AHH solitude!

Sometimes it’s important to be alone.

I am an eclectic mix of a total loner and a complete extrovert – I teeter between “I can’t breathe without people around me” to “I need my space”. I know most people want their solitude and people time both..But in my case I can take this to the extreme in a span of a few minutes.

In other words I’m a hostess’ nightmare !! My family organized a party when I was down in India. I spent the day hiding behind closets and mountains of food, ducking people I don’t know who were coming to smooch me on my cheeks and exclaim “ How thin/fat/old/young/weird you look now?” I even had a nice little lady ask me if Ive become taller this past year! I mean at 29 that would be a medical miracle or perhaps she thought I regularly hang out of windows!

So back to the party, I volunteered to make sandwiches till I discovered that those sandwiches don’t just involve spreading innocent pastes onto bread, but grating a humongous cabbage, boiling n shredding numerous chickens and then mixing the whole things into a mayonaisy sludge, which was to be inserted precisely into a teensy roll which had to be cut exactly 2.25 cms.

Needless to say the sandwiches were the only thing that people did not touch that day! In fact I went around n gently nudged people to try em at the table, but all these ladies started looking panicked and made ridiculous excuses of bread allergies and hearing non-existent children call. I guess my loudly exclaiming in public that I misplaced the face cream while making sandwiches didn’t help. Well I guess alls well that ends well as I’m not actually covered for comprehensive party insurance!
Ladies of all descriptions who were making all sorts of food in the kitchen gave me dirty looks, so I trudged sadly outside and decided to help make a nice lettered background for the party.

One person who walked by the house asked whose funeral was being conducted, as I had made the whole thing in black stating “God will hold you in his hands” – PS it was a 90th birthday! Hey we could have had a Goth themed birthday rite?!! I would have been willing to wear leather in artistic support of anyone …but all my ideas were met with cold deathly silence..Believe me people there is nothing more scary than being at the center of a circle of silent women.. I then fled to the upper levels while some ladies desperately sprinkled gold dust on the sheet to look more festive!

So I spent most of the event in the upper levels – shamed and named. Im sure the people below who heard thumps on their ceiling (hey in my defence I was practicing my swing on the Wii) would shake their heads disapprovingly and pityingly saying “ Aah that one is above” – just like an old batty relative who is relegated to the upper reaches, away from the rest of the sane population !