Yesterday my parents, J, Nora and I piled into the car and made our way to the Baltimore Aquarium, which was one of my favorite places when I was little. We walked through the freezing cold along the harbor, bought our tickets and spent a couple hours among the various species of fish and plant and the crowds of other children and parents and grandparents who’d had the same idea.

There was something incredibly heartwarming about watching my daughter make her way through the same paths past huge shark-filled tanks I’d once walked, and pointing excitedly at bright, darting, exotic fish.

But perhaps even better was the hilarity of driving there and back, packed tightly in the front and back seats, yelling at my father for pumping the gas pedal in a motion sickness-inducing manner and checking his Blackberry when we were sitting at a red light (”I was stopped it’s ok to do it when you’re STOPPED!”). Funny, busy, insane, hot. But the mundane details of getting there just as good as the actual destination.

Last week Nora and I took the train down to D.C. to visit my parents for a couple of days (sorry D.C.ers for not getting in touch! it was a really quick trip). Nora and I have made several long-distance trips together, so I wasn’t too worried about traveling alone with her, although I knew it wouldn’t be a piece of cake or anything. Nora isn’t walking yet but she certainly doesn’t like to sit still as much as she used to; our super-easy flight to Rome is a distant, glorious memory.

I want to diverge from the subject for a moment to talk about the guilt that I sometimes succumb to as a mother - the guilt that I think many mothers feel, despite the fact that they should not. The guilt I felt, for instance, when I dropped Nora off at daycare this morning, where a few kids were coughing. And what if she gets the Swine Flu?!? It would be all my fault! Because she could have stayed home with me! Even though I actually do have some work to do today (for once) and even though I know she loves daycare and it is beneficial for her in many ways! Still! Worst mom ever?!?

Jesus Christ. I feel like smacking people when they get like this, and yet…I’m not immune. It’s bullshit, pure and simple. However, these feelings of guilt play a part in this story because on my way to catch the train last week, with stroller and duffel in hand, I stopped to get a cup of coffee, as I hadn’t had any yet that morning.

Guys, I needed that coffee. I mean, if there’s one person in the world who needs a coffee, it’s a mom, especially a mom who’s about to travel five-and-a-half-hours by train with her child who may or may not be (read: definitely IS) in a minor tantrum-throwing phase. Yeah, I guess I could have waited, gotten settled on the train and then bought a coffee in the cafe car, but you know what would have happened by that point? I would have died from caffeine deficiency.

The point is that I got on the train already feeling bad because I was wheeling my stroller one-handed with a duffel bag over one shoulder, holding a cup of hot coffee. Now, I’ve become skilled at this sort of thing. I can wheel that stroller around 90 degree turns while drinking coffee, talking on the phone and walking my two dogs. You know, sort of. Still, to the untrained eye, I’m sure I looked a little overwhelmed.

So I get on the train with my hands full and proceed to look for a seat, which required walking through several cars. Unfortunately, one of the cars was the Quiet Car.

I just Googled “Amtrak Quiet Car” in an attempt to find a definition, and instead found that many have shared their thoughts on the subject with the Internet. Check it out.

The Quiet Car is self-explanatory. You’re not supposed to talk loudly or use your cell phone. I’ve always thought this was a fine idea, until - and here I diverge briefly again - my father’s recent experience on Amtrak. He and my mother, traveling to New York, sat down in the Quiet Car by accident, and my father proceeded to talk on his phone en route. Then, naturally, the inevitable happened in the form of a gentleman who leaned over and said, in a snide voice, according to my father, “Excuse me. Don’t you know this is the Quiet Car?”

My father, always easygoing except when confronted with - to put it plainly - total jerks, replied, “Thank you for telling us. And, by the way, I could do without the attitude.”

Guess what happened next. No, guess. They exchanged more words. Emotions escalated. And…they almost got into a FIGHT. Like, fisticuffs. Seriously.

Right. Um, do you know my dad?

He’s a peace loving guy. Which drives the point home even more:

People who ride the Quiet Car are assholes.

Well, for the most part. My mom claims she had to hold my father back - hold him back! - and that eventually both men calmed down. The Quiet dude got off in Philly, and everything was fine.

