Carefree Timelessness

This was a fairly quiet but very fun weekend.

On Saturday I got together with my friends Ruth and Mary for a delicious tapas-style brunch. We had so much fun that we decided to make Saturday brunch a regular tradition. What is it with me and traditions? I love them! Maybe because my family had so many little traditions growing up, like praying the rosary together on Sunday nights, and doing made-up plays for my parents' birthdays (the plays were always terribly dramatic, and I don't just mean the performances).

That evening, Lee and I drove up to the Adams Morgan area for dinner at an Irish pub with my friend Kelly's little sister Claire and Claire's friend Rachel. It was so much fun! They are such bright, articulate girls with strong opinions. I really enjoyed how fearless Claire was about expressing her ideas. She has had to fight a lot of battles as a pro-life Catholic girl at a big state university, and she's quite feisty as a result. The two girls are both juniors, which made me really miss my little sister Cathy, who is also a college junior and is far away in Spain for the semester.

After that, Lee and I went back to Arlington for a friend's concert at a restaurant. We met up with Joey there and then went to another party after that. It was funny because the three of us went to two different events with lots of other people at them, but we only talked to each other! In all fairness, it had been several weeks since I had seen Joey and we had a lot of catching up to do (as he put it when I complained about not seeing him in a while, "You're the one who went and got a boyfriend!"). It was pretty funny though. Do you ever do that at parties, just stay with the people you came with? Especially now that I'm dating someone, I don't really feel as much of an incentive to meet new people, or at least new guys. I like just hanging out with the people I'm already friends with. Of course, I still love making new friends, but I'm less focused on networking and socializing than I used to be.

Yesterday Frank and I kept up our Sunday "tradition" for the second week. He picked me up at 10 am and we listened to beautiful sacred music in the car. We went to 10:30 Mass at St. John the Beloved (my favorite) and then the grocery store to buy food for brunch. We discovered an interesting little fact about me: as spontaneous as I usually am, I apparently can't handle going into grocery stores without a plan, which was revealed when I had a minor freak-out in the dairy aisle over what to buy for brunch. It was kind of hilarious and once I calmed down we laughed about it. Frank looked me in the eyes and promised very seriously never to take me grocery shopping without a plan again, which made me laugh even more.

We invited Lee plus some out of town friends over for brunch. By the time they left it was after 3 o'clock! So we had a quiet afternoon and evening - Frank did some homework, I did some reading, then he cooked a delicious Italian dinner for us. We skyped with each of our families so they could get to know each other a little bit. We had some good conversations and just enjoyed spending time together.

I read a great little post today about the art of "carefree timelessness" - doing unplanned, leisurely things with people you love. I think this whole weekend, especially Sunday, has been an exercise in carefree timelessness, and I feel very lucky for that.

I've added this picture for no other reason than that Frank reminds me of Gilbert Blythe.