My Money's On The Ogre

Despite the hardships faced during preparation, the party was actually quite a success. My brother did an impromptu arrangement of games and prizes, giving everyone chips to play with as like tokens. We had darts, horseshoes, blackjack, liar's dice... I lost two chips playing darts with my brother-in-law (the wager was only one chip, but one of my nephews wanted to participate so I gave him one of mine). I had taken pictures of the scrapbook my mother made for my grandmother's birthday and uploaded the pics onto the Playstation to loop endlessly in a slideshow. I received many compliments for that, including the bottomless chocolate covered strawberries that were gone by the end of the night. So, all in all, I feel like I did okay after all.

I kept hovering over Damen like a mother hen whenever he went outside. The rabbits were still roaming about, but there were people eating outside so he was too preoccupied trying to find scraps. He didn't run off or snap at the children who pursued attention from him. It was practically flawless, the way the day was going. I only got annoyed at my mother's aunt when she literally cornered me, got within centimeters of my face, and graveled something along the lines of wanting her wedding picture that she sent to be put in the scrapbook back. She said she would let my mother know next time she saw her as well. At that point, my mother was conveniently on her way to the back so she was passing by the both of us. And my great-aunt saw her going and didn't stop to talk to her. Which makes me assume she thought it was my fault the picture, and not a photocopy, made it into the scrapbook. The woman bugged me at least an additional two times about the fucking picture throughout the course of the day. Jesus, I would've snapped at her if I wasn't trying to be putting on a front for the party.

I know I give my family members a lot of shit (it's only when they deserve it, honest) but I love them a hell of a lot more. I've been mostly highlighting the negative aspects of them so far, which is unfair I know. It's not like being an asshole is unheard of for my family, everyone is at one point or another, but sometimes that's all I can stress upon. I've noticed recently how often we sleight children, knowing they can distract themselves with their own activities or that of a sibling. I never had a sibling my age to interact with, all of them being 14+ years or older than me, so I was always left to my own devices. I never spoke up at family gatherings because I knew after about a minute of attention, I'd be brushed aside. So I became an observer, I searched for things to do, but refused to talk to anyone. I remember my brother always asking, "Why don't you ever talk?" right before he'd turn his attention elsewhere. It's probably selfish to have wanted personal attention, but that's all you want when you're six or seven. You want to feel special.

Literally one of the pastimes I did during the party was sit at a table away from a group of people and observe them, or get lost in my own thoughts. While I'm perfectly comfortable doing it, it somewhat disturbs me how used to being alone I am. Maybe I would've ended up in this position no matter what but when you're young the people in your life sort of determine how you'll be based on interaction. This also leads me to believe why, when I'm not sitting by myself doing nothing, I'm more adept to being in the presence of adults than children because I only ever grew up beside adult figures.

Early afternoon musings make me hungry. I think I'll drop this post off here. So, in summary: party was awesome, amateur diagnosis of why I'm an introvert explored, and family is an awesome pain in the ass, but when isn't it? That's part of what makes them awesome, I suppose.