There's so many towns I hate

In which I'm introspective, but shallow

This evening I brought my mother some pizza. Then I visited my father in the rehab place. I brought him a Walkman, some tapes, his laundry that I'd done, some candy and fruit cups, and some books. Then I sat and watched while he ate dinner. But I didn't eat because the food there is kind of bad.

I had dinner at the Green Margarita with Friar and his family (I have taken quite a liking to their little two-year-old, and I'm apparently his favorite person not related to him), plus Muffin and her husband and son. The restaurant's a nasty greasepit and if you're not drinking you really feel the cheese slide down, but I went for the company. Palfrey and I like to swap teacher stories. She told me that a first-grade girl at her school told her in an offhand manner that she was having (with a roll of the eyes) "boy problems."

I took little Monk Jr. to the video games and held down the gas while he steered a racing game. He's not a very good driver; we kept crashing.

Muffin's car had a flat tire. Her husband stayed in the restaurant parking lot to change it, so I took her and the kid back to her parents' house, where they've been staying since she moved back to Devil-Town. It brought back a few vague memories of nearly twenty years ago, when she and I were in high school or just out of college and all our friends would hang out at that house. And I'd break stuff. Yeah, I was kind of wild back then. Anyway, it's weird being old. She's married with a toddler, nearly forty years old now, and I met her when she was seventeen years old. In a way, I can't quite grasp that fact. To me, we still seem the same people, but obviously I'm deluded.

Friar was going to hang out with rock star Auric and texted me to join them, but I didn't. I wasn't sure why. I mean, on the one hand, it would be smoky and crowded and loud, and I've been exhausted all week; but on the other, it would be fun to laugh and drink with two of my oldest and dearest friends. And but so I didn't really consider it, just stayed in and sat around.

And then I read on Churlita's blog, "All my friends are going out tonight, and I'd love to join them, but this weekend is about doing some inner work." And I can't say what she means by that, but it seems to explain myself to me enough so that I quit worrying about it.