Wanted: the quiet life

I was lying in bed chatting with Natalia online and watching the USC/ Texas game in my underwear when Megan comes barging into my room smelling strongly of liquor and cigarettes, demanding that I get dressed and accompany her back to the bar. She'd been at Q's since 3, tailgating before the game started at 5, but I really didn't feel like getting up and putting clothes on to go watch the game in a crowded bar full of drunk football fans. Not that I have anything against drunk football fans; I'm just tired and I want to lay in bed in my underwear and eat peanut butter straight from the jar. Is that so wrong?

Megan left disappointed. I refused to get up even after excruciating naked tickle torture (I feel so violated) and a couple of very painful smacks on the butt. So I returned to my conversation with Natalia and it went something like this:

Me: I don't want to go out. I just want to stay at home and have someone to play Scrabble with.
Natalia: I couldn't get my fitted sheets on my bed by myself and I really wanted a boyfriend there to help me.
Me: I totally know how you feel.

Yes, yes, yes... women need to be independent and needn't feel incomplete in the absence of male companionship. I know. But geeeeez. Sometimes I can't reach the top shelf and sometimes I want to spend a quiet night in bed reading a book or playing a rousing (haha... a-rousing... I'm so cool) game of Scrabble or cuddle with something other than my pillow when I watch sappy DVDs. I firmly believe that it's important for a woman in a relationship to have her own life separate from that of her boyfriend's, like having a group of friends who are not his friends, like having her own place/ space, and having some occupation whether it's a job or school or hobby that doesn't include him. I'm all about the together time, but I feel like there's got to be some girls' nights and boys' nights.

(Aside: this is a really really good game. I've been trying to type while watching, so it's taken me like an hour to get this far in the entry. Evenly matched, well played by both sides. And Vince Young was aMAZing. Much like his buttocks.)

I've been watching a lot of Sex and the City lately. It's the season where Carrie has the short hair and Miranda first has her baby. Carrie's all cynical and sad and is losing faith in love. There are these publishing ladies that want to compile some of her columns into a book and they ask her what the overall tone of the book would be: is there hope or should we all hang ourselves now? And the answer at the end of the episode was that tribute should be paid to the eternal optimists, our Charlottes. The ones who believe in love no matter what, even when that faith is tested time and time again. To some extent, there's a little bit of Charlotte in all of us, I think. No matter how jaded I think I've become; no matter how jaded my friends and I become, even as we throw our hands up in frustration and worry that we'll die alone and be discovered three days later after our cats have eaten our faces off, still, hope lives on.