yevlax

Thirty-Five


I'm in a new apartment now, splitting the place with Brian & Katie. It's really nice, a drastic move up from the shithole I was living in for the past few years, sleeping on a couch and wondering if I was ever going to get out of that little box. The new place is frickin' huge. It's going to take me a while to get used to this.

I have my own room, my own bathroom, and space to prep food. Katie has bent over backwards to make me feel comfortable here, so bless her for that. I warned her about my mood swings from time to time. I have an actual door now, so I can hide in my room if it gets too bad. So far I've been relatively stable, the change of sceneray has helped tremendously in that regard. I still have little fits of anger every once in a while and the occasional nightmare, but I'd say I'm calmer overall now. Or at least I think I am. I may not be the best judge of that.

I spent the weekend before my birthday entertaining guests and being happy that I could finally people over without my elbows knocking into a wall when I sat down at a table. Saturday I saw Ray and Britaney for a bit, then my buddies from Bowling Green came down adn we played geeky games all night; some game that was similar to Apples to Apples called 'Would You Rather', then a super-hero rpg battle Russell had whipped up from Mutants and Masterminds. I played Dr. Doom, and tried to form an alliance with Juggernaut (played by Forbes), but was quickly beaten down by terrified heroes. Bah! Shows that I'm the most dangerous man at the table. Stupid do-gooders.

On Sunday, Bobbie came by early in the day with her little girl Annabelle to say hello for a few minutes and gift me with a birthday blanket. Thom, Anna, and James dropped by for a bit and drug me off to BW's Mongolian Grill for lunch. James bought me some food and I promised him a beer on our actual birthday. I got a lot of the stringy beef in my mongolian meal, and almost choked on it when I started eating because I didn't chew properly. So that was kind of embarrassing. Then we went back to the apartment to play Magic the Gathering for most of the night, where my Forest of Rage deck reigned supreme! Then we finished the night with a round of Cards Against Humanity. I thanked everybody for coming over to help us break in the new place.

Wednsday for my actual birthday, I was at the Cancer Center to get my weekly blood fillup in the vampire chair. The nurses didn't realize it ws my birthday until they were reading the date off the bag of B neg they were about to load into the IV line, then they rushed off to tell the others. I went back to my magazine, and was on the verge of forgetting about it until Jana* stood up and called for 'everyones attention'. I figured the nurses were going to sing happy birthday or something, but I was imagining like, three or four of them in front of me belting an off key tune. Jana made everybody in the ward sing. Sitting across from me that day was an elderly couple, both of whom were deaf, both of whom were relying on an interpreter to communicate to the nurses. The interpreter and the couple began 'singing' along in sign. I thought that was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. I was spellbound by it for a few seconds.

*- nurse of the year! shes on a billboard! shes also my friend Tims mom!

I saw the elderly deaf couple leave a little bit later after I got unhooked from the chair and wandered down to the lobby to wait for my ride. How did they meet? Were they always both deaf? Was there a hard of hearing love story there that spanned several decades. I wasn't brave enough to ask (and I don't know enough sign yet to communicate with them). It reminded me that if I can't get back to being a paralegal, maybe I can still go into sign language interpretation? Or both?

Katie picked me up and we took power naps before heading back out to town to say happy b-day to James. James and I are the only people we've ever met who were born on the same day as us. I'm older by a few hours, I think. I met some of his other friends (James si a popular guy), and Thom and Anna came by later with their youngling. Thom and James swore revenge for their humiliating defeat at the hands of my rapist trees, and I said I'd see them on Sunday. Katie went to have dinner with Brian while I saw to James being properly hammered, then she retrieved me for a ride home and off to sleep.

And thus endeth my birthday weekend.

It was a lot better than the emo-horror-story I had envisioned in my head. Thank you to everyone who participated in it.