in early january, i received a reminder to bring my boys in for their shots.

eric said he was feeling fine. but i insisted.

okay, okay. i have a confession to make. i have kittens. two of 'em. and if you don't like cats, then i suppose you'll just have to think lesser of me for the introduction of this story. and if you like cats because of the way they crawl up in your cleavage while you sleep or cuddle between your legs while you're watching tv, then we have something in common.

anyway. here's the scene. isaac and jermaine (the cats). doctors' office. the vet is examining the kids, doing the routine check up when it comes time for the "biggest loser" weigh in.

jermaine comes in at a respectable 6 or 7 pounds, qualifying him for the lightweight kitty wrestling competition.

isaac, on the other hand, qualifies for kitty sumo wrestling.

"uhhhhh," the vet says. "isaac could use to lose a little weight."

i examined the vet - giving him the once over. "couldn't we all?" i said.

at which point, i begin laughing hysterically (a two snort laugh - just as a point of reference). hardly because what i had to say was funny.

but because it is exactly something my mom would have said.

and then i called my mom, my dad, my brother, and my sister individually to tell them exactly what happened.

which is also exactly what my mom would have done.

one of the funniest things about growing older is how, in spite of it all and in spite of ourselves, we become just like our parents.

i'm not sure exactly when it happened, but somewhere between the time i realized that sucking my fingers wasn't cool and the time i became a pro-fake-ssional, i grew up and grew into the best - and worst - of my parental units.

i wanted to be a physical therapist just like my mom, but instead have become a ball-busting (soon-to-be) businesswoman just like my dad. i hoped for the petite build of my mom's family, but wound up with the hips and thighs of the rosenbaums. i wanted the ability to never cry in the face of adversity like my dad, but inevitably wind up on the verge of tears like my mom. i hoped for the saintly patience of my mom (santa barbara de pinecrest), but always lose my temper like my dad.

i got the blue eyes. the hypoglycemia. the frizzy hair. the attitude. the ingrown toenails. the inability to understand trigonometry. the love for shopping. the intolerance for incompetence.

(although i escaped the debilitating anxiety and capacity to lose a car in any parking lot like some of my other siblings.)

and just like (both) my parents, i got the irritable bowel. but i think all the kids got that.

i'm not sure if it's nature or nurture or just an awkward coincidence, but i cannot deny that i am a direct product of my parents. yet what is so often underreported is, in spite of it all and in spite of themselves, our parents - too - become just like us: their kids.

i mean, without my input, i do not think that my dad would send me inappropriate, yet hilarious, e-mails and i highly doubt that my mom would threaten her misbehavin' and potty-mouthed adult children with nakedness.

while they might laugh about how their best and worst traits manifested in their children, we are laughing right back. the ability to turn anything into a sexual innuedo has been natured and nurtured right into my parents.

that, my friends, is all me.

... which makes me hope that my children - and my cats - never, ever grow up to be just like me.

i suppose that part of being an "adult" is being an active and functioning member in the greater society: being called for jury duty. buying porn. voting. being served a citation for littering.

all things that clearly denote adult status.

wednesday, eric - my boyfriend - and i were called before the district of columbia's judicial courts to testify and plead our littering cases. (section 21 dcmr 700.4 and blog entry 10.25). my furry companions at home - not including eric - said they use litter all the time. and begged us not to go for fear that - like the legislation against the 11 million illegal immigrants in the country - we, too, might become aggravated felons.

eric and i received citations back in october accusing us of littering. the city found some random unopened mail in some random trash bag in some random alley in dc. neither of us has any idea how our mail wound up there. i mean, aside from the possibility that the endangered bald eagle who sits on our balcony and delivers our correspondence to friends and relatives when so called upon may have accidentally dropped it on one of his routine fights. but other than that ...

my law-school bound hero, upon deciding that we were going to refuse the fine and deny the accusation, took on his first pro bono case. he prepared pages of testimony - facts, alibis, references to precedent cases, and a handful of personal depositions (admittedly, i requested a series of photographs of our trash chute) - which concluded with the fact that, in essence, no one saw us throw our trash out.

and so, wednesday morning was our opportunity (insert performance music here) to make our case. to purge our records of false accusations. to determine if law school was a good idea for either of us. and (dramatic pause) to save the cats from some unknown horrible foster woman.

we were going to wear matching suits, but eric's purple one was at the dry cleaners.

eric briefed me on our defense on the way there. he read through the pages he had prepared without missing a beat. he sounded professional. charismatic. scholarly. lawyerly.

"what should i say?" i asked when he was finished.

pause. he bit his lip.

"uhhhh ... why don't i just speak for both of us?" he said.

