Work Hard, Play As Much As Possible

I worked a lot this week- never a late night, but insanely busy days. And I liked it, I was good at it, and on Friday around 2 p.m. the partner on the case turned to me and said, "you know, you're setting the bar very high for yourself." One of the things I miss most from school are the finals- not the tests themselves, but the regular, impersonal notification of how you're doing. Most of the time I think I'm doing pretty well in my new practice area, but it's nice to hear it.

I made some time for irresponsibility. On Thursday night the first boy I ever kissed (and married, I believe we were 6) came over to see my house and Landon for the first time. He moved to NYC shortly before I moved back to Austin from Chicago so we just missed each other this past summer. Landon was his usual charming self and once he was in bed we got out two bottles of red wine, sat out on the back porch, and nearly drained them both (there was also some semi-homemade pizza involved: Pillsbury crust, pesto, fresh mozzarella slices, and tomato - very tasty!). It was wonderful to catch up. We became best friends in 1988 at age 5 and were inseparable until he moved to New York in 1995. We sometimes go months without talking and years without seeing each other, but there's a part of me that will always be best understood by him. Though, I wasn't feeling quite so warm and fuzzy about it Friday morning when I dragged myself to work half-hungover, still hating coffee, and knowing it was going to be a crazy day.

I have a semi-big project to do this weekend (as a reward for setting the bar so damn high), but I ignored it today in lieu of going to the Red Bud Isle dog park with JP, Landon, Tex, Rosie, and a friend of ours who has dubbed himself Landon's uncle (he's the one who babysat so we could go out for Valentine's Day, I also lived with him while I was a pregnant summer associate in 2007- he needs a blog name, I think I called him Steve in those old posts) and the dogs' godfather (he routinely steals them from our backyard to run them along Town Lake and today he had new retractable leashes for them- I'm pretty sure Rosie would leave us for him in a heartbeat). It was a beautiful day and we had a great time walking the trails and watching the dogs be sociable and swim in the lake. Landon had a big time picking small sticks off the ground and handing the to me- he had to keep running to catch up to us after he finished clearing the sticks off the path around him. When he runs, he crooks one arm and swings it while the other clutches his belly- it might be my favorite thing that he does.

We returned with wet, happy dogs and a giggly Landon.

I just want to freeze him at this age for a year or five. Why hasn't anyone figured out how to do that yet? And as long as we're freezing time, throw in an extra few hours for my project due Monday, I have a feeling I'm going to spend most of tomorrow choosing play over work, and I'd like to get some sleep before Monday morning.