A sort of magical place, I guess

Last weekend I visited the Cheerleader in St. Louis. She and I have been friends for ten years and have seen each other through a couple of graduate degrees, several job changes, multiple relationships, a wedding, and two kids; the wedding and kids, obviously hers.

Our weekend was filled with lots of laughter and plenty of catching up on long-lost girlfriend time--I really miss the Cheerleader. And even though our lives are drastically different than they were a decade ago, the friendship, the accountability, the sarcasm, the everything hasn't faded one bit.

But let's go back to that drastically different part.

Even though I'm still living the dream as a single girl, I am nowhere near as crazy as I once was--yet another sign of aging. Exhibit A: Saturday night, she and her husband get a babysitter and we head out for a night on the town. After a few rounds of drinks, crashing a local's 50th birthday party, and a few requests at a dueling piano bar, I could barely hold my eyes open and was ready to call it a night. It was 9:45 PM.

So I may have lost some of that vivacious energy that used to get me through last call, or at least midnight, but my exhaustion isn't solely because I'm getting older. No. I'm not the only one who has changed. You see, more so than age, the reason I was exhausted before 10:00 on a Saturday was because of a little thing we did that day called, "occupying the time of an almost three and a one-year-old." Otherwise known as, "The Magic House."

Picture a Children's Museum (with a few interactive displays), and then picture the Extreme Home Makeover crew coming in, bulldozing that place down and in it's place building a behemoth mansion with floors upon floors, and wings upon wings, of bells, and whistles, and lights. That's the Magic House. And I know that kids love it; if I were a kid, I would love it; and the seventeen million kids that were there when we were were loving it, the Cheerleader's kids included. And parents probably love it, because it's an educational time suck for the kids. But single people--okay, namely this single person--might not share that love. I was overloaded on stimulation, and was ready for a nap the moment we set foot in the place.

I know I've said this before, I really do want kids someday. And I know that someday, I'll have to take them to the Magic House (or its equivalent). I just need to start mentally preparing for that someday trip today.