In this guy’s defense, my dad was talking loudly on his cell phone. Annoying, I’m sure, but I think a gentle reminder would have done, since my parents - honestly - didn’t realize they were being offensive.

Back to my train ride.

So I had to walk through the Quiet Car to get to less-populated train cars in the back. The guilt reared again. Not only was I carrying coffee and a duffel bag while navigating the narrow aisles of a D.C.-bound train, but if I had realized where the Quiet Car was, I would have entered through a different door. I would have skipped it altogether! Hell, I don’t want to ruffle any feathers. I was already bringing a 13-month-old on a train. For five-and-a-half hours! I was all about charming my fellow passengers into loving my rosy-cheeked, teething-biscuit-covered child. She’s getting her molars and SHE IS DELIGHTFUL!

Anyway, we’re walking through the Quiet Car and I’m pretty much tiptoeing, no joke, because people are sleeping and, no doubt, enjoying their noise-free train experience. There’s a bit of a bottleneck up ahead and, right there, smack in the middle of the Quiet Car, Nora decides to engage in a rowdy bout of whining, that most likely translated into something like “Why is it so quiet in this train car, I HATE IT.”

A few heads turned, although most people chose to close their eyes and ignore us, praying for our quick passage. There was one woman, though, who couldn’t resist dishing out a little judgment, and this woman, who was reclined in her seat and apparently in the middle of a nice nap before we showed up, looked at me then looked at Nora, crinkled her face into a grimace and sighed loudly, although she simply couldn’t believe our audacity. Who the hell did we think we were whining in the Quiet Car?

I am my father’s peace-loving daughter, except, it turns out, when some Quiet Car junkie dares give my daughter a dirty look. How the hell does she know what getting your molars feels like? Her gesture was subtle, but I am almost ashamed to say that I nearly reared back and smacked her.

Almost ashamed, but not quite.

My anger subsided as my bag lightened, and I looked back to discover that a kind middle-aged man had taken it gently from my shoulder, with a, “Let me help you, you’ve got your hands full. I remember those days.” He carried my bag through three cars until we found a seat, and helpfully placed it in the luggage rack. I was incredibly grateful.

We settled in for a rather tiring train ride and I reflected on the two strangers. And on myself, not quite ashamed, because you know what? Maybe my dad should have punched that guy, and maybe I should have smacked that woman.

But instead of making the local news, perhaps better that I came to the conclusion I mentioned earlier, plus a few more. Most people who ride the Quiet Car are assholes. But there are a lot of good people in the world.

Most of all, no parent should have to hold their breath as they worry about that their teething baby might wake up a fellow train passenger, who, I’m willing to bet, didn’t really need the nap in the first place.

And a mother, who will spend that train ride getting cookies shoved down her shirt, and probably could use a few minutes of shut-eye, should get coffee any damn time she wants.

A few weekends ago J and I traveled to Massachusetts to meet up with some good friends and check out the Big E, which is, for those of you who’ve never been, like a state fair on steroids. I used to think the fried food selection at the North Carolina fair was astounding, but they had nothing on the these guys.

Anyway, because J is a total opportunist when it comes to his hobbies, he decided that we should make an event of the trip and visit the Massachusetts and Connecticut highpoints the next day (you can read more about the highpointing business here).

I don’t like highpointing. That’s right, I SAID IT. I don’t like it in the same way I don’t like the birdwatching stuff, because I’m not really one for accruing specific goals that can be added to some kind of life list. But I do love the situations that both activities entail. You’re outside, you run into interesting people and you usually get some exercise. Plus, you get to check out new places and often, I force J into stopping for coffee after we’re done, and that’s always nice.

So I said, “Let’s do it!” We found a totally adorable, affordable place to stay in the Berkshires that night and headed to Mt. Greylock, Massachusetts highpoint, the next day. You can drive up Mt. Greylock. Up at the peak there’s a lodge, a few trails and lots of helpful rangers. Gorgeous views everywhere, and lots of tourists.

The Connecticut highpoint is different. Way different. I think the Connecticut highpoint is exactly the kind of thing these highpointers get off on. Difficult to find. Difficult to climb. Known by a select few. Annoying.

