I have the afternoon off while Blake is decorating my parents' tree, which allows me to get caught up on my digital tomfoolery. I'm glad he's doing it for his own sake; I thought that boy would explode with the need to decorate. We bought our tree on Thursday, which meant that it needed at least a night to relax. His first question when he woke up on Friday: "can we decorate the tree?" No, son. I'd love to know the code for calling in Festive, but it's a closely guarded secret. So yesterday, despite spending most of the day booting around downtown until Mason & I were thoroughly wrung out, we got out the precious red tote and started the tinselling.

Why were Mason & I so spent? It might have something to do with the fact that we were in pubs from school's end to well past midnight. It was a perfect storm of bar-crawling, starting with a staff function, sailing on through Brampton Drunken Knitting (with a brief dinner visit by Blake & my dad before they went off to see the Olympic torch in a nearby park), and finishing off at the Artful Dodger for a res reunion. It would have been even more difficult to get out of bed on Saturday if I had been able to put down the car keys at any point, but that's the problem with an inter-city booze expedition: there really can't be all that much booze if I don't want to have my car towed to some nearby, put-upon friend. So I watched the old crowd get loaded instead of participating.

(I'm really not sure that I could have stood back from this 12 years ago, put-upon friends or none. I suppose that means that I'm growing up. Or? Really tired.)

Everyone was feeling cozy and sentimental, and my ancient velour Christmas dress went over well, as the later it got no-one could stop petting my arms. (People love that dress. It is by far the most popular thing I've ever worn. Maggie M in particular thought it was worth building a time machine so that she could do as my mother had, and order it from the Sears catalogue in the early 90's.) I spent time catching up with Pete, Cranly, Steven, Seth & Kat, without wondering too much about when I would see anyone again. That may be the other thing about not drinking: I was able to appreciate seeing everyone without getting anxious about the fact that we never ever see each other any more.

I also found it interesting how easy it was to talk to Cranly, as I had to literally corner him to talk to him 6 ½ years ago, and I haven't been able to keep in touch since. Now he frequents the Dakota (for bluegrass), nearly joined the Peace Corps and has had a parallel experience with being seduced by bands in the BSS family. When I was younger I used to think that my friends then would like the same things as I did pretty much forever; now that I'm older my biggest surprise is that sometimes, they do.

No pictures, because I never went home for my camera. And also, I was talking too much. But to know what it looked like, you just have to picture everyone in my photos from the first days of the journal, only with beards. Yes, even the ladies.

Especially the ladies.

Labels: blake, christmas, friends, nostalgia, outfits, outings, res

I've been avoiding this entry for a couple of days. It helps that I've been on a non-stop social whirlwind (well, for me) and between my demanding public and my domestic duties there's been little time to work out the proper tone. But when have I ever let that stop me?

Okay. Those of you keeping score at home (and I've run into at least two of you this week) know that I've been taking ridiculous risks since the summer began. I've been carrying on like every night is Poet's bachelor party, which isn't a good strategy when you have a pre-schooler and a 40-year mortgage. Why? Well, the best I can explain it is that at the Maddy, I started to get to know Mason as more than just a work friend, as, in fact, an accordion wingman and general all right guy. Not having had a lot of recent experience with making friends (with two major exceptions: mommies & knitters), I seem to have reverted to my old template that used to serve when I was making new friends in my undergrad. Result? Alcohol-fueled bad decisions.

This all came crashing home to me on Wednesday night, when Mason told me that his partner was concerned. I believe the words "bad influence" floated around. And at first I was kind of tickled. Then the shame and guilt hit.

There's a gesture that Stacy makes when she is delighted by something: she throws her hands in the air and cheers briefly. She also makes this gesture when she is very displeased by something. I was reminded of this gesture when the whole bad influence idea came up. At first I thought of my rock n' roll cred. Then I remembered what this would do to my decent human being cred. Delighted/dismayed.

It's taken me almost two full days to come up from the shame to breathe. Once, after Dirk almost drowned, I told him to go home and write about it until he felt better. Today I decided to take my own advice.

The funny/ironic thing is that I met up with three "old-timers" from the Ferg days, people who saw me drunk off my ass more times than I can recall. And we were too busy taking pictures and laughing and reminiscing and catching up to drink all that much. So I suppose there is hope for me; I just have to speed up the process so that it takes fewer than 10 years to kick in.

As alluded to above (if you didn't doze off during the Angst Storm above), I went out to see Brigit, Dot, St. Jack & NotAnArtist at the Wheat Sheaf (Maria was a bonus!) Considering that I haven't seen them in 6 years, 4 1/2 years, 10 months and 5 weeks respectively, the rollicking good time was both surprising and expected. NaA knew Brigit in middle school, so she and Maria were plunged into the messy tide pool of Ferg memories from the mid-nineties. They did very well for themselves, only falling asleep once or twice. (Hee!)

