Chapter 276: Don’t Fucking Tell Me What To Do

Okay, so this weekend has been pretty interesting. This weekend has actually been pretty fun – more fun than most of my weekends. Since I wound up doing video blogs for the past two nights, there’s kind of a lot to catch up on. Where do I even begin? Well, I suppose I will start with Friday night. Friday was payday and I was really excited about this paycheck because I didn’t have to pay out for my piano lessons this month or anything like that, so I was looking forward to having extra money to play around with a bit. As I discussed in the blog last weekend, I have declared August “No Makeup” month. Of course, since making that declaration I have been kind of inundated with various emails and ads for different types of sales on cosmetics. It kind of sucks but at the same time these ads and sales and such aren’t really anything new – I am constantly hearing about these types of sales. There was one sale that was announced on Friday that was really difficult to pass up, though… in fact, it was so difficult that I didn’t. You see, on Friday I received an email from Stila, my very favorite makeup brand, advertising this weekend’s massive “Warehouse Sale,” because they needed to clear items out of the warehouse to make room for more. So, I found myself a loophole to this “No Makeup” August rule and ordered a set of official Stila travel brushes for a very good price. I figured this would be a good way to see how the Stila brushes feel before I decide to invest in the full-sized/full-priced ones in the future, which is something I have been thinking a lot about doing. It was only $32, with shipping and tax, so I was really excited about this and can’t wait for these brushes to arrive! After my Mom got off work, I wanted to take her out to dinner, so we stopped and bought a carton of cigarettes and got money out of the ATM for my rent, then headed out to Bradenton to go to dinner at the Cracker Barrel, which we both have a sick thing for. While we were sitting at the Cracker Barrel I started looking over my receipts for the cigarettes and the rent money, as well as the Stila brushes, and realized that I didn’t wind up having any extra money at all. In fact, I had considerably less money than I had anticipated. I think the main reasons for this are the fact that I had to pay out more to my Mom than I usually do to pay her back for the stuff she helped me out with last week and the fact that I ended the week with a near empty bank account, which I had never done before now. These two things combined made for a pretty shitty combination that meant that I could definitely not afford to go shopping this weekend, as I had initially been hoping to. Still, I wasn’t overly worried about anything at this point.

Saturday morning I woke up alone in the house because my Mom had to work. So, I got out of bed and just kind of lied around the house. I watched my most recent arrival from Netflix, “Bandslam,” which starred Vanessa Hudgens and Aly Michalka, of Aly & AJ. I wasn’t expecting a lot out of this movie and figured it would be kind of a hokey, Disney type movie. I was absolutely wrong, though. I fell in love with this movie – it was extremely well written and had a really strong emotional core to it. It actually made me cry at a few different points. It was not Disney at all, either, featuring all kinds of cool indie music and classic rock covers performed by the cast and such. It was really good and I definitely recommend it to everyone. Vanessa Hudgens performance was pretty impressive, but Aly Michalka was the real standout, I think. Also, Lisa Kudrow had a small-ish role as the mother of the main character, Will, and really stole pretty much every scene she was in. “Bandslam” is the story of a kid, Will Burton, who has been an extreme outcast in his school and has always wanted nothing more than to escape. He also has an extremely vast knowledge of music, particularly classic rock, and narrates the film in the form of letters he is writing to David Bowie. The story really begins when his mother gets a job in a new city and they have to move to Lodi, New Jersey. When they arrive in New Jersey, Will immediately finds himself wrapped up in this whole new world of a major high school band competition called Bandslam. It’s a dorky concept and, like I said, seems like it would be extra Disney-style but it absolutely is not. Like I said, I definitely recommend checking it out.