"i'm going to law school too," i mustered.

i even offered to be the standard cleavage character witness, but eric said that it wasn't necessary. the final deal was that if we lost, he'd pay my $75 ticket fine. and do my laundry for a month. the latter obviously more traumatic than the former.

instead of the grand courtroom ala the oj simpson trial that eric and i were both expecting, it was more of an anti-climatic office building. while in the holding cell (read: waiting area), eric was re-prepping for our defense while i was absorbed in a sodoku puzzle pulled from the newspaper. when the clerk called us into the courtroom, i considered leaving the newspaper on the chair for the next fellow criminal ... but decided it probably wouldn't bode well for our "we don't litter" defense.

the judge was procedural, reciting the case number and allegations and asking us to speak our names and relationship to each other.

"sexual," i offered quickly.

eric corrected me. and then kicked me under the table.

"we're roommates," he stated.

"who sleep together!" i added.

a guy from the city public works department actually showed up to represent the prosecution. when the judge told him that he wasn't adequate representation (he wasn't the actual one who found the trash bag, opened it, went through it, took out random pieces of mail that happened to be addressed to eric and me, made copies, and then slapped us with a $75/each citation), the public works guy insisted he still wanted to proceed with the trial.

for just a brief moment, i wondered if i'd have to report to graduate schools and the federal bar that in 2005/2006, i was indicted of and found guilty for littering.

the city spends money on trials like these? in the 7 minutes we spent in the courtroom, 28 women were battered. 70 violent crimes happened. 14 murders transpired. and who knows how many people in washington dc contracted aids.

the judge rolled his eyes, politely declined the gentleman's insistence, and dismissed the case.

dismissed it ... "without prejudice."

meaning that if the city reports a good reason why the accusing officer was absent from the trial of the century, eric and i will be retried for the same crime.

which i could have sworn was against the bill of rights. but apparently those basic human rights don't apply to wrongly accused litterers. we're left to fend for ourselves in a court room.

but don't doubt what we're capable of.

recycling, however, is not one of those things.

like most cynics, i don't make new years resolutions.

it's not that i don't make them because i can't keep them. i don't make them because i make "resolutions" all year round. for instance, my current running list consists of:

1. give unnamed source the silent treatment
2. call lax occasionally
3. say thank you to my parents more often
4. lose weight
5. go to synagogue to pray for grad school acceptances

sometimes, i think the hardest thing about growing up is that there is more we are expected to do. more expectations we aspire to live up to. and a whole lot more transgressions to be sorry for. (or in some cases, pretend to be sorry for).

which i suppose is why people feel the need to make new year's resolutions. ha.

i was lucky enough to take off some time (at this job, i actually have what the rest of the world calls vacation days. not take-off-a-day-when-you-need-to-but-we're-going-to-make-
you-feel-guilty-about-it-anyway days) between the american holidays of christmas and new years to venture to the drama capital of the world: miami. i don't necessary have good stories to report. in between the south beach rendezvous, the poker tournament, the 102 fever, the ring buying fiasco, the $1000 bar tab, the overdrawn checkbook, and the pending-all-out-fist-fight in a bar that i actually saved from inception, it was quite uneventful.

while sitting at a chinese restaurant on christmas eve, i realized that this december/january actually marks a decade since i met The Boys. who single-handedly changed my life. without them, i'd probably have some drug addiction and four illegitimate children.

come to think of it, my drug addiction and four illegitimate children might be a direct result of my friendship with them. oh well.

i'm not sure when we stopped being hormonally driven teenagers who stand in parking lots arguing about what we're going to do and started being hormonally driven twenty-somethings who stand it parking lots arguing about what we're going to do.

but the issue that strikes me most every time i go home is the undeniable balance between acting my age and feeling like half of it. granted, it's an equilibrium i struggle with everyday of my life, but somehow, sleeping in your childhood bed makes it okay to not wear makeup. and to skip. and to sing in the shower (loudly).

and it all folds up into anal-retentiveness the moment i step off the plane back in washington.

and so here i am venturing into a new year where it is quite plausible that 365 days from now, the anxiety and perpetual fear caused by grad school applications and letters of rejection will melt into anxiety and perpetual fear of talking outloud in class and law school/business school finals.

at this time next year, i will have made life changing decisions including where i will spend the next four (plus?) years of my life and will already know my grad school network of contacts.

at this time next year, i will have failed miserably (at perhaps just one thing. but probably a whole lot more.)

at this time next year, i will have let someone down (hopefully just one person. but probably a whole lot more.)

at this time next year, i will have said something stupid (we can only hope just one thing. but probably a whole lot more).

at this time next year, i will have not lived up to the unattainable expectations that the world holds for me.

i'll just aim to start a business, publish a book, blog more often, and learn to drive stick shift. all in the next 6 months, obviously.

which is why i don't make new years resolutions. if you don't set the bar so high, the disappointment is a whole lot less disheartening.

i think josh isaacs once said the same thing about his friends.