Thursday, January 14, 2010

Friends, movies, books

I felt a little distant yesterday, but the day was still alright. Victoria came over after I got off work, and I was so glad to see her. So glad she wanted to come over! I mean, we are friends and we have been for a while--but mainly we're friends at Camp. And sometimes it's difficult to tell with friends from wherever whether they're people who actually want to be actual friends, minus the location. Am I making sense? I'm guilty of it too. For instance, there's a girl with whom I went to college who is a bit odd, very sweet, very joyful and funny. I do like her, but for some reason when she tried to become closer friends with me around graduation time, I balked a little bit. I don't know why. I felt bad about it, but I just wasn't interested. We've talked a bit lately though, and I hope I can undo any damage I might have caused with my coldness.
Back to Victoria. She's pretty fantastic, but she has, you know, other friends and social engagements. In other words, she had a life before we were friends, and here I am trying to squeeze my way in. As someone who has had (for the most part) the same group of close friends since early elementary school, that always makes me a little self-conscious. I am always looking for telltale signs of whether whatever friendship I'm feeling nervous about is a friendship of convenience, rather than one that matters more in the long run. So my point in all of this is that when I texted* Victoria the other day to tell her I hadn't realized she was still in town, the fact that she immediately responded with "yes...why yes I am. would you care to get together on wednesday?" did a lot for, I dunno, my positive feelings about our friendship. It's hard to write about relationship insecurity without feeling like a complete loser, despite having no shortage of friends. It seems like no one talks (openly, at least) about that sort of thing, so it's hard to tell for sure whether other people have the same worries. But I do sometimes, so there it is.


Back to task. Recording the day: both Victoria and I pretty much suck at coming up with things to do, so we went to see The Princess and the Frog**, which I had seen (with Ami!) but she had not. The verdict: still good. Especially the soundtrack, which is really no surprise considering that it was written by Randy Newman***.
She went home after the movie, and shortly thereafter my mom came home, and then my sister and dad. Have I mentioned that my mom is a wizard in the kitchen? Just before Chloe walked in the was saying how she didn't have any idea what we were going to do for dinner. Maybe 20 minutes later we were eating vegetables, beer-boiled shrimp with garlic butter, fresh salad, homemade (oven-baked) fries, and a few leftover extras.
I was tired and went to bed (if not sleep) early--a feat in itself--and started Widdershins! (Sara lent me this book months ago, when we were all in PA for Susannah's bridal party weekend thing.) I am proud to say that although it was good, I did not read it for hours and hours. I was greatly aided by the fact that it's written in sections, rather than just chapters. If it's just chapters I'll finish one, then look at the clock. "Oh, it's only 1:25 am?" Then I'll count the pages in the next chapter. "Only 20 pages? No problem. I'll just read a few more minutes."
It can be a bit of an issue.














*Ok seriously Firefox, is "texted" still not in the dictionary?

**And we got popcorn, and my tongue and lower lip are STILL feeling weird from the salt. That is intense. And disgusting. Possibly this is all exacerbated by the fact that I had some smoked whitefish salad yesterday, which is also very salty. I've probably about covered my sodium intake for the next week and a half. Disgusting. I am disgusted.

***Poor David is so patient. Last night on the phone I said, "did I tell you that the soundtrack was by Randy Newman?" He responded, ever so gently, with "Yeah, I mentioned that several times. I said I wanted to see it because Randy Newman did the soundtrack. I mean, it also looks good..."
This happens all the time. He is so nice about it. My goal is to someday find a way to remember more than 50% of what I hear.

1 comment:

  1. ah! meta relationship stuff! run away!

    I think it comes down to how much both parties are willing to invest in each other. Usually someone has to show undeserved faith in the other one by investing time and pursuing a real friendship despite any thoughts that the effort is unrequited.

    So someone has to eventually overcome any insecurities and just be a friend...

    if it's ever worth it.

    it usually is

    Toy Story will always be my favorite Randy Newman soundtrack. Rachel can't understand why I like that movie so much.

    Oooo. Widdershins! Crazy fairies...

    If you like Widdershins you need to read "The Onion Girl". The whole series struck me as really dark and vengeful.

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