A Trip Around the Sun

Remember when I said I needed to get out?

Well, I did.

Our company Christmas party (planned by hostess extraordinaire, B) was thwarted by Snowpocalypse 2009, and we finally had it yesterday afternoon. We had lunch at the Grove Park Inn (and I just want to say, they were incredible about rescheduling, and this is one of the many reasons we love to use them for company events).

When you work with people for long enough, they become a family to you. Not in that “we’re always here to love and support you” way as much as that “weirdo cousins that creep me out and that damn Uncle that’s always paying too much attention to your comings and goings”, but still. Family. Our lunch was lovely, and several of us spent another couple hours drinking out on the veranda after the party broke up.

After some dinner and a little rest, the lovely Rythmn and I headed out on the town with her husband. We drank and talked and wandered around downtown all night. I walked through my front door a little before four this morning; makeup cried, laughed and sweated off, and that all too familiar feeling of pre-hangover hysteric exhaustion. I woke up this afternoon with blisters on my feet, a mild headache, some kickin’ cotton mouth, fuzzy memories, and a song in my heart.

Where so often my reaction to my general disappointment in human nature (from which I am not necessarily excluded) is to retreat and withdraw, I found myself doing the exact opposite. I let my friends close ranks around me, and I linked my arms in theirs and remembered that there are people in this world that make me so happy my heart could burst. We went out into the world together, stumbling down the sidewalks, looking out for each other, laughing and being silly, meeting new people, running into more friends  and having adventures.

Every once in awhile, you have these nights that feel like they last a year- a blur of friendly faces both new and familiar, bright lights, and a million silly little stories. As I crawled into bed, knowing that my friends were safe and snug in their own beds as well, the exhaustion finally rolled through me, from the crown of my head to the tip of my baby toe. I fell asleep with a smile on my face, despite my slight headache.

The best part of those kind of nights might be waking up the next afternoon, calling your friends, and putting all the puzzle pieces of the experience together, filling in gaps for each other and comparing notes. Finding your new friends on Facebook, nursing your hangover and realizing: for everyone else, Friday was just another turn on their axis, but for you? It felt like a trip around the sun.

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