Scrapes and japes

Last night, I was dragged out by my very loving friends. Knowing that I've recently made a decision that, while necessary, also completely sucks, they insisted on my company. Tiff made me pinky-swear, guys; it was that serious. We ventured into town for drinking and dancing, and I proceeded to have the most accident-prone night of my life.

Anna's list of minor wounds

1. Index finger: paper cuts, two. No idea how they happened, although I suspect my recent nail-biting is the culprit. Stung like crazy.
2. Knees: scraped. I fell over on the way into town (still completely sober!), and despite my leggings, took a layer of skin off. Standing up / sitting down hurts.
3. Hands: saved from my clumsiness by my unusual decision to wear fingerless gloves into town.
4. Face: elbowed by a 6'6" madman skanking at full speed. He apologised. Nose not broken.
5. Arm: bruised by being hugged into a wall by aforementioned madman. Hurts a lot but isn't visible, which is the worst kind of bruise as you don't even get kudos.

Tiff used her nursing experience to field-dress my knees with tissue paper from the ladies'. That's not so unusual for me; a few months ago I treated a pretty deep wound at a house party with makeup pads and sellotape because nobody there owned plasters. I still have an interesting purple mark on my knee from that one.

That was the first time I've been out dancing in quite a long time, and I went for it wholeheartedly, inhibitions significantly lowered by a couple of rum and cokes and the smoke machine that obscured my flailing completely. The people I went with were absolutely lovely; I got talking to someone about graffiti; he's hopefully going to email me some of his art for me to have uninformed opinions about.

Various people pulled / passed out / puked, ultimately returning to our house and crashing. It's quite nice, at times, to come downstairs to a living room full of people who are still drunk / barely conscious / insistent on us all returning to their house for "mystery hot chocolate."

It was very mysterious.

   I kind of ache all over.

      Still, at least it took my mind off -
       - oh man... this sucks.

Recap

I really have been neglecting you, haven't I. I'm very sorry about that. I think it's because my life is full of people now, so I rarely feel the need to reach out to the internet.

It all changed rather abruptly; I moved in with a friend from uni and his housemates, and suddenly it was as if I'd pushed off downhill in a shopping trolley. Sometimes the road steepens and sometimes it levels out, sometimes the road is especially bumpy, but I love the ride. And extended metaphors.

There's a lot of things I can't write about for privacy reasons. This blog is connected to my real identity and pseudonyms wouldn't protect the anonymity of anyone who knows me and my my friends, so to a certain extent I've had to curtail my desire to write about my experiences.

Let's see, what shape is my life right now...
I work in retail, in a job with great customers. It doesn't earn me much because it's only around two shifts a week. I'm also working as a volunteer for a Cardiff-based publishing company! I've mentioned that, I'm sure, but it's great and exciting and scary and stressful all at once.
Every week we have Drunken Sunday, where loads of our friends come over and we talk, drink, laugh and generally make merry. Drunkenness entirely optional, of course. Sometimes I'm in the middle of everything, flirting outrageously and loving the attention, and sometimes I sit in the corner and just smile because I feel so lucky to be there.

I am, you know. Very lucky. My friends are passionate, interesting, talented people, and easy on the eye to boot! Truth be told, sometimes I feel unworthy. The ol' self-esteem is kind of at an ebb right now. So it goes. I've gained a bit of weight over the past year due to not cycling any more (some helpful person put Ben's 5-digit lock on my bike, so it needs some trial-and-error codebreaking and an awful lot of TLC before I take it back out on the road). It shouldn't matter, and it's not like I think I'm ugly, but every time I see my body I'm disappointed and low. Such a shame. With a bit more confidence, I'd be having a lot more fun!

I am having fun though. Trying new things, going on adventures... On Monday morning (after two hours' sleep and a Drunken Sunday), I went up Garth mountain with my friends. Admittedly I was, er, bringing up the rear - as I say, I'm not in great shape at the best of times - but I made it up eventually and thoroughly enjoyed the whole day. And the night was just magical. It's rare to feel that close to a group of people.

I hope you're all well, and again, I'm sorry for the rather lacklustre attempts at blogging lately. You deserve better. I'll try to up my game!

Love,
A x

While the cat's away

Gavin's been gone for three days, and I've been using the freed-up time to meet up with people, go out with housemates, and mope in my room. Mostly that last one. It's been a fairly good weekend, except for a very dramatic night last night in which I was extremely irrational and angry and frightened - never a good combination. Long story short, I was just worried about Gav because he was having an allergic reaction.

Friday night was vastly superior: I was hanging out with friends, kicked everyone's asses at Wii bowling, met someone new, discovered White Russians (which are now tied first with Baileys for best alcoholic drink ever), and wore my sexy shoes for no readily explainable reason.

Interesting thing of the day: a facemaker. I adore this thing, I have endless fun with it. Just search for faces by Thiefree to see what I've been up to with it!

and that's why I puked on the vicar.

I can't believe how beautiful the weather's been lately! I was worried that it would be another washout, but instead I've been staggering about getting sunstroke and falling over. Not literally.

I spent the weekend at my vicar friend, TyTe's, house; which was absolutely lovely! He barbequed some shark for me and Gav out in the garden, and it was delicious. Absolutely amazing. I drank a few glasses of rosé, and then... well, I got rather drunk.

I've never been drunk before. It was very peculiar. There's a moment, when you're on a swing, when your stomach swoops and tingles. On a swing, it's amazing. Sitting on a chair, screwing your eyes closed and hoping it'll stop, it's not so fun. Seriously, why do people do this?!

Still, I'm glad that the first (and hopefully last) time I got drunk, I was in a safe environment with people I trust. I'm less glad that I threw up on the patio.

... in the downstairs toilet, Gav holding back my hair...

... in a plastic bucket in the morning...

... in the bathroom sink...

... in the upstairs toilet...

I didn't have the traditional hangover symptoms, just horrible, constant queasiness and throwing up. From 9pm on Saturday to about 3pm on the Sunday, I didn't feel safe. Thank GOD I got better just before I had to get on the train...

Aside from that though, great weekend!

I'm home now, with my lovely lovely family, and causing my beloved undue stress because I'm not in perfect health (in a different way).

--- CAUTION: GIRL STUFF FOLLOWING ---

Every time I move or have a lot of stress, my periods go haywire. When I moved to Plymouth I was on more or less constantly, and now I'm a couple of weeks late. Trauma. I mean, I'm not hugely worried, but I will feel better when I'm all sorted out, so I went to the doctor's today.

--- GIRL STUFF OVER ---

Sorry I've been updating so rarely; life moves so fast... hopefully I'll be a little more regular now!