It was a wonderful night, very validating. Sometimes talking to casual acquaintances from the Old Days can make me feel like a suburban sell out, a mediocrity in mom jeans. These guys had much more class and much more love...but that's always been true. Pictures to come tomorrow, I think, when I'm not in another rush downtown and I can sort out my elbow from my hairline. (Or, as I might have said the last time I saw Dot, when I can sort out my ass from my moustache.)

Labels: angst, friends, nostalgia, outings, res

Sorry about falling off the face of the earth like that. Last week was probably the worst week to buy a house, considering that I was getting sick, report cards were due on Monday, and the Boy was arranging job interviews like a crazyman. I spent all weekend in the basement: marking, cursing, calculating, _{chatting with Mason on Fb about how much damn marking I had to do}, flipping through the Ikea catalogue, and festering. My morning shower on Monday was so beautiful that it brought tears to my eyes.

So did the fact that I still had an entire set of essays to mark as of 9 p.m. that night. The Boy rescued me, as that is his superpower (he marks to stop the wailing & gnashing of teeth and I love him for that.) This is the first time he's had to bail me out like this in at least a year, which means that I've come an awfully long way. I took a sick day today to deal with my cold and re-mark the papers (to add comments and check my perceptions against the finished product); so far it's turning out an awful lot like my weekend. Rocketbride needs a good washing.

"It's kind of a shame that I'm doing some of my best festering outside of Ferg, but change of location is no excuse not to try for excellence." - october 10, 1998

"Nerds, geriatrics and moms. You forgot moms." - me

And revisiting the concept of festering leads us to...

Zeena (Warrior Princess from Ferg res) invited a bunch of people on the Fb out to a party this Saturday, but a number of us are felled by exams, papers, and in my case, parenthood and pending home ownership. I kind of want to go, but the whole idea of 10 p when:

1. I'll be knitting at the Dick on Friday, probably into the wee hours, then
2. getting up early to give the Blake breakfast, etc. so that I can be ready for the house inspection at 10 am

To recap: the scary thing about this Facebook fenom is that I'm getting more invites than I did before. Not scary because of the invites, but scary because it makes it all the harder to give up. As Mason likes to say, I've grown accustomed to this Facebook.

Labels: basement, bat masterson, res

Thursday was…weird. Two weeks ago I was quietly pining for a night on the town, 1997-style. On Thursday night, it happened. Originally, I was planning on dancing with Dirk in honour of his birthday (a.k.a. Dirktoberfest). But because of that dratted Book of Faces, Seth had a chance to invite me to "party like it's 1995." I convinced Dirk to check it out for a half-hour before moving on to Velvet; thus it began.

The crowd at Sneaky's was a wash of half-familiar faces, many of whom I had seen at St. St's wedding last fall. They were all overjoyed to see Dirk, somewhat less enthusiastic about me (oh well), but I found conversation immediately. I recognized three girls from my first year at Ferg, none of whom said a single word to me the entire night (so much for thinking that they had liked me then, either). So I talked to the boys, which is my MO anyways. And I tried to hide my embarrassment at the fact that I could vividly remember the last time I had seen a few of them, and what I remember of my behaviour was neither respectable nor sober. Eeep.

I employed my usual tactic when dealing with social awkwardness: I started drinking. Dirk took my keys & promised to drive until I sobered up, which meant that I had pretty a free hand with the circulating pitchers. (Ahh, the good old days.) The edges melted. The room warmed. My volume increased.

And by contrast, Velvet was incredibly understimulating. I'm not fond of sitting by myself in goth clubs, even if I'm too tipsy to really work myself into a temper. So I persuaded Dirk to take us back to Bloor Street and the Dance Cave, where we rejoined the 90's party.

The rest of the night was spent sobering up, dancing, laughing, dancing, shouting a few words of conversation, and fighting through the enormous crowds to find the bathroom. I was hit on during a Prince song (happens every time I go to the Cave) and I stood listening patiently while an old acquaintance confided that he was tired of picking up women in bars. It was a completely satisfying experience.

Best of all was the fact that I was there with Dirk, and that it was more like old times than it has been since we came back from Nova Gothic. In fact, it was better, because the camaraderie was overlaid with a level of maturity and understanding that's hard to describe. I felt more solidly connected with him than I have in a long time, and that mostly comes from the fact that he is almost healed of his long illness. Also indescribable is my relief at this simple fact.

It was the best Dirktoberfest ever.

Labels: dancing, friends, outings, res