a visit at petty rant island
monday, july 23, 2001
(this is all pasted from an e-mail, hence the insane length):
so, friday T called me to set a time for when to drive off saturday for cousin A (his sister)'s place. after him being annoying on the phone (refusing to answer straight questions. i hate that so much. if i ask something, i want an answer, not ten minutes of 'i don't know.. la la la...') he said "okay, we're leaving at noon."
friday night i'd rented three movies (thank you, free rentals) and i was just about to watch them when i got a call from my friend ninnie. i hadn't talked to her since december when i left for america, so obviously i was thrilled. she came over and we talked till 1 in the morning. so far, so good. i watched a movie and then went to sleep.
saturday morning i'm woken up by my cat making scratchy "i wanna take a dump" noises by my bed. at 7.30 am. i scared him off and found his kitty litter all dirty (oops, busy cat) so i changed, he's happy. i decided to stay up and watch the two remaining movies so i could be ready by noon. fine.
11.30 am. behind schedule. called T to tell him this. my aunt answered and told me T's asleep and didn't get home until 5 am.
obviously, he wouldn't be ready by noon. around 1 pm T called me back. i asked him when we would leave. he dillydallied about for ten minutes before saying "4-ish" -- i said okay, we hang up. fine. it's only a 3-4 hour drive...
at 4 pm i'd eaten, showered, packed a bag and selected music to play in the car. 4.30 T called to say he'd be by soon.
4.50 the car pulled up outside.. with a passenger. his friend kiwi (his name is really henrik but when we were in grade school he was in my class and we started to call him kiwi for unknown reasons. obviously it stuck. there's a lesson in there somewhere.) is apparently coming with.
(okay i'm just going to start mixing tenses here because i've always been bad at sticking to just one. deal.)
i have an internal stress attack. hate strangers. hate plan changes like this.
the orig. plan was me + T go to A's house, hang out, sunday we go early to the concert so i can get up front and then we leave monday around noon.
HA!
so, after an annoying drive where i discover that T and Kiwi indeed have the worst taste in music possible (they love very very commercial artists and bands, which is fine, if they just didn't insist that i am so wrong for not liking it, and stopped raggin on my music choices .. yes, surely i'm insane for not worshipping bruce springsteen, lionel ritchie, elton john, roxette, shaggy, haddaway (yes, haddaway!!) and ronan keating)..
we get to A's and i ask how the night will play. T asses around and i ask him repeatedly. finally (after i sit there as they watch freakin' golf on tv for an hour) they get up -- turns out they are going out to drink.
um, okay. fine. not my thing. i ask when my cousin A and her husband will be home. after T bypasses the question a while i finaly get that A's husband, is off work at 10 and will wait with A until she is off as well. "Ah," i think, "they'll be home around midnight. that's cool."
T and Kiwi leave.
2 am i'm still alone in the damn house. i fall asleep on the couch because i have no idea what the sleeping arrangements are supposed to be.
4 am A&M and T and Kiwi come home, very very loud, laughing and start to eat (i made a handful french fries for dinner because i couldn't find any bread or any veggies to cook) and whatever.. i go back to sleep.
9 am sunday i wake up and watch a movie and wait for people to wake up and tell me what's going on. that happens around 10. i find out A is going to work at the hotel around 3 pm, possibly checking hakan hellstrom and the other bands in. i freak and bounce. gave her my hakan cd to get signed (but he never checked in so i got it back and i'm fine with that, autographs are weird anyhow) and was generally happy and bouncy about the concert.
T and kiwi spend 6 hours playing playstation soccer. i read a book. i slowly get ready. A leaves for work (T and K drive her in coz we need the car) and i de-shell shrimp. ugh. so disgusting! who ever thought of boiling these things and then pull their heads and shells to eat the insides? but i figured hey, they're nice, i got a free comp ticket, i should help out.
