This afternoon after work I went to the grocery store only to find it and all surrounding buildings eerily dark. Then I remembered the lights at work flickering about half an hour earlier and realized that while my lights had complained, the lights in half the town had simply given up and gone out.

I got out of the car and approached the grocery store employee who was standing in the doorway thinking that she could at least answer my question (“I bought this chicken here and it tasted awful. Can I return the rest of the it and get my money back?”) even if she couldn’t do anything about it until the power came back.

“The power’s out,” she mentioned, helpfully, as I walked up.

“I see that.” I still didn’t feel close enough to actually ask a question so I continued forward.

“I can’t let anyone in,” she warned, stepping protectively into the doorway and spreading herself slightly so as to fill as much of the gap as possible.

“I understand that, but I was wondering…”

“You can’t come in.”

“Right. I just have a question.”

Just then another worker came out, possibly to help fend off this problem customer. Recognizing her as one of the managers, I asked her my question, but she only answered that I’d have to contact the Deli, which is “all the way back in the corner of the store, that way…. but you can’t go in there.”

Right… Sorry I asked….. Maybe I’ll try again tomorrow.

Last night I was getting ready for bed. I brushed my teeth, flossed, got into my pajamas, washed my face, and was just about to take out my contacts when I realized that my contact case was empty!

What had happened?!? Had I forgotten to take them out when I went to bed? Had I decided to change them and so just thrown away my current ones so that I could open a new pair? But, hadn’t I just done that the day before?

Oh… wait… I’m here to take my contacts OUT, not put them in. They’re not in my case because they’re still in my eyes. I’m going to bed, not getting up. *sigh*

My quiet existence has undergone a bit of shaking up in the last week. Suddenly new friends are positively exploding out of the woodwork. Here’s this next week’s social schedule:

• Monday: cooking dinner for co-worker
• Tuesday: possibly hanging out with colleagues after work
• Wednesday: nothing, but that’s because it’s my weekly night shift
• Thursday: dinner with another co-worker
• Friday: Swing dancing, possibly with two of my newest friends (new colleague, B., from work and somebody I met at last night’s dance)
• Saturday: coffee with another colleague
• Sunday: hiking and dinner with two new friends (they don’t work with me, but one of them is in the same line of work as I am)

I don’t even recognize my own life!

This last weekend was the beginning of all this craziness. I went straight from a birthday party to B.’s house so that he could take me swing dancing. ……

…The night started of in the most unpromising manner. I was a little late, which I hate hate hate, but he seemed unperturbed and soon we were walking out to the garage. Then he explained that if my door of the car was a little wet it was because he’d been cleaning it of mouse poop. Then after nicking the garage on on his way out, we were on our way and making uncomfortable small talk while driving up to the dance … for an hour. I’m decidedly not good at small talk. I believe I sounded more like a 13-year-old nitwit than anything else. I didn’t even know the answers to any of his questions about my family, which felt odd seeing as I’ve always thought that of all things, I know my family. Ah well… such is life. Or at least, such is my life.

Our first dance of the evening was similarly ill-fated. In fact, I ended up splayed on the floor at one point, right in front of the band and three or four hundred other dancers and spectators. (Luckily, I was entirely unhurt.) I felt stupid for letting my feet slip out from under me, and he felt bad for letting me fall.

But soon things started turning around. He’s a fabulous dancer and leads so well that I found myself doing moves I’ve never practiced before. Granted, he wasn’t doing anything really hard with me, he saved that for when he was dancing with the people who were actually accomplished dancers. Still, it was the most fun I’ve had in a long time. He never ran me into other couples (which was a minor miracle since there was hardly room to breathe on the crowded dance floor). And did I mention he leads better than anyone I’ve ever danced with before in my life? A guy like that can make any girl look like an accomplished dancer.

In fact, because I was first seen dancing with him, other guys who knew their way around the dance floor began asking me to dance with them. In the past I’ve danced primarily with the beginner guys because none of the other dancers realized from these first, awkward, a-rhythmic gyrations that I might be fun to dance with. This time, everything was different. After our first few dances together I had such a string of decent partners that by the end of the night I’d learned dozens of new steps and gained enough confidence to actually show how much fun I was having.

