On Being Single, Living Alone, and Having Hardly any Single Friends

Posted under Friends, Life, Longings, Money, Ranting, Uncategorized, Women by Sarah

1. Your back gets patchily tanned and/or burned.

2. There is a distinct lack of motivation to wash the dishes.

3. Nudity can happen frequently at home.

4. Solitude aplenty. Solitude in abundance. Solitude to the extreme!

5. 10 AM seems bright and early.

6. Going alone to the beach is unavoidable.

7. Clothes, magazines, shopping bags, wine bottles, bags of chips, iPod cables, newspapers, mail, and water bottles on the floor in every room is just normal.

8. No one reminds you when you’re road-raging about that tailgater that you just committed the same offense on the way home yesterday.

9. You can drink water, wine, OJ, and coffee every day for a month without running out of clean glasses (at least, I can).

10. Never mind the old adage that you should take off one piece of jewellery before you leave the house; in my case, I have some I can’t put on before I meet up with other people.

11. The things you have in common with your girlfriends (now married with children) grow less and less. And less (something just happened as I wrote this that really drove the point home).

12. Stigmas about Old Maidendom get closer to home, whether in your eyes or others’.

13. Wanting to go out means you either a) scrape together the nerve to go by yourself (not likely); b) wait until that one single friend you have is available on a Saturday night; or c) play the anti-social card. Again.

14. Items of clothing with buttons up the back are, sadly, not for you.

15. You’re the first person people think of when someone asks them for a pet-sitter or house-sitter.

16. Without a man, you really have no idea how to care for your car and just hope nothing happens.

17. No one helps you dig your way out of your driveway in winter.

18. You can only have Housewarming parties so many times. Besides that, what can a single girl register for to get stuff like engaged and expecting girls do?

19. Fashion means more to you.

20. The baby behaviour, baby stuff, baby growth, baby names, and baby care references get old when you’re the only one without a baby.

21. Master of the fake smile you are.

22. You fear the cat-lady reference yet admit to being a candle-lady.

23. Eating in is a novelty.

24. Cooking for one isn’t. You begin to long for NYC, where everything can be delivered. Or, perhaps, to hire someone just to have someone else to cook for.

25. Plant-and-candle lady?

26. Things stay where you put them. Ordinarily.

27. You flip-flop between wanting to nest and wishing you’d never stopped to roost.

28. No one cares what time you come in at, and no one cares what time you come in at.

29. Only you face the consequences for too much shopping.

30. There’s no one to blame for anything else, either.

Life in the H.C., Part 3: Bar Fights and Deep Fried Mars Bars

Posted under Friends, Late Nights by Sarah

Tonight I joined the friend who made my birthday special on an excursion to make her birthday special. Looking hot, we met up with some of her friends (and her sister, who is closer to my age then my friend is, yay) and headed to a popular bar in the other big town in the H.C. (other than Goderich, obviously), Grand Bend.

One of my weaknesses is that I’m often uncomfortable in new situations, new places, and with new people, especially when I don’t know what to expect. If I have someone whose side I can cling to, I do alright, then once I get used to the situation or the layout of the place, I’m fine. Usually.

I’m less comfortable in places where people are more likely to boldly (drunkenly) talk to you or single you out. If I’m simply blending in, that’s one thing, but looking hot in a huge place packed with drunk horny people on a long holiday weekend is terrifying! If I had known, I probably wouldn’t have gone, but then I would’ve missed the drama!

So there’s a zillion people in this place, people lined up around the building waiting to get in. It’s Jam Night, so there’s live music that’s not necessarily wonderful, and inconsistent. There are several self-important beefed-up security dudes allowing people into the building in small groups, after checking everyone’s ID. Telling them we’re with a birthday girl doesn’t work for us at all.

Once inside, our group was split up by the layout of the place and the sheer multitude of people inside it, constantly moving. I didn’t even see the bar the whole evening because I wasn’t brave enough to fight through the 5-deep crowd buzzing around it. I was so overwhelmed by the noise and the people and the strange place that I wanted to leave as soon as I got in, but stuck it out anyway.

Two of us found a couple of stools in a very busy passageway and claimed them, our knees getting very familiar with strangers without any input of ours whatsoever. We chatted and sang along a bit, and sipped our drinks, but mostly kept squishing backwards in our chairs to get out of the way as much as we could.

We had gotten a little sick of the constant surge of scantily-clad tipsy youngsters when a garbage can came through one of the floor-to-ceiling windows beside the stage, about 20 feet from us, shattering two layers of glass and drawing the attention of 450 people. The band members were instantly bounding over tables and chairs and people and out an emergency exit to catch the punk while we just watched, stunned. Then there were cops and security guards with headsets. Hundreds of people stared and milled about, and we had a great view.

As soon as the band was back on stage and playing again and things were calming down, a fight broke out in front of the stage that had the musicians trying to play their instruments with one hand and slap the idiots with the other. The Macho Macho Bouncers shoved a group of people out the door as the singer yelled obscenities through the microphone (”Will the $&#^ing psychos get the $^@& out NOW?!”). The crowd started chanting along with him.

After all this, I figure I’m safe to trek to the washroom. Arriving to the lineup unscathed, it wasn’t till I was almost done my business that the yelling and the mighty mighty F-bomb made their way to the doorway across from the ladies room. More beefy bouncers herding bombed bar-goers away from the head case who was apparently still trying  to get in.

Returning to my friends, we talked about leaving because we were so sick of the insanity. We finished our drinks, took some pictures, then headed toward the door, only to find the place had been put on lock down. No one in or out, no one being served, no music playing. Just a few hundred anxious tipsy people stuck shoulder to shoulder.

Soon enough, we were being ordered out. And that’s when BJ’s (outdoor) Diner up the street met our need. Our need for greasy food, that is. A few excessively loud conversations later, our night was revived by Deep Fried Mars Bars with ice cream, and a large poutine on the side.
I may never return to The Gables (okay, I could be convinced), definitely not on a long weekend, but the story I can tell just might be worth it!

Happy Birthday, Ash… it can only go up from here!