magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

It's been hot. After a long spring of days barely reaching 60° summer has come bounding out of nowhere. One effect of this is that I finally got my hair cut again. Another is that I impulsively bought window fans that don't fit in my windows. A third is that I haven't really felt much like eating. Which today left me hungry and snippy.

Chris left a message on my voicemail mid-day. 'I don't know if he's called you, but Garth is in town. So when you get out of work give him or me a call and we should all meet up.'

Around 5, I called Garth. 'I'm at Dave's with Chris and Matt. We're just headed out to get some food and eat it in Prospect Park.' In my undernourished state I took it personally. They had been hanging out all afternoon, and now, half an hour before I was going to get out of work, they decided to eat without me.

An hour later, on the phone with Chris, the first words out of his mouth are, 'You probably don't want to come all the way out to Brooklyn. I didn't realize until after I had hung up, but that was what set me off. Of course if you couch it that way, what am I going to say? 'We just got back to Dave's,' he went on, 'and are planning on chilling here for a bit.'

'Well, I don't want to come out to Brooklyn if as soon as I get there we're all just going to get on a train and come back into Manhattan. And I don't want to go out there so that we can all sit around in Dave's kitchen all night and not get dinner. I mean you guys have already eaten.'

'I can't promise you that either of those things won't happen. But it was just a slice of pizza, I'm sure we'll all be hungry again later. So I'll just give you a call when I know what's up.'

'But of course I don't want to just go home either. Then I'll be even further away if you guys decide that you're going to do something.' Again I was taking it all too personally. Feeling that because I have to work on Fridays and because I live in Inwood that I was being somehow intentionally left out. Of course it was just my empty stomach talking though. 'I'll just come out to Brooklyn. We'll figure it out from there.'

(George called before I had a chance to leave the office, and we talked for a bit. He's back in school again, just one intensive summer class right now, but it's a start. And Alex is graduating today, twelve years out of high school. It's not just a genetic quirk of my family, almost none of my friends have pulled off the four years of college plan either.)

The train ride out to Brooklyn, even with the bit where we were stuck behind a broken train at Jay Street for twenty minutes, wasn't bad at all. I had yesterday's crossword, which I didn't do on the ride home on account of the drunkenness, plus todays, and they kept me busy for most of the trip.

And sitting around at Dave's for a while wasn't bad either. But when we found ourselves in Max and Andy's backyard and it was rounding nine o'clock and there still had been no talk of dinner I started getting upset again. And kind of blew up outside of the soup place, where they supposedly always have a couple of vegan soups, but tonight only split pea, which is not a filling meal, especially when eaten sitting on the sidewalk on a hot night. It was also at this point that I realized how bitchy I was being, but still couldn't stop myself.

I should have grabbed something in Manhattan, before heading out to Brooklyn, but I had really thought that we would probably be going out as a group to get something to eat at some point. We ended up all walking to the supermarket, possibly the single worst supermarket that I've ever set foot in, although again, I'm sure my perspective was a little skewed, where in any case I did manage to find enough bits and pieces with which to make myself a couple of half-way decent sandwiches when we got back to Dave's.