Just Another Day in Paradise: March 2008

You know in high school when teachers and parents tell you that the people who are your friends then will most likely not be your friends later? I was told that countless times and I always thought, “Yeah right, my friends and I are like Superglue! Nothing is going to separate us!” Well, I am here to tell you that the teachers and parents were right (unfortunately).

I had gobs of close friends in high school: Carma, Beckie, Kris, Jeannie, April. Junior year Carma and I stopped speaking, I don’t really know why but it seemed to me that she found new friends that were “better” than me. Kris and I stopped talking Senior year, she let herself believe a bunch of lies that she should have KNOWN were lies since we had been friends for so long. Beckie and I were friends all through high school and into college. We never stopped being friends, our personalities just changed so much that we had nothing in common anymore. Jeannie and I are still friends, but our friendship is more strained and almost forced rather than easy-going like it was for years. I still talk to April a few times a week, though I would be lying to say that I value our friendship, but that is a whole different story!

About a year ago I stumbled across Carma’s blog while Googling people that I went to high school with while I was bored one afternoon. I got a link to her sister’s blog, that had a link to her blog. I have to laugh at myself for the stupid comment I made, but I left my email and it wasn’t long before I had a long letter from her in my inbox. We traded a few emails, started calling one another, and before too long we were walking our dogs together almost every night and passing the boring hours at work by incessantly chatting on Yahoo Messenger. More recently I have been able to reconnect with Beckie via myspace. I think we are too different to ever be as close as we once were, she being very liberal and I very conservative I think causes most of the friction. Jeannie and I go shopping still, the friendship seems superficial and like something that we are holding onto because we both miss the “good old days” back in high school when there was not a care in the world and we could just go shopping all the time. For Jeannie and I both, I think we are both afraid of losing that last shred of carefree living that we can associate with one another. (Does that make any sense at all? I swear it does in my head!) Kris I will never talk to again. To be perfectly honest I hate the ground she walks on. I know that is a terrible thing to think and that I should not hold onto those feelings for so long when they have no importance in the grand scheme of things, but she hurt my feelings in a way that I am not able to just forget about and move on.

I have made some new friends since high school. Most of which I have forgotten about because they are more acquaintances I guess. Of all of the people that I have become friends with since my years out of high school, Terrie and Jenny are the 2 that I can say are truly worthy of being best friends. Of course I consider my mom and Jake, and maybe even my sister, to be best friends also. Due to life, I am not able to spend half as much time with any of my dear friends as what I would like. Jake and I are terribly busy with the house and a new puppy, not to mention the fact that we are up at 430 every morning and we are in bed no later than 9 on the average. My sister took a new job in Ft Wayne and her schedule is screwed up. April is having a hard time in her marriage, which is mostly caused by herself trying to get her husband to hit her so she can “justify divorce in the eyes of the LORD”. Jeannie and Carma are wrapped up in being pregnant. Jenny took a second job in the evenings to pay for the Harley she and her husband just bought. Terrie and my mother are both going through some sort of menopausal something-or-other, aside from their work schedules and hobbies.

I sat and whined to Jake just a couple of days ago about how I feel like I really have no friends anymore. I get bummed out because the only way I stay in touch with my friends lately is from reading one another’s blogs and emails, the occasional run-in’s and chit-chats at Wal-Mart. And Jeannie and April don’t have blogs, Jeannie doesn’t even have email. I miss phone conversations and going out for coffee for an hour, “play dates” for our dogs, late night trips to Wal-Mart.

Now for the real point to this post, (I don’t know why I always feel so compelled to give so much history to so many of my posts. I think it makes me feel better to just gab, nad it passes the time.)

One of my pregnant friends was to deliver their baby on Monday. Being Irish and an infamous party-girl, I had plans of indulging myself in plenty of green beer and my favorite home made beef stew, (with my secret ingredient of Guiness on St Patty’s Day). I took time out of my evening to step outside of the crowded bar, away from my steaming bowl of beer-infused stew, away from the loud band playing traditional Irish folk music, away from the staunch green ale that I love so much and can only get one time a year, and called my friend to see how things were going. Had she delivered the baby yet? Was she in labor? How was she feeling? I tried 2 different numbers. No answer at either one. Hey, no big deal right, she was supposed to be having a baby, she was probably a little busy…surely she will see that I had called and call me back when she had a couple of free seconds to spare. That was Monday, today is Thursday and I still have not heard a word from her.

At this point I am thinking that she is probably just really busy with a newborn baby, or worse yet, what if there were complications? If I were in her shoes, having a baby wit or without complications, she would be the first non-family person I would call to let know what was going on, and I expected for her to call me and let me know. I am not saying I want to be her number one, but if she calls me a friend wouldn’t it just make sense for her to at least drop me a couple of lines in an email. I know that I have said some things regarding my opinions about having kids and babies, but I was pretty sure that she knew that no matter what my opinion is, she is still my friend and I care about her wellbeing and the wellbeing of her about-to-be-born baby. I am starting to wonder if maybe she didn’t realize that, or chose not to care. (I still feel as if I need to state that this is MY blog. A place for ME to post about MY opinions to things. If YOU don’t agree with them, then don’t pay any attention to it. DO NOT attack ME and try to change MY mind with YOUR opinion.)

