Regrets

I suppose it's fair to say that I really don't have any. Rather, it's fairer to say that I don't have any large ones, any large regrets sinking in my heart. There has been a lot of debating out of me more recently about following paths and doing what you want and this and so forth, but really, in all actuality, despite the things I might have access to right now if life were different, I really don't regret one thing about yesterday, today or tomorrow.*Yesterday Craig and I left work early to meet Lauren and Jeff at Nina's. For Lauren's birthday back in May, I bought her a gift certificate (which, at a New York City restaurant constitutes a business card with the amount scrawled on the back plus the signature of the owner) to Nina's, because one time last year she refused to go there with me because she had told Jeff they would go there together sometime. Well, so a few months after I gave her the birthday treat, they allotted a day to meet us there (yesterday). Inadvertently we selected the day that New York City would be dumped on by rain, torrents of it, sheets and sheets of heavy rain, right around the 5 o'clock rush hour. When it rains in New York City and you are a commuter that travels by foot and train and bus and cab only, expect the whole of your pants to be drenched, from seat to ankle - that's just life here. Umbrellas don't do much when it rains like it did yesterday. So anyway, Lauren came to our apartment for a little bit first, then we met Jeff at Nina's. We had such a nice time, such a really great time. Those two are just cut from perfect cloth. Jeff was tired from a wild night the previous night, so we didn't spend hours out or anything, but we did certainly love our dinner, beginning with four diet-conscious people trying to glean healthy things from a posh pasta-laden menu, all the way to the complimentary two plates of flan they brought to us, which was on the house because the owners see Craig and I on regular bases (plural) and they love us and we love them. Thanks, truly, for the flan, I wanted to say, which was accompanied by their homemade caramely-delicious sauce and a dollop of thick, creamy whip cream (yum) but when complimentary plates of flan are set down in front of a group of dieters, there is the initial hesitation followed by the "we have to eat it" shrug, followed by the pain of having cheated so horribly on the diets! But oh, their flan is good. I cheated and I don't care - I also ate organic dark chocolate yesterday and I'm also suffering from a watering mouth over the Nathan's hot dogs I will consume when Craig's cousin is here late next week!!! Dieting is easy: you do it, then you cheat, then your stomach REGRETS it, then you revert back to the new healthy lifestyle: that's what bad food is there for: to remind you why it isn't right to eat it! Right?*Anyway, I absolutely refuse to experience any kind of overload of emotion having to do with being 30 right now. I'm so happy. My boyfriend sits around appreciating everything I do, our families are happy and healthy, our jobs are good (we got raise notification yesterday - always good information for middle of the year), we love New York and today a corporate guy was in our office kind of by chance of a canceled flight out of LaGuardia last night and I was able to meet with him and speak to him for a while - I slid the bug in his ear that several of us are so happy in New York that we never want to leave - please acquire more work, sir!! Anyway, he was so nice and asked me a hundred questions that I actually had answers to, so I felt good in that.*I have amazing friends, I have a hundred opportunities around every corner, and I basically can't complain about a thing - and yet, sometimes things are still just hard - but this isn't the place for that. This is the place where I celebrate just how unbelievable it is to be alive, how many things there are to look forward to doing, and how completely naive I am to so much - or, how many things I have left to learn. So here goes. Congrats to me on a few private successes (I'm high-fiving myself right now) and congrats to me on not looking back. Looking forward is what keeps the globe in motion.*