Birthdays, Bitchiness And BBQs (Allowing For Weather)

[Looking at this a year on makes me cry. Gah.]

My other damn blog still hasn't set itself up, and I keep being lured back here.

The Man Who Is Not My Boyfriend (Cameron) and I had a fight the other night, or as much of a fight as we ever have. Our arguments always follow the same pattern: he (the calm, collected, logical, occasionally autocratic party) makes a statement that I (the emotional, instinctive, occasionally-prone-to-overreaction party) take offense to. We talk it out, him in a peaceful way, me with flying hand gestures and just a hint of a Spanish accent, and in the end he willingly apologizes for making a blanket statement and I grudgingly admit that there's more than a grain of truth in it.

So the other night he said to me, You treat your friends like children. And I put my hands on my hips and glared at him and said, I bloody well do not.

Yeah, he continued, you do. And they might have needed it ten years ago, but they don't need it now.

You- you- you CAD! I spluttered. (Note: he gets really annoyed at me when I use this term, because his initials are C.A.D. and he's hated them ever since he was a kid, but sometimes when I get riled up I forget that I'm not supposed to hit below the belt, and use it to try and force him to react with something other than amused detachment. I know I shouldn't, and yet I occasionally do.) That's a horrible thing to say!

Babe, I'm not trying to be horrible, he said. But you need to stop. You spend so much time looking after people who don't need to be looked after, you forget to take care of yourself. You're in your mid-twenties, and you're already going gray because you take everyone's stresses onto you.

(At this point I slapped his hand away from me. He knows how to hit below the belt, too. Mentioning my gray hair...dammit, that's just low.)

I don't have any control over what I feel, I reminded him. You knew that when you met me.

True enough, he told me, but you can control what you do. I'm not telling you that you need to stop giving people your time, but you do need to stop babying them. What were you saying a few months ago, when you were bitching about your family coddling you? Something about wondering why people think that occasional humiliations and hurt feelings are fatal?

(The nerve of him, using my own words against me. Asshole.)

To which I responded peevishly, Why the hell are you bringing this up NOW?

Because you're doing it again, dummy, he said. You're panicking over this whole birthday thing, and have been since you decided to have people over. You think that your groups of friends aren't going to mix well, and people are going to have arguments, and offend each other.

But- but- they WILL! I cried, getting quite emotional at this point. I know my friends! They're nice people, but they don't all know that about each other. They don't know that Christie is passionate and loyal, but has very strong convictions about everything, and will stick to them even when she's wrong. They don't know that B has such an open heart that she trusts too many people, and then when they let her down she sometimes holds it against people who remind her of them. They don't know that Sash has spent the majority of her life having to prove to men that she's just as good as they are, and sometimes assumes that she still has to to every man she meets. They don't know that Ricky says things that he doesn't really mean to get a laugh, because he still feels like the kid who thought his only good quality was the ability to amuse people with mocking. They don't know that Curt is so protective of me that he gets overzealous about defending me from perceived threats, and may go into attack mode when someone teases me.

So, logical as The Man is, he asked me, Well, what's the worst that can happen?

They can offend each other, I said, sticking out my bottom lip in a pout. They can hurt each others feelings. Someone will inadvertently say something racist or homophobic or misandric or otherwise stupid, and someone will be hurt and angry.

And? They're adults, they can handle it. If they hate each other, they don't ever have to see each other again, they're from all different parts of the country. If they offend each other, you just don't invite them all to the same party again. At this point, he sat down on the bed and stroked my hair. What are you really worried about, babe? he asked me.

I don't know...that they'll hold it against me, for putting them in a situation like that, and then they won't like me anymore.

The Man gave me a hug, and laughed a bit, so I socked him in the arm. Not hard though, since I wasn't really mad anymore. This is what I'm talking about, silly, he said. You treat them like they're still angst-ridden teenagers who are going to react like children. You got so excited when you joined that site of yours, and met Bubbles and the Kid, and AirForce, and diablophallus, and all the other people you haven't met in person yet, because they were these incredible people who behaved like mature adults. But you've been so caught up with that, and you've stayed away from friends for so long, only seeing them for an hour here and there, that you haven't realised that your outside friends are now grown-ups too. Remember what you were saying about Becki last time you went skating, how pleased you were at how confident she is now, both professionally and as a person? Remember how surprised you were when you and me and Dom went to that club in Mayfair, and he was talking about taking his counselling diploma, and you said you thought he wanted to be a professional footballer, and he laughed?

I nodded.

So what are you so worried about? You think your friends are going to hold it against you if something happens that they don't like? You need to give them more credit. They're your friends, after all. I doubt that you'd surround yourself with people who are vindictive and hold grudges.

So, well, that was that.

So here I am, throwing all - or most - of the panic aside, and saying, fuck it. I am having a birthday party this year - the first time I've looked forward to a birthday, and the first party of any sort that I've thrown in about eight years - and it's going to be fabulous. This year I'm only expecting eight or ten people; next year I shall open it up to my favorite British bloggers (and non-Brits who can get here). Assuming it goes well and I don't die of embarrassment. Ack.

I have a BBQ planned. Just a small one, here at my house. Hopefully my brother will actually call me back tonight (I left a message a few days ago) to tell me if he and his wife can make it, and whether I can borrow their big BBQ or whether I need to go buy a couple of small ones from Robert Dyas. I shall "volunteer" some nice man, probably my brother or Curt, to cook the meats, and busy myself making tuna pasta salad and potato salad and green salad and a ratatouille pancake bake, and trying my best to make a pavlova and a summer pudding before throwing my hands up in defeat and going to buy a Delia Smith one from Marks & Spencers. And I need to work out some music. Dammit, I don't have a stereo, I always use my iPhone. And I need chairs. And drinks. And...

What the hell have I got myself into? I know NOTHING about entertaining, I'm the kind of person who chucks a bunch of people in a room and tells them to have fun. That, or I can cater a sit-down dinner party, or at least I used to be able to when I was 15. I do NOT know how to have a casual party.

Breathe. It'll be fabulous. This is your first birthday, remember?

Gah.

Breathe.

I'm breathing.

Friends: think you might come next year?