At what point in a person’s life do they stop being senselessly pleased at accomplishing small, run-of-the-mill tasks? Last night I successfully navigated my way home from the bowels of South Vancouver at 2 in the morning, by alien bus and a cab – and I am pleased as punch at myself for doing so. It’s pretty stupid (not to mention fairly insulting), as people complete amazing journeys and overcome insurmountable odds every day, yet I am patting myself on the back for basically crossing the street without a grown-up. How I am able to navigate the world without a helmet and a chaperone, I’ll never know.

My ride home fell through last night when the beer bong (did you know that is a thing? I did not know that was an actual thing; I thought it was something invented by Hollywood for the frat bro movie genre) came out, so I caught the last bus out of Marpole and found myself wandering the fragrant streets of Main and Hastings at 1:30 in the morning. I fully intended to hop the 135 bus home from there, but my stop was overflowing with humanity in varying states of inebriation. I was more than a little tired of being the only sober face in the crowd by then, so I opted to hail a cab instead and made it home safely in 15 minutes or so. I’m a little gun shy when it comes to taking taxis – for starters, I really do hate to be an inconvenience to people (even if their job is to be inconvenienced by me), and also ever since I had a cab driver try to invite himself up to my hotel room the first time I was in Toronto (doing many things for the first time: travelling, business tripping, taking a cab by myself, etc). Still, I was inordinately pleased with myself for successfully hailing a cab and getting home in one piece. I’m such an adorable little broken and socially inept simpleton!

I don’t know if it was because this is Pride weekend or if it is the normal state of Hastings and Main at 1:30 in the morning, but there were so many cross-dressed prostitutes out! They all had better legs than me. In fact, that was the easiest way to spot them: see some excellent legs strutting about on a pair of terrifying shoes, realize it’s a man, still be jealous of the excellent legs.

Speaking of Pride, I am my annual depressed self that I am not downtown, revelling in the festivities. I desperately want to Pride it up with the rest of the city, but I am so bad in crowds (and triple that when I’m by myself). Most of the people I know either don’t do Pride, or they’ve got group plans that I don’t want to intrude upon .. so I stay home and alternate between feeling sorry for myself and angry at my inability to handle seething throngs of thongs. If only there was some kind of substance I could take that would ease my overwhelming anxiety – some sort of medicinal herb or distilled fermented liquid or even an assortment of chemicals designed to bind to specific sites on my gamma-amino-butyric acid receptor – but I can’t for the life of me think of anything like that, so here I am; alone and not covered in rainbows.

I’m starting to think it’s isn’t much fun to be as broken as I am, no matter how I try to convince myself and the internet otherwise.

Adventures in Babysitting aside, I did have fun last night. I met some very cool people I hope to see again for additional awesome conversations and spent some Quality Time with some of my favourite people. My 3pm nudity does belie the plans I have to get out of the house today for fresh air and picture taking, but this was all a part of my Sunday strategy: sleep, laundry, and too much time spent inside my head. Nothing is all bad by any stretch of the imagination; it’s just a little lonely sometimes (and subsequently gets Ace of Base stuck in my head for hours thanks to some amazing logic gymnastics and the 90s fused to my bones like a kitschy and less lethal form of Wolverine’s adamantium).

Happy Pride, everyone!