Thoughts on My Weekend, Mostly Coherent.

Sometimes it’s really hard to condense all of my thoughts into a coherent post: sometimes a cohesive theme is hard to find, and everything I want to say seems impossible to confine in the perfect lines and pre-set margins of this page. 

I’m sitting in a coffee shop in northern Virginia; an excellent Sunday afternoon where it’s just me, my laptop, a novel, mellow music and sunlight making the old wood floors glow.  The trees outside are pink: Spring is definitely on the way.  We’re coming out of the woods. 

J and I went to drinks last night with our newly engaged friends.  They had invited us to dinner, as well, but J—anticipating, kindly, my sensitivity on the issue—invented plans for us.  I don’t want to be jealous of them anymore, and I don’t want to feel hurt that she told J, but not me, that they had gotten engaged.  Still, it’s hard. 

I played nice, and we had a good time.  Her ring was beautiful, they had a cute engagement story, and she spent a lot of time telling me how we’ve got to get together and hang out sometime.  I can’t decide if she’s just being nice or if she really means it.  I’ve had plenty of pseudo-friends who were really more for show: “oh, so good to see you, let’s do drinks sometime, yes, I’ll call you” friends where it’s mutual understanding that all of our promises are figurative.  Of course we won’t get together, and of course she won’t call.  That’s just how it is. Once I start to accept that about this girl, it doesn’t break my heart so much when she rebuffs me. 

The thing of it is, I haven’t made too many real friends out here.  I really wanted to add her to that small grouping.  Que sera sera, though, right?

I was doing well with this laissez-faire attitude until she started discussing her wedding plans.  She wants to get married this fall, in Charlottesville.  Although I certainly never told her, that was my plan first.  A fall wedding in Charlottesville was definitely my plan first.  B!tch won’t be able to get married in the UVA chapel, though, because you have to reserve it a year in advance, and weekends in the fall are on a lottery system depending on the home football schedule.  It’s possible I’ve looked into this.

Two Irish car bombs and four Guinness pints later (it was a St. Patrick’s day special weekend), it didn’t seem so bad.  In fact, it seemed kind of funny.

It was significantly less funny when J and I woke up, I ever so slightly hung over, at 10.52.  And Palm Sunday Mass started at 11.  There was a time in the not-so-distant past when J would have said, hey, screw it, we won’t make it.  I think he’s coming around to seeing how important this whole faith thing is to me, though, and it was on his impetus that I threw on my clothes, tied up my hair, and quickly washed the sleep off of my face.  We normally go to a church farther out, but there is a parish pretty much right across the street from his apartment that quickly became our destination du jour.

By the time we rolled in, about 10 minutes past the hour, it was packed.  Standing room only.  We were literally standing out in the narthex with a whole little crowd of “couldn’t get here early enough” miscreants, craning our necks to hear what was going on. 

About a half hour in I really felt like I was going to pass out.  It was hot, I’d been standing, I hadn’t eaten anything and had had no caffeine.  I’m a serious addict, for those of you keeping score at home.  Things started looking splotchy.  I was trying really hard to focus, but I felt like I couldn’t breathe, and I really thought I was about to lose it.  

I have fainted exactly once in my life; it was in San Francisco last year while waiting for a table in a packed restaurant with my godparents.  I hadn’t eaten, I was still on DC time, and it was hot and crowded.  That’s a sure-fire way to get a table immediately, fyi; pass out in the bar after they say it’ll be at least a 45 minute wait.  About a million hot guys offered to escort me outside for some air, too, though I doubt that would have been the result at mass. 

Rather than finding out for sure, I elbowed my way out, and sat on the curb for a while to get myself together.  I resurfaced just in time for communion, and J and I bolted after that for some very tasty Vietnamese soup down the street.  Things started looking up from there. 

Maybe I’ll get married in the fall, and maybe I won’t. Maybe it’ll be soon, and maybe it won’t.  But regardless, I have so much good in my life that drowning it all for minor frustrations and disappointments hardly seems worth it.