I had more fun over the weekend than I have had in...years.  I was the designated driver for Oktoberfest at a Czech Beer Garden in Queens.  Which turned into a total shit-show.  (By the way, I love that half the free world has adopted my term, "shit-show."  It's so all-purpose.)

After two no-good, very bad, unpleasant weeks, CJ and I decided we needed some fun.  She suggested that we go to this biergarten in Queens.  I suggested we go outlet shopping.  We split the difference and did both.  This, of course, required us driving first to the Catskills, and then, to Astoria.  We allowed my husband to tag along, though CJ and I have been told that we are very "exclusive" when we get together, like the popular girls in high school.  (Which, by the way, is a laugh-and-a-half, because CJ and I are the farthest thing from that.  We are certifiable nerds.  We just spend so much time together that we have developed a lexicon of colloquialisms and inside jokes that I suppose could be intimidating.  And tricky to decode for someone who hasn't spent hours brunching with Kermit, or running down pedestrians.)

What followed was not what either of us could have predicted.  Our trip to the Catskills was unremarkable.  But our evening at Bohemian Beer Garden was amazing beyond compare.  We arrived after more than an hour of driving, so of course, a visit to the loo was in order.  CJ and I went into the ladies' room only to find a gaggle of girls going into stalls together.  "Ohmygosh, did you just barf?" one asked another, "I just threw up like four times.  Boot and rally!  It just makes room for more beer.  Are you done yet?"  The girls finished their purge and then went out for more beer, as another group entered the stall together.

CJ and I emerged from our respective stalls, shell-shocked.

I was the designated driver for the night, so I laid off the beer, and CJ sent Andrew to procure pitchers and dinner.  He returned with Czech beer, bratwurst, sauerkraut, and fries.  His eyes were starry.  "It's the beer I like and they have it on tap," he said.  His family is Czech (the non-DAR side), and he has family in Prague. 

We sat at a table sandwiched between a bunch of Queens natives who turned out to be between 17-19 years old, and a group of slightly older Hofstra students, some of whom were still underage.  A few tables away from us, an academic-looking guy made eyes at CJ and me.  He had either soiled himself or had spilled beer down the front of him.  Awesome.

CJ and Andrew proceeded to get tipsy as the oompah music pounded in the background, and the underage beer drinkers danced.  The tipsier Andrew got, the more CJ needled him for information about anything she could think of: his family, his stable of stunning paralegals, his bad behavior of late, etc.  After two pitchers, he began lecturing us about Greek history, telling us the tale of when the Greeks defeated the Turkeys.  Unreal.  It was a wonder, as we sat in the middle of Astoria, sorely out of place, at least ten years older than the median age of most of the beer garden's patrons, that we didn't get our asses kicked over something.

We left after midnight, full of fried food, the two of them full of beer.  We walked through the dark neighborhood to the car, the two of them arm in arm, teetering on beery legs, unaware of any dangers that might be lurking around poorly lit corners with only little me to protect them.

I drove home, took a wrong turn, wound up trying to enter FDR drive from a bike path and having to do an 800 point turn to get out of the jam.  I kept screaming about being knifed to death by a crazy murderer lurking nearby as I did my 800 point turn in slow motion, and CJ kept screaming back that there were no murderers in the area.  (This brought back memories of the night that CJ and The Laura and I almost ended our friendship over whether one could die in a knife fight in the Manhattan Mall, but I think that one is truly a "you had to be there...")

I don't think I've laughed as hard as I did on Saturday night in...years.

Friday, I had dinner with Tink's sister in law, Virginia, who I have known for years, but who recently moved to the city.  We had an amazing evening over Vietnamese food.  I have stolen Tink's dinner companion!

And then this week, while less horrible than the last two, has been fraught with all the usual complications of an ordinary week, topped with coming home last night and finding myself allergic to something the dogs had been rolling in in the park and having my eyes swell shut, and also realizing I had dropped the ball on proofreading document after document for a project I should be working on.

In sum, Oktoberfest in a Czech beer garden: Awesome.  Vietnamese food with Virginia: Awesome.  Eyes swelling shut, email battles with friends, dropping the ball, tanking economy, wanting to go back to working for a law firm and finding that damn near impossible at this juncture, plus all the weekly blah: Not Awesome at all.

That is all.

What I think the "bailout" plan needs is a PR person.

This is not to help the "rich guy on Wall Street."  This is to unfreeze your home equity line of credit, people.  Your credit card company is not going to increase your credit line until this passes.

Taxpayers are not throwing money at banks.  (Btw, that is YOUR money in banks, that is YOUR money that they're protecting, and YOUR money they're "throwing" at it to protect YOU.  This is ALL ABOUT YOU.)  This will make money.  It may take five years or so, but it will make money.  The plan made money in the 80s, when the government bailed out the savings and loans. 

I love American short-sightedness.  I love that Joe Six-Pack on the street thinks that this is just to help a bunch of rich guys in suits.  It's not, by the way.  Those rich guys in suits are messing with YOUR money.

I think a lot of things would do better with a little good PR: brussel sprouts, anal bleaching (though that seems to be doing just fine on its own), grey-water recycling systems, buying residential property next to an active airport runway (Playa del Rey, anyone?).  I'm not talking about throwing some euphemisms at a trainwreck, or sprinkling political correctness on something to make it more palatable.  I'm talking about some good, old-fashioned spin.

One wonders when someone in congress is going to push aside the politics and grow a pair and stand up for what he/she thinks is right and good, and refuse, for once, to run along side of the bandwagon.

I was thinking, this morning, over my tea, and oatmeal, and BBC World News, about feminism.  What does it mean to be a feminist, exactly?

Sometimes, this seems to be a very exclusionary concept.  Pro-woman, at the expense of everything else.  And sometimes it seems a very inclusionary concept.  After all, being a woman is inherently life-giving.  This is not to say that a woman's only role in life is as a mother.  But there is, of course, that potential.  Viewed through a Judeo-Christian lens, God is life-giving.  Through a Christian lens, Christ is life-giving.  Is feminism; pro-womanism, therefore somehow Godly, Christlike, inherently good?

I don't know.

What I do know is this.  I have to agree with the likes of Gloria Steinem when she says that the nuclear family is the reason that women shouldn't want to have children; that women can't do it all.  It really does take a village, I think.  The nuclear family sets women up for failure, in many ways.  Choose between your family and your career?  No thanks.  That's neither good, nor Godly, nor Christlike, nor life-giving.  It doesn't breathe life into anyone.  In a system where the whole village, the whole extended family and the whole community are building strong and healthy families...women can have careers, women can have families and women and men can be...feminists.

I think it takes successes and failures; the exploration of trial and error; and the willingness to learn to truly be pro-female.  But being pro-woman isn't enough.  One has to be willing to draw on the support of others; to reject the nuclear model; to demand a village and not a cage to be a "feminist.