A few weeks ago we went out to celebrate my little brother’s 28th birthday. Dinner with family and friends followed by the inevitable question. Go out or go to bed?

We were in New York, Brooklyn specifically, and my parents had graciously offered to take Nora back to the hotel so that J and I could join the celebration. I thought about it and decided that, yes, we should go out. But not until 3 a.m., I said. I said it about ten times.

Being a parent hasn’t deterred us from going out now and then, having drinks and late nights with our friends, not at all. But I will say that the majority of our evenings revolve around eating dinner and reading in bed and going to sleep early. Well, the going to sleep early part is a regular thing for me, at least. J’s a little more of a night owl (owl reference, I know, you’re welcome).

This is because, yeah, obviously, we have a child who we take care of on a daily basis. But it’s also because it’s what we like to do at this point in our lives and that has to do with many factors. Nora and habit and our age and the fact that you can get HBO series like “The Wire” on demand and, oh my God, have you seen it? “The Wire?”

Having a night out, however, is a really great release for parents, in my opinion. Whether it’s a quiet dinner together, or a get together with your brother and friends that involves beers. Like millions of beers, even though you totally told your parents, don’t worry, we are not going to stay out until 3 a.m. and you truly meant it when you said it.

The problem is that even a semi-late night sometimes prompts me to say things like, “Wow, I can’t handle those nights anymore,” and guys, that actually is lame. I don’t mean my being tired after staying out past 10 (that’s right I like to go to bed at 10), because we have to get up at 7:30 or so every morning and take care of a toddler, which requires a good night’s sleep. It makes sense.

The lame part is feeling the need to analyze my behavior and physical state. Especially because the analysis almost always stems from my concern that maybe I’m too old, too adult, too much of a mother to ever do anything remotely related to my younger self, like, for instance, go out for my brother’s birthday and drink millions of beers.

It’s like I’m not quite sure I always know my place, and this goes beyond birthday celebrations in Brooklyn. How I’m still figuring out my career path and don’t have an exactly regular paycheck. How I don’t understand the stock market. How I still look to my parents as pillars of advice, still feel very much their child. But then I have a child, too. Every once in a while I catch myself wondering just how much of a grown up I really am.

Then there are moments of certainty. The other day I was driving with Nora somewhere and I took an extremely rare break from public radio, flipping through the commercial stations. I heard this song by Justin Bieber and Ludacris. Right? Justin Bieber and Ludacris? Yeah, I haven’t been keeping up as well as I should with pop culture, but isn’t Justin Bieber, like, 9-years-old? And not someone you’d picture doing a duet with Ludacris?

This is what I was thinking about when I realized the very obvious fact that Nora was so much younger than all the Justin Bieber fans out there. That God knows what would be popular someday when she was a teenager. A teenager! I felt so much like a mom, and it felt really good, honestly, daydreaming about how one day I wouldn’t “get” her music.

I know, I know, the night of one million beers. I’m getting to that, but I wanted to point out the opposite first. The moments where I feel so mature and perfectly suited to my current role.

A couple tequila shots in and singing “Only The Good Die Young” at the top of my lungs at some hole in the wall in Gowanus? Not so much. And, of course, we got back to the hotel at exactly 3 in the morning.

I could have - normally would have - woken up the next morning and questioned my actions, thinking about how - despite the fact that I’m normally sipping a cup of tea and devouring a mystery novel by 9:30 - I shouldn’t, ever, stay out late and drink beer, and especially drink tequila. Even though tequila is the only shot worth taking if you’re going to take a shot, and has never dealt me a bad hand. I didn’t even have a hangover.

Not the point, though. The point is that I didn’t wake up and immediately begin punishing myself for staying out late and celebrating my brother’s birthday, and I think the reason is because I’d had so much fun. Fun of the going-out-late sort that I hadn’t had in so long, where everyone’s singing and dancing, really letting loose. I’m not advocating tequila shots or anything (but if you’d been there that night I would have, very much), I’m just saying I had fun. That’s it. And then when I woke up, I was still Nora’s mother, in need of a lot more coffee than usual.

I know there will be both kinds of moments in all our coming years - moments when I feel so much, so easily the parent and moments when I’m still trying to figure myself out.

Most of the time, though, are the moments I like best, and, to tell you the truth, they’re the times that sort of fade into the background. Most of the time we’ve both had plenty of sleep and I’m not trying to analyze anything. The other day I took Nora to a favorite coffee shop where she ate a bagel and babbled incessantly to me and to a few kind strangers. I was holding her close on my lap and Feist, who was on Sesame Street by the way, was playing and I’m sure anyone who saw us would have realized that we were mother and daughter. Although to me, it was just us, listening to music we could both get into, hanging out somewhere warm on a cold afternoon.

I talk about this a lot, but if you were to ask me what my ideal job would be, I would say columnist. Like, columnist for some hugely popular magazine, you know, “Time” or something like that, or for a major newspaper. I’d write one column per week and everyone would read it and love it and I’d make trillions of dollars.

I mean, I’m just sitting here on a snow daydreaming, is there anything wrong with that?

But the other ideal job that comes to mind is being sent to weird events and places, interviewing interesting people and then writing about that. Kind of like Bill Geist on “CBS News Sunday Morning.”

I’ve had the good fortune to get to do just that with my freelancing for the New Haven Advocate lately and wanted to share my latest story. It’s on a lecture I attended for Sex Week at Yale. Yale has a “sex week.” I know.

Anyway, I went to a lecture by author Katherine Gates on “Deviant Desires.” As in sexual fetishes and kinks. Which is, by the way, a lecture rather unlike most I’ve attended in life.

You can read the story here.

I was feeding Nora lunch today when I dropped a piece of cheese on the floor and totally, accidentally said “Oh fuck.” Accidentally, guys.

And then Nora, very happily said “Fuh.” She said it. Fuh. And I knew exactly what she meant.

So we begin a new era.

Nora’s been sick in the middle of the night the past couple of nights (a saint, as always, not even waking us up) so today, a today that was meant to be spent working while she was in daycare, has turned into a sick day, “sick” being the new theme of caramcduna.com.

I know I haven’t been writing much lately, the reason being that I’ve had a lot of work to do. While this is GREAT (!) I don’t want to neglect this blog, since this blog is a venue for my favorite kind of writing, so I thought I’d take a few moments while Nora’s up babbling “baby, baby, baby” in her crib - I thought she was gonna take a long forgotten morning nap, I swear - and say hello.

As far as today goes, I’m hoping to have fun playing with my new Things program, although that seems like a kind of geekiness I’m not ready to embrace, brewing some more coffee in the French press, which is a lovely thing when you’re drinking for one, and maybe watching the episode of “The Wire” that J watched last night when I gave in to exhaustion and went to sleep. I do not like it one bit when he’s seen an episode that I haven’t.

And, of course, playing with my Nora, who, despite the unexplained throwing up all over herself and her mattress, is happy. I experienced a few moments of disappointment this morning when I realized that I was not, as I thought, going to go to the gym and then out somewhere to work on my laptop, but instead, was going to spend the day at home avoiding other children and reading “The Train Station” featuring Elmo eight or nine hundred times. But when Nora climbed up in my lap a little while ago and chose - surprise, surprise - that very book, then settled in against my chest, I am telling you, I felt very lucky that everything got turned upside down. And puked on.