April, which first brought sunshine and warmth and the promise of a lengthy summer, has turned on us as of late. Cold rain has begun and ended several days over the past week. This being the current state of affairs, I was not very excited to attend an outdoor concert last night.

Friends had discovered that the band Guster would be giving a free concert at Duke and we decided to go. Here’s where I get in trouble, especially with the JMU alums who may boot me from the inner circle for the following admission: Guster is not my favorite band. I admire them, think they are infinitely talented and very cool people, but, you get my point right? They’re not my favorite.

After leaving the show last night J told me he’d envisioned the whole thing as us standing in the sun upon fresh grass enjoying the music. I tell you this part first, so I can now tell you what actually happened, and how much what actually happened differed from this rosy projection.

First, I wasn’t much in the mood to go out, but did because the event started early, at 7, and because it’s important to go to out and experience things like rock concerts in the rain. I picked up J at the lab and after we met Sherry and Christy we were off to the Duke campus.

Where it was the last day of classes!

It’s interesting. I mean, maybe I should have realized it was the last day of classes when a 12-year-old dressed in patterned pink pants and a button down came stumbling across the lawn in front of Duke Chapel. But, I was like, “Well, this is North Carolina. That shit happens.”

It took assessing the situation further and listening to nearby conversations spoken in very loud tones to get the picture. Classes were over, baby. Not only were classes over, but Guster wasn’t playing til 9! Not only that, it was starting to smell a little bit like puke!

Pretty soon after one of two opening bands started playing some college-esque love songs the muddy field started getting pretty packed with intoxicated youngsters, some of whom were drinking actual beers, the 21-year-olds or those with damn good IDs, I figured, and others who were drinking neon pink and orange liquids out of plastic water bottles and Nalgenes. Oh, you guys. I went to college. I know what’s up.

I forgot about the fact that I hadn’t really wanted to come see my non-favorite band in a rainy field on a Wednesday night and got rather into the scene. I became an equally surprised and delighted observer. Especially when hip hop artist Razell (I’ve searched the Net to no avail on how to spell this guy’s name) took the stage. I’m pretty sure there were some other, older Guster fans, like our group in that quad, but we had somehow gotten right in the midst of the-last-day-of-classes glee club and when I wasn’t witnessing up-close, highly sexualized dance moves, I was picking up an empty bag of Franzia from the mud and handing it to a concert-goer behind me. Really. He wanted to make sure it was totally gone.

At one point during Razell’s performance - which was amazing by the way, the guy could imitate the beats and lyrics to complex hip hop tunes using only his voice - I felt someone softly grip me around my waist and lean his chin on my head as everyone swayed to the music. Justin? No, a teetering gentleman who all too soon left us for the great unknown of the crowd beyond. Romantic.

It became dark quickly, and the pulsing crowd reached new heights of excitement as drinks were circulated. Besides the adorable conversations I heard, including, “I need a beer. Dude, I need a beer. Dude. I need a beer.” and (from the more innocent among them) “HEY! Let’s totally take a road trip up north this summer! Are you in? I’m in! I’m so in! I’m in!” I noticed the very sensual interactions between the students. I thought back to all the times Erin G. and I had danced to “Only the Good Die Young” at one of our favorite bars in Boston, sung by a local cover artist, and wondered if we, too, had been so sensual. I am saddened to think that, no, we didn’t quite have these moves. Taking tequila shots in the freezing cold landscape of New England, I suppose, doesn’t yield the same results.

When Guster finally appeared onstage, after we’d been trampled a little and separated from our friends, the students reached a peak. The band played Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” two times as well as made many references to it being the last day of classes, and the students accepted the kind gestures well. There was crowd surfing. There was singing, guys belting out the lyrics to every last song just as powerfully as the girls.

Our good friend Tara, who went to JMU with J, has a boyfriend Mike, who I will give major thanks to for the rest of our lives because he rescued me from certain situations. Certain situations like J and all his friends suddenly forming a tight circle and dancing rambunctiously to a song I didn’t know. Or breaking out the guitars and singing a tragic ballad. At a party, say. They all have great voices and can harmonize, and it’s very, very sad. Mike and I formed a coalition and last year he bestowed me with a wonderful present - a t-shirt with our group’s name, “The Coalition for Happier Music,” emblazoned on its front.