So this morning I decided to log onto my myspace and check the handful of blogs that I like to read. Imagine my surprise when I click onto this person’s blog only to find that she has yet to deliver her baby. She went on and on saying how she was sick and tired of people giving her bullshit lines better left to Hallmark sympathy cards and that she would just rather someone say “that sucks”. I think that she must have forgotten that I am probably one of the only people she knows that would have just said “that sucks”, not to make her feel better because that’s what she wants to hear, but because that’s the truth. Although I would like this not to be true, I have to admit that I was hurt. My initial thought was “Some friend!” Then I wondered what was wrong with me that made me her obvious last choice to talk to. (Poor Jake. I once again bombarded him with my whining about my problems with my friends. To which he dutifully replied that I am not at fault here, that it is pretty bitchy for her to exclude me.) Bitchy, huh? Yeah, I guess it is pretty bitchy.

I read the comments to this post and I was shocked to see that someone had commented the exact same thing that I was thinking! They had a weird name, and when I clicked on their name their link didn’t work, so I have no idea who this person is, but I was shocked to see that they had written that. Her sister posed underneath this comment something about not being “snarky” towards the prego girl right now with everything that she is dealing with right now. Initially I agreed with her sister. I mean, even though I agreed with this person, I would have not posted that on her blog. That’s SHITTY. But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered just how shitty it really was.

I know her sister is doing the right thing by sticking up for her, but I have to wonder if her sister would feel differently if she had experienced the ostracizing. As hard as I tried to see things from another point of view, I could not. I can't help but sympathize with the person that wrote that "shitty" comment. I was surprised in a way to find out that she is snubbing other people.

I remember asking this person a few months back if we were still going to be friends once she had her baby. She laughed at me and said that just because she was having a baby didn’t mean that she would be a different person. She was wrong on so many levels. And I have a feeling that this is the turning point in our friendship. Southward.

I once quit speaking to one friend about a shitty comment she made about how I was going to look in my dress for her wedding. I blew off the bridal shower, bachelorete party, and the wedding, never to talk to her again. My point here is: I have quit being friends with people for dumber reasons than not letting me know how things are going with a pregnancy.

Once again, I feel like this girl has decided that I am just not good enough to be her friend. Maybe it’s because I don’t share her enthusiasm for getting married and having babies. Maybe it’s because she thinks of me as a “partier”. Maybe she could read my mind when she was telling me that I should get a shock collar for my new puppy…I was thinking to myself, “Maybe you shouldn’t have a dog if you can’t train him with positive reinforcement and you need to shock him into behaving. Maybe you should get a shock collar for your baby when in does something you don’t approve of. You are going to teach that baby to do things right and not jump on counters or whatnot with the use of a less invasive punishment, so maybe you should try the same approach with your dog.”

I can’t help but wonder how many times I am going to let this happen. This makes 2 times that I have been left in the dust by a so-called friend, and I have decided not to let it happen again. She will probably read this and be royally pissed. Maybe her feelings will even be hurt. Who knows. Call me a bitch if you will, I can’t help the way that I see things and that I am sick and tired of always being there for my friends when they need me and having no one to turn myself.

Jake was talking a few days ago about putting in for a transfer to another branch of his corporate office in Minnesota. “I would love to go to Minnesota, but what about everything we have here?” I wondered. The house: there will always be another house that we can remodel and restore. Our families: they will love us no matter where we go. The dogs: they like car rides, we’re good there. Our friends: What friends? The “true friends” will, like our families, still love us and be there for us no matter where we are. You know what I think, I think Minessot-ah sounds great. I bet we could make some new friends that are less bitchy there, don’t’ch ya know?

I have been feeling…well, very cherry.

I had to stop at the gas station this morning on my way to work this morning. I went in to pay and noticed a display of limited edition cherry flavored M&M’s. I am not a big fan of M&M’s but I do like to try any of the new flavors they introduce, so I bought 2 packages. While awaiting my turn at the register I was perusing the rows of candy and happened to notice a small package of those gummy cherry slices candies. They were only 50-cents and I had not had one of them on forever so I picked up a package. While the girl behind the counter is ringing up my gas and goodies I happen to notice a display set up advertising a new fruit drink called “TAVA”. It’s a vitamin enriched, zero calorie sparkling fruit juice beverage. The girl waiting on me told me the “Mediterranean Fiesta” flavor was the best so I bought one of them too. I noticed on my way back out to the truck that the “Mediterranean Fiesta” flavor is just a fancy name for black cherry.

I brought leftovers for lunch today but I had to run downtown to Wal-Mart so I decided to save the leftovers for tomorrow and just grab something in town today. I ran into the store and almost collided with a man stocking a display of fresh cherries. (I am not sure where in the world fresh cherries are coming from this time of year…) My mouth was watering so much I was afraid to open it to excuse myself for fear that he would drown in my saliva. I bought 2 pounds, at nearly $5 a pound! Forget picking up lunch…forget leftovers! I am going on a cherry binge.

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I have ate and drank so many cherry flavored things today that I think my face is going to be stuck in that almost painful look you get when you eat something super sour/sweet. I can feel the muscles in my cheeks, jaws, and throat tighten and my eyes start to water by just thinking about it!