4 pm i ask A's husband when we are to leave since i want to be there early (concert starts 7.30, gates open 6.15 pm, i wanna be there at least by 6, preferably earlier.)
he looks surprised and says nobody wants to be there that early, we're leaving 6'ish maybe. i drop the issue but am majorly disappointed. had i known, i would have gone in with A at 3 pm, obviously i'm more into this concert thing than anyone else so i shouldn't have expected them to care, but it really annoyed me. i would have been fine if i had known, and since i had mentioned wanting to be early for weeks and all morning, you'd think somebody could have clued me in on everybodies plans, especially when i have been asking about them all week... oh well.
(really, the issue above will be mentioned a lot and yes, it's all petty small stuff so feel free to skim or skip at will, it doesn't get much more exciting than this.)
6.15 i'm ready to leave. they're not. T asks me "all packed?" i ask what he means. "well we're driving home after the concert so do you have all your stuff?" --- uh, no? you said we were leaving monday? T claims he told me about the, again, changed plans, i know he did not, as usual (it's the umpteenth time i'm not informed of plans and expected to know anyway and seen as stupid for not knowing).. i'm visibly angry and stressed.
i get my stuff. we drive off at 6.30 p.m. and i find out we have to make a stop to pick up 2 more people (mm, 6 ppl in a small car... yummie).. the rest of the night i'm treated to comments from T about my mood, as if i had just decided on my own to be in a bad mood when everyone else was having fun. uh, okay. right. hurt feels accumulating an entire weekend obviously does not register with anyone else. wee, i get to be the party pooper! i ignore and try to pretend i don't have a massive head ache despite max pill dosage and water drinking.
we finally get to A's hotel at 6.50 and find out she has to change clothes. okay. we wait. and wait. and wait. i hear sound check noises from the stage way off. by this time i won't even stand with the others, i'm too annoyed and disappointed by all the crap. (yes, i get pouty and look all dejected and everything, ha ha, i'm so annoying but i can't help it.)
i wanted to explain to them that stress from plan changes + new people + concert jitters and surges of disappointment spread out in little doses over a day will build up inside and cause my body to do a chemical thing which affects me despite what i may rationally think, and that it is not a conscious mood choice, i chemically shut off.
outwards, i look petty and moody, but inside i'm simply trying to deal with my muscles tensing up to a point where i can't always manage to straighten my back because the muscles won't release enough, and i battle feelings of wanting to cry or maybe die because it's all too intense, this feeling of disappointment and dejection, no matter how small it really is it grows huge inside and i'm aware of the overreaction but my chemicals don't cut me much slack so i just have to ride it out until it settles, so i distance myself physically a while to wait it out.
it's a most bothersome thing, you know, when you have to fight your own brain and you yourself know you are over reacting and really want to just shrug things off but your actual body won't let you. it's like my brain can't tell the difference between small stuff disappointment and valid disappointment and register them as the same. anyhow. enough about my chemicals.
finaly A joins us and she is sooooo nice and she tells everyone we need to hurry because "jennie wants to see hakan!" and it was so weird -- of all the people, she was the only one who really understood that it meant a lot to me and cared to try and help me out. to the others, it was just a free summer concert, but to me it was A Big Deal and they just did not care. the thing is, that is OK, but if they could have clued me in to this earlier, i could have made separate plans and all the disappointment would have been avoided without any hard feelings. does that make sense?
so we fiiiiiiinally get there and get crossed off the guestlist (i'm one of 'plus three' ha ha ha) and get in and the place is PACKED. packed. absolutely packed. the concert is 15 minutes away. i resign and squeeze in as up front as i can 45-55 feet away from the stage. whatever.
finally it starts and the band comes in and h�kan comes in and he is just as jaw droppingly pretty and enthusiastic and amazing as i thought, but i can't concentrate worth shit because a mob of 15 drunk guys decided to push and push and push and scream and laugh and act like assholes.. i swear i have elbow and knee imprints all over my back. thank ghod i decided to wear the doc's and not my thin sandals!
so, h�kan was good but i had trouble concentrating due to massive assholes around me. it really ruined it for me. yes, i know, i can't expect to be up front at every concert, BUT, i can damn well try because i can't stand the carnage far behind and it really makes it hard for me to have a good concert because there are too many distractions. so it feels like i Sort Of saw him. oh well. what i saw was amazing and he's sooooooo cute and sang better than i thought and it was a rush to get to sing along and wave my hands and jump. :)
as soon as it was over i bee-lined out of the mass. the next two bands were good but not my thing so i didn't see a need for being up there and being pushed to bits.
