Probably. All of this happened in a fleeting few hours on Saturday evening. I was home with Kirstin, and had her upstairs, supposedly cleaning her room. In actuality, she was playing with her Barbie dolls, but I didn't feel like noticing that.
I usually keep my house in a relatively orderly fashion. I don't like to have things left out, especially in the living areas, and in the kitchen. At Kirstin's request, though, I went to put in a Cheryl Crow CD, and noticed that the CD's were haphazardly piled up on the entertainment center shelves. That bugged me, so I straightened it, but then I noticed that the whole thing should be dusted, and the frenzy began.
I sang:
Down here I feel like a citizen of nowhere
got my bags all packed in case they ever come for me ... while I scrubbed out the stairwell.
If it makes you happy, it can't be that bad... while I was scrubbing the bathroom.
And the wounded bird still sings... as I broke the chandelier.
Then the CD was over, and the house was clean. In the silence and stillness of that pristine, museum-like environment, I realized that there wasn't anything else to do. That was a nice feeling. Then I realized that in the back of my head, the whole time I had been drowning out my thoughts with loud music, I had been thinking that someone was coming to my house tonight, and I needed it to be perfect.
Isn't that stupid? It's true, though. For some reason, I don't feel like a real human being worthy of respect if people see my house in an untidy state. I think it's because when I was little, my mom wouldn't let me invite friends over unless our house was clean, and she still won't let me and my sisters visit without scrubbing first. (Then again, my mom has a maid service twice a week. My house would shine like Mt. Olympus if I had a maid.)
Michele brought Bridget over as planned, after the circus was over on Saturday night. (This is Bridget, Forest's 18-year-old friend, not Bridgette, Dominic's mom.) I must say she looked cute in her clowning costume. She had bright green hair, and was wearing an adorable combination of purples and greens and yellows that she had made herself. You would never have known it, though. She's got quite a knack for costuming. It's odd to see Bridget wearing anything but black, though. I'm not sure if it's because she does so much tech work, or if it's that "all-black-is-cool" phase that so many high schoolers endure, but I don't think I've ever seen her in a color before.
Of course her face was painted white, and she had a red button nose, so it was kind of difficult to see her under all of that in the first place.
Despite the makeup job, I'm happily inclined to be a bit more trusting of Bridget now. I fed them ice cream, and we got to talking until probably 2 in the morning. We mostly just chatted about this and that.
This is a pretty strange, sticky situation, you see. Michele feels like she's responsible for getting Forest and me together. It's partially true, I guess, because she introduced us by drafting him to play Lysander last summer. Michele is determined that Forest and I will work out in the long run, and gets very defensive of our relationship, as though it were a fragile thing, that might break at any moment.
Michele is Bridget's big sister. Bridget has been Forest's friend for as many years as Michele has, and has had feelings for Forest for a long time. I'm not sure of the depths of her feelings, but I know they're there.
Forest talks to Bridget a lot. I talk to Michele a lot. Forest and I talk to each other a lot. But in this odd sort of quadrangle of relationships, Bridget and I have never really worked out a sense of where we fall with each other.
So Saturday night felt kind of like we were doing that. I scrubbbed our entire house before she came over. I don't know what I declared by doing that. By coincidence, the first room on the tour was our bedroom. I don't know what I meant by that, either. Generally, we chatted about this and that, and both demonstrated how well we know Forest, and both showed off our respective abilities to pick on him in his absence. Michele seemed to be listening carefully, almost like a mediator.
But it was all cordial, no need to worry. I didn't sprout fangs and horns and scare Bridget away. I was myself, that's all.
Forest came in for the last half hour of the evening, truly tired, and the real tests began.
I met him at the door, and got a kiss, then ran in to sit down.
Bridget got a full minute of his undivided attention by showing off her clown outfit.
There are only 4 seats in our living room. I was in the easy chair, Bridget and Michele were on opposite ends of the couch, so that left the middle for Forest. Bridget looked right at him, and snuggled him a couple of times. Michele glared at her, but I didn't even flinch. I remember snuggling in high school. Bah.
And I honestly didn't feel threatened.
I know I sound like a horrible, self-righteous person. But after some thought and talking to her, I see that for all Bridget is way cooler than I am, and certainly appeals to Forest's darker side more readily than I ever will, there are ways that we just can't be compared, and I'm grateful for that. I'm lucky to have as much experience in the world as I do. I've shaken off some of the shit life has thrown at me, and gone on. I also know myself pretty well, and think I haven't stopped growing, but I've certainly been at it 8 years longer than she has.
I'm not saying I'm better than she is, or that she's better than me. I'm still slightly envious of her position, getting a fresh start, and making of her life what she wants to make of it. I'm just saying that it's like comparing apples and oranges. Forest tried to point that out to me before, but I didn't understand it until I talked with her for a while. She and I are almost different species.
This weekend was also good with regard to how much time I did and didn't spend with Forest, or alone, bored, and pining away. Friday night Kirstin went to spend with Jeff and Alex, so Forest and I went out. We had dinner with Tiff, first, though.
