Twelfth Night HRC Post Office Bonanza!!! Yee-Haw!

Yesterday was quite an interesting day...

I woke up, on the second day of my two-day unpaid suspension from work with a nasty headache. It was the same headache I woke up with the morning before, but I was feeling a bit mopey and really didn't feel like dragging my lazy ass down to the store to get coffee, the lack thereof was causing my pain. I managed to get through that day, but yesterday I knew I couldn't take it. I had to have coffee, and I was going to have to go get it.

As I made my way up the street, I noticed that the tiniest little specks of snow had begun to fall, and I got all homesick for the snows we used to have when I was a kid, big mounds of blue-white sparkling brilliance, piled high and deep, waiting for some adventurous kid to explore. This seemed more like the air had become sick, or had some kind of of dry skin condition.

By the time I got home I was ready for coffee. My boyfriend Daniel offered to make me a pot, so I collapsed on the couch and waited. When it was ready, he brought me a steaming cup, and for the majority of the morning, I lounged on the couch watching the snow fall out the massive front window and read a book.

In hindsight, maybe I should have stopped after the second cup, but when there's hot rich coffee available, it's hard for me to resist. So in the end I drank the whole pot. By now Will and Daniel had both left for work, leaving me in this big empty old house alone with not a damn thing to do.

Here's where I made my biggest mistake - after I had finished the coffee pot, I went to the fridge and pulled out a can of Vault soda. If you've been living under a rock and not heard of Vault soda, let me break it down for you. It tastes like a weird mix of Mountain Dew and Mello Yello, but has the caffeine intake of a Jolt cola, that nasty brew you got addicted to in college. I had one of these, and by now, my heart was racing from all the caffeine in my system. I had to do something. Right now...

So I went into my disaster area of a bedroom and began furiously cleaning, moving mounds of dirty clothes and reorganizing stacks of newspapers I have yet to go through and clip articles for my scrapbooks. The entire time this was going on, I was rocking out to Led Zeppelin, which of course meant that periodic stops were made for rhythmless white boy dancing and air guitar.

About two hours later, my room was clean, but I on the other hand, was spinning from the caffeine and adrenaline. I tried to take a shower, then decided a nice nap might do the trick. Easier said than done. I tossed and turned, threw pillows off the bed, twisted the sheets around my legs, but never quite actually made it to nappy-land.

Then about eight, Daniel got home. He came in my room and told me that our friend Crazy Bear had called several times to find out if we wanted to go to a Twelfth Night party. I had never been to one, but Daniel was keen on going, so I got up and quickly got dressed.

On the way to the party, Barry tells us a little about Twelfth Night parties. Apparently part of the Christmas season, and usually celebrated by Catholics, the twelfth day after Christmas friends and family get together and enjoy drinks and desserts, and of gifts of stories, songs, poems, or dancing to their hosts and other party-goers. I racked my brains to figure out a story, and finally remembered one that involved the only car accident I was ever in - but that story's too long to be recited here right now.

We arrived a wee bit late to the event, and when we walked in, one girl was in the middle of reading her story. I had no idea anything she was talking about, but became terrified when I realized that most of the stories and such had a Christmas theme. I didn't have any good Christmas stories, and Crazy Bear had gone back out to the car, so I couldn't ask if a non-Christmas story was acceptable. Finally I decided to hell with it, let them enjoy the story or not. So I volunteered when the time came and told my story, at times humorous, other times intimate and heartwarming. I was pleased.

Crazy Bear wanted to go have drinks, so we rode with him across town to Tribe, the local power-queer watering hole. Being Friday night, the place was packed. But apparently it was some kind of HRC night, and everyone was wearing these numbers on their clothes. If you saw someone you liked, you wrote down their number, and your own, and a message, and for five dollars the HRC "post office" would deliver the message. Apparently "Hey, you wanna fuck?" was no longer accpetable.

We drank, we left. We came home and lounged on the bed. I was feeling a bit icky at that point. I'm not a heavy drinker, and the mix of too much caffeine and dirty martinis was making my stomach all lurch-y. I was folding my clothes from the evening, going through the pockets, when what to my wandering eyes should appear but a bag of shake!! The perfect Twelfth Night gift.

So Daniel and I sank into a cloudy mist and talked about Spring Gathering, which is coming up in April. And by three, I had fallen into a peaceful sleep.

So now I have a story for next year's Twelfth Night party.