My Life: That's About It, Just My Life

I'll do a full "My Ideas" update this weekend, at least according to plan. For now, I'll just focus on how things have been for this week. It was...a busy one.

Wednesday! The last night before a vacation. Laundry was done. This...is why I don't do a daily blog about my life. Though, really, who can? Even Neil Gaiman has "Today I folded my underwear" times.

Thursday! This is more like it. My family went to visit Wisconsin Dells as part one of a trip to Minnesota for a wedding. The assumption was that since we had to travel for hours anyway, we might as well leave a day early and enjoy a water park. So we did. I was going to go with my parents because carpool is econominic and environmentally friendly, and who wants to drive for three hours when you can sleep and listen to your iPod.

My parents planned to get to my apartment and leave around 9:30-10. About 11:30, we left. I did additional laundry around 10, because I know my family. About the time we left my town, my brother, sister-in-law, and niece, who live much further away south than us, told us they already hit Wisconsin.

Friday! This was "Do everything you can in the Dells" day. We planned to get an early start and then do everything. We finished breakfast around 11 am. Again, I know my family. Afterwards, he did the Ducks for the first time. The Ducks, for those who don't know, are former military vehicles capable of going on land or sea and now mostly used for these sort of tours. That was fun, at least for my two year old niece. Afterwards, my parents took the toddler for nap and other activities, letting the "young-ish" adults have their fun. It was the first time I hung out with my brother like that in a long time, and arguably the first time I could just hang out with my sister-in-law Rose for almost an entire day. It was fun. Even if I was a bit of a third wheel in romantic terms, it was comfortable. Best of all, it was a real friendship. It's not hard to love your family members, but just having fun being with them is a rare thing, especially the ones you don't grow up with.

Saturday! Not so uplifting. More depressing really, which is not a good sign since that was the wedding. The wedding was 3 pm. We had a four hour drive. We left about 11:30. My fam...eh, you get it. It wasn't too bad. We had to stop at our hotel for a desperate clothes change, and in the end we were 15 minutes or so late. It could have been worse. We missed the introduction of the wedding, but we caught the vows, which was really the point.

The reception, on the other hand, was not the slightest bit enjoyable for me. It was all my introversion issues coming together with the always pleasant experience of being a single, dateless person at an expression of perfect love between two theoretical soul mates. When I was just hanging out with the usual extended family members and food consumption, it didn't matter. And I actually found the best man's speech to be interested (mostly because I gave the one for my brother and was eager to compare,) but by the time we got to the photos of the family, I started getting a vague and increasingly despairing feeling of isolation. I started to fear, or even grudgingly accept, that I won't ever get that experience. No happy montage of me with the woman of my dreams by my side; no little quotes on the wedding programs about how I'm special and what about me makes her happy and visa versa.

And then the dancing. Oh, Lonny, the dancing. I already dislike dancing, being shy, awkward, and having no experience or natural rhythm whatsoever. But what people don't realize is that I don't mind dancing. I'd LOVE to dance when I have someone to dance with. But I had nobody, so watching everyone, from married cousins years younger than me to older couples with decades of experience, was too much. I literally had to leave the room and couldn't go back. I never came that close to a public nervous breakdown, at least not recently. It wasn't so bad, though; I calmed down later that night, and nothing permanent resulted. But it was pretty scary.

Sunday! We drove back. Except for the fact this took seven hours, it wasn't so bad.

Monday-Wednesday! Work, writing, yabbade yabbade.

Thursday! Today was a bit anticlimactic compared to this weekend, but it was notable. The big thing about today was a friend who was stranded in another state and who needed for me to wire some money. That wasn't a big deal, except that it took TWO HOURS for me to call and get the money wired. The lesson here is that if you want to use Western Union, do so in person or online. Otherwise you have to wait for someone to call for your validation, which takes forever, and if you call to check on it they send you to the back of the list again, so you never know when you actually can give your increasingly hungry and desperate friend enough money for food and gas. It was a rough night, in other words, and I was late for my writer's group as a result. But at least I could do a nice thing, and even if no good deed goes unpunished, it felt nice to at least make someone else's day less unpleasant.