Dear Diary,
I did go out to see Ginny on Friday. She has a vacation house. We hung out together, walked by the lake one day and rode bikes the next. She cooked very simple meals and I ate them. I had lots of time to read and on Friday night I slept about 10 hours.
The only thing I was really kind of bothered by was Ginny�s drinking. I have a suspicion that she might do it often. She looks pretty great these days and I guess it�s because she went on some crazy diet � which involves shooting up a hormone that makes your body think you are pregnant, then only eating 500 calories a day, but supposedly the hormone keeps you from being hungry but your body is eating your fat? Odd, but that�s how she explained it to me� in any case, Ginny said she�d been doing this diet and she feels awesome and looks awesome and said she really didn�t drink anymore (I remember her telling me that she enjoyed a glass of wine at night). On Friday night we had our mutual friend LilyB, who lives there year-round, come over for dinner. They opened up a bottle of champagne, and then drank a bottle of wine. I guess it was cause for celebration because we were all together- we had some really good heartfelt conversation, but there was also something strange about it. I�m sure LilyB was tipsy, but Ginny�s behavior felt really strange to me. I noticed she polished off the last of the champagne without even gesturing to fill LilyB�s glass. And she was just acting like a totally different person than the one I know, jumping around and woo-wooing and just kind of being brash and weird� also, in the past Ginny left our town to live in this �community� that my other friend told me was pretty much a cult. Apparently there are some very dynamic leaders and they have regular meetings, but there�s a lot of �confronting� going on� like someone will �confront� you about your behavior, or how you are or are not doing something� sounds like a nightmare to me, but to each his own. In any case the more she drank, the more the vocabulary of this community was coming up, and she was confronting LilyB about some things, and then she had to go and supposedly get on this conference call with her group, but I think they kept hanging up on her because she was shouting, �hello, hello� and who knows what was going on with the other end of the line, maybe they could tell she was a little inebriated.
I�m a little sensitive to all of this because when I was in college, a woman who was also going to my school who was married and about ten years older than me� and she invited me to move into her big house because they had extra room. But she turned out to be an alcoholic and drank every night and I was trapped living with Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde, she would act completely different and couldn�t remember anything the next day. I was aware that I was getting a little triggered. In any case Ginny didn�t break down in tears and monopolize me like this other woman used to do, but I am not very big on hanging out with drunk people in general.
The next morning Ginny seemed herself and I was wondering how much she remembered. She seemed to remember things like a glass getting broken and not being able to get on her conference call, but I don�t know if she knew the full measure of how she was yelling and stuff? And we had a nice day. And the next night we went to LilyB�s for dinner. Ginny said she only wanted a small glass of wine, but LilyB put the bottle of wine in front of Ginny at dinner and basically Ginny drank that whole bottle, and then started doing the same kind of behaviors, including trying to coach LilyB and her boyfriend, and saying what I thought were inappropriate things to a 20-something year old guy we didn�t even know. On the way home she fell off her bike and landed on the side of her face, apparently lacking the reflexes to even block her head when she fell. LilyB was drinking too, but either not as much, or maybe Ginny hasn�t been drinking and really let go on the weekend and has less tolerance, or an extreme sensitivity like me? But I wonder if I had stayed another night would it have been much the same? I just have this memory of a party in NYC where it appeared Ginny was drinking, she started doing crazy stuff like sitting in this guy�s lap and sprawling on the floor while someone rubbed her head� Nobody else was doing that kind of stuff. Then I guess she passed out and they put her in the bedroom. Days later she told me that she�d only had one glass of wine and she was just really tired from working non-stop all weekend and that was the result of her exhaustion. I�m not sure if I�m off the mark, sure I have been really tired or maybe happy to see friends and indulged too much, but I guess I haven�t seen her enough to know what�s happening. I know that she really wishes I would move to her town too, but even if I was going for an extended visit I don�t think I could handle this kind of stuff as a nightly ritual. Ultimately I know I don�t want to live where she does, so I guess I shouldn�t worry about it, but if I manage to post that I�ve been captured by a cult, please come and get me!
The daytimes were really nice, and I really do love Ginny. She has done a whole lot for me professionally- supporting and recommending me, we actually share clients. And when we have worked together there is really no ego clashing. I felt that by the second day I was actually starting to relax and aware of how unrelaxed I normally am. I need to get away!! I came home on Sunday (Easter), and cooked myself a meal, read my book, called some people on the phone. Went to the park but I was kind of over the windiness of the day.
Truthfully I haven�t made much headway on cleaning, packing or selling anything. I had heard that eBay was no longer the goldmine that it used to be. X encouraged me to just keep moving forward. I guess as far as saving money and moving, it�s like having a baby� you never feel like you have enough, but you just have to do it, and somehow you�ll get by.
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