Friends are cool

Yep. I've returned from an unintentional blogging hiatus to tell you all something you already knew.

Friends are great. They send you links to funny things to make you laugh, accompany you to places like bars and movies and even musicals called Jersey Shoresical. They help you celebrate your birthday and make fun of you when you do stupid shit just so that you stay grounded.

But here's another reason why friends are great.

Sometimes, if you're going through a crisis, friends are there to help you maintain your sanity.

Recently, a friend sent me a completely innocuous text message, but I was drunk and happened to be upset about something and so her phone ended up chock full of crazy texts from me. Those texts, over the last number of days, have moved into gchatting and emailing and more texting and more of me being like WAH WAH I HATE EVERYTHING SOMEBODY CALL THE WAHMBULANCE and not once has this friend said, "Arielle, I didn't sign up for this." Instead, she keeps asking, "Are you okay?"

At happy hour 2 days ago, a different friend who I hadn't seen in awhile asked me a harmless question about something which, yet again, triggered a whole lot of nonsense spewing from my mouth about how I was upset (same issue as last paragraph). And she, like a champ, talked me through it. When we were done, I apologized. Profusely.

"Sorry about this, I didn't mean to unload all that crap on you it just sort of came out and seriously, thank you for listening and REALLY I AM VERY SORRY."

She looked at me like I had 3 heads and told me to shut up with the apologies.

It's not like this news to me, that friends will listen to you vent about things or will give you feedback as to whether or not your thoughts or feelings are crazy. I guess I just needed a reminder that complaining to someone doesn't automatically make you a burden. It makes you a friend, who is normal and vulnerable and who, if the opportunity arose, would absolutely return the favor.

Friends are good peoples. Remember that.

"Somewhere far along this road he lost his soul..."

My friends occasionally make fun of me for being heartless. They jest, but it's one of those things where you joke about something that's actually true. I really do think people believe I'm more or less dead on the inside.

They're not exactly so far off. I'm way more heartless than the average bear. I'm typically the anti-romantic, fighting against all things cheesy or otherwise emotional. I haven't had a good cry in over 2 years.

In the last week, however, 2 things have made me get all teary.

1) Harry Potter. I finally saw the damn movie. I teared up multiple times. Including at the end.

2) Reading recaps, seeing pictures, and watching videos of all the gay weddings that took place in NYC yesterday, the first day they could legally occur. THE HAPPINESS!!! It was so overwhelming and adorable. Even I got emotional. I wanted to jump in my computer and hug all those couples and then dance the Horah with them. And then when I was done getting all teary about that, I read a transcript of the wedding that Bloomberg officiated for 2 of his staffers. Amazing. WHERE ARE THE TISSUES?!

I think this means I'm only part robot instead of full robot.

And someone needs to invite me to a gay wedding ASAP.

Kickball round-up

I don't have a lot of natural talents, but one good thing about me is that I'm naturally athletic. I enjoy being active and I tend to pick up on new skills pretty quickly. However, growing up as a competitive gymnast means that I was never trained in any sport that people still commonly play as adults - softball, soccer, basketball, etc. I can still do a perfect cartwheel, but I'm terrible at all of those other sports because no one ever taught me how to play them.

This is why I really enjoy playing kickball. NO ONE is trained in kickball. All you really need is some mild athleticism.

I just finished a kickball season as part of a team of fellow Tufts alums, and we kept up the Jumbo tradition of being terrible at sports by losing every single one of our games. Despite this, the kickball season overall was a huge ego boost for me. Since I've been feeling pretty low in confidence recently (more on that in a different post, or not at all), I'm going to spend the rest of this blog post tooting my own horn by writing some kickball stats.

Here are the number of times that the following happened:
- A guy on my team told me, during our last game yesterday, that I'm the best girl fielder on our team: 1
- A different guy told me, during our last game yesterday, that I'm the best girl kicker on our team: 2
- Despite the above, number of times I got on base all season (5 games): 1 (note to self: learn to not pop the ball up in the air)
- I pegged a bitch and got her out: 2 (the ref called the girl safe on one of these because he said I nailed her in the head (illegal) even though IT WAS IN THE SHOULDERS #bitter)
- Any other girl on the team pegged anyone: 0
- Caught a fly ball to get the kicker out: about 10
- Any other girl on the team caught a fly ball: maybe 2
- The best guy on our team caught a fly ball: 100 million
- People told me I was awesome when I stepped in to pitch: a lot
- The ref stopped the game when I was playing catcher to tell everyone that I was no longer allowed to play catcher because I was making him laugh too much: 1

Okay this isn't actually as fun as I thought it would be. Suffice to say I enjoy kickball and despite getting on base ONCE THE WHOLE SEASON I think I'm pretty good at it. Too bad everyone wants to change in future seasons to soccer or some other sport that I am going to be god awful at.

Pompous post over!