Well, sort of. Have I mentioned Forest's narcoleptic abilities yet? It's really amazing. He hasn't slept well in the past couple of weeks. We're not sure why, but he keeps waking up all night long. Well, Friday night, I picked him up from work, and before we were a block away, he was asleep in the car.
This is normal, he is always cat-napping, and I've gotten used to that. He's also usually very difficult to wake up.... but it's not usually THAT bad.
We got to Tiff's to pick her up, and I tried to wake him, with no luck.
We got to the restaurant, a little Ethiopian place near Frandor. This time, I spent nearly a half hour trying. I shook him by the shoulders, patted his face, smacked his hands, opened the door and let it rain on him, shouted every name and nickname of his that I know, and still, he wouldn't wake up! I even honked the car horn, to no avail. Finally, frustrated, I carefully tucked him into the car, and closed the door. I felt bad about leaving him out there in the cold, but what else could I do? I went in and started to eat, then 5 minutes before we had to leave, Forest came in, his face red, his hair jumbled, and sleepy in his eyes.
It's really kind of scary to not be able to wake him up like that. What would he do if the house burned down?
Anyway, after dropping Tiff off, we went to see The Ninth Gate. It was a good movie, but I think the thing I liked most about it was all the tarot symbolism. It sort of parallelled the journey of the fool through the deck, except with a satanic twist. The one part of the movie that annoyed me is that witches were portrayed as evil devil-worshippers. Also, the tarot images were portrayed as some sort of herald of the opening of the Ninth Gate to hell. That's just wrong. I read tarot cards, and I'm not a devil-worshipper. I don't even believe in the devil.
I'm not a militant pagan, though, so it didn't mean I couldn't enjoy the rest of it. The acting in it was fun to watch, but the symbolism was the best part. There was a hanged man, just like in the Rider-Waite deck, and I could be wrong, but I think many of the major arcana were represented in the cast of characters. In the end, there was a tower image that looked just like the "tower" card. It was fascinating. I'd like to see it again with a couple of tarot decks in front of me, just to read along with it.
After that, Forest and I decided to meet up with his dad and their friend Doug, to hear Bill play his bagpipes at Mort's. At that time, the line was too long, so we went to Cory's instead. Forest's dad and Doug drank green beer, and Forest and I each had a Guinness. Yummy. I decided to blow caution to the wind, and actually drank enough so that I was giggly and rather uninhibited. I don't drink scotch often, you see, but I used to be married to a bagpiper. We used to go to bagpipe festivals. One way to survive the endless sounds of 500 bagpipes being tuned is to slink into the tent, and have some scotch. It'll cure what ails you, whether it's the common cold, or the sound of 2000 drone reeds (There are 4 in each bagpipe set) scraping at the inside of your skull. I actually developed a taste for smooth scotch, which is pretty expensive, but worth it.
I digress. Anyway, to make a long story short, I drank with Forest, his dad, and this Doug guy, and had a really good time. Doug is funny, and has a great laugh, and a great way of laughing at himself for past misdeeds. He tells terrible stories, but cracks me up.
After Cory's, we went back up to Mort's in hopes of seeing Bill play. The line had diminished, but it was still quite crowded. I have to admit that years of listening to it has led me to have quite a distinguishing ear for bagpiping, too. I can actually tell you the difference between a good piper and a bad one, and pipes being in tune and out of tune. Bill has been practicing for a long time, and is getting pretty good at it. I enjoyed his playing.
Then I realized that I was quite tipsy, and had to be up at 6 in the morning, so Forest and I went home. I actually was asleep in the car, which is a rarity for me. I have no tolerance for alcohol anymore, though. I guess I haven't since I was about 19. It's a good thing I don't drink very often.
Saturday morning the combination of ethiopian food and scotch had left my stomach a bit on the upset side, so I decided to stay in bed longer than planned. I had been drafted to help set up the bell choir festival, but there were plenty of other people to do it, and I promised I'd help tear down everything instead. They were cool with that.
So I actually had a leisurely morning, staying in bed and cuddling my honey, and waiting for my stomach to stop complaining. I still felt a bit green about the gills when I got to the festival at about 10 AM.
It was a pretty stange experience, too. I haven't been active in my handbell choir in probably 4 years... and I had come to accept the fact that every single person who was in the choir when I left was still there when I came back. That's a very small turnover for a volunteer organization. I didn't know, though, that I would know so many of the same people in the larger handbell community. There were 200 ringers there, probably about 20 choirs from all over Michigan, and I knew a lot of the main people there! They even remembered my name. It was pretty strange.
Then there were the people from Meridian Township who saw me on TV. I still wish I knew just exactly what it was that they saw.
The day was long and tiring, and somehow my choir was scheduled so that we didn't get lunch or any time to sit down. The festival is kind of like a conference. There are clinics where people can go and learn techniques and so on, and repertoire reading, where choirs can sightread new music, and decide what to buy. My choir was helping facilitate all of this, so we spent all of our downtime helping out with these breakout sessions. Then, during lunch we had to rehearse, since we were playing a solo piece in the concert, then after lunch, when everyone else sat to watch a concert, we were the performers IN the concert.