At one point during last night’s concert the Guster band members started plucking their guitar strings in a deliberately slow manner and I thought, “Dear God, no,” but yes, they were playing one of these tragically emotional songs J and his friends like to sing in harmony. I looked around and thousands of drunk Duke students had lifted their mouths to the skies and were singing like their lives depended on it. I told J I was living my worst nightmare, but after a bit had to smile. It was funny. It was more than funny. There we were, packed like sardines with what seemed like a million carefree students, stepping on beer cans and each other, the smell of mud and grass, cigarettes and puke mingling - college! The smell of college. The picture of college - their bare feet and rolled up jeans, their clear bottles full of whatever they could get their hands on. The sounds of college - their singing, but loudly, not like the too-hip concerts we now attend, their conversations, their calls to friends and their declarations of joy in the form of fists thrust upwards and a piercing yelp because classes were over…what I’d spent the first hours of that concert thinking of as “their fun” had suddenly become mine and I was overjoyed that I, all at once, had no desire to experience it over again as I did in that cold, New England urban landscape, but that it still exists in such a pristine form, the music made even happier by the fleeting circumstance of such young, unburdened life.

I was driving home from a town board meeting last night in the previously-mentioned satellite and CD-free atmosphere when I happened upon a soft rock station that I just knew was featuring Delilah dedications at that time of night and so I waited though the commercials. That’s how much I dislike Delilah.

Sure enough, piano music soon rose to a crescendo, a chorus of heavenly angels sang “Deeeeeeee-li-lah,” and I waited eagerly to hear what atrocity the woman would shell out to her next avid, and undoubtedly emotionally impoverished listener.

The caller, who’d “put Dad in the ground” that very day (mark, my words, if any of you call Delilah on the day you “put me in the ground” there will be hell to pay) and, having a five-week old baby, the poor man was sad, but also felt fortunate that his father had held on, five years past the time doctors had given him, to see his grandson.

Listening to this particular call, I learned that Delilah doesn’t know the difference between playing a song to make someone feel better, and playing a song which simply has lyrics that relate to a given situation. Like, you’d never play the song “Breaking up is Hard to Do,” by Neil Sedaka for someone who’d just broken up with someone. You’d be subtle and play “No one is to Blame” by Howard Jones.

I waited in the brief, quiet moments just after Delilah said she wanted to play something to honor this man’s father and bless his newborn son wondering what soft rock gem this woman could possibly pull from the vaults when the opening notes sounded…and yes, of course, she’d chosen Mike and the Mechanic’s ultra-sentimental and tragic “The Living Years,” a song that features the troubled relationship between a father and son littered with “crumpled bits of paper” and quarrels “between the present and past.” The singer wishes he just could have told his father how much he meant to him in “the living years,” but, here’s the winner, thinks he just may have caught his father’s spirit, post-death, in his “baby’s newborn tears.”

I couldn’t stop listening so I drove and wondered about the others affected by the radio show. The caller, perhaps writhing on the floor, reduced to a mess of tears, and the radio queen herself, smug in her studio, lecturing the timid crew, “Did you see that? A father’s death and a newborn baby in that song. Now that’s award-winning programming.”

Today was a day I truly wished I worked in a bigger town, so that when I was getting annoyed about the seemingly endless humdrum work I was producing, I could have exited out the front door and onto a sidewalk teeming with interesting people. In bigger places, in cities, you can lose yourself in that. In smaller places, like the very small southern town I drive to everyday, you don’t get the same.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with either situation, just that some people prefer one or the other. I’m not a huge fan of the quiet. While I appreciate the occasional foray into the wilderness and certainly everyone needs some solitude once in a while, I often wish that I worked closer to Chapel Hill, even, and that I might be able to energize myself every once in a while with a nice crowd of people. People make me happy. People I don’t know, even. Sometimes that’s better.

These writers who surround themselves with bottles of vodka and don’t leave the house for ten days, I mean, that’s not for me.

Today as I sat, sinking lower and lower in my chair becoming more and more despondent by the minute, wondering how much more of this I could take (this is a good one - when you are married, and healthy and employed and absolutely fortunate and you begin to wonder “how much more of this” you can take) I began thinking of my younger days, and by “younger” I mean “more nonsensical,” when bad moods were never, ever the cause of something practical, like losing a contact or a bad grade, but were always the result of some deep chasm in my soul. Really. This coming from a girl who used to fill her diary pages with elaborate descriptions of how much she loved horseback riding.

I know I’m not surprising any of you because, admit it, you felt that way too. Listening to Nirvana. Reading “The Sorrows of Young Werther,” whatever. Life is sometimes just a little much when you’re young, and as I discover from time to time, you can slip right back into the same woeful mood when you are 28.

