February 20, 2020
It’s 5:30 am and my day has begun the way so many do: by waking up and going through a laundry list of all of the things I’ve done wrong in my whole life. I spend a little while petting my cat, who’s asleep next to me, and scrolling through Facebook and Twitter. The first activity helps the anxiety; the latter exacerbates it. I get up and use the bathroom, get a glass of water, take my thyroid medicine, feed the cat who is now awake, and then get back in bed. My mind is still racing, listing through all of the things I need to do, but one of those is drive just shy of 180 miles to visit a friend in Louisville and it’s still dark out, so I try to force myself to go back to sleep. It must work because next thing I know, it’s almost 10. I get up and do some laundry: switch the clothes from the washer into the dryer, sort and fold and hang up the clothes that were in the dryer, etc.I’m heading to Louisville this afternoon, so I get my duffel bag and pack a couple of shirts, socks, underwear, pajamas, etc. and then get my phone to make a list of everything else I need to take with me. I clean my house for a bit so my cat sitter can swing by tomorrow, then finishing packing. I hit the road at 12:30. I realize I’m starving and haven’t eaten breakfast, so I swing through the McDonald’s drive thru on my way out of town for a sausage McMuffin and an iced tea. The next few hours are a little boring: I drive through Indy, stop just south of the city to grab an iced tea refill at another McDonald’s, and listen to a few episodes of my new favorite podcast, You’re Wrong About, in which two Millennial writers revisit things we got wrong in the 90s. I listen to a two-parter about Tonya Harding and another about Marcia Clark, the prosecutor from the OJ Simpson trial. What was I wrong about? Everything. I get to Louisville a little before 4, but the friend I’m staying with is busy until after 5, so I find a coffee shop called Quills and have my third iced tea of the day while catching up on emails and checking Facebook to see if any of my friends have given me more suggestions for things to do while I’m visiting. My friend, M., texts me about 5:15 to let me know she’s back home, so I pack up my stuff and drive the 15 minutes to her house on the other side of downtown. I’ve never been to Louisville before, so I check out the sights along the way: the Angel’s Envy distillery, the Louisville Slugger factory, etc.I’ve never been to M.’s house before, so she shows me around and to the room where I’ll be sleeping (her kids’ room—they’re with their dad this weekend)and I get my stuff settled, changed my clothes, and get ready to head out for dinner. I’m starving(I realize I haven’t eaten anything since hitting McDonald’s back in Muncie) so M.suggests that we head to one of her favorite restaurants, Mayan Café. They’re pretty busy for a Thursday night and it’ll be about an hour for a table, so we put our names in and head across the street for a drink and a snack. I get an old fashioned—it’s Louisville after all—and M.gets wine; we split an order of fries and roasted brussels sprouts with pomegranate molasses, which are incredible.
M.catches me up on what’s going on in her life—defending her dissertation soon, balancing school work and teaching and her kids and her long-distance relationship—and I tell her about my job, my writing, my cat, the movies I’ve been watching after spending my entire adult life missing cultural references my friends make. She asks what’s next on my list, which is The Hudsucker Proxy, a Coen brothers film filled with jokes about Muncie. It happens to be one of her favorite movies, so we decide we’ll watch it when we get back to her house after dinner. Drinks and appetizers are perfectly timed, so when we’re done, it’s time to walk back across the street for our reservation. I get chilaquiles with chorizo and a fancy margarita made with blood oranges. Both are delicious. After dinner, we head a few blocks down for another drink, then M. suggests getting ice cream. It’s almost 10, so we swing through Kroger on our way back to her house and get a couple pints of Talenti gelato. While I change into sweatpants, M.calls her partner on the west coast, who is just getting off of work. I fire up her Roku, sign into my HBO account, and find the movie just as M.finishes her phone call. The movie is as good as I’ve always heard, but it’s midnight and we’re both getting sleepy, so the last 20-30 minutes are hard to get through. By the time the movie’s over, I’m struggling to keep my eyes open and I realize that M.’s already sound asleep on the couch, so I turn off the TV and most of the lights as quietly as I can, grab a glass of water on my way through the kitchen, and head in to bed, where I spend thirty or so minutes reading Facebook and Twitter before finally falling asleep.