i hung out with A+M way back, right by the rocky beach (the stage was right by the ocean, facing it, so boats were out there to listen and seagulls were everywhere).. it was fun. for the finale i squished back up there because h�kan joins the others on an onstage medley of all three bands hit songs.. a lot of fun. then i walked off (couldn't find the others) and made it to the hotel to pick up my unsigned cd.
in the lobby was the third (and biggest name) artist looking sour (A always checks him in and he is always an asshole so i giggled at the sight of him -- just 15 minutes earlier he was on stage and ecstatic and now he was just this angry little man in the foyer.. heh heh heh)..
i find the car and get in, we drive off. find out we don't have enough gas money. previously that morning i specifically ASKED T if he needed gas money from me that day; he said no, just do it when we get home, so i spent $18 on a
h�kan shirt (it's so pretty! royal blue with the line "wrapped up in blue" meaning 'wrapped up in the sky' on it and h�kan printed on the back) and only had $7 to offer.. empty tank..yey..
we pooled money and got to $28. that meant we had exactly enough money for the miles we had to drive (i think 26 metric miles is about 400 american miles? or maybe not at all -- it takes 3-4 hrs to drive, anyway).. so we stop at a gas station and the guys whine that they want soda. i say i have a large bottle of coca-cola -- sure i had had some, but if they were desperate.. they get out to get gas saying they're gonna get exactly $28 worth.
i watch the thing and.. they stop at $24. i see them disappear into the gas station and return with a soda each, bananas and chocolate bars. oooookay. inside, they claim they had calculated the mileage and speeds so what we had would be exactly enough.
here follows annoying night driving with bad bad music (three times they listened to the same new crap roxette song. three times!!) and i'm pretty deflated and just quiet, looking out the back window.
15 miles from home we hear a sputter and the car dies. we're out of gas. their stupid sodas and bananas left us STRANDED at 3 am on an empty road in the middle of nowhere (i can tell you there were plenty of blair witch forest.) T calls his dad to come out with emergency gas. we spend half an hour inside the dark car. i try really hard not to look out the windows.
finally, help arrives (after T and kiwi swears not to tell about the sodas because ppl would be so mad. i just don't care. their damn fault. sodas. boo!)
and i'm dropped off at home where i wake mom up, tell her the whole whiny story and finally go to bed, cat cuddled up against my face to console me a bit from being so angsty.
so. yes. i agree. i'm really too dramatic over not that much stuff, i should be happy, but i'm really angry. i felt really left out of the loop this weekend, like i was just not supposed to be there and ignored, i hate being left alone an entire evening in a house, hate that my concert was less than i had planned, and most of all i'm really upset that my cousin T acted so badly towards me the entire weekend.
my trust in him has been declining lately, but right now i don't even feel like i ever want to do anything with him again. i've just had it. it's his attitude that bothers me, leaving me out of the loop all the time, avoiding my questions, saying he'll do stuff and then turning around and do exactly the opposite.. whatever. i'll talk to him if he can just deflate his attitude and communicate with me like a grown up and not an over-aged brat. ha ha, i don't think i've ever seriously bitched like this about anyone in an online journal before. poor T. :)
i called my cousin A to thank her for the free ticket and for being so nice, and that's the end of it.
well, not really -- i'm planning to use $60 i have coming to me and go see h�kan perform again august 1st, alone, at a somewhat closeby city. i'm gonna grab an early train, sit outside the fucking venue all day and get my damn front spot, leave after his performance and go back by train and be happy, HAPPY, mm-kay??
pah.
btw, i got my school loan granted. just thought i'd mention that. if i can get the travel plans and my school board stuff in order and the currencies aren't too badly matched (dollars are too expensive right now) i should be going back to america, my friends and my work around august 15. yey! :)
tentatively.
we have a swedish saying: "sj�lv �r b�ste dr�ng" -- "you self is the best worker/do-er" and dammit, that's just way true. okay, i'm getting off Petty Rant Island right now. cin cin!
