On The Road

One of the girls is getting married. Not just any one of the girls either. One of the girls. One of the girls that used to hold my hair back when I got too drunk. One of the girls that slept over when I needed someone to be there with me. One of the girls who sat and ate ice cream with me until the spoon found carton. One of the girls who cried on my shoulder until she ran out of breath. One of my girls. Except now she's someone else's girl. And that's all right. After all, all things must pass, right? She met a great guy. I couldn't be happier for her.

I get to stand up on the altar next to her. I get to watch her face him. I'm going to get that same feeling that I get every time that I'm at a wedding. It's a small longing. I'm not afraid to admit that it's a little bit of envy. For those of you who haven't been in love, there's no feeling quite like it. For those of you who have, well, you know what I'm talking about. For those moments that I'm up on the altar watching her, I'm going to want to be the one who's getting married.

I know that feeling will be fleeting though. After all, for all the want I have to get married eventually, finding the right person is a somewhat dubious task. And making it work is even harder.

So this weekend, I'm going to try to put it all aside. All the girls are going to be there; some of the guys too. We're going to go out on Friday night and get drunk and tell stories. We're going to laugh a lot. We're probably going to cry a little bit too. We're going to take turns catching up on each other's lives. On Saturday night, we're going to watch our friend get married, then we're going to get drunk all over again. There will be more laughter. There will be more tears. At the end of the weekend, we'll all go back to our respective places around the country.

And next time, we'll do it all over again.

And losing all that weight to squeeze into that dress will have been worth it.

May Day

By May 1, Spring is usually in full bloom. The flowers are usually blooming. And I can usually sit in the park and eat my lunch under the bright sun with a cool breeze. This is a tradtition for me. Every year on May 1, I take my lunch to the park and I eat it there. It's how I welcome the impending summer.

Not today.

Today is gloomy. And overcast. And ugly. And I'm left here sitting in my office, waiting for lunch, which I'm going to eat at my desk because of the prohibitive weather. It's been such a long winter this year. It took forever for the snow to melt. It finally did. It took forever for the weather to get nice. It finally did, albeit sporadically. It's taking forever for us to get to summer. I know it'll get here. It's supposed to rain all the way through Saturday. I know that the rain will stop eventually.

This year, it'll just have to be May 4 that I sit in the park and eat my lunch.

It's All Coming Together

(tenting hands) Excellent.

OK, I'm really kind of excited about this. For anyone out there reading this, please check out Deckie Holmes' site. He's Hollywood's foremost uncredited movie actor and cult hero. He shares his daily interactions and life via his blog. And he was kind enough to link to my piece on his page yesterday. Please read about the trials and tribulations of Deckie. You won't be sorry you did!

Name In Lights

Yankee Pot Roast put up my piece! Read it here!

In The Beginning ...

... there was Lisa. This is my first shot at a blog. I'm not exactly sure what to do. I guess I'll just do whatever the hell I want. After all, this is my blog. I figure, with my online writing career about to break wide open, it's time to fire up the blog.

I grew up on Long Island, which for the uninitiated, is like growing up in a sandbox. All the kids know each other. Everything is right around the corner. And after you reach the age of about 4, it becomes really, really boring. I lived there for 18 years of my life, the first 18, and after I had packed all my bags and put them in the car and was set to go off to college, I took a look around the room and for just a second it felt OK that I had grown up there. Long Island, bastion of dysfunction and locale of lunacy, will always be my home. I still take a piece of it with me wherever I go, despite the fact that right now, I live only about 20 miles west of where I grew up.

I feel like almost everyone feels this way about where they grew up. While they were there, they started out too small for their world, eventually grew into it and then finally grew too large for it. In a county full of small towns where all of the kids seem to know each other, sometimes it felt like we were all walking around smacking our heads on the rafters. My parents still live there because it isn't where they greew up; it's where they settled. There's a world of difference there. My siblings are all prepared to leave. One of them isn't old enough yet. She'll be out of high school in what seems like any day now. The other one escaped to college and she toils there, endlessly it seems. It seemed endless to me too. Then it ended.

Three sisters, two parents and one house. All Long Island born and all Long Island bred. One big happy.