Yearly Archives: 2008

Someone To Take Care Of Me

It’s times like this I wish I had some­one to take care of me1, because I’m tired of tak­ing care of myself.

  1. Pat once told me there should be a per­son in every group who’s always con­trolled, calm, and togeth­er (in case of emer­gency, or oth­er­wise), and he tries to be this per­son. It must be true, because he’s my rock, the friend who has nev­er let me down. I once asked him if this idea extend­ed to his mar­riage, and he told me that it applied to 90% of the time. But for the oth­er 10%, when he’s tired, unmo­ti­vat­ed, and does­n’t care any­more, Jenny takes over, and he admit­ted to me that he’s become depen­dent on this. [↩]

Birthday Surprises

My friends know I don’t cel­e­brate my birth­day, because I don’t believe in rit­u­als1. I went through most of Thursday with­out any­one men­tion­ing any­thing, aside from Louise call­ing me from the road, remind­ing me that we were going out for lunch the next day — which the three of us do on our birth­days at work.

So when I got home around 9:30 that night — tired and hun­gry after Tai Chi — I was sur­prised to find a let­ter taped to my front door. This let­ter lead to my birth­day game:

Then, before I went to bed, I real­ized I had two phone mes­sages:

Hearing Dan and his fam­i­ly singing was awe­some, but hear­ing my dad’s voice was some­thing else. He had nev­er called to wish me hap­py birth­day him­self; it was a day only my mom would remem­ber, and she would always pass the phone to him.

It seems like every year I expect noth­ing to hap­pen, but I end up being sur­prised in one way or anoth­er.

  1. And this was before I dis­cov­ered Taoism [↩]

Synergy

I’ve been blessed with friends who paint, sculpt, carve, design, sing, and com­pose, and I’ve been for­tu­nate enough to find a print­er and framer who are artists them­selves in what they do. Even though they have dif­fer­ent medi­ums and ways of express­ing them­selves, they’re all dri­ven by a sense of pas­sion. Some can explain where it comes from, some can’t, but you can tell it’s root­ed deep with­in their beings.

Passionate peo­ple have always attract­ed me. When you talk to them, you become filled with ebul­lient ener­gy. You feed off each oth­er, like a dia­logue of ideas and inspi­ra­tion.

It’s warm­ing. It’s mov­ing.

Together, you become some­thing that’s greater than you are by your­self.

Last Minute Halloween Party

Trolley and Steph

Thumbnail: Sushi platter
Thumbnail: Halloween hallway
Thumbnail: Halloween pirate
Thumbnail: Kitty
Thumbnail: Living room
Thumbnail: Me and Trolley
Thumbnail: Halloween pimp
Thumbnail: Pumpkin lights
Thumbnail: Gathering
Thumbnail: Raggedy drink
Thumbnail: Dog skull-and-crossbones cape
Thumbnail: Spooky drinks
Thumbnail: Taking shots
 

Last minute Halloween par­ty means last minute cos­tume.

I’m walk­ing down the con­sol­i­dat­ed aisles of Walmart at 7:30 on Saturday night. The cos­tume pack­ages are all 50% off, and the mod­els on the labels are all pre-teen. I don’t think I’ll fit in the tights of this Batman cos­tume, and this vam­pire cape only goes down to my waist.

I’m sud­den­ly struck with a fit of nos­tal­gia. Remember that time when I was at that par­ty with Becky, who was wear­ing a witch­es mask, try­ing to engage her in a con­ver­sa­tion after we met at the Honest Lawyer1? Remember when we went as Supertroopers to the par­ty at the girls house? Remember when I got drunk off that bot­tle of Earnest and Julio Gallo?

I hur­ried­ly grab a black cowl and bloody knife, and walk to the check­out line. With my full-length leather trench coat, I’m hop­ing it’s enough to gain accep­tance to the par­ty, but not too much to stand out.

As I leave, I won­der if Halloween still exists for those of us past our trick-or-treat­ing days.

So the plan is to get there ear­ly. That way I don’t have every­one look­ing at me when I walk in the door. Bail when it gets too loud, or the peo­ple too drunk. But every­one invit­ed through Facebook was told eight while I was told nine, and I’m almost last one there.

Continue read­ing “Last Minute Halloween Party”…

  1. If you ever read this Christine, I will deny every­thing. [↩]