided to go to the Jefferson Memorial, which I'd never been to at night, and it was so moving and lovely. I could not for the life of me get the entire libretto of 1776 out of my head as we read the quotes on the walls and stared out at the water and contemplated futilely why and how there is no railing to keep people from tumbling to their watery graves.  Saturday was jammie day, and never a more lazy jammie day was spent. After a yummy breakfast of toast and scrambled eggs and brie courtesy of Chef Elizabeth, we spread out a buffet of junk food on the coffee table ranging from cheese in the can and crackers to M&Ms to chex mix to cookies to potato chips. We ate ice cream and magic shell. We baked chocolate chip, walnut, and caramel cookies. We drank wine and mango rum and blue martinis. We read magazines. We watched The West Wing and Sports Night and Shakespeare in Love and Down with Love and Once More with Feeling and would doze off intermittently as necessary. We also watched the first Anne of Green Gables in its magical four-hour entirety, and it was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. It was so great to see how Elizabeth enjoyed it as much as we knew she would. Some of the first bonding I ever did with these girls was over some of these things (Sports Night with Elizabeth and Anne with Melissa), and it was so fun to finally watch them together. Every single time the theme music would come on during Anne, one or all of us would begin to blubber until we finally just started passing the kleenex around. However, Elizabeth is clearly deluded if she thinks that Gilbert Blythe in any way resembles Johnny Castle, and she will never convince me otherwise. We watched the leaves falling through Elizabeth's amazing wall of windows. I tried to befriend her very cute cat, in whose future was no plan to befriend me. We got white pizza and ravioli delivered for dinner. We ate some more ice cream. We didn't force ourselves to talk about deep, dark fears and hopes and dreams, because I think we all just wanted the chance to relax in the ease and comfort of knowing it was okay not to talk about anything we just wanted a little break from. It was really kind of a perfect day. On Sunday morning, Elizabeth made chocolate chip muffins for breakfast which we finished with some more cookies. We talked some more about raging into action. We packed up the car and headed to the airport. We sang Avenue Q the entire way there. These are good people. I am very glad that I got this chance to spend a little bit of time with them, and I am better for knowing each of them.  I think one of the things I will remember most about this weekend is the Jefferson Memorial. I was born in Washington, left at six months old, didn't return until a high school trip, and haven't been since a work conference five years ago. I was glad to be there the weekend after the election, as kind of a way of bearing witness. I saw those monuments and the Capitol and the White House lit up in the cold night sky. I saw Thomas Jefferson's quote: I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. And I got chills, and not because of the chill in the air. I still believe in this country and the people in it. I really do. In other news, I have self-diagnosed myself with eczema, and Saturday my little brother called me in the middle of the night to inform me that he was in the midst of partying with Johnny Knoxville and the cast of Super Troopers. About this time in ...
© Copyright 2004 elb |
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