Of flakes, party dresses, and torn paper bags

Let's start this off with a little chastising...

*Princess hangs her head in shame*

I know I'm not being a very good blogger girl. Turns out that the end of the semester means a rapid resurgence of every other element of my life, including the fun (yay for social life!) and not-so-fun (boo for mountains of laundry), with tomorrow being written off for frantic Christmas shopping before I fly back home on Wednesday.

But, look:

Who is that sexy birthday-ed bitch, with such stellar facial tone?

(I decided to give into the party dress picture requests.)

And now a little secret...

I may have slept in that dress on Friday night.

So, yeah, my birthday celebrations ended up being a little entertaining.

My friend J and I started off our joint birthday celebrations by... wait for it... 5-pin bowling.

Because who doesn't want these shoes?

Or to drink at a bowling alley bar?

Or to watch me bust out the classy between the legs moves bowling moves?

Or to observe friends taking creative pictures with bowling balls as breasts?

After that, a group of us made out way to some ridiculous mini-club. Of course, they made us wait in line outside, despite the fact that the place was half-empty. 

Then, we had to wait in line inside, too. J managed to pull the "birthday girl" card... but they would only let the girls past the omnipresent velvet rope right away, so S and I staged a protest to get our boyfriends in (Gee, thanks, bouncers, because to celebrate my birthday I would love to leave my boyfriend behind).

Then the bouncer told J I could get in free because it was my birthday, only to chase down the Duke two minutes later to make him pay for me (#1- Dude, don't tell my boyfriend to pay for me. Tell me. #2- You're not going to get into J's pants like that.)

Then the coat check girl told us that there was no more room for our coats (at 10pm!), so we would have to haul around our umbrellas and winter jackets. (Thankfully, this was overturned)

At this point, I was a pretty frustrated Princess, with this ridiculous treatment on top of the flake factor (which I will get into later). But apparently no one likes a sour birthday girl, and there is no better way to cheer one up than shots... Jagermeister and otherwise. An hour later, I was dancing up a storm and posing for approximately 20 million candid shots with my girl friends.

A few hours later, I had been delivered to my front door, and fell into bed, only managing to take off my tights.

I woke up the next morning, and wanted to die.

We're talking the most rancid hangover on the planet, with water being a struggle to hold down, walking being difficult, and reading hurting too much. 

I'm getting old, folks. 

***

Speaking of getting older...

Is it just me, or are 20-somethings the biggest flakes on the planet?

Because it seems to me that convincing anyone to commit to an event in the future is becoming more and more like pulling teeth. 

Sure, part of it is that we all lead busy lives, and everyone has their own individual excuse that is justifiable in its own context-- but the pattern is becoming pretty damn uncanny.

For instance, I had three people drop out of my birthday party the hour before it was set to begin.

Even worse, I went to a friend's planned boardgames and wine (well, not for me) night last night. It was supposed to be a small get together of around 7-8 people-- and then no one showed up besides me.

Since when is it acceptable to cancel something you said you were going to attend 2 weeks prior because your dad needs the car to go shopping?

And, fyi, just because Facebook has a "might attend" option doesn't mean that it is a polite thing to always select.

I just got to the point after planning this year of saying "Screw it, I'm going to this pub at this time, be there or don't". No follow-up phone calls and pretending to smile and nod at yet another excuse.

***

Sometimes being in the middle of the city is the loneliest place in the world.

On my way to the previously discussed boardgame night, as I hurry to catch a train, the bottom of the paper bag containing my game, some glass bottles of Vanilla Cream Soda (being that I had only managed to get out of bed around 3pm, I was not about to be consuming anything remotely alcoholic), and a large ziplock bag full of my now infamous Christmas cookies manage to fall out.

As such, the bottles smash to the floor in a rather dramatic fashion, with my other items strewn about.

Of course, with that telltale *crash*, everyone snaps out of their iPod induced bubble... and stares.

They don't help, as you struggle to gather up all your items.

They just stare.

Frustrated with their unhelping gazes, I dramatically toss the ruins of my paperbag into the trash can.

Only afterwards realizing that my bag of cookies was still embedded in the paperbag wreckage.

As I stomp towards a train, I look down, and realize that in the process I have cut somewhere on my left-hand, such that there is a fair amount of blood smeared on it. 

My arms are too full to investigate, so I get on the train, boardgame, pop, umbrella, purse all balanced in my arms, blood smeared on my hand-- and everyone rushes past me to grab a seat. I have to actually ask some woman perched on the outside of a double seat (the classic "I-am-too-good-to-have-anyone-sit-next-to-me-despite-the-fact-that-the-train-is-packed" type) to sit down. She makes me squirm past her rather than simply sliding over.

I set down my packages with a sigh, heart pounding because I have no idea whether I have cut myself badly or not. A cursory examination of my hand shows that I have apparently sliced off my cuticle and a chunk of skin below it-- nothing dire, but stings and is certainly, well, more bloody than I would like.

The perching-seat woman looks at me with disgust, and gets up to move to another recently vacated seat.

I almost start to cry. I call the Duke and gasp about how people in the city couldn't care less about me. I think about my small town, and how someone would chase someone down the street if they dropped a loonie, yet how a bleeding hand and an armful of packages wasn't enough to even get eye-contact here.

In a little blessing, the woman who had replaced perching-seat woman overheard my whispered complaints, and actually looked through her purse to find me a band-aid. 

It is nice to see that not everyone hides behind the anonymity mask.

***

I hate to leave this on a bitter note- so let's all smile at Christmas Dog!