Granted, it wasn’t all a bed of roses. There was one twerp who kept trying to dance with me and flirt with me, but managed to insult me pretty much continuously. Not only that, but he kept explaining how I could improve my dancing even as he flung me into people and never seemed to realize that he could, with any skill at all, have prevented these collisions. I couldn’t figure out what moves he wanted because he couldn’t lead. He also had no rhythm. But he was pretty sure he was the Lord of the Dance. Note to Twerp: Asking if a girl is in her “mid- to upper-twenties” and then saying “Because I’m not up that high yet” is not actually very flirty or charming. (Oh, and he looked exactly like Tom Cruise, which is not calculated to inspire love in those of us over the age of 21.)

But after doing time with such upstarts, I’d get to go back B. and be swept around in a style to which I could easily become accustomed. He sure does know how to make a girl feel like a princess. He even opened my car door at the end of the night. What a gentleman.

I must have been about 7 or 8 years old when I saw my first mechanical pencil. My dad owned it, and somehow I got my hands on it. I clicked the lead out and admired the sleek filament of lead, so smooth to the touch, so mysterious in it’s ability to stretch itself out of its casing. I’d never seen anything like it. But then the lead snapped. That’s the moment I remember most clearly. That and hiding the ruined pencil under my pillow after trying and trying to fix the snapped lead without success.

That night, as he tucked us kids in and said goodnight, Dad noticed that I was sniffling a little into my sheets. After a stiff interrogation (as I remember it, he asked, “what’s wrong?”) I spilled the whole story… how I had found his pencil, how I had broken it, how I’d tried to fix it but just couldn’t. “Where is it now?” he asked.

Oh, the shame! Not only had I broken his pencil, but I’d hidden it in the vain hope that he’d never notice the loss (though how anyone could overlook the loss of such a treasure I couldn’t fathom). Sobbing, I pulled the pencil out from under my pillow, as well as the teensy piece of lead that need reattaching.

At this point Dad realized that I’d broken the lead, not the pencil. He got me out of bed to show me the little plastic container of replacement leads, popped off the eraser to show me where to load the new leads, and then handed the pencil to me so that I could prove to myself that it would, indeed, act in its original, wondrous way.

Yesterday was a friend’s birthday party, which she’d elected to hold at a bowling alley. Things started rather quietly, due to general uncertainty. Who were these people we’d only barely met? Would they play seriously or just to have fun? Would they (worst of all) be really good bowlers? Because, you see, I am decidedly not a good bowler.

Bowling, as everybody knows, involves a ball. And not just any ball, but a really big, really heavy ball. It also involves aiming. And neither of these components align with any skills that I have ever possessed. You could call me Ball Dyslexic because in my experience, balls generally do whatever they want to do and care not a whit for my intentions or desires. What is more, they generally follow physical and geometrical laws all their own with very little regard for the laws of physics and geometry that I learned in school.

So as I said, things started off quietly as we eyed each other’s relative bowling prowess as well as our relative senses of humor. (There’s nothing worse than cracking a joke and having everybody else give you The Look, that combination of puzzlement, distrust, and worry.) But as things progressed we loosened up and began to enjoy ourselves. We became comfortable with the steady magnetism that the gutters seemed to hold for our balls, we laughed at ourselves as our bodies began to get sore in unfamiliar places, and we jumped around like 11-year-olds when our balls, by some quirk of fate, managed to knock down all 10 pins.

Actually, no. There were 11-year-olds present, and they did not jump around when they made strikes or spares. They walked back like old pros, glancing at the electronic score boards to make sure the event had been properly recorded. But I digress.

Part way through the evening, we were all up-staged. A man and his seeing eye dog walked in and set up shop. His plan was to bowl for 24 straight hours to raise money for his trip to represent Team USA in Australia. And yes, that’s right… he was blind. He was blind, bowling for 24 hours, and on the US bowling team.

Luckily he was way at the other end of the alley. We all studiously ignored him and went back to tallying up our gutter balls and to shrieking with joy when we hit strikes and spares.