I've run through a thousand opening lines and none of them work for this weekend.
Not the one about how I found it odd to be vacuuming at eight in the evening last night rather than bathing off the sunburn and sore muscles, not the one about spending half the weekend upside down or how I ended up in bed with two beautiful blondes who spend half the weekend kissing me on the cheek.
Not the one about dancing-like-a-cool person lessons, or the hypocrisy of the drunken male desperate to not end up alone in their tent for the night.
I passed out in the trunk of the Kangoo on the way back from Farmoutiers, head spinning with sunstroke and the usual overload of difficult to untangle thought strings.
I came home to find out that I was hosting a wine-and-cheese for Maja and Andreas who are back in town for ten days, and that one of my cousins is also in town for the week, while his brothers are all elsewhere, and his mom called to ask if I'd invite him out because he's lonely, bored, and too shy to call me.
I'm just hoping we can find something interesting enough to do in the evenings with the germans, my cousin, and my work-addled brain.
I have this week to finish that project.
It's 10am, I called in to see if the server was fixed, and since it wasn't, I'm spending the morning here, and working late into the afternoon there.
The party was a party, the camping part not very campy, the huge backyard of Cristal's great-grandmother's house was filled with tents but I ended up in the same bedroom as on New Year's, with the two other blondes from the weekend.
Every half hour or so during the party I'd have some Great Realization, but it would swiftly dissipate into another, as a drunken Fred asked me to sit on his lap, or a drunken Herve spent an hour following me with his camera.
All of it was so insincere that any forthcoming ego boost of being hit on by a gang of athletes disappeared quicker than it came.
I spent much of the evening curled up in blankets with Fatna and Sonia, play-fighting with Fatna's boyfriend or engaging in surprisingly meaningful conversations with the girls.
About tattoos and intimacy, fear and fatigue.
At some point Fatna explained nail polish theory to me, and I was saved by some terrible piece of pop music as the girls half-carried me onto the patio to turn it into a dance floor.
The ensuing pop-dancing lesson was extremely comical, but extremely enjoyable too. All boundaries of group, preference, social-scene were gone, it was just the rising moon and the pounding music and laughter.
I had the fortune to fall into other conversations with people I've admired from afar, Cedric and Brieuc who adopted me as a fellow goofball (quite the prestigious compliment, given their world-famous comedy routine), Thomas and Henriette who adopted me as their pet penguin and proceeded to spend the next twenty four hours hugging me (even after I got soaked in the waterfight) and sending me affectionate smiles from all over the garden.
Daniel's low growl was still charming and sexy and yet somehow irritating, he's an impressive athlete but his charm wears off after the eigth growl when you realize he's got little else to say.
I preferred him when he was concentrated on a juggling lesson and a bit of his inner curiosity showed through, rather than his pseudo-witty flirtatious act the rest of the time.
Although, I have to admit, that when he grasped me by the waist and waltzed me around the patio to some mellow Queen tune, I was happy to have him there.
There's just something about a hand in your back and the quiet, confident spinning that makes you feel graceful despite dirty corduroys and scuffed sneakers.
There's a thousand other moments in there, each minute of the weekend packed with smiles and tears and celebration, but my favourite parts were two:
A quiet moment towards two in the morning where a face appeared in the shadow of the moon and all celebration drained out of me for a few moments as I sat at the foot of a plum tree and smiled a secret smile, and eighteen of the umpteen confused strings in my head simply fell away into the bubble of quiet I held clasped within my fingers.
At seven in the morning I was the only one awake in the world, just me and the sparrows and the geese, the air still frigid, and me wrapped in a blanket on the dewed grass, reading and basking in the slowly rising sun until one or two people stirred towards nine-thirty.
Alone in the world, within reach of a plum tree and pear tree, quiet and serene and looking forward to the sunburn which now graces my pink arms and blazing cheeks.
There were water fights and a chocolate fight filmed on video, a good few scuffles that resulted in bruises which explain why I'm not wearing a skirt to work this afternoon.
There was barbecue and too much food and enough affection to bolster my heart and yet somehow my resolve to move is unshaken.
I have a thousand things to do this morning, vacation time to take care of,
life administration to attend to, and the handful of insecure moments from this weekend where I realized I'd said something wrong are barely penetrating my flushed skin.
This week is going to be fast and hard, but I have the harsh sun in my bones, strenghtening me as much as it drained me yesterday.