The beauty of friendship

Yes, cheesy title, I know! But bear with me - it's been a pretty horrible weekend, and I was saved from complete and utter despair by an awesome night out with some pretty amazing people!

My weekend was horrible because I haven't been sleeping well. Even today I lay down for a nap and ended up dreaming that I wasdrowning in a dirtly green swimming pool. I woke myself up because I was thrashing around trying to swim... On top of all that (lizard woes number 5) the last really sick lizard was dead when I went to treat him this morning. I'm praying that it wasn't the result of anything I did. I'm justifying the whole situation by sayiong that I did my best, that he wasn't really improving very much, he was realy far gone to start with and that I was silly to let myself get attached to something that was that sick (silly to get attached to anything that is, in fact, a test subject). Is there a name for some kind of reverse-Stockholm syndrome? It was still pretty upsetting. Fortunately just after that whole thing I had coffee with a friend from the zoo, and it was really nice.

So anyway, last night I went out to dinner with Lara, her (and my) friend Nicola and a bunch of other people. I knew an alarming number of them, and even more alarmingly it was because I've taught them at some stage! It was fun though, and we laughed a lot, between lots of really rough Afrikaans jokes... and various lous and random discussions. La and I also met someone from Sevende Laan in the bathroom, which got her all super-excited! After that we realised that it was still pretty early, and although La needed help to walk to the car (Nicola was driving) we were all up for going off somewhere else, so we headed off to a pub near my house.

It was really awesome! I tend to stayt clear of pubs and clubs, as I find that I always run into people that I know either from babysitting them (sad, but oh so true), teaching them or serving them at any of my various jobs. It's incredible awkward and I always end up feeling old and embarrassed. The bonus of this place is that I think they actually check ID, so it was packed with people of around my age. When I finally found Lara and crew we set off to the bar to be stopped by a very tall (and very tipsy) guy in a suit. He rushed over to La and gave her a kiss on both cheeks. I figured that either he knew her, or he was really drunk, in which case the best option (once he left her and headed for me) was to let him do the cheek-cheek thing and then he would either introduce himself or go away.

So it was left cheek, right cheek.. the he grabbed my face and pulled in to me! La tells me that she's never seen a look on my face like that, and it was really luck that he did, indeed, go away or I would have had to hurt him. Unfortunately he didn't stay gone, and spent the next half an hour wlaking past us and casually slapping my butt until I had to switch places with Nicola (you don't want to upset her!) and he got the message.

Once Lara and I'd recovered and we;d all managed to squeeze in at a table in the back, we decided that it was a good time to take photos. One of the other people (Natasha, neither of high heels or Eyes) had a camera with her, and Lara and I tried very very hard to do self portraits with the two of us in various poses. It didn't work. Most of them involve one of us laughing while the other poses. Eventually the owner of the camera reclaimed it, but carried on taking photos, so there is a fantastic series of pictures of us in various stages of gigling fits. I hope to get a copy soon, because it's been a long time since I've laughed until I cried, and I think that having a memento would be a great thing to get me to giggle should a weekend ever be as depressing as this one!

So yes, friendship is really a wonderful thing, and I'm giggling as I type this, so I'm going to have to stop there!