NaBloPoMo 22: This & That

Note: I wrote and posted this from the car yesterday, and just realized that it never fully published. I DID write! I did not skip a day! Yet.

I'm traveling tonight, and writing from the passenger's seat. Ain't technology grand.

We just pulled over at a rest stop, and two young women in the ladies room were having a conversation about a boy. One of them said "there were a couple of weird hugs." Her friend asked her "do you mean the hugs themselves were weird, or it was just weird to be hugging him?" I was wondering the same thing, and looking forward to the answer, when the hand dryer went on and drowned out her response.  

It has me thinking about either answer, and the times I've experienced either situation. The first one. The weird hug. Where the huggee keeps their distance, and kind of pats you. Or the worst hug I ever gave, to a very stoic, non-touchy woman I knew, who revealed to me that she'd just had to put her beloved dog to sleep. I knew she wasn't touchy, but really couldn't think of anything else do do but throw my arms around her. She kept her arms to the side, so it was sort of like hugging a tree. How embarrassing, I left feeling like I'd assaulted her.

And then, the "weird to be hugging him (or her)" hug. People whose arms you never dreamed you'd be wrapped in. At funerals, for instance. A hugger at my sister's funeral comes immediately to mind; a woman that usually made no bones about her disdain for me (I know, it's hard to fathom, isn't it?) crossed the room to give me a hug. It was one of those room-stopping hugs where everyone stopped talking to witness such an occassion, and I was left thinking, "well. This is weird." 

***

I arrived to work one day this week to find this on my keyboard:

Oh boy! A present! What is it, what is it? Who gave it? Yay a present!

Aurgh! Another cat head, a reciprical gift from Nicole, whom I gifted a kitten head in a box a few weeks ago. Oh, I see how it's going to be. Game on. 

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We grabbed a salad at Piato today, and I was surprised to see people playing bags in the middle of the mall. That's the whole story, so I'll leave it at that. I rambled on enough about that girl's weird hug, so I'll spare you the bags-in-the-mall speculation.

In fact, I'll spare you any more speculation at all, for now. You have reached the end of this post.