The highest peak in Connecticut is on Mt. Frissell. But it’s not located at the top of Mt. Frissell, because the top of the mountain is actually in Massachusetts. So you have to stumble around until you find this tiny little marker indicating that you are, in fact, the highest you can be while still in Connecticut, before passing over the state line. It’s ridiculous. This site, called “Peakbagger,” which, frankly, sounds dirty to me, provides some information: Mount Frissell-South Slope.

The second highpointing excursion was going to be totally different from that morning’s trip. I could tell the second we pulled onto the bumpy gravel road we were to follow for, like, three or four miles. No people anywhere. Just murderers and bears.

Yeah, you know how I feel about abandoned woodsy areas and murderers and bears. Only black bears in Connecticut, you say? The wildlife is an integral part of the outdoors experience? I don’t care. It’s still way different than spotting a deer or squirrel.

My ex-boyfriend once said he thought I had the opposite of claustrophobia because I am afraid of wide open spaces and the lack of people, rather than being in crowded, tight spaces. It’s true; give me a semi-bad neighborhood in a city any day over a lonely forest glen.

I didn’t want to be labeled a coward, however, and the truth of the matter is I do like hiking. I also adore being outdoors. I love the fresh air associated with unadorned nature, pure and simple, and sometimes that means leaving the crowds behind. I can deal with that. Sort of.

Also, I shouldn’t complain because J had the baby strapped to his chest the entire time, but this hike was hard. There are certainly more difficult trails out there, but I wouldn’t call myself an experienced hiker and I was really working for the majority of our uphill climb. At times we were basically on our hands and knees, pulling our way up large rocks. We’d passed a couple of other hikers on our way in, but since then we’d seen nobody and I was starting to wonder exactly how quickly I could pull out my Blackberry and dial 911 in the case that we were attacked.

I was cranky, to say the least. I’d been up for this, but climbing and climbing and CLIMBING in order to find some remote metal marker on the state line just to say we did it? Are you serious? Also, our directions were confusing and the trip was psychologically, as well as physically, exhausting. We had to hike to the top of one smaller mountain, then hike back down a bit before beginning to scale Mt. Frissell. J kept saying we were “almost there,” which I found frustrating because how can you possibly know when you’re “almost” on some southern slope of a mountain at the state line, especially when you’re never been there before and especially when all landmarks listed are things like “pile of rocks” or “especially large tree”?

My body was tense, I was scared and all I could think about was how we kept going deeper into the wilderness and in order to get back to our car we had to do it all over again.

Just when I was really starting to hate life, we heard voices. A couple was approaching us from the opposite direction, hopping down the rock face, having already completed their upward climb. Other people! I enthusiastically greeted them. Seeing other people on a hike always helps remind me that, in terms of my fears, I’m being an idiot. People hike in the woods! And not only do they survive, they have a good time.

The couple asked us how we were doing with the baby in the Baby Bjorn, and J gave them a quick rundown, telling them that hiking with the baby was really very easy. They said they were interested because they were expecting their first.

This healthy, athletic, not-afraid-of-bears-in-the-least woman about my age, she was totally pregnant. I stood there, sweating and resentful and totally not helping out with Nora, and I thought a good long while about how I needed to seriously stop it. Where was worrying about bears and murderers going to get me anyway? It was a beautiful day! I was with my family, somewhere on a mountain near the Massachusetts/Connecticut state border, for Christ’s sake, and if my husband wanted to find that obscure marker, then we were going to find it.

We chatted for a bit, and before getting on their way, the woman said, “It’s great to see you guys out here. It’s good to know that you don’t have to stop doing all the things you love once you have a baby.”

“You can do everything you used to do!” I exclaimed without a moment of hesitation.

I didn’t say it to try to impress them. That’s something I truly believe and I meant it, one hundred percent. So on we hiked until, after searching around in the brush, J found what he was looking for and we were - officially - standing on the highest point in the state.

After such a grueling uphill trip, my legs were weak and I fell a bunch of times on the way down. But we didn’t see any bears.

