Another Wacky Week

In which I go to a party, have a lonely birthday, see Walrus again, and find out when my mother lost her virginity....

End of the festival party:  I'm not good at parties.  There was a part halfway through where I got overwhelmed and sat by myself, right in the middle of the crowd, and just watched.  I won the costume contest.  ( I was Princess Leia.  The crowd actually started chanting 'Leia!  Leia' as soon as the contest was announced.  It was very embarrassing)

Then some people started dancing and not knowing what else to do with myself, I danced a little.  I'd leave if the music got too 'house' but if they played some oldie I'd go back.  Now, I generally don't dance in public.  I bend my knees in time, and think I'm dancing, but it's like my body is frozen.  But, in a Princess Leia costume, the day before my birthday, I just started having fun.  I don't think I'd want to watch footage of me that night, but I was jumping around and just not caring.  And the other dancers knew all the songs and sang along.  For once I wasn't a snob about people being sincere about pop songs.  I could sorta see why people like drinking and dancing... It makes you feel alive.  And while I'm not rushing out to a club this weekend to experience it again, I at least saw another point of view....

Cleaning up after the party took well into the night, so then it officially was my birthday. I missed the last bus out to the suburbs so I stayed overnight at one of the other intern's...she was really drunk and threw up three times.  In the morning she was so embarrassed.  She was really nice and I felt bad for all the mean things I said about the Other Interns before the festival.

My birthday sucked.  I slept all day.  I tried to get a small gathering together and all I got were a bunch of 'maybes'.  The only confirmed guests were a girl from choir and Walrus.  Um.  Awkward.  So I canceled that.  Spend the evening doing laundry and applying for jobs.  My mom didn't even cook me a birthday dinner.  She made herself eggs.  Sigh.

At least my choir had cake for me at this week's session and sang me birthday songs.  It was the first time I'd seen Walrus in two months.  Wasn't sure how to behave. We greeted each other with a hug but I didn't stand next to him during the singing, then ended up next to him anyways later in the evening.  I still fuss over him, getting him a chair, picking up his cane when he drops it.  He went and helped himself to cake about halfway through the session, which I thought was rude.  If nobody else had touched the cake, I certainly wasn't going to.  But he always ignores those social cues if there's food or drink around...

So after choir Walrus and I went to this show.  It was right next door to where we meet for choir and featured a comedian we'd previously seen together.  I'd been trying to get somebody to go with me for weeks, and then Walrus seemed so disappointed when I canceled my birthday plans, so I asked him to come.  He was going to be at choir anyways... And I paid for his ticket, supposedly as a 'loan'.
Yes, I know this is a weird way to see your ex-boyfriend.  Really, I know.
He enjoyed the show.  The audience was invited onto the stage at the end, and no one moved, except Walrus, who clomped his way onto the middle of stage quite unabashedly and starting looking at the unusual instruments.  I followed, but stayed to the side of the stage.   Then the rest of the audience joined us...

Afterwards I waited with him at the bus stop and he talked about what's going on with him.  He's signing up to volunteer for a stroke organization, and applying for financial aid to go back to school.  At one point I was telling him about winning the costume contest and he one-arm hugged me and said 'Good for you, dear!'  and that's bothering me a bit, obviously.

Well, there might have to be a conversation about that.  No, I don't want to get back together.

He told me some anecdote about him getting so drunk he passed out in the bathroom and his ex trying to get in to pee, but he was blocking the door.  She'd hit him with the door and he'd groan, so she left him alone and peed in the kitchen sink.  He thought this was a funny story.
I would have reacted so so so differently than the ex.  He was going to spend his life with this woman?

On another topic, I got a free couch this week and it's sitting outside on the front lawn.  Trying to clear a spot for it in mom's basement, I knocked over a box of her mementos from her high school/college years.  Found notes from her old boyfriend.  One of them said, 'Would you like to engage in sex this evening?  Check one box' followed by three boxes all labeled 'Yes'.  One note might have been about a pregnancy scare in her college years.  Others were about fights and emotional messiness that didn't make sense to me, but must have been intense for the parties involved.

Reading these gave me a weird feeling, and I put them away.  Mom was sexually active in high school.
(So was my sister - She gave me a box of old greeting cards she thought I could use for crafts. In it, I found a note from her friend congratulating her on her first time.)
I also found a necklace with a Women's Lib medallion in Mom's things.  Just weird to think of who she was then and who she is now.
And weird to think of teenage love and to not have that experience.  Or a shoebox full of notes to remember my youth by.  I have two love poems from Walrus though.

Anyways, I'm very tired and I don't know what to do with all these thoughts.  I'm sad that I have no one to talk to, no one to celebrate my birthday with.