Drinking Habits of a 24-year-old

It’s Sunday morning and I’m not hungover.

Not even a little bit.

When did everyone start drinking craft beer at parties? When did they start caring about IPA’s versus lagers? Where the hell did all the everclear-laden pink panty droppers and date-rape drinks go? I swear, I drink beer to sober up after a long night of boozing. Beer is just bready water after all (or watery bread?). 4% alcohol? Pshawww. That’s like my shampoo…

These days, my friends pop Advil like it’s their job the morning after a rough night. They chug water, lie in bed, and moan about not being 18 anymore. Really, guys? Weak.

I guess my semi-small stature prevents me from consuming especially large quantities of any type of liquid, but I do think I’m better equipped to handle alcohol than the average 5’3 female. In four years of college, I never once vommed mid-party. But now, with everyone around me acting all subdued, I don’t want to be the wacked out drunk girl doing shots from 3-year-old bottles of Jaeger.

So, I sip my chilled beer calmly and engage in pseudo-intellectual conversation with skinny-jean-be-clad hipsters. I’m enjoying myself, sure, it’s just that now it’s in a mature, dare I say, adult manner? I guess a diminished alcohol tolerance is just one of the many signs that I’m finally starting to grow up.

When It's Time To Go

I had never been present at death until last night. It’s not exactly unlike what I expected, but it has a certain elusive component - a characteristic that simply cannot be captured. Death has many sounds.

His individual labored breaths intermixed with the steady hum of the oxygen tank and the syncopated beats of jazz music playing softly in the background. At 5 pm there was still enough life in him for me to get a final gesture of acknowledgement. Not quite a full squeeze of my hand, but enough. There was some fight left in him to leave a lasting tactile impression. Selfishly, I’m glad he knew I was there.

My mother held his hand and I rubbed his shoulder, bony from weeks of refusing food. At 5’11, he weighed less than I did. I joked with him that I’d kill to be at his weight, but he just looked past me blankly, not seeing, not comprehending. It was my first joke that failed to elicit even the slightest smirk from his lips.

The room smelled less medicinal than I would have imagined. I detected the same hints of laundry detergent and burnt carpet as always.

By the time I left, his skin was cool to the touch. The color had vanished from his face but he remained beautiful, taut – statuesque, really. In my grief, I asked myself, what are we if not impermanently stored carbon energy?

I’d say his last 86 seconds were a worthy reflection of his 86 years – courageous, sweet, surrounded by love.

He did not complain, did not cry out, did not even whimper. He breathed until he decided not to. Then he stopped.

Three Life Lessons

My grandparents are all pretty old and they’ve done a lot of living. When I make time to fit in a visit or a quickie phone call, these are the three simple life lessons they preach.

Live clean work hard. 
One day at a time. 
It’s not over ‘til it’s over.

My grandparents have a great deal of combined wisdom so I know I should pay attention to what they say because what do I know? Life is still very much without meaning to me, so if octogenarians want to offer tips, I’m all ears.

My grandparents have experienced more love and loss in their lifetimes than I can ever begin to imagine. My DC-grandpa fought in wars and watched close friends die in combat. He suffered from his soulmate’s tragic demise. He remarried only to lose again.  But on Sunday afternoons when I stop by his nursing home with Comet pizza and a slice of chocolate cake, he reminisces joyfully, lingering on only the happy memories.

My grandparents tell me I look like my grandma. They’re not the only ones. Those who see photos remark on the eerily similar countenance and tell me I’m lucky to resemble such a classic beauty. She was too pretty for words so my grandpa says none at all.

My grandparents remind me to live clean and work hard because they know karma will always balance things out.
My grandparents remind me I should take one day at a time because they know, better than I do, that sometimes you don’t get another day.
My grandparents remind me it’s not over ‘til it’s over because they’ve seen endings and beginnings and they know sometimes the end doesn’t look how you expected.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T (why is it so effing hard to get any?)

My job is amazing. I think I've described it in bits and pieces before but basically I'm an event planner for a corporate wellness company. That means I plan health fairs, employee wellness challenges, and biometric screenings for local companies that want to make their employees healthy and happy. I do a lot of hiring of local screeners and plan events with the hope that the screeners are happy, the client is happy, and my boss is happy. Sometimes this is easy and sometimes things get a little nuts.

One issue I've encountered over the past month of employment has been the utter lack of respect I get from people who are older than I am. My job isn't exactly what the average person waltzes into right out of college. It's actually in pretty high demand and many of the biometric screeners, nurses, and dietitians I work with have been vying for jobs exactly like mine. I have an enormous amount of responsibility and I manage many individuals at a time. It's exhausting, time-consuming, and at the end of the day, extremely gratifying.

However, I'm 22. The average age of my screeners (health professionals who I hire and fire at my discretion) is probably about 40. Some of them are youngish college students with flexible schedules but the majority of them are moms or even grandmothers with decades of nursing experience and strong backgrounds in the wellness field. Whenever I take control at health fairs, some snide screener always feels the need to comment on my age, or my "cuteness", or my "tiny waist", or something equally irrelevant and inappropriate.

The point is - I do my job and I do it well and I do NOT appreciate people making me feel inferior simply because I have chubby cheeks and an enthusiastic, cheerful disposition. Some days, I even find myself wishing for a few more wrinkles or a some wisps of gray hair just so I might command a little respect (but, of course, those are fleeting thoughts!)

I know I shouldn't be complaining and I'm incredibly lucky to have such a fabulous job in a field I love right out of school, but how can I make people realize I know what I'm talking about? Hopefully, as I gain experience, I'll become more confident, and in time, perhaps that confidence will garner its own respect from those around me.