More importantly, I didn’t even stop to look.

I know I said I wasn’t going to be blogging while still on vacation, but this morning I got myself a cup of coffee, settled in to watch the Ted Kennedy coverage on MSNBC, and opened up the laptop. And…it was like reconnecting with a dear friend. And I got a little fidgety. And I couldn’t resist the pull of composing just one little blog post about our trip.

One of the great things about this Maine trip is that a few friends were able to come up to join the family - my darling, hilarious, always fun high school friends Abby, Jennifer and Max, and Max’s amazing fiancee, Kasia, who I was so happy to finally meet (Kasia, here’s your story).

Max and I were hanging out yesterday and he asked me about seven or eight times if I had written about him on my blog recently, and then, when I replied no, began asking why not, and explained to me that he doesn’t really read my blog, he just skims through it every now and then to see if he’s made it into any posts. I mean, what can I say? My friends and I are honest with one another.

So to celebrate the fact that I’m finally getting some quality time with Max and Kasia, who now live in Poland, I thought that I would, in fact, dedicate some space to the famous Max Bobbitt. Especially because I have a very nice picture to post:

I must now add Baby Bjorn skills to Max’s long list of other talents (drawing, devising complicated plans to catch lobsters, being a terrific friend, getting Mina really fat, rowing a wooden dinghy across a probably dangerous and shark infested body of water just to say we did it).

Obviously, this Maine trip is a little different than the one we experienced three years ago. Yet we are still able to make a day out of doing, well, not much. As J said, when he’s up here he has absolutely no desire to do anything productive with his life.

Amen. Long live vacation. Long live August in Maine.

Apologies for not writing for over a week, but we’re relaxing off the coast of Maine and I’ve thrown aside the computer in favor wine on the patio and afternoons swimming in the (almost freezing) pool.

Stories - and pictures! - to come after I return home later this week. After eating more lobster. And maybe some ice cream.

When my alarm went off Monday morning, it just wasn’t a good scene. I was that kind of tired where you feel like punching somebody. You know, because you are so tired. And that seems like the only logical solution.

I somehow made it out of the bed and into the shower, into my clothes and into the car so J could get me to the station for the 6:53 train to New York City. And the minute I’d boarded and settled in to my window seat, I leaned my head against the wall in hopes of getting a little more sleep before the work day began.

I drifted off for a while, as the seats next to me filled up and the car got more and more crowded, and I came to sometime after we’d stopped in Fairfield and were on the express route to Grand Central.

I was hot when I woke up. Like, really extremely hot. They’d jacked up the heat that morning, I suppose because of the unseasonably cold temperatures, and I’d been leaning against the vent as I slept. I took off the cardigan I was wearing, but that didn’t help. I kept getting hotter. Then my stomach didn’t feel quite right. Then my vision started to go a little blurry. I realized I was about to pass out or something.

You know what the worst place to be is if you feel like you’re going to pass out or something? The window seat of the three seater aisle on a crowded train that is on the express route to New York City and won’t be stopping anytime soon.

I knew I needed to lie down. I mean, it wasn’t as though I was going to die or anything, I was fully conscious, and not even panicking, I just needed to lie down. But, of course, I came to the awful realization that if I wanted to lie down, I was going to have to make at least a little bit of a scene, because those ladies sitting next to me? They were going to have to move.

I tried my best to get over it. I sat back, took some deep breaths and closed my eyes, but I just felt worse, so I resigned myself to the inevitable, and in my most polite voice, told the women that I “didn’t feel very well, sort of like I’m about to pass out, and I’m five months pregnant, and would you mind getting the conductor for me?”

Great, I thought, now everyone knows. No one made too much of a fuss though, thank God, as I put my head down and pulled my knees up towards my chest, as my seat companions, who’d graciously and quickly gotten up to make room for me, suggested.

Within seconds I felt 100 percent better. I guess I just needed to put my head down, like I’d thought, so my circulation could get back to normal. But I’d already set the wheels in motion, as I knew would happen when I realized I had to go public, and a few minutes later the conductor (Why had I asked for the conductor? It had seemed like the right thing, but what could he really do for me?) appeared in the aisle with a banana and a bottle of water.

