Details Seem to be the Thing

The things I do when you're not looking:

I will never understand why people read blogs where the author is just listing off what they did that day, item by item, with the exception of national geographic explorers or astronauts or like porn stars daylighting as nannies. But all the most popular ones are like that, day by day, so who am I to argue? Maybe that's the soul of blogs, and I'm just in the wrong medium. Maybe other people's lives are so boring, they get off on knowing that other people actually left the house? Like, when I'm broke and eating cheap discount grocery store food for the week, so I read food blogs about fancy meals? And maybe you would all like me more if you knew what I did when I wasn't posting vague and inarticulate philosophical ramblings?

So this Saturday, my friend Laura threw her annual Robert Burns dinner. He's a Scottish poet, look it up. She had twenty people to this one, which is a fairly awful undertaking for a dinner party, so kudos to her. I won't even have one person in my cave, let alone twenty. She even made it a sit down dinner, and just scrounged together every table and chair she could find. There were pitchers of water on the table, everyone passed the bread, it was pretty well put together. There was a bagpiper! in full kilt garb! and he recited us Yeats and Burns poems from memory, and played while she was cutting the haggis and the shortbread. We were all like "where did she find this guy?" and then Jimmy figured out he must be the physical manifestation of St. Andrew, which made total sense. Laura is calling down demi-gods for her dinners now. She made her cheese turnip bacon soup, and once again I could hardly finish my haggis because I ate too much soup because I love that soup so freaking much. The actual real Andrew who is not a saint (hardly, though he's working on it), brought this lovely older Australian woman who is staying in his second bedroom which he rents out as a bed and breakfast to overseas guests. She was from Perth, and we talked about how Perth was like Cleveland basically, only our potholes were the worst most awful things in the entire country. She showed me pictures of her pretty daughters, and her dead husband, who had a very nice face.

I left Laura's and went to Julie's St. Patrick's Day party. I stopped on the way to get cigarettes, and this guy at the gas station asked me if his clothes looked okay. He was a very cute black guy, and he was wearing a tie under a sweater, which isn't my thing really, but he was supposed to hang out with the Elders that night, so I was reassuring. I wish guys didn't wear earrings. Frankly, I wish no one wore earrings. Piercings are so not my thing.

At the St. Patricks Day party I got pretty drunk, and talked to lots of nice people who totally have all their shit together. A lawyer lectured me about how I shouldn't get into school debt AT ALL, and I reminded her that 2 years of state school debt is a lot different than 3 years of lawyer school debt, which is true. Julie was hitting on some guy in the kitchen, and I somehow pushed my way into that conversation and sounded like a snobby asshole when I declared I couldn't go to any of the bars right by my house cause they were full of people who "weren't my type" which is to say horrible hipster artsy people are my type, not firemen and cops and their young wives, which is true but still really snobby of me. Austin and I went to Bogtrotters afterwards to get sandwiches, and a very pretty Indian girl kept trying to ask me if I was dressed up for St. Practice Day, but couldn't say it with her accent. I got home and was so tired I couldn't even eat the sandwich, so it's still in my fridge and I plan on writing a Yelp review about the place later once I see how it's sandwiches hold up to being 2 day old leftovers, cause frankly I think that's the honest way to review a place that sells sandwiches till 3am on Saturdays. If I'm ever going to use this Yelp thing, it's going to be for very specific occasions like this. Or when you're in downtown Willoughby hungover as fuck on a Sunday after 1pm and can't find brunch anywhere, and end up eating pizza in the only open bar, but the pizza's pretty awesome even though Willoughby is not. Those kind of reviews.

Sunday I went with a friend shooting. It was my second time shooting, and I got 6 bullseyes, which I'm pretty proud of. Shooting is an expensive habit though, one which I can't afford to take up. But I wish I could, cause I think I could be pretty f-in good at it. Maybe I should start going to those cop bars, and get a cop boyfriend who will take me shooting all the time. Somehow I don't feel like that would jibe with the rest of my lifestyle though. Later I got sick, and he had to pull over on the side of the highway to let me throw up cheap beer, which is only the second time that's ever happened to me. I think it's more embarrassing that it was still daylight out when this happened. Mom is going to hate this part of the post. But Mom, I swear I wasn't throwing up cause of drinking. It was a migraine, promise. I hardly ever never throw up cause of drinking. Maybe that's a worse statement.

Monday, well, I covered that in the last post.
And now here we are.
It's beautiful outside, like really and truly Spring. This morning I went to get into my car to get some coffee, and I was wearing a summer dress and sandals and everything smelled good and sunny. I got into the car, and thought "what's this bag I left here on the seat?" and oh, it was Fox's ashes. So that was a weird moment. I swear, this dog and I are having an adventure.


Edit: this WEIRD reaction has happened since I posted this yesterday. I received texts from several people apologizing for things they thought I was calling out in this post? And one now deleted (not by me, swear) comment from a blogger who shall remain nameless, about how possibly people didn't want to read 3,000 words in a post either. Yet I didn't really think this was a negative post. Though this blogger was sort of joking poking, and fair point to them anyway, cause it's true, most people don't want to read 3,000 word posts. That's why I'm not mega popular, only sort of niche popular. There's also the strong possibility I'm just not that good at writing. I both accept and encourage this attitude. But text people? Calm down. When I say lecturing, I mean with love. And when I say I'm snobby, it's because I'm snobby.

We're just going to go ahead and make this post even longer. Cause last night I was thinking about this on my drive home, that people who meet me in person tend to write me off as sweet and nice. And I strive to be these things, because I think nice and sweet is better than mean and bitchy. But I also try to say what I think, assuming people are like me and don't care enough to be offended by truthful observation. Cause it's just my own thoughts, and the weight they hold in the world is minimal at best, and I assume you are smart and have therefore already criticized yourself more harshly than I ever could. I make a lot of assumptions.

Tangent: My family, we have this genetic inclination to want to make people like us, we are emotional negotiators and pleasers and entertainers. Very much we want people to love us, but also to love them back. We just want to love everything. However, the thing you don't want to do is cross us. Cause, and now I'm just speaking for myself, if I love you and you hurt me badly? There is no middle ground, I go straight for blood and kneecaps. I will find the thing I know will hurt you most and I'll use it. I don't fight fair or reasonably, there is no judgement of appropriate reaction. I will do my best to wound you as quickly and lethally as I can. In this respect, I probably would have made a good military commander. Luckily only 3 or 4 people have ever experienced this, because it only comes out with the worst kind of hurt, the kind where I really actually all the way no boundaries love you. This is the part of my personality that scares me most, and I wish I understood it better, this ability to thoroughly mutilate a thing I once loved if I feel it's been taken away. It's so powerful, if I could harness it, if I managed to reduce it to smaller easier doses in my regular life, my writing could be a lot better, sharper, and maybe in person I would be sharper too.

But then again, I think I'm so soft to you, a harmless little bunny, and then I write something that totally makes people feel bad without meaning to. So maybe I'm just not very nice at all.