I'm pleased to say that Tempest went really well. We played it as fast as we have ever done, and managed to get it all together, so that when our last note cut off, there was silence in the room, and you could hear members of the audience whisper "wow" before they started to applaud. I love that kind of thing. Unexpected audience response is a great part of any performing art.
I was really tired after that, but I cleaned my house and had company, and stayed up very very late.
Sunday morning, for the first time since before Christmas, I slept in. WAY in. Kirstin wasn't up until 10:30, and I didn't crawl out from under my pile of blankets until 11. We had a nice breakfast with Forest, and all watched The Little Mermaid together before he had to go off to work. It was nice to have a little down time as a trio.
Kirstin and I then went to visit my aunts and uncles in Ithaca. It was strange to see them all together again. I was wrong, it was more than 10 years, probably the last time they all get together was 1984. No wonder I didn't remember it, I was 11 years old at the time. My uncle Mike lives in Iowa City, and works between there and Denver. He says he's never tempted to come back to Michigan because he likes the sun too much! I think that's pretty funny. My mom, Aunt JoAnn and I love living in Michigan because of the variety. I can't imagine living someplace where the weather was the same from one day to the next, and especially not from season to season. I could stand a month or two less winter, but I wouldn't want to lose the rainy season, when things smell so earthy and new, or the fall, with its crisp, dry scents, and colors. I think my uncle's nuts.
But I guess in a way, my whole family is that way. They are all really over-educated people who tend to spend their lives with simple things, instead of using their expensive noodles to make a great fortune. A lot of people would call that nuts. I like that, though, it's something I can relate to.
It was interesting to hear tales of where my cousins ended up. One of them is in Washington State, where he has gotten into some trouble over a truck brokerage deal gone bad. I think there's a federal judgement against him for $600,000. That's crazy! I haven't seen that cousin since we were 9 years old, so I don't really know what the deal was on that one. I assume his sister turned out okay, but haven't heard anything of her. Her parents aren't the sort who talk of their kids when everything is going fine... they only talk about them when they are in trouble. That's my aunt Sue, for you. She's a little on the darker side.
My cousin Lester was there with his wife and 9-month-old baby. It's amazing how much their little girl looks like my mom's baby pictures, and like I remember my cousins looking when we were little. He's the first of my cousins to have a child, after me, that is. He's 34 now, I think. He fell off a roof this summer and broke his back. Amazingly enough, he's walking now. Wow. He's Aunt Joann's son. I don't know what became of my cousin Carrie, who lives in Wisconsin. I think Joann's youngest, Joethem went to U of M.
My cousin Tommy just finished his first semester at U of M, and dropped out to enlist in the marine corps. He's at boot camp now on Paris Island. His sister Jackie is getting her MBA from Michigan State.
I haven't seen most of my cousins in years, except at weddings, when I really haven't had time to talk to them. So it was pretty cool to catch up with their antics.
We got home from there at about 7 PM, and I thought Forest would be home around 10, so I decided not to have guests or anything, and just read a book. I was a bit disappointed when he called at 10 to say he would be running late, and would meet me in bed. I really wish he would try to be a little more consise in his planning, so that I could make plans for myself, too. I had thought of inviting a friend over for Sunday night, but didn't, because I figured he and I would like a little alone time to end the weekend, and a couple of hours wouldn't be much time to have a guest.
In fact, though, Forest didn't get home until around 11:30 or so, which would have left me plenty of time to have company. I tried to get him to stay up and have a snack, or a hot shower with me, but he was determined to go straight to bed.
So that was a bit of a bummer. But over all, it was a nice weekend. I was mostly just busy enough for my own sense of things.
Today at work I'm writing a proposal that's due tomorrow, and am feeling a bit over my head. I have to project a budget with amortized costs and stuff like that, but I've never been trained in that kind of thing, and haven't got a good grasp on what I'm doing. I also don't feel confident in it because I'm not good at math in the first place.
Tonight is going to be another busyish one. I predict that after work I'll grab my music and go to choir rehearsal, and then possibly work a little bit of Tae Kwon Do into the schedule after that. Then I'll go home, Forest will talk on the phone to his friend Wayne for a while, then we will crash out early. He hasn't slept well in so long that I can't imagine doing anything else. I'm trying to encourage him to try some yoga before bed, since maybe a little balance in the system would help him sleep. He doesn't sound enthusiastic, though.
I hope it's not me, or anything about our lives together that's disturbing him so. He says he has no idea what's causing it, and that worries me. If it was bad dreams, he would admit that to me. Last week he was sick, but he's feeling better now, and this is still happening. I suppose maybe he's still a little congested, but I can't imagine that would bother him this much.
Oh well. There's really not much I can do about it. I hate sitting with my hands tied while someone I love suffers, though. I want to help so much!
By the way, I've noticed that other online journals are offering notification services. Every time I posted an entry, the people on that list would get a message notifying them of the update. If you want to be part of such list, why don't you drop me an email and let me know. I didn't see much point in it until Shelly started using a list... and it means I don't have to hit her site a hundred times a day wondering whether she's posted yet. It's awfully convenient, and I'm all about value, right? Heh heh.
