I got into bed at 9 PM last night and fell asleep reading before 10. I woke this morning to my mom’s phone call at 10:11 AM. My level of exhaustion is obvious; what is telling is my ability to sleep that much when I’m as distracted as I am. It’s been about, oh, ten years since I was this distracted, and then I would lie awake nights, obsessing and tossing and turning. I like to think it’s a sign of age and maturity that I am fully aware that I need sleep to make anything good happen in my life.

I’m covered in scratches, bites, and bruises, not unlike I used to be when I was dancing in a show. The mosquitoes got me on the hill during a night of stargazing, the bruises from a bad fall just as the reception began… and from the softball game… and the cuts and scratches are from dancing all night. My shoes for the wedding hurt the moment I put them on, but a few glasses of wine and I was swing dancing all night. Oh, what fun.

It’s amazing the perspective just a few hours can give you. I was so incredibly emotional and distraught this morning, sad that the wedding was over and that the camaraderie I found might be gone, but tonight I’m considerably better. I saw Kent, Lucas and Sean Patrick in the city before they left, and we saw Pirates of the Carribean again, which will put any red-blooded American girl in better spirits.

Ian and Tessa are gone on their honeymoon, mom might be leaving tomorrow, Kent and fam and my dad are long gone… I feel so lost and so blessed at the same time to have the family I do. One of the things that’s always baffled me about the posity of good men in my life, that is, outside my family, is how much I have to offer them by way of family. I have a few other good things to offer as well, but I also have my family who, if he’s a good guy, will love him dearly forever. I have time in Napa with my Dad and Carole to offer. drinking wine, talking into the night, loving and discovering life with them. I have a life full of my mom’s mess and magic and music, her absurdity and generousity and willingness to adopt those who love her kids, her talent and goodness and orange rolls. I have four brothers, all of them brilliant and brave, none of them willing to put up with a schmuck. And, well, me. There’s me. I’ve got that too. But I guess it would have to be a pretty incredible, transcendent, wonder-full guy who could fit into this clan. I wonder if he’s out there.

I write because I have to right now, even though my body cries for sleep and rest and a reprive from alcoholism. I write because it has been such an amazing week, and I am so sad it is over. It was definitely fraught with hard work and confusion and hangovers and mess, but it was also beautiful, sweet, and perfect.

Ian got married yesterday eve. It is a story too hard to tell, but yesterday and the three days before, for the first time in years, I was exactly where I wanted to be, spending time with exactly whom I wanted to spend time with. I carried no keys, nor wallet or phone, ignored my watch, and surrounded myself with a soup of loved ones. Some I love now more than I ever thought I would, more than I thought I was capable, and those of you who get that love better be ready because you are now part of my life and I’m going to make sure you stay there. I am a determined woman, and I will do whatever is in my power to make sure that such goodness, light, craziness, gorgeousness, power, and love, only grows in my life. I am stunned by this week, stunned by the company of my mom and my brothers all in the same house, amazed at the reverence that Ian and Tessa create that brings so many people so far to work so hard to make sure their day is perfect.

The first night was just Sean, Jordi, Ian, Kent, Sean Patrick and my mom, but late in the evening, Scott, Annie and Chip showed up. This comparitavely small party played board games late into the night, and it was the beginning of bliss.

The rehearsal dinner that my Dad and Carole threw the next night was so spectacular that I can barely recall being happier. So many people got to their feet to declare their love for my brother and new sister. So many friends had so much to say.

Friday was the picnic at the swimming hole, the barbeque and softball game at night (where, as I’ve reminded everyone in the passing days, I not only scored a run even though I was pegged in the leg by a ball, I also was part of a double-play). Again, unimaginable fun, made even richer by a late-night trip to Great Barrington to feed the vegetarians in the car.

Saturday, the day of the wedding, was somehow the most lovely and sad. Jordi and I got ready together, which was terrific since neither of us clean up very often. I had the honor of being in charge of Chopin the dog, who was also the ring-bearer. We processed up the hill, where under a sweet, light rain, Ian and Tessa vowed to do the best they could for the rest of their lives. There were cocktails on the lawn, and then the reception in the barn, and I danced about three years off (or maybe added on to) my life. But a celebration of love, particularly on of this character and grace, definitely makes you re-examine your own life, your own love, and reminds you… or in my case, suddenly dawns on you, what it is you want.

I know what I want now. Everything else is falling into place. I’m no longer worried about not being cleared for the Peace Corps, or if my job is what I should be doing, or if I’m doing the right things in my life. Some things have become clear. What I need to do is take care of me, take care of my heart, and hope, hope, hope that in the end, I’ll get what I wish for. I’ve wished for a lot of things in my life that I didn’t really want. This is the exception. I’m calling on all the powers of the universe to help me, to grant this wish, to at the very least let me believe for a fraction of a second that this kind of happiness is possible. Let me actually believe that I can love, and be loved. It’s all I ask.

This morning at the Park Slope Food Co-op, it was so slow that I was able to shop during my shift for enough flour, butter, oranges, and confectioner’s sugar to cook two hundred orange rolls. When my mom picked me up, I lugged the huge box of groceries, my dresses, and my bags from the Co-op to her car. I had planned so well, dragged everything from my home to the store to save time. Only now, when I am upstate, having driven the length of Manhattan and back to pick up Tessa’s earrings and dress, driven up here, and worked in the barn for a few hours do I realize that I left one bag at the Co-op. That one bag is a familiar Tangerine color, containing one Tangerine I-Book given to me by my brother Ian.

