It started off pretty good, I guess. Started on (and finished) a 5th painting, got the notes on the back of three of them written up (and one delivered to the person it was made for), and unexpectedly ended up asking a girl on a second date, which is the first time that's happened since... way back in October 2011 when me and Ruth went on our second date. Which means it's also the second time that's ever happened in my life, oddly enough; apparently I've gone on a whole lot of first dates but somehow never got around to asking any of those girls on a second one. The thought had come to mind earlier, when I had found out that she actually wasn't going to be immediately disappearing to go on her mission after the summer but instead coming back to SVU for at least one more semester, but at the time I had kind of brushed it off... until we ended up talking in the library and I just couldn't help but blurt it out. That's going to happen tomorrow; I'm going over to her house and making chicken fajitas as a late lunch for both of us, which should be pretty nice.
Later on in the week... things changed a bit. Thursday I found out from my dad that my grandma had died. I didn't react much at first (mostly just kind of stunned by the news and wasn't able to get many words out), but the next morning it finally hit me when I saw my dad share her obituary on Facebook. I shared it too, and started to type a little bit of a message to go with it, and then ended up going on and on and going over all of my memories of Grandma and crying for something like an hour straight. Thankfully I had friends to talk to about it with and help me calm down a bit almost immediately (one even contacted me midway through the typing-and-crying hour... just to randomly talk to me about something, but it turned out she just happened to get in touch with me right when I needed someone to talk to the most, whether it was intentional or not. Thanks for that.) I don't know how things would've gone if I had been stuck alone in my apartment the whole day with nobody to talk to about it, but fortunately that did not happen. So many friends came out to show support that day, whether it was in-person or over Facebook or even by text-message. Thanks again for being there for me, you guys.
Despite starting out with me crying for an hour straight over my grandma, Friday actually turned out to be a pretty good day somehow. I ended up having a trip to Food Lion to stock up on some things I needed, got a haircut so I won't get kicked out of graduation for being too shaggy (and not only was it free, but it doesn't look weird to me! usually when I get my hair cut shorter, it does), spent a lot of time hanging around with friends, and went to a choir concert at SVU which turned out pretty well. Friday was a pretty good day.
Saturday, though... that one broke my "nothing but good days since February" streak, even though the truly bad part lasted less than an hour. It was just that bad. I'm not sure what the heck I was thinking, but for some odd reason I signed up for a 5k that SVU was doing. Started off fine, before it actually had started, when I was just hanging around talking to some friends... but then when it was about to start, everyone got packed in together at the starting line. I ended up in at least a "pre-crowd-freakout" state around that point. Then it started, and my friends (who I had thought would be mostly walking) took off running and I made a crappy attempt to keep up at first but found myself unable to put forth enough effort to actually do so thanks to the still-developing crowd freakout holding me down. After that it just got miserable. I was left behind by literally everyone, even random married people pushing baby strollers; I was in the very back of the line for a while, only 20 feet ahead of the random police car that they had to pick up people who physically were not capable of going any further if they happened to pass out on the road or something. I just got so angry. Mostly at myself for making the stupid mistake of signing up for this thing, but any random stranger who was dumb enough to cheer for me from the sidelines got yelled at a bit, too. I was at least able to be a bit nicer to the people I actually knew, but not as much as I normally would. I almost felt like I had regressed back to the high school version of myself for a while there--it was just that bad. I mean, I don't *like* having people cheer for me even now, but I don't normally react too strongly to it, I don't normally yell "SHUT UP!" at random people who do it for even a second; back in high school I absolutely hated it, though. I did actually have someone to talk to very briefly, for a few minutes toward the end, but... that was about it. I probably should've tried to find someone who planned on mostly walking before it started and convinced them to stick with me for as much of the race as possible so I would have someone to keep the crowd-freakout from happening and be there to talk to me, but... for some reason I didn't think of it ahead of time. I guess I didn't think that "running along with a bazillion people" would trigger crowd-freakouts in the same way that "sitting in one place with a bazillion people" does, or something.
