So I've noticed (and my husband has pointed out to me) that this blog provides information but is somewhat lacking my personal voice.  My new weekly post is part of my effort to change that and to thereby take this blog into a less boring and bleh direction.  And because I am a refuge from Tumblr, I shall do it with gifs.

I know that it would be most appropriate to write about what I'm reading right now or what I'm up to, but I've honestly been a little too anxious for reading or being up to things.  I had a decidedly hectic weekend, and I don't know how I didn't kill every soul responsible.  You see, I've always been a very calm person and haven't really gotten much joy out of partying or acting wild or being around people who do.  I like going to museums, seeing plays, bird watching, shopping at farmers' and flea markets, and having people over for dinner and wine.  I like things quiet and subdued and generally shun all things rowdy.  And the thing I love most in the world is being a completely antisocial shut in who loves books and Netflix and internet.    

And yet somehow, since my husband's birthday in May, my house has become known as the "party house."  This fills me with no small amount of screeching anxiety.  Each week as I clean up after the people my own age who do indeed enjoy partying and acting wild, I look forward to a quiet weekend, but the next weekend only brings more people.  
I am a person who collects nice things and who takes good care of her things so that they can last forever.  I take pride in my home.  I expect people coming into my home to treat everything in it with even more respect than I do because it doesn't belong to them, and that is the respectful thing to do.  But the people coming into my house are tearing around, making an unholy mess, damaging the furniture and floors, and acting just plain dumb as hell.  I can only clean up after these fgts like Miss Mary Sunshine for so many weeks before I lose my shit.

I don't like confrontation, so it takes everything I have in me to tell them to stop sternly several times.  If that doesn't work, I become a ball of helplessness.  At first, they listened.  However, after several weeks, they grew too comfortable with me and with being in the house, and they have now stopped listening. 

As I stand and watch everything I ever loved being destroyed

Several other factors also contributed.  My husband has tended to blow off the things I scold them for and make them seem like nothing because he has never owned furniture or nice things and therefore has no sense of preservation toward them.  This only empowered them to ignore me too, because if he's ignoring me, those things really mustn't be a big deal.  I am also very kind to people in my house (or anywhere, really), and I cannot seem to break myself of it, no matter how they treat me.  Predators like the ones tearing up my house see this as weakness.

The growing lack of respect for me and my home compounded into the unholy shitstorm that was this weekend.  Two guys got into a fight, and one of them slapped a cup of milk out of the other's hand, getting it all over the ceiling and walls.  I still cannot get the stains off, and it makes me rage to think that they would have the gall to do this in another person's home over something so dumb.  Beer was spilled around 10 times inside the house, and people were haphazardly wiping it up with my nice dishtowels and leaving giant sticky patches on the floor.  Beer was also spilled on the furniture, and the person did not tell anyone but rather tried to hide it and lie.  If I had been told when it happened, I could have cleaned it, now we have to get a $100 steam cleaning.  Someone stepped on one of our PS3 controllers, broke both analog sticks, then didn't tell us.  Someone ran into the shelf that holds my glass chickens so hard, they shoved it in front of a door and made no attempt to move it back.  They are damn lucky that no chickens broke.  I woke up the next morning to loud booms.  It was a drunk guy diving onto the feather comforter and using it to slide across the sticky living room floor into our TV stand.
Even though I banned beer pong from inside the house, I was ignored and it was brought inside.  I banned it for a reason.  Every time it has been in the house, beer has been splashed all over the wood furniture and made water spots and rings.  I have tried so hard to repair it, but it will never be the same.  We even got ants from the beer everywhere.  I am also going to have to do pricey repairs to the hardwood floors because of entire patches of clear coat being scratched off.  Even though I've told people to stay off the lawn because it tracks mud into the house, they just won't.  They've ruined a white bath mat, and I have to scrub the bathroom tiles every week.
And then here's the unholy of unholies: they harassed my canary.  That is my pet, my baby, and they tried purposefully to scare and upset him.  One guy wouldn't leave him alone, even when I yelled and pulled him away.  That is sick.  Anyone who would harass a helpless creature and try to cause it distress is sick.  It was truly terrible, and I have tears in my eyes just writing about it.  And that is why I didn't feel bad when someone slammed his head into the floor and left a mark on his forehead.

I felt more like this

I don't think I could handle it if I were to tally up how much money I've spent and lost from this series of parties that have only escalated to this magical point of craziness.  Some of the offenders have been yelled at by my husband, and the rest will be yelled at by him when he gets done with Air Assault School and goes back to work.

And the moral of the story is one I already knew a lot about: people suck.  People really and truly suck, and while you'd like to think that everyone's parents would have instilled in them some amount of propriety, manners, and respect for others, this is just not the case.  People give not one shit about anyone aside from themselves and therefore give not one shit about anything that belongs to you.  Out of the crowd of people who were at our house this weekend, only three people behaved respectfully and decently.  That is sad, but such is life.
And that is why I am a hermit, because avoiding people, especially large groups of them, and participating only in calm activities/ frivolity just makes life happier.  I've noticed that when I invite the wilder people to do calm things with me, they think it will suck but ultimately enjoy themselves.  Calm things don't equal boring things, and I hope more people come realize that.  Also, I hope more people will realize that if you're drinking, you don't have to act like a belligerent, destructive tornado of party-energy.

I promise next week I won't be nearly so bitter.  I'll probably talk about books and trying a new restaurant and happy funstuff like that.  It isn't very often that something happens to me that makes me rant, but this time, it did.  But here ends my passive-aggressive rage, and here begins a good rest of my week and good weekend.  I wish the same to anyone reading, unless you're one of the fucks that wrecked my house, in which case I hope your computer catches on fire or something.