It’s not Monday. It’s not your job. It’s not your allergies, especially not your allergies. It’s just everything.

When my upper back had reached the topmost portion of my chair and I was actually staring into space, not for effect, but because, well, that’s what I could muster, I realized that there wasn’t any more of this I could take and made a quick move towards the back door and stepped out onto a small wooden landing there. This is where I enter the office every morning, sometimes carrying coffee, and try to unlock the door without putting anything down. Often, this ends in disaster, like coffee on my shirt and in my bag.

The sun was warm and comforting. I hadn’t really been outside all day. Just a few individuals were scattered in a nearby parking lot and I spotted a small bird in the grass that flew away at my arrival. I decided to go for a quick ride to the grocery store to get some water and a snack before my evening meeting and rolled down the car windows while turning the radio up. J and I have both become accustomed to the almost constant presence of satellite radio and CDs in the vehicles we drive, but today I had neither. Just a few commercial stations.

I rode past the grocery store when “Scar Tissue” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers came on and turned it up louder, a very good song. I kept driving when “Drops of Jupiter” by Train came on, a very bad song. I drove until there were no houses or anything, just trees and quiet all around, except for me, who was being very loud.

My point isn’t really that I suddenly realized the quiet of a small town can be really wonderful or anything like that. I’d still rather the people and noise. I think, rather, that I simply needed to remove myself from the situation briefly to realize how childish I was acting, ignoring the obvious factors leading to my slumped posture and lack of productivity. The fact that it was hot in our office. A sinus headache due to allergies, Monday, the government, a meeting tonight, a small southern town and all the mundane things that, when we grow up, mean so much more than we ever wanted them to.

“What’s it going to be like when we get older?”

“It’ll be great. We’ll have a wet nurse.”

“Um, what?”

“A wet nurse. Like a nurse that comes to your house when you’re old.”

“What? That’s not a wet nurse.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No - a wet nurse is a nurse who breastfeeds a baby that’s not hers. Like, if the mother can’t do it.”

“What are you talking about? A wet nurse is a nurse who comes to a house, and takes care of older people. Sometimes if a bunch of older people live together in a house, they get a wet nurse to take care of them. What you’re thinking of is probably the historical definition of the term.”

“Why is it called a wet nurse, then?”

“Because it’s…”

“Because it refers to breastfeeding.”

“No, it’s like Daphne. On “Frasier”? She’s like a wet nurse for Frasier’s dad. She tends to his wounds…”

“He doesn’t have open wounds…”

“And bathes him…”

“I think we need to look this up.”

“Ok. We’ll look it up. But I’m right.”

(He was wrong.)

The unthinkable happened when Cecilia spent the week with my parents…in our bluebird house…looking for squirrels…front porch…my Easter basket…J’s first cup of coffee after going so long without…Mina/jellybean…

Last night I arrived home after an evening out at a friend’s house for an Easter celebration and to continue gorging on chocolate, as I’d been doing all day. It was the last of several weekend events, including a night out on Franklin St. - bustling with activity now that it’s so warm - and a cocktail party where I had enough wine to think dancing to “What a Fool Believes” by the Doobie Brothers was a pretty good idea. I mean, it was, and it wasn’t.

When I got back last night I took a good look around the house and decided that doing the dishes wasn’t happening. J was at a baseball game and I opened the front and back doors, letting a breeze in, settled on the couch and proceeded to declare myself in a slightly depressed mood. Yes, the kind that occurs when a long weekend ends and Monday is fast approaching, but there was something else. Was it the wine? The candy? The pounds and pounds of candy?

The mood did not disperse entirely over the course of the evening, and was slightly less intense this morning, until it was nearly 8 a.m. and I realized I had to get up and go to work. The bed was so comfortable. The shower, so far away.

Needless to say I did what needed to be done and got out of the house with only time to grab a cup of coffee and blow my hair halfway dry before driving away, through Chapel Hill, into the county. I was half-heartedly listening to Lindsay Lohan’s true Hollywood story on my satellite radio, trying to sympathize with her, having had such trying times (the stress of upholding all those social obligations, those crazy nights out) when I realized that I, like Lohan, really had no right to complain. Ok -her dad lands himself in jail now and then, and mine, thankfully, does not, so maybe she’s got an advantage on me when it comes to sulking. The point is, occasional mood changes are normal, especially for me, it seems, during transitions, whether that’s from a long weekend to the work week or an entire change of a season - or even going from eating no sweets, to eating icing straight out of the container while decorating cupcakes, because Goddamnit, you sacrificed for 40 days.

