magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

'Hi, it's Bean. Yes. I know. No, everything's fine. I 'm okay. I'm not dead. I have no excuse, really. I don't know why I tend to just totally flake out for a couple of days every six months or so. I mean, I know why, once I start, I continue to do it. It feeds back into itself. I flake out, and then I avoid the confrontation of explaining that I have no excuse for flaking out. And the longer I put it off the worse it gets and the more I put it off. But yes. I'm dealing with it now. I'm not in front of my computer, but all day tomorrow. Uh huh. First thing in the morning. Okay. Yep. Bye.'

---

Exactly one month after the fact, I got an iTunes gift card in the mail today. The note read simply, 'happy (very belated) birthday', unsigned. I've got a pretty good idea of where it came from, but not knowing 100% for sure, I don't want to go thanking anyone who potentially might not have sent it. So, you know who you are, thanks.

---

More thunderstorms today. I stood on the front porch for a while this afternoon watching the rain pour down on my block. Thinking 'there's no way that party is going to be happening on Dave's roof.' But the sky had cleared up by 8:30 or so, and although the roof was still damp, cooler air had moved in and it was a beautiful evening.

The party was ostensibly for Kate's birthday, although her actually birthday isn't until next week, while today is the actually date of Garth's birthday. But, he is, of course, still in Chicago. 'Did you call Garth to tell him to go to hell?' I asked. Whenever I've brought up the fact that we could be celebrating Garth's birthday in absentia, as well as Kate's, Chris had made some such disparaging comment. Of course we all know that it's just because he misses Garth. (It's also Adam.K's birthday today, and it was rumoured that he was coming to the party at Dave's, but they proved not to be true. He's yet to host any big barbecues this summer.)

And although one by one, girls who I might have been interested in left or seemed to have boyfriends, the party was fun. I, again, took lots of pictures. Again, drank a fair amount (I could have used just one more beer). Again, headed out on the long subway trip home at some terribly late hour.

I began to get a migraine headache on the train. I guess the first stirrings of it had started earlier, but I hadn't thought it was a migraine at that point, I'm not one of those people who gets a "migraine aura" an hour or so before the pain kicks in warning me of what's coming, and I get so many other sorts of headaches that I can never really be sure until I'm sure.

I probably get two or three serious migraines a year, the ones that range from incredibly fucking painful to completely debilitating. I sometimes wonder if migraines are the universe's (very poorly implemented) way of trying to tell me something. As if it should be a sparkly loving feeling, letting me know 'hey, you're about to meet someone important in the story of your life.' But something's been configured incorrectly, and instead of sparkles I get pain and light-sensitivity and nausea, and if I were to meet someone I wouldn't be in any shape to interact with them. Like the girl on the train, in from out of town, who had been heading from midtown back to her hotel at Fulton/Broadway-Nassau, but fell asleep and ended up in Brooklyn, and on the way back the A was running on the F line, and was as confused as a tired, slightly drunk, out of towner with a badly designed subway map would be in such a situation, and asked me for help.

We exchanged a little small talk, but no personal information. She got off at West 4th to catch the A back downtown. I wished her good luck. And returned to my headache for the rest of the long trip home. (Including a stuck door at 50th, where they ushered everyone off of the train for 15 minutes, before ushering us all back on and continuing uptown.)