I sincerely like most of the Metro North conductors I’ve met, but this one could not have been more unfriendly. He all but threw the items at me, told me to “eat that,” and away he went, almost as though he had seen it all before and I was just another pregnant woman causing problems on the train, and couldn’t I see he was busy? And how could I have let this happen?

I did what he said, though, peeled the banana and started to eat, because I figured it could only help, and I was taking my first bite I saw a very tall gentleman walking through the train car, calling out, “Where is the girl who is not feeling well?” and I had to raise my hand and say, “Oh, that’s me,” despite kind of wanting to jump out the window. Jumping out the window at that point seemed like the best option.

The man was very nice, though, I’ve got to admit, and asked if I’d like him to test my blood sugar levels, to see if maybe I was hypoglycemic, and I said sure, and was offering my index finger as I finished the rest of the banana, when I realized I had no idea who in the world this man was, and stopped him so I could ask, “Wait, are you a doctor?”

A registered nurse, he replied, and I happily gave him back my hand.

My blood sugar was fine, I was fine, and we all returned to our regular activities.

When I got to Grand Central I called my doctor’s office to ask them if I should be concerned, and the nurse told me that feeling faint while pregnant is actually fairly common, that I’d done the right thing by lying down and that she was nearly positive nothing was wrong, but since this was my first pregnancy and it had never happened to me before, maybe I should come in for a quick visit that afternoon and get checked out.

So I called my office and told them I’d be taking a sick day, I called J and asked him if he could pick me up in a couple hours, I got a scone, so no one could accuse me of not eating enough, and I got right back on the train heading back towards New Haven.

The rest of the day was rather uneventful and even pleasant. I slept almost the entire train ride home. J picked me up, got me some lunch and made sure I was ok, and I slept a little more before he took me to my appointment, where he patiently waited with me, sitting on a chair in the corner while I sat up on the examination table, for the doctor to show. We laughed, thinking up ridiculous baby names.

After a quick check - my blood pressure and the baby’s heart rate were both just fine - the doctor declared that “pregnant women are simply more prone to fainting.” I told her that yes, I’d heard that. We talked about the fact that I’ve been really good about eating enough, but probably didn’t get enough breakfast before leaving the house that morning, and how if I felt that way again, the best thing to do is lie down, like I did, although if it happens again on the train I’m probably going to opt for the jumping out the window routine.

I didn’t like what happened, not at all. Besides being a pretty stressful way to spend the morning, I don’t like feeling weak, and even though I’m well aware that “pregnant women are simply more prone to fainting,” I, personally, like to think I can somehow avoid it anyway. That maybe I’m somehow better and stronger than everyone else.

Which, of course, I’m not.

When annoying or bad things like this happen, I like to at least try and look for a positive, and there are a couple in this instance. I caught up on some sleep I probably badly needed, for one thing.

There were also a few wonderful moments of female unity in the midst of all the commotion that morning. One of the women sitting next to me reassuringly told me that she’d fainted on the train when she was pregnant so she understood, and the other, who had been sitting on the far end of our row and had gone to find the conductor for me, told me upon returning to her seat that some man she’d encountered in another car had the nerve to say that “They shouldn’t allow pregnant women on the train.”

She told me she looked right at him and asked “And how many babies have you had?” Then she smiled at me and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “If men had to have babies, the world would end.”

As those regular readers amongst you know. Wednesday I returned from a week long trip to Hawaii - a vacation planned because my friends Lisa and Eitan were getting married there - and a vacation long awaited because the rest of us, oh, somewhere around January, started talking about how AMAZING and GREAT and FUN and MEMORABLE it was going to be for the group of us (friends since high school) to spend a week HAWAII! An island chain with beautiful beaches and views and leis and Mai Tais!

And honestly, I could stop writing the blog post right here, because you know exactly what happened: We had an amazing, great, fun time. I’d be more creative in my choice of descriptive words, but that’s truly how it went down. Hawaii is this incredible place, as anyone who has been there knows. Not only are the people who live there very kind and welcoming, and not only is there a ton of fun stuff to do, but there are palm trees and views of the bright, blue ocean everywhere you look.

