No rain for the party

I know everyone is bitching about it around here, so I'll join the sheep. MOTHER OF GOD STOP RAINING. Remember when I was back in Cancun in 2005 and we had this big motherfuck of a hurricane and the power came on but then it would go out and half an hour later it would come back on again as they brought up other neighborhoods but we didn't really know that until later so at the time it just got to be really depressing (I know you remember because you all have read past posts regarding the whole reason why TtheD came into existence)? It's kind of like that. Rain for flipping two solid months, then yesterday this fabulous day of sun and blue sky and good moods and happiness and la la la it's almost summer and today? Seriously I've never seen it rain so hard and so steady up here. Which is probably a total exaggeration but I don't care. It's a curtain of rain out there and has been since I got up at 5:30 and suddenly it appears I live on a lake. It's just depressing. Seriously. I was totally going to clean out my trunk for the body shop appointment on Tuesday. I still will, but now I'll be all wet afterward. It's now 8:30 and my living room is still in full dark. It's a good thing I've never been suicidal because there is NO QUESTION this would put me over the edge.

So last night (a world away, the sky was blue), evening really, I went to a party for my friend Kim's birthday. She's 40. (Happy Birthday, Kim!) As is the case for Kim parties, there was a very diverse crowd, and part of that was a slice of one of my many former lives. Very fun boys from long ago that I used to hang out with pretty regularly. Sit in back yards, drink a bunch of beer, once in a while go to a bar. It was fun and everything but it was really a long time ago, and, you know, people change and stuff. Or, you know, they should. I did.

It was good to see these people again, but shit, I have to ask. How do you continually drink as much as these people do and sooo regularly and still be sane? Two of them don't work (one is an apprentice in a union so to his credit he has to wait around to be placed for jobs, but still, I mean, as I said to him last night, I have never actually spent any time with him where he was employed. And I have spent A LOT of time with him), one of them might, but I failed to ask him, he's one that usually does work, so I didn't see the point. One of them in the last few years has actually died, been brought back, had open heart surgery, and told me, while smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer, that he's opening up a hot dog cart this summer. One of the guys told me (while I was telling him, You know, it's really hard to look at Joe and not think of him as being dead once. What do you say? Geez, you look fantastic for a dead guy..) that Joe has pretty much figured all this post-dead time is extra, so he hasn't taken any steps to, uh, take good care. As horrible as that might sound to most of you, to me it makes sense for that particular group of people. Who have not changed one bit in the ten years since I hung out with them.

Which is fine, you know, for them. It's nice to see them but I always leave thinking, good God, I couldn't do it. I could not go out EVERY FLIPPING NIGHT, get completely wasted, sleep on someone's couch until 4pm and then go to another party/bar/friend's house, crack open a beer and then, after three or four, say, Whew, starting to feel a little bit better now. Good Lord. I mean, I USED to be able to do that (I think), but holy crap. I was like in my 20s. What's next? Will these guys live to see 50 (probably not Joe)? Like I said, it's good to see them, and the further away from them I get, the more the horror of the idea of not having changed in ten years goes away.

Anyway, thank God the sun was out for it because for the short time I was there it was quite festive, nobody gave me any shit for not having a beer, and I drove home with the sunroof open. I am sure the festivities lasted well in to the night, and I hope that the rain held off for the end of it.

Because it's certainly getting us back for anything remotely close to almost-summer today.