And oddly enough, before the thing even started, a friend suggested that I should find a certain person who was walking the whole way and stick with them. At the time I didn't really consider it because I thought that the group of friends I had managed to track down were planning on doing more walking than anything else, but looking back, it probably would've helped a lot if I had actually done that.
Anyway... after the 5k itself was over, I managed to find a group of friends again and be not-alone during the luau afterward. I was still feeling pretty crappy for a while, but eventually I managed to at least partially recover thanks to having friends to talk to and goof off with for a while. That always helps. I didn't completely recover until around 11:00ish when I stumbled across the same group of friends again as I was leaving the lofts, and things just got really silly and I kept cracking up laughing and... yeah, I felt like myself again. The only bad part was that I didn't have my camera to take pictures of some of the goofiness I was there to see. So Saturday didn't end on a bad note, at least. It just had one really awful one in the middle.
Sunday... was a Sunday. Nothing particularly eventful about it, except that I finished a 6th painting (the first of the small ones) and it's really goofy-looking. I only left my house to go for a walk later on.
Yesterday was my grandma's funeral. I'd never been to a funeral before, but... it wasn't really that bad. I managed to avoid crying, though only just barely (several times my eyes did tear up a bit, but never went beyond that--I guess I let most of it out Friday morning when I cried for an hour straight.) Met a lot of relatives I didn't know I had who had shown up for the funeral, and also got to see my mom for the first time in a while (though unfortunately my little sister didn't come--apparently she had said she wouldn't be able to handle it and decided to stay home.) I actually managed to get up in front of everyone and talk about my memories of Grandma for a while during the funeral service, despite my fears of having a crowd-freakout and just not really liking public speaking too much. I was one of only three people who did that--one was the guy directing the funeral service, another was someone from Grandma's church, and then there was me. I kind of ended up rambling on about silly little things, but... I think I did okay. And besides, rambling on about silly little things is a normal thing for me, so at least I was "working" at the time rather than breaking down and not quite being my usual self.
I think I finally understand what the point of having a funeral service is, though. It's not for the dead person; they're dead, they've already moved on, and though I suppose they might be present at their own funeral, floating around somewhere and watching and getting another look at their loved ones again without the physical ailments that made it hard during their last days on Earth getting in the way... the one in the casket is not "them," it's just a dead body at this point. There's no need for it on that level, it's not some superstitious thing where the dead person's soul can't find peace until they have all these ceremonies and rituals done in their name or anything silly like that. A funeral is for the people who are still alive, to give them a chance to come together and remember the one they've lost and have some sense of closure about it rather than dealing with it on their own and possibly dragging things out for too long and messing themselves up in the process.
After the funeral, I went along with my dad and several newly-discovered relatives and got something to eat at Jack Mason's in Clifton Forge. The food (I had a fish sandwich, salad, fries, and cheese sticks) was good and it was nice to have people to talk to the whole time. After that, we went up to the cemetery where Grandma's body is going to be buried. I don't think it had been done yet, since there was a recently dug hole with a bunch of boards over it in the place where her gravesite should've been. We did see my great-grandparents' grave, which I'd never seen before. I never knew either of them, since they died in the '70s before I even existed.
After that, me and Dad went over to the computer place in Covington and got a replacement battery for my laptop. The old one had apparently been in bad shape for the past semester-and-a-half, not being able to hold a charge for more than an hour and constantly telling me I needed to replace it. The new one seems to work much better; at 40-some percent it still had more time left than the old battery had at 100% toward the end there.
And then I came back here, got more food over at the Institute building, and got to hang around and talk to several friends for a while. One in particular I ended up talking to for hours... a lot more hours than I had expected to originally, actually. XD But I think that was a good thing. It's nice to have friends who I can just sit down and have multiple-hour conversations with, especially when they're the kind of friends who I can bring up literally any subject with (no matter how weird or not-socially-acceptable they might be to bring up with someone) without much fear of making things too awkward or freaking them out. I wish I had more friends like that... there are several now, and I'm definitely glad to have those I do have, but I wish there were more.
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