Freud Doesn't Live Here

I hate it when people apologize for not updating their blogs.

Obviously, they feel that they need to apologize for having a REAL life. Well, ask any of my extended family and they'll tell you how much I apologize for nothing.

Actually the whole disappearing into silence thing is rather common for me in my real life. I've been pondering the whole "Am I a bad relative because I just keep my head down and live my own life and only come up for high holy days and only then when there is beer?" We will be spending the winter holidays in the same manner that we spend all holidays. Surrounded by the entirety of us and only us.

Ours is a marriage of black sheep. When we got hitched, our goal was to live somewhere far away from our relatives and when homesteading in Alaska fell through (I had second thoughts about having to chew through the umbilical cord after giving birth on the barren frozen tundra while fending off wolves. And after seeing Sarah Palin, I think I chose wisely.) we ended up in Duluth, MN.

All of this crap has been rolling around in my head as I've been to a couple of functions where my obvious distaste for small talk and most normal human interactions had me leaning up against the wall in the background sending emo-waves out to all the teenagers. As people tried to approach me with clever little stories of their lives, all I could think about was this: My entire life has been a paean to being a sullen prickly outsider. I can be quite fun at parties, dinners, and the occasional bris, but I have to choose when and where to open up. There are times when I stand in a crowd at a function and I just want to scream at how incredibly boring it all is and then I do a gut check and think, perhaps , just perhaps, I am a HUGE FUCKING BITCH.

Not to put too fine a point on it.

Do social butterflies have to put on their game face before hitting the streets? Does the Queen of England ever turn to Phillip and say "Damn it all! I don't want to go to the embassy tonight! Let's order Chinese!" Do I have to stand in the middle of crowds with a frozen look on my face as I think back to the little girl that I was in kindergarten who only colored with the black crayons and played alone on the playground? Or can I just realize that the entire weight of the intellectual world does not ride on how interesting or stimulating Mrs. Blue Eye Shadow's story is. Perhaps, just perhaps, I need to get over myself.