I mean, if you want me to go on and on about how great it was and all, I will, but suffice it to say that I had a fantastic vacation. And I can’t wait to go back to Hawaii someday.

Here are a few pictures that tell the story much better than I ever could.

A few of us girls spent our first few days of the vacation on the North Shore of Oahu, where we rented a house. And oh yeah, we also rented this:

That’s right, a totally sweet Mustang convertible. Have you ever tried to fit five people in a Mustang convertible? With all their luggage? Yeah. Maybe it wasn’t the most practical choice, but believe me, it was worth it, especially when I was able to take pictures like this from the backseat while we were cruising around town:

Our days on the North Shore were pretty chill, and mostly consisted of waking up, eating lots of pineapple, putting on lots of sunscreen and heading to the beach where we’d go swimming and snorkeling. We also hiked to and sat underneath a waterfall one afternoon.

And by the way, the beach looked like this:

I know. Poor us, right?

Our next stop was Kauai. That was where the wedding took place and where, would you believe it, we had even MORE fun.

That, for instance, is a picture of me and my friend Cate trying to surf. The two of us, along with our friend Jennifer, took a surfing lesson one morning and actually got up on the boards for entire seconds at a time! There are no pictures documenting us standing up on the boards, but believe me, we did it. And it felt incredible. What didn’t feel so incredible was when I wiped out right at the shoreline, with the board going in between my legs, falling frontwards, then backwards, then having the waves wash over me and my face in the sand. But whatever. You’ve got to sacrifice if you want to be a righteous surfer. Thankfully, there are no pictures of me falling down, either.

Another adventure was a hike we took on the Na Pali coast on the northern shore of Kauai. I could try and explain what a gorgeous place this was, but pictures should do the trick:

Those are a few of the things we did on our vacation, and that doesn’t even really begin to explain it. We lounged around the pool, we ate shaved ice and macadamia nut ice cream, we tried in vain to snap pictures of huge sea turtles stick their head up out of the waves, we talked and talked around the dinner table, we took tequila shots and crashed a birthday party, we sang and danced and tried to do the hula, we ate pig at a luau and shrimp from a shrimp truck, we read gossip magazines and, of course, we went to a wedding, the reason we all were there.

I met with stark reality the day after my friend Abby and I boarded the plane to come home, when, following an all-night flight from Honolulu to Newark, I was forced to wait an extra couple of hours for my one final flight home to Raleigh. I was tired, and unshowered, and totally not on a beautiful island anymore. I was, instead, in an airport in New Jersey.

While I waited there at the gate as they kept pushing my flight back another ten minutes over and over again, a little boy, barely two-years-old, came over to chat with me in nonsense, baby words and I smiled at his mother and said it was perfect, “about all I could handle after the nine-hour flight” I’d just had. “Nine hour flight?!” she said. “That’s so long! Where did you go?” And then I realized that whining was absolutely out of the question and I told her, “Well, I just came back from Hawaii where I spent a week with all my best friends. So I really can’t complain.”

Tomorrow I head to Hawaii for a week and needless to say, I probably won’t be writing while I’m gone. But I’ll come back with stories and pictures.

I’m very, very excited about my trip. None of us has ever been to Hawaii before and the past couple of weeks have been an all-out exclamation point fest between me and my friends over email (”HAWAII! I CAN’T WAIT!!!”). It would be one thing if we were just going for a vacation, but not only are we going to this beautiful place to hang out, lie in the sun, take a surfing lesson (oh yes, that’s right, a surfing lesson), snorkel, eat the local fare and take in all the gorgeous views, but we’re going there for the wedding of one of our best friends.

Lisa, the friend in question, always cries at weddings. I mean, this girl cries before the bride has even begun walking down the aisle sometimes, and it’s that personality - her great love of life and for her friends - that makes me think I might do the same during her ceremony (OR the amazing fact that we’re all in Hawaii, for Christ’s sake, might prevent me from crying, I don’t know). Her soon-to-be-husband Eitan is - in addition to being an all-around great guy - the one who helped get J into birds when he spotted an owl in the woods outside our house a few summers ago. This makes me love him and very rarely resent him. But love is the most prevalent emotion.

