the super-adult women. and me.

Today, it occurred to me (and not for the first time in the past year), that I am lagging behind. I've missed the proverbial boat. Depending on how you look at it--I'm either refusing to grow up, or every woman around me is insisting on being "super-adult."

So, I'm sitting there at lunch with women old enough to be maybe my slightly older sisters, and they start chatting away about their recipes, kayaking, grilling with their husbands, and it dawns on me--I feel light years behind these women in dosmestic, culinary, and well, kayaking aptitude. I truly couldn't hang--not with the conversation, and not with the talk about the versatility of Omaha Steaks. So I quickly gobbled my eggplant parmesan, excused myself, and went to my room....well, my office.

But for a moment, before I escaped from the table, I wondered why I'd been so bored with these women--and why I had not yet embraced all the wonderful grown-up things that these women found so fascinating and essential to their womanhood. Yet, I shutter at the thought that I'm somehow less of a woman because I don't care much about the best way to keep a house clean and a husband happy....but maybe...hmmm...i dunno.

All around me, women are growing up. My friends are having babies and getting married, and of course, I'm doing neither. It's not even penciled in my 2008/2009 calendar. I could say my moving to a "new" city is my own little way of growing up, but most of these adult women would think "When is she gonna just settle down and be comfortable?" I've already gotten the "Wow, you move a lot!" from a couple of my co-workers. (These uber-adult women are quite vocal.) I wonder why they're concerned...yet I admit to myself that moving isn't so much grown up as it is uncertain...unsure...unsettled...and still figuring life out. And well, yes, I'm all those things. I'm not saying I don't want the opposite, but I can't help that my pace is different. I got a late start, and then lost my map, and had a couple setbacks, and then figured out, that I was enjoying the journey anyway, so why rush it.

The only thing, I guess I can do, from this point on, is to find a new lunch table. I mean, I'd rather lag, than sit tight-lipped at the adult-woman table hiding my real self.

p.s. Today, I really missed my cool DC girlfriends--and how we indulge unapologetically in hours of crap-talking over coffees on the best hair juices and berries, that thing so-in-so did that made you laugh your ass off, who has the best happy hour drinks in town, and why on earth super-adult boys are so damned nuts.