Happy Day

Disproving any and all conspiracy theories that imply the malice of inanimate objects and/or intangible collectives: I got paid today.

"Yeah? And?" I hear you say.

Well, I wasn't supposed to get paid til TOMORROW. I had pretty much steeled myself for a long day of privation and fun-lessness and then four (well, three) days of work before another weekend rolled around. But something told me to check the balance this morning, and -WHAM!- paycheck. (I love my bank. They tend to credit me with things that allegedly don't exist yet.)

In the grand scheme of life, this improves exactly nothing; in the grand scheme of the next 14 hours, however, it makes me very very happy.

Chez Gladys became the Communal Beach House this weekend. Saturday morning I woke up to find Damian watching TV on the couch, having woken up early; then Tim called at about 11:00 Saturday night and showed up at nearly 1 AM; and THEN, Damian's little brother James showed up at about 5 AM Sunday morning (with an anonymous girl in tow who I didn't find out about til the two of them left late Sunday afternoon). Well, that brought us substantially over capacity--me and LJ in our room, Damian on the bed in the spare room, and Tim on the sofa--so James and Anonymous Girl apparently got the floor of the spare room. And everybody woke up around noon and came downstairs, except for Anonymous Girl who I still didn't know was there, and there was much bullshitting and loud-talking and male bonding. The guys and Anonymous Girl went off to a barbecue, leaving me (Don't ask. I'm not asking and you shouldn't either) at the house watching the race with Tim.

(An aside: The folks at Lowe's Speedway in Charlotte are gonna have SO much explaining to do after what they did to that track. That race? Was pathetic. 23 cautions isn't "intense" or "exciting"--it's just bad racing, and it had nothing to do with the skill of the drivers. They need to go back and look at their track and decide what needs to happen to make it a viable driving surface again. And what kind of word is "levegating", anyhow?) /NASCAR moment.

LJ came home and went upstairs in typical wordless LJ fashion; around midnight, James and Anonymous returned. At which point I gave James holy hell for the condition in which he left the bathroom when he left--towels on the floor, washcloths balled-up on the windowsill, the shower all grimy--and explained to him that a) this is not a Motel 6, and b) even if it WAS a Motel 6, I am not the maid. Which actually felt kinda good, giving him hell like that, and it didn't hurt matters that Anonymous was standing there listening to the whole tirade. So I fixed French toast for myself and some for Tim, and went upstairs to bed, and talked to LJ for a while. I'm forgiving his past few days of buttheadedness; he's dealing with a lot of shit right now, and just kinda wants to be alone to process it.

Which I can understand, being in the same sort of state of mind at the moment--except "alone" doesn't quite seem to be an option around Gladys's Summer Cottage. Then again, I had plenty of "alone" this winter, thankyewverrymuch, and all the company is kind of a welcome change.

Or it would be, if they'd pick their grubby towels up off the floor...