When I was little my mother talked about this type of mood change all the time, ensuring me it was perfectly acceptable. It might happen due to something that would normally make someone sad, like the end of a particularly wonderful vacation at the beach, but also might occur when something as small as a friend leaving after a sleepover happened, she’d explain. Transitions, no matter how minor, could be tough, she told me. Similarly, before I got together with J, and in the beginning stages of our dating (just after ending a long relationship with someone else) my friend Max used to tussle my hair or put his arm around my shoulder when we were all hanging out and announce to everyone, “Cara is going through her transitional stage.” And in the midst of explaining to everyone that what I was doing was right, and that I knew I was making major life changes, but that they were important ones, this was exactly the encouragement I wanted. That was exactly what I was going through, I felt.

It’s not as though every time the seasons change I need to sit home wearing huge sweatpants and watching Lifetime for days or anything like that (although that does sound pretty great). Instead, I think every now and then one is entitled to eat more than their fair share of peanut butter and chocolate candy eggs and allow the dishes to go unwashed. It helps rejuvenate the senses, somehow, to shirk responsibility, just briefly, and commiserate with Lindsay Lohan. I doubt my mood will last much longer than it takes to get back into the swing of things at work. In fact, it may be fading now, even against my will as I’d like to chalk up another night of lazy television watching to a state of mind I just can’t shake. Let’s face it though, people who like Michael McDonald Doobie Brothers songs just aren’t fit for melodrama.

It’s official. Yesterday while driving home I saw a shirtless, scruffy-haired boy wearing a hemp necklace and talking on his cell phone in an old mercedes with the windows down, no doubt off to some friend’s house for an afternoon beer and I thought, Ah, yes, the season has arrived.

This weekend, being the awesome wife that I am, I suggested to J that we finally go take a walk at this biological reserve mentioned in his books as an absolutely great place to go birding. The place is serious business. We had to go to the North Carolina Botanical Garden first to get a pass allowing us into this holy place. While at the front desk of the information center at the Garden, a weekend volunteer - a tall man wearing glasses, peach turtleneck and matching peach button-down - told us, after we’d asked for a pass, “Yeah. That’s where, um, the birds are,” as though we’d just asked for the keys to the nerd museum.

As I’ve mentioned before, walking in deserted wooded areas isn’t my favorite thing. I realize this is pretty silly, but still, I couldn’t help but notice we were pretty much the only people around. My guess is that was because a person really, really has to want to go to this place. You’ve got to get your key, and then you’ve got to follow the rules, including the no-dogs rule and also the rule where if you are not interested in looking for new species, well, you’d better just chill and enjoy the walk.

Admittedly, it was pretty there, and it is rather hard to find large plots of land that are so undisturbed in developed areas. Also, the new bird J saw that day, and consequentially added to his Life List, was precious.

As J practiced his healthy, semi-adorable hobby, I, of course, fell to needless self-scrutiny, specifically: why didn’t I have any pastimes like this? Something to soothe the soul? Something I could lose myself, or find myself, doing?

I voiced my concerns to J, who lowered his binoculars and told me that of course I had hobbies. I liked to knit and read and write. And socialize with people.

And although that last one bears little resemblance to the bird-watching, stamp-collecting, gardening-genre of ways to spend one’s time, I realized, with my husband’s help, that I’m certainly not a passionless person, and happily resumed the stroll, always watching over my shoulder lest some crazed lunatic should emerge from the vast woodlands, because I swear to you - the thing is, if he did - no one would hear it. Except those birds and honest to God, what help are birds?

This morning I was watching CNN’s “American Morning” and caught a segment they did on Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise’s potential plans for a “silent birth.” Apparently Scientologists believe that a birth should be a somewhat quiet event, so that it may be more “natural” for the mother and child. I learned from the story that they don’t so much mean that the mother should be quiet, but that the doctors, and others in the room should be quiet. I learned this from a Scientologist who shared her thoughts on the practice, which she had experienced herself when giving birth to her son a few years ago. If a “moan is done” by the mother, that’s ok, she said. But she didn’t want a doctor yelling “push, push!” to her while she was in labor, because, as she explained very practically, she didn’t want her son, when he was learning to ride a bike years later, to hear her saying “push, push!” and for him to become inexplicably stressed and have a headache.

