Sometimes the universe gives you a couple of days where you feel like you're finally in the right place at the right time doing all the right things - and you're not even trying. You just exist in a state of happiness. Thank you, universe, for giving me a couple of days of this. I deserve it.

I began my last Saturday by getting up insanely early and running five miles (who am I? Someone has kidnapped me and replaced me with a responsible adult-like person). Then I headed over to

my best friend's baby shower in Brooklyn Heights, which is the quintessential Brooklyn neighborhood that when you see it, you feel like you must move to Brooklyn immediately (think The Cosby Show brownstone).

My part of Brooklyn, while hip and cool, is not nearly as lovely. I drank Bellinis and got to catch up with some old friends. I was one of only three women at the shower who are:

1) not engaged to be married

2) not married

3) not pregnant or a mother

However, I felt awesome about it. Everyone kept telling me how great I looked, code for "I don't have anything else to say to you because you are single and baby-less", but who cares? I looked great and felt great.

Us three single ladies left the shower and headed to a whiskey bar - the obvious

post-baby shower

activity. One our way to a second bar we somehow got sidetracked by a tattoo parlor, outside of which I asked "Who wants to get a tattoo?" to which my ladies answered "We do!"

So we did. Mine (on my side rib) looks like this:

It hurt like a bitch, but felt great afterwards. It reminds of my childhood summers when I spent my days at the beach at my grandparents house. I dug up clams with my bare hands. I combed for shells and made jewelry out of the ones with natural holes. I still collect shells from every beach I walk on. I keep the best ones in tiny jars on my bookshelf to remember, but now I will not forget because there is this on my skin.