After a frantic phone call I learned that my computer is exactly where I left it, and someone heading up for the wedding is going to pick it up tomorrow. Big fat phew. It’s not like me to do something like that. When Sean, Mom and I were in Utah, we bought advance tickets to the next night’s showing of the Pirates of the Carribean, and I promptly lost them. It is so confusing to me that I’m allowing these things to happen. I was able to talk our way into the theater, so we didn’t miss the show, but I just don’t get what I did. A week later I found one of the tickets, but the other two are lost in the world of nether.

There is still so much to do here, before the wedding, that everyone is a little overwhelmed. I still have a few things to pick up myself, and all of us have to devote time towards the barn tomorrow. But Sean, Jordi and I made a pact that we are going to all tackle tasks together so at least we won’t be hanging out alone anywhere. Steve is here, as well as Dad, Mom, and Carole, and Kent and Sean Patrick are supposed to get here some time late tonight. Sean and Jordi will arrive any minute, and when all is said and done, I get the good fortune of being with my entire family in one room. It might be weird or difficult, but it also might be terrific. I’m just so incredibly freaking happy that Ian, and Tessa, found people they want to spend their lives with. I can’t even imagine what that must be like.

More often than not, I sit down to write my blog when I have exactly no time to do so. I just worked a double, and have to be on my bike in six hours to get to French class on time.

But here I am anyway.

I’ve realized this week how much easier it all is when you don’t care about people’s opinion of you. It’s just so much easier. You stop trying to talk up the people who you are pretty sure you don’t like you, and a couple of days later they sit down next to you and ask about your Peace Corps application. And you still don’t really care if they like you. It’s sort of a wonderful feeling.

I leave for the wedding on Wednesday and don’t return to work for a week. While that certainly sounds lovely, I just have no idea how I’m going to make it work financially. I guess I’ll leave that worry to the end of the month. What is on my mind is my colposcopy, and the fear that my stupid cervix might keep me out of the Peace Corps.

On that note, to bed.

One year ago yesterday I was on the border of the United States and Canada, in Glacier National Park. I’d been away from home for three weeks training in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the days before had driven north to the starting point of my trek. I’ve been thinking about the influence of last summer, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it actually has changed my life. Since then, I’ve no fear of the outdoors, of heat, of lack of sleep, of not showering for weeks. I also got a good taste of what it’s like to think you are doing something great and to be reduced to doing not much more than cooking dinner. But within weeks I could also pitch a tent in under two minutes and make dinner out of the dregs of vegetables and canned soup at the bottom of a cooler. I also have only approached my hair dryer, and any serious makeup for that matter, once since returing last October. And that was for a Christmas party.

I also feel as though it has made me lust for the Peace Corps. Wherever I go, I will be essentially on my own, and whatever happens will be a result of my work. I’m scared I won’t be able to go for some random health reason. I’m trying to remain open and ready for whatever decision comes from Washington but I’m also… unsure. It’s a terrific lesson in patience.

Yesterday I at work I rushed upstairs during my shift in hopes of an available bathroom and a co-worked was sitting at a desk reading the paper. The headlines screamed “GAY HIGHSCHOOL TO OPEN IN NEW YORK”. My first instinct was to say to my co-worker, “Hey, cool, I can’t believe they are doing that”. Ten minutes later, as my station downstairs was undoubtedly going up in flames, I was still sitting at the desk talking about this high school. The person reading the paper was a twenty-year-old gay man, and as we talked I was given pause.

My initial thoughts when debating this idea were simply this: enough money and recognition is going towards the gay community that they can open a school. Gay kids won’t get harassed and beaten anymore. Gay kids can be open as early as Freshman year of high school without fear of repercussion.

But then… gay kids will always have it harder than non-gays. In my lifetime there will not be full tolerance, and hate crimes will not cease to exist. So do we raise our gay kids in an environment where they will never have to deal with hate, with fear, with violence against their kind, and then send them off into the work force where no such illusion exists? Do we let them form themselves during those hugely important years without learning to tell homophobes to f**k off? Do we let them believe that they will never be harassed for being gay, and by doing this, not allow them the defense mechanisms that they will need for the rest of their lives? Can we really create this false sense of security that could ultimately, and let’s be specific and historic on this issue, get them killed?

I’m not saying that just because every kid in the school is gay that they will not have a hard time. High school is hard no matter what. And maybe if it is a multi-racial school they will learn what it is like to be different from one another. But if you put 100 white gay kids in one school, I have to believe that they will not learn to deal with the real world.

But even more than that, I worry about the kids in the regular high schools who were the abusers. If we take all of the gays out of the non-gay high school, that will create even more ignorance and fear among the kids that were raised to hate gay people. The best thing to happen to a homophobe, in a situation like this, is to find out that one of their friends is gay. The fearful person then learns first-hand that their friend is both their friend, and worthy of that, but also gay. What if the grade and high schools had remained segregated? How do you suppose I grew up not believing what I was told but what I experienced first hand? My first crush was on a black boy at Taylor Elementary. I was in the 4th grade, and his name was Stephen. The year was 1981. Not too many years before, we would have been in separate schools, and I would not have been able to concieve of having a crush on a black person.

I don’t want hate-filled people growing up in schools that enforce that hate because of seclusion and segregation. And I don’t want gay kids growing up without learning to defend and believe in themselves when their very nature is attacked. I cannot believe that this is a good idea.