Some might say the crazy part is that these Scientologists believe that some baby is going to have even the slightest memory of their birth. But what I want to know is who the hell yells “push!” when they’re teaching their kid to ride a bike?

You can watch the story here.

Last weekend J and I flew to Connecticut to attend his cousin’s wedding. It was a McDonough affair, meaning his J’s father, J’s father’s twelve million brothers and sisters, and their children were in attendance. In other words, the night was a hysterical and joyous celebration that included wild dancing to “Come on Eileen” as well as late night hastily-concocted drinks whilst swaying to Frank Sinatra. But I’ll get to that later.

Upon landing that morning J and I went to meet his parents for the drive back to Orange when I felt an all-too familiar sensation grip my insides like some vile devil. A urinary tract infection. In times like these - times when I get a urinary tract infection immediately upon landing in Connecticut, where we’re staying for only one night to attend such a lovely occasion as a wedding and I’d really like to be comfortable, if not having fun - I try and remember the worst experience of this sort, that plane ride back from London, where I’d spent a semester my junior year. The one where I felt the pangs of horrid pain the minute the plane had taken off and I was forced to endure the entire seven-hour flight having to pee every two seconds knowing there was nothing I could do. The worst part? I had antibiotics the doctor had prescribed for just such a situation. In my luggage that had been stored safely in the luggage compartment far below and out of my reach. The point is, when I feel I’ve been dealt a particularly unfair hand, I remember that plane ride and how whatever I am dealing with is just simply not that bad.

Luckily, the women in J’s family get urinary tract infections just as often as I do and when I shared my news his mother responded with amazing speed. She had a prescription from the doctor, just in case she needed it, and she, so very graciously, filled it for me. After an afternoon lying in bed, drinking water and holding emergency conferences with J’s mother and his sister Megan, during which we commiserated about how there is nothing worse - support that, of course, made me feel so much better - I was able to get up and into my dress. With the help of various medicines attacking the infection and the pain I was ready to begin an evening of wild debauchery.

After the ceremony, held in an charming, historic church we went on to the reception, where we met up with the above mentioned brothers and sisters, including J’s Uncle Bobby. Uncle Bobby has a highly entertaining blog, and he, J and I quickly got down to the business of holding our first ever blogger’s convention (you can read Uncle Bobby’s account here) at the table where we talked about the importance of getting more people to read our blogs. Meeting adjourned. I would think that our incredible dance moves (at least Bobby, his family, and I along with other McDonoughs…J can’t be counted on to dance even at weddings lest you slip him something mighty strong) might have been reason enough for all those in attendance to quickly look us up online and become avid readers. People who dance like us can obviously write an awesome blog.

Once the reception was over, and since J’s parent’s house was nearby, it seemed obvious that everyone was coming over. When we arrived, Megan’s boyfriend Matt and I got busy making everybody drinks, including a shot of vodka and cranberry juice that we served up in tiny espresso glasses. Those were a kind of hard sell, but nonetheless I found several takers and everybody cheered to whatever. Frank Sinatra was playing and soon people were dancing and I was passing out on the couch. It was great, as I told my father the next day when he was driving us home from BWI, and he promptly stated, “It sounds like your mother’s family when they get together. Those Irish.”

Nearly a week later I’m spending the afternoon at home flushing my body with gallons of water again. The doctor I saw this morning determined that the wonderful gift of medicine I’d received from my mother in law hadn’t quite knocked out the infection and I’m now on something new. I’d normally get pretty bummed about a situation such as this, especially since my parents are coming to visit tonight. But I’m staying positive. I’ve been watching the Food Network for a couple hours, the Mecca of all that is frivolous, and therefore, ultimately comforting. While I’m on the subject, I’d kind of like to know where these cold-hearted individuals who can’t get enough of making fun of Rachael Ray are when Paula Deen is on? God love the woman, but come on.

The more important thing keeping me happy though is the memory of all the help I got last week when dealing with this annoying and persistent ordeal from J’s family. Even his grandmother, another fellow sufferer, encouraged me to stay strong. When you aren’t feeling well, the one thing that can make you feel better, and not alone, are people who have been there. And believe me - if you haven’t been there you DON’T KNOW.

J and my kids are screwed, I realize. They’ll be born blind and in immediate need of some Cipro, but they’ll have a support system in the form of laughter, understanding and late night Irish-jam sessions, and they’ll be just fine.