Late in the afternoon on Saturday, I received a text message from my dear friend, Whitney, asking if I would want to hang out that evening. I said yes and so we suddenly had last minute plans to hang out. I also called my BFF, Rachel, who I hadn’t seen in a couple weeks because of some car drama that she had go down recently. So, I figured this would be a fun way to spend an evening. Around 7:30pm, I received a text from Whitney saying that they had to stop by the Sprint store in town and would be over right after that. Rachel wound up showing up very shortly after that, as well, and we sat down and talked for a bit. I was telling her about the fact that I have been feeling like I have stopped moving forward in life and how nothing happens in my life and she turned around and told me that she had been feeling the exact same way. In fact, she had also told me that she had come up with this idea with another friend of hers recently to attempt to remedy that feeling and asked if I would be a part of it. The idea that they had come up with was to randomly travel to various spots around the state of Florida to see new things that none of us had ever seen before and kind of have the experience of it all – then document it all in videos, photos and such to be posted on a blog about the whole thing. I told her that I absolutely loved that idea and would love to be included in the whole thing! So, I don’t know how the whole thing will start or anything but I am definitely down for it. I can’t wait, honestly. As we were talking about this whole thing, the idea of spending another evening just hanging out at my house started to seem really dull. So, we came up with this idea – we had both heard about this gay bar out in Venice, (sadly, the nearest gay bar to us here,) and had discussed a few times in the past the idea of going out there. We felt like this would be a perfect night for it and it would be going out and doing something we hadn’t done together before. Of course, the snag in this plan was the fact that Nate and Whitney were still coming over. So, we decided to text message and see if they would want to come, as well. This idea was immediately shot down but Whitney said that if we still wanted to go it would be fine and we could just hang out with them another time. So, I text messaged her back and said, “You really wouldn’t mind? It’s been a REALLY long time since I’ve been to a gay bar and we really wanted to do something different.” Then, the shit hit the fan. It became a huge ordeal because apparently Nate was really pissed off that I wanted to cancel plans. So, I said that it was fine and that they should just come over but apparently the damage had already been done. This back and forth text messaging trying to figure out whether or not they would still come over went on FOREVER. Finally, after about an hour and a half and four or five text messages that I never got a response to, I finally sent one last text message saying, “Hey, I hope it doesn’t create some big issue between us all, but I’m going to go ahead and go out.” It all just seemed a little fucked up to me. I understand that it sucks to cancel plans at the last minute but, at the same time, these plans had been made only hours beforehand, I attempted to include them in the new plans and I can’t even begin to list all of the times that I have had plans made with them a week or two beforehand that I reminded them about several times beforehand yet suddenly when the day comes I don’t hear a single word out of them and wind up just sitting at home by myself. I have never had an extreme reaction any of those times. As fucked up as it may sound, I don’t feel a single ounce of guilt for this. I don’t see where I did anything all that wrong. Like I said, I even made the attempt to include them. It’s not my fault that they didn’t want to join in on this. In any sense, after all the waiting and such, this didn’t leave me in the greatest mood when Rachel and I finally did leave the house. It didn’t help that when we arrived at this bar, Big Z’s or TOTI, (I’m not sure which is the name currently,) it was kind of empty. The crowd in there was nothing but old men and a few scattered lesbians. We sat down at the bar and had a few drinks and talked with the bartender who was hot. As we were there a little longer, more people started coming in and it was a younger crowd. They immediately headed to the dance floor and were doing that whole thing where they aren’t actually dancing but just kind of standing there fucking around. We kind of wanted to go dance but didn’t want to go get in the middle of their playing around. We stuck around the place for about an hour and a half and, in spite of not really doing anything beyond sitting at the bar and talking, we had a really good time. It was nice to be out amongst gay people. I had very minor interactions with a few people but the place was mainly old creepers. Still, I had a really good time. I felt a little bad because I know that Rachel was really into the idea of going out and acting crazy but just getting out of the house and going out to this place was kind of a big step for me at this point. I mean, I don’t have social anxiety or anything, that I know of, but I have definitely been in this place for a really long time where I just don’t feel all that comfortable being away from home. Still, if nothing else, Saturday night proved to me that I still have it in me and, fortunately, I have someone like Rachel in my life that will always push me to do the things that I may not be the most comfortable with right off the bad.

I don’t want to understate this or anything but Rachel is really a fucking Godsend in my life these days. I don’t know what I’d do without her – there is just something about her personality or the way about her that really puts me at ease with seeing the world in a different way and having fun with the things and ideas that I would normally find daunting. I need that in my life for sure. We were also discussing the fact that neither one of us has that person in our lives at this point who is like our best friend, or that person who you see or talk to almost every day, who you know is always there not just if you really need them but just if you are bored or whatever. So, we have made the decision that we are going to make it a point to see each other and talk to each other more often – not like we already have been doing, where we have been seeing each other once a week or so but where we are talking or somehow being in contact most days and hanging out more frequently and such. I think we could both really use that sort of relationship. She even offered to teach me how to drive. In thinking of all the different people who could possibly teach me how to drive before I never actually thought about asking her but I do think that she would be an excellent person for the job. That would be awesome because that is something that I really feel like I need to FINALLY get done. So, that is pretty exciting. I am really extremely grateful for everything that Rachel has done and continues to do for me.

After getting home from the gay bar last night, I had a lot of trouble falling asleep. We left the bar a little earlier than we had to because we both needed to get up somewhat early today. Rachel had to work at 9am and I had agreed to go with my Mom to a baby shower/brunch for one of her co-workers this morning. I wound up awake until around 5am last night and then woke up at 10am today, so I didn’t get the most sleep. I immediately went to doing my hair and makeup for the day but unfortunately I fucked up my makeup once, removed it and rushed through re-applying it, only to get mascara in my eye and freak out. I also made us late by doing an EXTREMELY quick re-application of just a single eye shadow, Kitten by Stila, and a quick line of eyeliner and mascara. I figured it couldn’t really hurt to do a simpler, more natural look. After all, we were just doing brunch with my Mom’s co-workers. It actually wound up being a lot of fun, though, and this restaurant we went to had this crazy, amazing breakfast menu like you’ve never seen. It was delicious and so much that I still have well over half of it that came home with me. My Mom’s co-workers were really nice, too. They were all really sweet and it seemed like they all genuinely cared about one another. It was an interesting juxtapose to the way things work in my department. After we got home, my Mom had to go to work for some overtime, so I laid down in my bed to watch a movie on Netflix. I decided to go with “A Star Is Born,” but actually wound up falling asleep through most of the movie. It seemed interesting, from what I saw, and Barbra was, of course, brilliant, hilarious and just generally amazing. Why would she be any different from her nature? By the time I woke up, my Mom was off work so she picked up something to make for dinner then we sat down and watched “Bandslam” again, because she didn’t get to see it before, and ate dinner. It was a pretty laid back day and I was really glad for it.

So, now it is 10:39pm and I am getting ready for bed. It is time to start a whole new week of work. I am confident that it will be a good one. I am going to listen to “The Secret” audiobook as I go to sleep again tonight. I think what I should really do is listen to that every night while I go to bed for a while. I feel like I really need to let it sink in to my brain again, and what better way than to listen to it while I’m sleeping? After all, I started out last week using it and it really worked out but as the week wore on it slowly started working less and less. So, I think listening to it every night will probably be really helpful. I am excited and I feel completely confident that I am going to get back to that place where I was in 2007 when I was riding high on “The Secret.” Only this time I will be in a much better place because I will know how to maintain it, which I didn’t know last time. I think it is going to be great. I KNOW it is going to be great, actually. So, I am ready to get it started. For now, though, I need to go do my skincare routine and get to bed. Goodnight.