evening out

there is a massive city wide ethnic festival going on. Smitten has a friend in from out of town. we are going out tonight to the festival.

yesterday she phoned me while i was at work after five and began discussing the route we would take. she invited me over for a few minutes after work to discuss plans - i declined because i wanted to drop son off at his mother's and go exercise - which i haven't found/made time for in 2 weeks. i was irritated because this was yet another Smitten distraction (it felt like stbx-Mrs_C and her shit always trying to pull me away from my stuff) from my exercise. i also wanted them to have pure "friend time" and not be the boyfriend hanging around. their relationship needs to exist outside and alongside my presence. i feel pretty strongly about that. in the past i have declined some joining Smitten and her friends on some occasions where i thought i would be intruding.

anyway, we are intending to take the bus as there will be some drinking involved with this evening. there are special festival buses that take you from location to location around the city. Smitten asked about which ones i would like to go to and i tried to do it from memory. we had a few minutes of discussion. each location is dedicated to a specific culture/ethnic group. i named one location and she said "oh, but that's at the very furthest point away at the very end of a bus route." i was in the middle of writing my last post and was in full steam. i was slow and clear and deliberate in my response "All I said was that I would put the Indian Pavilion on my list of places to go." She said "I wasn't saying we couldn't go there, i was just talking about logistics" i repeated "I wasn't making a demand or insisting that we go there, i was just telling you that i would put the Indian pavilion on my list of places to go. we can settle the logistics after we see which pavilions everyone wants to go to."

she says "i sensing you are getting defensive about this" i said "yes, i am getting very defensive."

(i didn't say it at the time to Smitten, but stbx-Mrs_C would always do shit like that "oh, it would be so much trouble to do whatever," she would say, and then "but we can still do it" and then it would be problematic if i insisted - she would ruin the activity in one way or another. the festival runs every year and stbx-Mrs_C was really bad for cutting out pavilions i wanted to go to - for 18 years [including the dating 2 years] she refused to go to a couple of them...)

Smitten said "i already apologised for putting you on the spot because i have the festival guide in front of me and you don't"

i said that if there were some pavilions that i wanted to go to that they didn't i would just go by myself that evening, and then do the rest with them.

there was some other short discussion and the call ended.

i called her back when i got to my place and said that i could hardly get cranky with her about what locations we were going to if i wasn't prepared to have a discussion about it, so i would come over and we would discuss it.

dropped son off and went over to her place.

it was a little stilted at first. some discussion and a scotch later i was a little less pissy/grumpy.

her friend suggested that we go that evening as well. i underlined that i had rather specifically not wanted to go over there because i didn't want to disrup their "friend time". that i was even uncomfortable in being over there, because i wanted them to have their time. they said it was fine, that they appreciated my sentiment.

we decided to go.

it took a bit for me to loosen up, but it turned out to be quite a fun evening. it was after 8 by the time we sorted out a few things and we only hit the Indian and Hungarian locations - but we saw a lot of dancing and drank some imported alcohol and ate a lot of good food.

i was in a good mood and very tired when i dropped them off. i went home and son was there burning some CDs on my set-up - we always make back-up compies of our new CDs to keep the originals relatively pristine and let the copies get scratched and fucked up. i was tired and left him doing his thing and went to bed.

----

9 and half hours of sleep later i feel good. best sleep in about a month.

i am not nearly as pissy and moody as before.

i am in a sanguine state with the world.

i will go exercise now for a little while. i am late, so it will only be an hour long session (we are going out to do more ethnic revelry starting at 2pm), but i wanted to clean up my place and do some of this writing to continue to clear my head.

I hope that all my negativity toward Smitten has more to do with my physical state than anything.

i think i have identified some problems that i are larger than i had realised and will see what i can do to express my wants and needs. and to try to do it in a slightly less bitchy and aggressive way.

i think i am getting aggressive because when there was a problem with stbx-Mrs_C there was no way of changing things. that i would lose in one way or another on every expression of self. i think that a collection of issues and my physical state built up into the kind of anger that should really be directed at stbx-Mrs_C. and that i am attributing the same kind of sinister motivations to Smitten.

i am a reasonable writer and can build a case for my view of the world - my choice of phrase, adjectives, which quotes i use and how i paraphrase statements are all loaded choices.

i know - i do that for a living. i load language and underlying impressions into sentences. that is why my love of etymology (since i was a little kid) stands me in such good stead in my work. i will argue over wording for hours sometimes because the person writing the piece doesn't understand the history of the words they are using and the nuance that they are putting on a piece of writing with the words they choose. yes - the original latin and old english or middle french meaning is relevant to what you are trying to say.

i will see how things go today after clearing some of the guck from my body by exercising.

i hope that most of the toxic ooze that has spewed out recently can be attributed to my physical state.

see you later