$40 undies and a rather mixed day

So under my jeans today, I am wearing $40 drawers (underwear), well I bought them on sale $4.99. But as they are expensive fancy I wondered what exciting things might happen today. I am also wearing bright turquoise socks which I think of as "special day" socks so the chances were doubled.

Today work was a little hectic as we face an audit/project evaluation next week, so there was a lot of spreadsheets and indexing files to make sure the info is all there.

At lunch an attempt to send a message to my brother over "bookface" resulted in the auto-filler bringing up a past love, though we're no longer "friends", our on site connections and correspondence were once numerous.  The brief sight of his profile pic with a gal and I felt red my face go red and and a heavy pit formed in my stomach.  I took a couple of breaths, watched a youtube video of puppies playing and shook it off.

Besides I had parade practice - yes parade practice.  So I marshaled the crew up and down the hallway with our banners singing Jingle Bells now we have our banners, our sign, our flags and I bought candy to hand out to the kids.  

A note about small town parades...if you haven't seen one - they are not particularly polished.  Some entries are actual floats but there are also a lot of vintage cars and pick-up trucks with trees and lights in the back, or  groups of kids walking their dogs with Santa hats on and people on horses and lots of emerg vehicles with sirens - honking, whirrrring, beeping away.  Last year someone brought a goat and walked it along.

Tonight as I was out buying the candy - I ran into guy, K, I had a crush on when I was in highschool.  Back in the day I was pretty shy (still can be) and he's four years older than me so even though we lived in the same neighbourhood and our families were friends I mostly just smiled and blushed at him.  Forward 5 years ahead and I'm away at university, he's in the same city working and I see him at church one day.  After the service we talk for a while, trade "how's the family" stories and talk about where we've been the last few years. I'm less shy, we're more equals and he comments that I've grown up and we make plans to get together with some friends of his and watch a big hockey game together later that week.  I hum and skip my back to my dorm.

On the day of the game about an hour before I was to call him to give him directions to pick me up, I learn that there's been an accident and a friend of mine has died and I'm too upset to call K and even explain and also I didn't want to bum him out with the sad news.  So I don't do anything.  From his perspective - I stood him up.  I don't see him again for weeks and when I do he seems a little shyer, a little cooler, he's on his way before I can explain what happened.

So now years after that - I've seen K a couple of times since and I always felt embarrassed how it had played out. (letting go of past foibles not one of my strong points) Heard from his mum he's married and is a dad now. I don't imagine he has any remembrance of the exchange or event that I described above (or really that it registered with him to the extent that it did with me).  When I meet him tonight he's out with his son and we chat a bit and he said it was nice I'd come home after many years away and traded small talk.  As I was leaving he said, we'll see you around more now that you're home.  And I hope so - a new/old friend is always welcome.  And tonight for the first times, I didn't feel the urge to explain or be embarrassed...it was more where we're at now and that felt really good.  I guess I'm not completely able to forget things as I just wrote it all down here but I know I am getting better at being present in the present.

So I guess the socks/undies were special