And I can’t wait to be there when they get married.

I spent some of this weekend and most of this morning preparing for my trip, including going to a department store and buying a suitcase appropriate for such a vacation. It’s been forever since J or I has checked bags, thus we don’t use real suitcases that much, which is good because the one we have is pretty old and doesn’t really zip up. And that’s important when your suitcase is going in the bottom of an airplane for many hours, that it zips up.

Buying a suitcase in an odd experience. I mean, it’s a very large thing and you can’t, like, put it in a shopping bag or anything. So after I picked out a nice blue one I had to wheel it out of the department store, through the mall and out to my car. Besides feeling like kind of a weirdo - a weirdo who brings her suitcase to the mall or something - there were some practical challenges, like getting the suitcase down an escalator. Thankfully a nice guy who was out shopping with his two sons watched me mess with the extendable handle for a few moments and then stepped in, said “I’ve got it,” and carried it down for me like a true expert. He laughed and told me I’d have to perfect my skills before I went on my trip. People like that are one of the reasons I’ll miss North Carolina when we leave.

I met another nice person on my way out, an older woman sitting on a bench outside the mall who looked at me with my new purchase said that I must be going on vacation. I told her I was - to Hawaii - and she got this great, happy look on her face and said, excitedly, “You’ll have such a good time!” I asked her if she’d been before, and she told me she had, to the Big Island, and that it was a wonderful place. I told her a little about my trip. She asked me if I was flying (sure, a slightly strange question, as how else would I get there, but she was a nice older lady, so what did I care?) and I told her I was. This is when she sighed and said, “It’s a long trip” (indeed, my friend Abby and I are flying nonstop from Newark). I said I knew that, but that I was traveling with one of my best friends, and me and my friends always manage to have a good time, no matter what, so I wasn’t worried.

And that’s the thing - these girls and I - we’ve had a lot of good times. These people have been my friends since we were in the throws of adolescence, since the adventure that is high school. I’m aging myself here, but the year we all went off to college was around the time email became a popular, user-friendly tool, and we’ve all been exchanging a group email since then, sometimes many times a day, checking in about everything from boyfriends to health to, well, getting extremely excited about a trip to Hawaii. You could throw us in jail for a night (I mean, let’s hope that doesn’t ever happen, but what I’m saying is you could) and I’m pretty sure we’d have a good time (on a side note, one time my friend Jennifer and I did get locked in a boiler room, no joke, and while it was a little scary waiting for someone to find us and open the door, we had as good a time as two people can who happen to be locked in a boiler room).

So, Hawaii? Yes, from the interminable plane trips to the beaches, I’m thinking this is going to be one great vacation. I’m sad J has to stay here and work, but this just means I’ll have to scout out places we’ll visit when we both go there together some day, since we love to get out and see the world. And also, I have this new suitcase, and we might as well put it to good use.

I went up to New York City this weekend, and stopped over at my parent’s house in D.C. Thursday night, and because my mother was out of town on business, my father and I decided to go get dinner at this cute, happening pizza place in Georgetown.

We were standing at the very crowded bar, drinking a glass of red wine together and started talking about how we both tend to be a little neurotic when it comes to our health, you know, thinking we’re dying, when in reality, we’ve got a muscle ache or something.

My dad decided to tell me a story about this one time he’d gone to have his yearly physical, and the doctor had detected a tiny bit of blood in his urine, but opting to be “delicate” in his recounting, he leaned in and told me, “there was blood, you know, in my wee-wee?” the only problem regarding this delicate recounting being that we’d gotten really into the conversation, into laughing at ourselves and he told me about his “wee-wee” in a sort of gruff, fake-whispered-but-actually-incredibly-loud voice, which, needless to say, attracted the attention of some of the bar customers, many of whom looked like they might be out on a first date. But what really reeled them in, stopped all their conversations was when my father told me, naturally, he’d assumed be was dying of some rare disease, and I asked him what had actually been wrong, and he, having lost all sense of decorum and realization of the fact that we were in a public - a really public - place, told me that, of course, it turned out he was fine, that the doctor - and this he shouted - leaning back, making fun of himself, glass of wine in one hand and a piece of bruschetta in the other, “It was MY PROSTATE. JUST A LITTLE ENLARGED! ‘NO BIG DEAL’ THE DOCTOR SAID. MY PROSTATE!”

