And that is a deadpan, non-emotive woof. I am freakin exhausted. I slept for a couple of hours tonight and I still hurt from exhaustion. I actually got an almost-normal amount of sleep this weekend so I’m not completely sure why I am this tired.

I had quite the weekend. I went down to Santa Cruz with my nephew for the beach burn. During the weekend he did something stupid (he is 15 after all) and I said, “Good going genius.” For the rest of the weekend everyone there called him Genius and it was put on his name tag. He told me he likes it and wants it to stick as his nickname. Odd boy. He was surprised at my ability to track exactly how much alcohol and pot he did over the weekend. I kept telling him, “Dude–these are my friends. Of course they will rat on you.” He stayed at a moderate level though and given that his mother is ok with him using both substances, I kept my mouth shut. I did ask him to stop mid-way through Friday night because I felt he was at the limit of what he should do in a night and he stuck with my recommendation. I was glad. It was interesting taking him down there because he got to see examples of people who use responsibly and people who use irresponsibly and it was kind of cool to see the dichotomy up close. He also handled the sexual innuendo pretty well and told me that the party will be a whole lot more fun when he is over 18 and the girls don’t avoid him like the plague. I can see that….

I learned some lessons this weekend that I have learned before so I feel like a schmuck for not having actually absorbed them before. I don’t like loud, large, anonymous parties. I just don’t. I don’t have fun; I don’t feel safe; I don’t relax. So why do I go to them? I think I believe that they should be fun, or maybe I believe that since I am so much of an extrovert that I must like large parties… right? Well I just don’t. I hate them. And loud music makes my stomach hurt and I get grumpy. I need to not go to them anymore. It isn’t that I am a stick-in-the-mud, I just prefer smaller gatherings.

Puppy and I had a couple of blow-ups and two long and hard discussions. There are things in this relationship that are very hard for me. We really do have trouble communicating. He pointed out that a big part of our problem is that we are too much alike. We are both extremely sensitive and emotional. We both take teasing too seriously and get upset and we both feed off of one another’s upset. ugh. It is like he is a cross between Noah and Tom. He has many of the qualities that I loved so much about Tom, but he wants to process… a lot… Yeah. That is straight up Noah territory. Ostensibly this should be the best of both worlds… if we can figure one another out… I’m scared because I want to run more than I have wanted to run in a very long time. This relationship is absolutely terrifying to me on a basic level and I can’t entirely figure out why.