Yesterday there was a lemony pale light creeping cautiously across the gnarled branches and frost whitened leaves outside, landing delicately on the upper cabinets and then sliding slowly down across the oven hood and onto the counter. And why wouldn't it? The poor sun hadn't been out in soon long, I'm sure it had to feel its way around the unfamiliar landscape.
Today the clouds have come down again with iron fist and everything is dismal, as per usual. Today I took a pregnancy test and I am not pregnant. I still have to fight off the lingering urge to go back upstairs and retrieve the test from the waste paper basket, just to check and see if the second line has only just now appeared. Which would be absurd and I am so not doing that.
I'm beginning to think that pregnancy isn't really real. It's not something that actually happens, not in real life. All that fuss about bassinets and swelling ankles and food cravings and stocking up on tiny little diapers is never actually going to happen, they're just stories from somewhere far away and I'm only hearing the echoes.
Also, to compound the misery, I am dreading New Year's Eve. We have plans to go visit one of Keith's friends, who has plans to build a bonfire, which means that every one there will get plastered, as soon as possible and late into the night.
I know this is the point, on New Year's Eve and that is why on New Year's Day no one stirs until 1pm in the afternoon, except the chipmunks and chickadees. (Seriously. I once had the opportunity to walk the streets of Boston early on New Year's Day. It was like the movie "Twenty Eight Days Later: Boston Edition.")
Anyway, my childhood experiences of New Year's Eve were of all night prayer meetings and home baked snack foods that included popcorn and Coolaid. Since then, I've usually been in an apartment somewhere, struggling to stay awake long enough to see the ball drop on TV and drinking one class of affordable champagne or sparkling grape juice.
Part of my dread of this party is due to the fact that I've already seen how a party goes down at this particular friend's house. We arrive and I wander around sticking close to my husband, stiff and awkward and shy. Everyone else has known one another since elementary school.
Other guests arrive who all know one another and who don't know me. They all proceed to get smashed, trade insults and sexual jokes while I sit, awkward and stiff and sober, on the couch and hope not to get noticed. I remain permanently stuck in what I was raised to believe was acceptable social behavior, even though it's clear that there is no need for it in that environment and that I should cast off the restraints and enter the general mayhem with vim and vigor. That, in fact, my remaining hopelessly polite and formal and given to spontaneous displays of naive goodwill (that I hope will make up for my reserve) make me instead appear a complete idiot.
I don't mean to be a snob, I really don't. I want very much for those people to like me, which is why I light up like a stupid Christmas tree if there is a comment or a topic that I can respond to, or a chance for me to display how much I really would like to participate. But in order to fit in, it seems that I must give up who I am. Or at the very least, to get drunk, which is easy enough, one bottle of beer would do it. But frankly, I'm too terrified to get drunk there.
Lastly, it seems the basis for guy/girl interactions is always going to be sex. If I should enter that kind of exchange, even once, it shows clearly that I am open season and I'm really not. I really don't want to flirt with someone who is not my husband. I don't want to receive crude, sexually charged insults, or for that matter, compliments.
So on will go the night. The others will get drunk and begin to pass out, some with snot running down their faces, to the amusement of their companions. Fights, unfocused, between couples, between friends, will begin and end. Someone might propose to someone else, half heartedly, and get half heartedly rejected, the recipient vaguely recalling that perhaps this might not be the scenario of their dreams.
People will go in and out of the house in small groups, looking for more liquor or beer or food or lighter fluid or blankets. The guys, in drunken bravado, will drive small construction utility vehicles around in circles in the mud of the back yard, they will get the golf cart stuck, they will break things. Someone will try to hit on me. The girls will ignore me. Keith will come check on me frequently.
I will remain sitting on the couch until past midnight, watching Reality TV Crash and Burn or Destroyed in an Instant shows, because that was what was on and because I don't know where to sleep. Everyone else will pretty much pass out where ever. Eventually Keith will come and claim me and we will sleep where ever too.
That was just a random party. This is going to be New Year's Eve, for goodness' sake. With a bonfire. It's not going to be better, folks. Maybe I'm just being pessimistic. I certainly feel pessimistic. I'm beginning to wonder; is there any one out there like me? Is there anyone who might enjoy throwing a dinner party with linen napkins and a game of Sorry or Charades afterward? Maybe a nice bottle of wine? I have some French Lick Red, which is heavenly stuff.
On a completely different note, why is it that as the day goes on, the music on any classical station only gets worse? Early in the morning, it's all baroque and Mozart and later in the evening rush, Vivaldi and lovely little string quartets. However, in the barren stretches of mid day, it's as though the jockeys decide, while we are all presumably chained to our desks, to force on us discordant, emotionally bombastic pieces of modern crap.
"They'll never listen to this otherwise," they plot. "Surely if they listen to "Fanfare for the Common Man" enough times they'll like it. I mean, it works for Brittany Spears. Let's foist it on them again...whahahahahaha!"
