"Did you say YOLO?"

...Asked Stella when I justified my need for legendary chocolate ice cream from San Ginés. (Parents & Grandma, yolo means "You only live once.")

Me & Toof, my new friend, don't want to leave

September 26, Tuesday

I decide to make our last day in Madrid a Fat Tuesday. I don't eat, sleep or drink at home the way I do on vacation, and all I keep thinking is, "After today, it's all water & broccoli." I love water & broccoli, but I'm swimming in the best wine & pork in the world, as far as I'm concerned. I gotta go big. 

My Fat Tuesday comes to a premature end when I pass out for a long afternoon nap after two glasses of wine and ice cream. The nap is pretty luxurious, so I guess you could consider it a different form of gluttony- it feels fantastic. 

We spend our last evening at a small dinner party at Will and Maria's house. I bask in the excellent food and conversation. I have such an incredible crush on our friends and I'm so grateful to Stella for sharing them with me. It's wonderful to feel so completely at home with new friends. 

Magic Hour Madrid

I'm in absolute denial about leaving Madrid tomorrow. I have to be at the airport before dawn and, besides packing this morning and using the "last day" excuse to overdrink & eat, I'm not acknowledging the future. Stella and I stay at Will & Maria's until...

September 27, Wednesday

... and finally leave in a flurry of hugs and kisses. I'm going to miss them. 

I sleep for a whole two hours before I catch my cab to the airport. I have a full fifteen minute conversation with my cab driver all in Spanish, and I'm now determined to up my Spanish game. When you see me in real life, ask me to say something in Spanish so I can practice.  

It's so goddamned early and I'm so goddamned delirious, I video myself a lot online. I no longer have Stella around to stop me from overposting on social media because her flight leaves this afternoon so she's still asleep at the flat. (Just kidding, she never asked me to stop, bless her heart. But I did try to spare her unless I really couldn't help myself.)

Aw hell, the sun is JUST coming up

After three hours of waiting in the terminal, we board. Then we wait on the tarmac for two additional hours because weather at Gatwick is too foggy to land. Gatwick?? I thought I was flying into Heathrow!!?

Boy, was I wrong. Doesn't matter. Just THANK GOD I downloaded the rest of Season Four of The Originals. By the time we finally take off, I'm quietly sobbing to myself because Julie Plec's series have The. Best. Season. Finales. Ever. 

Life is SO GOOD

Also? I get an empty middle seat!! This is huge because I didn't make my seat assignments until yesterday. Now, is there any way I am lucky enough to sit next to an empty seat for both legs of my flight home?

Spoiler, THERE IS. I AM. I DO. 

On flight #2, I sit next to the window and meditate on the empty middle seat next to me. I pray, then I hold space, then I make peace with "what is", then I distract myself with Spanish lessons, then I practice gratitude for "what is". I sweat and I scheme and I get high on trying to control seating assignments with my mind. 

I don't know if it was a specific meditation I did or if it was how long I procrastinated in calling the airline to make my seat requests, but I get the space I want and I feel so insanely lucky and grateful. For the seats, for my journey, for the Loves who support me, for Stella, for The Originals and Bojack Horseman seasons I downloaded and devoured, for my health, for every way I can stop and be in moments and feel the joy and thrill and fight and freedom and peace that is my life. 

Thanks to any and all who followed along and I'll see y'all on the next one. ☺️

Plaza Mayor, all of the lights

La Latina

Scenes from the hood

Sky popcorn

No sleep, jet lagged, stuck in rush hour
and happy to be home

On the Other Side of a Saturday

I didn't post last night because... I was out! (GASP!... smattering of applause)

A bestie was in town to visit and nothing gets me out of the house like company. It was a magical weekend of laughing, incredible food, movies, and more laughing. Serendipitous timing at restaurants, minimal traffic, and decent parking contributed to make the weekend a quintessential LA Weekend Visit Miracle. (Seriously, I haven't had a better Saturday night out in too many months to count and not feel like a loser.)

And now? The blues.

For every Christmas morning there is crap-ass December 26. For every college Mardi Gras there is the hangover sponsored by Saltines and Pedia-lite. And for this weekend, I find the frigid quiet of a solitary Sunday night, giving way to the harsh glare of tomorrow's "reality."

I'm being dramatic. It's from all the estrogen. For three days I've been in the company of women. I spa'd. I talked about dreamy movie stars. I read girly magazines. I even watched 20 minutes of the movie "Valentine's Day"... and defended it. I choaked up several times during all 10 minutes I watched of the SAG awards. I'm not this girly in a full month. And now? It's over... (whine, lump, glisten)

It's hard for me to be girly. I hate shopping. HATE. I have minimal patience for children and cooking. I tolerate spa-type procedures like facials ONLY if I have a gift certificate I can't trade for something else. I hate (HATE!!!!!!!) chick lit and every chick flick made after Bridget Jones' Diary.

But when I'm around certain besties, I forget to judge- okay, that's a lie, but I'm game for the girly, and the 14 year-old boy inside me (Let's name him something... Boo?) partakes with open-minded curiosity. It's like we (Boo and I) get to hang out with the cool girls and we play along and get to learn and do all kinds of new stuff. They encourage us to try on the orange mini-dress.They read our horoscopes to us. They ask us about how we feel. Its the same reason, I imagine, that the boy who sat next to me all three years of middle school went through my purse on a weekly basis. It was tourquoise and had dancing bears on it, and it contained intimate secrets (read: period stuff). It's a different Purse World that he (and Boo and I) can only visit because it's not our nature.

This is a long digression from my post-party weekend blues, but I feel on the cusp of a personal discovery so bear with me.

These girly weekends free me somehow. Not like I'm free to be the girl I've always wanted to be, because I don't want to be different- I like me, Boo and all. It's more like, the love, sensitivity and thoughtfulness of my estrogen-heavy girly girlfriends encourages me to be more adventurous, tender, and accepting of myself. And I, in turn, stop analyzing and judging myself and the things around me and just enjoy living.

It just occured to me the above qualities have nothing to do with estrogen or sex but more to do with real friendship and intimacy. I just blew my own mind. (Heh.)

"Okay, so now what?" Boo wonders, growing increasingly impatient with all this emotion.

I don't know. I just know I have the best friends in the world to give me the gift of enjoying my life and my self. The next step is... what...? Being a better friend to myself so I don't have to wait for Girly Blowout Weekends to truly relax and have a time too fantastic to put into words?

Oh. I just blew my own mind again. (Heh, heh.)