Sage advice: 'Just get drunk.'

I went to a keg party last night. I am way too old to go to keg parties.

My friend S. and I knocked on the pulsating door, then swung it open and walked in (because who really knocks at a keg party). I felt like a spy, wondered if my outfit, my hair, my attitude might tip them off I wasn't one of them.

A guy came up to us, said, "You guys looking to buy a cup? Ten dollars."

After filling up on beer, we stood on the edge just watching. Drinking games at the table, a boisterous tall girl bouncing up and down pretending to dance, a pipe being passed around on the couch.

S. was talking to his friends from work. He introduced me. I joked that I didn't know anyone. The girl, quite wise for her age, said, "That's OK. Just get drunk."

How true. So, I did. That is, after all, why I came. My social life at this point is so stale that I dragged my tired ass out to a raging party full of teenyboppers.

S. and I had different takes on it. He sighed, "Isn't this the life? Look at them!" A guy was twirling around in the middle of the room, bopping to the music, then in some rap-inspired move, humped the leg of his girlfriend. She widened her eyes, shook her head, then ignored him.

I felt pale and pasty compared to their rosy-cheeked drunken cherub faces. I told S. that, he laughed and said we'd been broken down and they hadn't yet.

But I found myself trying to distinguish myself from them in some way, any way. I thought, hmmm, they seem chubbier than our generation and the men are shorter and they have fancier toys. S. shot that theory to shit.

Really, there was no difference. Uni students are uni students, but I wanted there to be a difference.

Last week, I read an article about Michelle Pfeiffer in InStyle magazine. The reporter talked to her about what she was like in her childhood, her teens, her 20s, 30s, etc. Then, at the end of it, the writer notes: 'Pfeiffer has lived a pretty logical arc ... she established her personality in her teens, her career in her 20s, her family in her 30s.'

Pfeiffer responds, "I hadn't thought of that until this moment. When you're in it, finding yourself, it just feels like a big mess."

And keg parties are part of that mess.

But not the messy kind of thing I need anymore.

Running afoul in the city

Wet city, much like wet dog, smells bad. It's the kind of stink that fills your nose with its musty, rotten scent. And rain in the city is definitely not refreshing, not in the way raindrops on grass and trees clears your nostrils and brightens your brain.

I imagine the smell of wet garbage juice does much to put one in a foul mood, as I was this morning.

But that's the case most mornings. It dawned on me today when I was complaining for the umpteenth time about something or other going wrong. Admittedly, it's been a bad week technology-wise, and I've vowed to bring in little food and drink sacrifices to place before the almighty computer (apparently crumbs in the keyboard weren't enough). But pretty much every morning, I'm cranky -- in part because I'm struggling to crank out stories, one after another. I'm also gulping down coffee to keep bleary-eyedness at bay.

But it's also in large part because I want more, I want better, and I want it now. Is that too mid-twenties, think-I'm-all-that excessive? Perhaps.

And in thinking that I forget that at least I'm not bored, as I've been with most other jobs. Better busy than bored. Especially with my attention span.

Hmm, maybe us mid-twenties folks just all have undiagnosed Attention Deficit Disorder?