tugboats

Another weekend has passed in a blur of delight. Saturday was wicked cold and rainy so I curled up with some coffee and finally applied for two jobs I found that I am actually qualified for - woop woop! Then I made some tea and read for pleasure, I still forget that I can just read any book I want whenever I want to *sigh* It's the little things you know? Anyway then I packed a bag and drove to Portsmouth to my supervisor's apartment to spend the night. We went for a walk in her neighborhood and it is official, New England has the most beautiful houses I have ever seen. They are all old victorians with rap around porches and one had a widow's walk and they are wonderful colors and the molding! Bah! My ridiculous excitement was perfectly reflected in Jane which resulted in a mutual gushing over the houses; a direct quote from Jane, "Break me off a piece of that house!" Basically we are old-house loving soul mates.

After the walk we had a Parks and Recreation marathon and she came to love Ron Swanson, as any sane female would. The next day we had brunch at the wonderfully hipster restaurant The Friendly Toast where the food is all of these ridiculous flavor combinations i.e. pumpkin pancakes with raisinettes (to DIE for and you would never guess). Then we walked to the ocean and I saw some tugboats and well the ocean which is such a wonderfully enjoyable thing to do here because it's so second nature to New Englanders but so note-worthy and exciting to a midwest girl. After stopping in a jewelry store where I got a compass necklace Jane drove us to Boston (seriously I will NEVER drive there-I would die) to go to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Art Museum since it all renovated. It's a heavenly museum, but made even more enjoyable by Jane who used to be a tour guide there. All I want to do in my life is talk walks with people who teach me things, I could have stayed there for hours. Then we met up with her old roommates for dinner and I loved them and I formed another theory about differences in New England and the Midwest.

So the two women (?girls? what do you call a 30 year old?anyway...) and Jane are all 30ish and either single or dating someone. The only married women I have met out here are 40+ and those women have young children. You can imagine that when I mentioned that most of my friends are married/engaged that they were baffled. Now I just thought that I happen to have friends that are getting married, but now I think it is a cultural difference. As in girls/women (really we need an inbetween term) in the Midwest get married/have families earlier than girls/women out here. Now that I write that down it actually seems like a conclusion I should have come to sooner as it is stereotypical that women in cities would be more career driven/less family oriented. It's just weird to be so surrounded by it. Also I just discussed this at length with a woman who's cubicle is near mine. I am continually fascinated by the subtle differences from the Midwest when so many things are simultaneously so similar.