This weekend J and I flew out to San Francisco to attend our friends’ wedding. I first met the couple getting married - Alex and Natalia - my freshman year at BU because we lived in the same dorm, Loretto Hall, which wasn’t, in fact, located on the university’s vast and sprawling campus, but instead about a 15-minute walk away at a small Catholic college. It was used as overflow housing. I met a lot of my good friends in the dorm. We grew close, I think, because we were isolated, fondly dubbing our home away from home, “The Loretto Ghetto.” Don’t get me wrong, it was a totally decent place to live, but I mean come on, it rhymes.

Needless to say, I was extremely excited about this weekend. For one thing, J had never been to San Francisco, one of my favorite cities. For another, we were going to get to hang out with old friends we hadn’t seen in a while.

Because the wedding took place a little south of the city we rented a car and didn’t waste any time upon arriving early Friday afternoon. With the help of a map I’d snagged at the airport we maneuvered our way into San Franscisco, got an incredible parking spot near the North Beach area and started walking. We saw some huge seagulls at Fisherman’s Wharf, did some people watching at Washington Square Park and then picked a little Italian place on Columbus Avenue that seemed popular with the locals for pizza and a beer.

Afterwards, because we were close by, I told J he had to drive us down Lombard Street, the crooked street. Despite the fact that he told me he wasn’t that into doing the really touristy stuff (I couldn’t get him sufficiently excited to go on a trolley ride) I think he had a pretty good time.

We ventured back into the city Saturday and after getting lost downtown for, well, let’s just say a while, we made it over to the Golden Gate Bridge and surrounding park, where we explored some more.

We had bloody marys and a late lunch with friends in Pacific Heights before driving up to Telegraph Hill for a quick glimpse of Coit Tower, and to see the adorable, tree-hidden apartments up there, and then of course J wanted to keep an eye our for those parrots we learned about in the documentary “The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill.”

Since we didn’t have too much time Sunday - our plane departed at 2 p.m. - someone had suggested we drive to the coast, and that’s exactly what we ended up doing, then taking Highway 1 back up near the city then heading, sadly, to the Oakland airport, to go home.

Were there some less than perfect moments? Sure. We accidentally drove the wrong way down a one way road one time (San Francisco is very confusing) and J, in his hurried motions to get us turned around somehow put the windshield wipers on at the fastest speed, and I didn’t mean to, I swear, but it was funny, and I started laughing and I don’t think he liked that too much. Another time, because of the crazy air travel restrictions and the fact that you can’t bring anything with you anymore, including saline solution for contact lenses, J bought what he thought was saline at a drug store downtown. When we got back in the car he decided to pull over and put his contacts (which he’d brought in the case) in since his glasses were giving him a headache, and it turned out what he’d bought was not saline solution, but instead emergency eye wash, you know, the kind with an eye wash cup, like if you’re in science class and squirt chemicals in your eye. But we decided it’d work anyway and so there we were in our rented Subaru Outback pulled over somewhere near Market Street, with J putting his contacts in with emergency eyewash which, let me tell you, doesn’t exactly work the same way as saline. He looked over at one point and told me, bleary-eyed, “I squirted it in my crotch.” I lost it. We couldn’t stop laughing.

And that’s the thing. There were some stressful moments, there always are when you’re on unfamiliar terrain and you just want to take it all in - the tourist attractions, people, food and lifestyle - yet you’re on budgeted time. But you make the best of it, and J and I made the absolute best of our trip to San Francisco, not to mention the important part, seeing the most adorable couple in the world get married. Sharing that with good friends.

So when the priest who was officiating the ceremony told us to point our right hands towards the newly married couple standing at the front of the room and send them our heartfelt wishes for the future, I couldn’t help thinking that I hoped they’d be as happy as we are. Because, seriously, I’m having so much fun.