I was awakened from a weird dream by the movie Slackers playing in the other room. It was on cable. Rob said that it made him never want to set foot in Austin. I said it reminded me of why I left. Too many hipsters, trying to imitate the movie. To quote Firewater "every word that passes from your lips is counterfeit". And again what is nice about the small town. As many frustrations as I may have, folks seem to feel they have a lot less to prove.
This morning, I was dreaming about my cat Wednesday. She got hit by a car and it looked like the car had done it intentionally. At first I thought she was dead and I couldn't find her, but she was cowering under a table, all scratched up. But she was so traumatized that she wanted to run outside and hide. I didn't want her to, because she needed us to take care of her. There were a bunch of people around and they all kept leaving the door open. I finally got someone to guard the door while I watched after her.
This morning, I told Rob about the dream so he brought me Wednesday. She curled up on my lap. Right now, she's out on the balcony.
I have been enjoying my cats company far too much I think. I'm joking when I say that, but it's funny...I have been doing more artwork where I display the emotions of cats, and I wonder if I'm eventually going to go the way of Louis Wain.
I'm a bit groggy right now. I just made coffee. I started off this morning with iburpofen again. For the past two days, I've had this god awful headache. At first I thought it was the tequila rose, but now I don't know. My throat was also sore this morning. I hope that I'm not getting sick.
We went to a bonfire Saturday night. After running around and doing errands, we unwound by swimming and hitting the jacuzzi. Then we made plans to go with someone we know to a bonfire party out in the sticks.
It wasn't the first time I've gone to the sticks for a party but I can't remember the last time I got to the sticks so quickly.
It was kinda weird.
It wasn't bad,but not what I expected. It was a small gathering, and there were kids there, and I got the feeling that Rob and I were the only ones that hadn't known everyone there for years. So for the first hour or so, we just sort of stood around, only talking to the person who took us. In my case, I'm not really that outgoing with people I don't know, so any hope of interaction was kind of futile, but Rob the life of the party (tm) also wasn't having much luck.
After awhile, though, folks actually started being friendly to us and that was cool. I only wound up talking to a couple of new people there myself but the ones I talked to seemed fairly interesting. And it was nice of the person who brought us to invite us, and it gave us something to do. Since n8 and Bekka were up in Detroit this weekend, we didn't really have anything to do unless we wanted to hit the bars by ourselves. And while I am all for that on many occasions, I wasn't in the mood for that at the time. So that was cool at least.
I had brought the bottle of Tequila Rose that Ted had given me for my birthday, as well as this tequila raspberry stuff I had picked up on a whim. I hadn't been drinking the rose lately, mostly kamikaze and various vodka or rum mixed drinks. As soon as I started drinking it, I realized why.
Anyone who knows me will be very shocked to hear me say this, but I really don't think I like the rose anymore. No, really. I just am not digging that whole sweet and heavy drunk thing anymore. It gives me a headache and I just can't drink it in volume. Another sign of getting old? Perhaps. But since I changed my diet (which, for those of you have been following this has helped. I've lost about ten pounds. Since I felt I needed to lose fifteen, I've been making good progress.) I haven't been eating very much sugary stuff at all and now I don't even feel the craving. So that probably plays a big role in my move away from the rose.
After awhile, I tried the raspberry stuff which is slightly better, because it has a little more of a bite, but is still heavy. But it did the trick for the party. I started to feel the impetus for some ephedrine but there was no water and I didn't particularly want to wash it down with thick, sugary booze.
At one point I'd had enough to drink to realize I really needed to use the bathroom. I asked the friend we'd come with if he knew where there was a bathroom. He pointed at the woods. A look of sheer horror crossed my face. I then went to Rob and whispered my problem to him, and he got the party host (who he had been mingling with, what with his gregarious ways and all) to come over.
" I have to ask a big, big favor." I said. Before I even finished asking him, he clearly knew what I needed to ask.
"You see that house with the light?" He said." Go to that house. Go to the porch, you'll see some dogs. Pass the dogs, turn right and there's the bathroom. If you see my Mom, say hello." So I thanked him profusely and began the trek toward the house with the light.
Uh oh.
There were two houses with lights and in my drunken state, they looked fairly close together. I was not sure which to go to. I had some fearful image in my head of some redneck coming out with a shotgun (see what happens when the last small town you lived in was in Arizona?) if I walked into the wrong one. People would find my carcass, and the news report would tell my tale of needing to find a bathroom. It might even win me an honorary Darwin award. But, I found the Jetta and figured the house it was parked by must be the one he meant. (I later learned the host's Aunt lived in the other house, so it wouldn't have been a travesty if I had walked into the wrong one.) I opened a door and found a porch. On that porch were two...dogs? Ever see the episode of Frasier where Niles adopts a dog and everyone comments how much the dog looks like Merris? Well, that was the exact same type of dog as these two. They were nice enough, though they tried to run into the house when I went in. I used the bathroom, as I came out, one of the dogs got into the house. Shit. So I tried to catch the dog, but whenever I got near it, it started growling at me. Oh god. So, I started chasing it, wrangling it back toward the porch and getting outside. Then, I drunkenly found the campfire again (no small feat, I may add.) and made it back to the party. A little while later, our friend was getting tired which was just as well because we had to get up early the next day, so we left.
The next day, we got up far too early to go to Bekka's bridal shower. I was feeling like hell. I couldn't even finish my cup of coffee. I felt like I'd been tied to a railroad track, run over by a freight train and was now being asked to be charming and stylish. Ugh. It took too long to get to Detroit and part of the freeway was shut down for construction, so Rob gave me a tour of scenic Gratiot road.
It was a good time for the most part. I got to see a lot of our Detroit friends, which was nice. We began planning for a party we're going to throw once this place is together. So far we have invited seven folks from out of town (heh, where are they all going to sleep?) but I only really count on three of them making the trek. Still, I'm fairly excited by this. It should be a good time.
We went back to Rob's Mom's house where I was zombified for the rest of the day, before we got on the road around 7:30.
We stopped in Marshall, where we ate at an actually half way decent Chinese restaurant. Aside from a table of big, burly bikers, we were the only customers in there. The vegetable Lo Mein was tasty and Marshall was a quaint little town, if quaint is your thing. Around 9:30 or so, we got back to Kalamazoo. I was up for all of ten minutes before I finally conked out and got some much needed sleep (what with Friday night's insomnia and Saturday night's socializing) and slept til about 10 this morning.
So that's it. That's my weekend in a nutshell.