It's never going to end... or maybe it has...

Talking to the best friend this afternoon, which doesn't happen much anymore, now that the boyfriend is in the picture. Yes, I think I'm experiencing a spot of jealousy, but that's for another time...

But the conversation today may the one that pushes me over the edge... hang on to your seat...

Her: "John came over and spent the night again last night."

Me: "Ah"

Her: "He said he thinks he's going to have to go back to the doctor"

Me: "Back to the doctor? That doesn't sound good..."

Her: "Yeah, he told me it's something that used to happen before, when he masturbated..."

Have you picked yourself up off the floor yet?

I have no idea what exactly she said after that, because I put the phone down for a few seconds while I cleared my head... something about feeling blood pounding in his jugular vein and being afraid he was going to have a stroke.

I'm STILL speechless over this one, and the conversation took place about 8 hours ago. I so very much want to scream "When did it become okay to talk about things like this??? I don't want to know this!!! I don't care that we've known each other forever, STOP TELLING ME THINGS LIKE THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Maybe I'm a prude. Maybe I'm more conservative than I ever dreamed I was (God help me). This whole thing is making me SOOOOOOOOOOOO uncomfortable, yet I'm afraid of what might happen if I say anything. We've known each other all our lives, yet we're just not the type of people that really talk about our feelings.

Must come from being Presbyterian.

Well, I finally have a desk of my very own, in my new department, at the Casa de Insurance. I succeeded in evicting the infidel who refused to vacate said desk. Some time ago, before I transferred to this department, someone with a Magnetic Poetry set left the message 'You are a pain' on one of his filing cabinets. He left this for me when he moved (while throwing a rather loud temper tantrum, mind you, that quite a few people could hear). This was Friday.

I was struck with what I thought was a brilliant idea over the weekend... and Monday morning I left a message at his new desk, taken from my own Magnetic Poetry set, that read simply 'Too bad, so sad.'

I was rather proud of myself for that.

My veggie boy

W.T. tried asparagus for the first time today. He seemed to like it. He's always been a vegetable-boy, so I'm not surprised. He looked so cute with the little flecks of green around his mouth when he was finished.

The only bad thing was that it was, in fact, the green-colored crayon called "asparagus" in the Crayola 64-pack. Yes, he'd chewed on about 1/2 an inch of it. Heaven only knows how much he actually swallowed. Thank heavens they're non-toxic.

I thought about telling K when he gets home from school, but I think it will be more amusing to wait for the phone call at work tomorrow that will start out with "Is his poop supposed to be green?"

81 days and counting...

YEAH BABY!!!

My dad at 22, in 1942.

Lot's of anniversaries this week. Anniversaries make me contemplative, introspective, and all the other synonyms of looking inside yourself to try to figure things out. Why have things turned out the way they have? Lots of 'what if's'... what if I'd gone on to graduate school after college? What if K hadn't answered the personal add I put in the small, local newspaper (have I ever mentioned that's how we met?)? What if the birth control we were using had done its job the way it was supposed to?

Life would be so much different...

But this too shall pass, I'm sure.

Today is the first anniversary of my father's death. Is that even possible? It really doesn't seem like it.

I haven't talked to my best friend much the last 2 weeks, since the whole birthday extravaganza. I've called several times, only to be blown off with 'Oh, John (remember him, with the big yoo-hoo?) is supposed to be calling. Can I call you back later?' No return call was ever received later in the evening. Ouch - that smarts. I called today... just a little bit ago. I stayed home from work today, and she's off on Wednesdays.

"We're just sitting here watching a movie. What's up?"

"Just hadn't talked to you in a while. I stayed home from work today, thought I'd call and see what was going on."

"Stayed home from work - that's always fun..."

At this point, I reminded her what the day was... "Oh! Has it been a year? I can't believe that."

"Yeah, I think I'm doing okay, though. No big outburst of tears yet."

"Well that's good. Listen, can I call you back later tonight, once John's gone?"

Thirty-five years of friendship, and I don't rate more than 5 minutes on the phone on the anniversary of the death of a parent? I'm still speechless. Slap me in the face, why don't you? Maybe I'm overly-sensitive right now, but to me that seemed rather a bitchy thing to do. Don't get me wrong - I'm thrilled that she's found someone that has true prospects of being THE ONE, but this is taking it a little far if you ask me. I just don't know where to go with all this. This isn't the first time in our 35 years of knowing each other that I've had feelings like this, but we're not the kind of people that express these things. Everything is repressed. We were both brought up in families that didn't talk about anything, ESPECIALLY feelings. Are we growing apart after all this time? Could be, I guess. It's a very lonely feeling.

Me & K at our wedding 12/05/97

Sometime this week, the 12th, maybe, it will be 10 years since the mr and I met... hard to believe. We still look pretty much the same. The part in his hair is a little wider now, if you know what I mean, and my hair isn't quite so big these days, but that's us. And he has a wonderful smile, just not when you put him in front of a camera (ever see the 'Friends' episode where Monica & Chandler are getting their engagement picture taken?).

So that's us, for anyone who might've been curious.

10 years... 120 months, 520 weeks, 3650 days. 87,600 hours. At times it's flown by, and at times it has dragged unbelievably. We've been through so much crap that it makes the head spin. Many times, I've had to step back and remind myself what it was that made me fall in love with and marry him, and I'll admit that I've wondered more than once if it was all a mistake.

But then he leaves to go to his evening classes, or to study at the library, or I leave in the morning to go to work, and as soon as we're not in the same place together, I miss him. So would I do it all over again?

Yeah, I would...

See what happens when I have too much free time on my hands... K is at school studying, and the boy is playing quietly by himself with the Little Einsteins on the Disney Channel in the background. My father-in-law called just a little while ago to ask if I was bored, since I wasn't at work and had nothing to do (insert confused look here).

Is this new template obnoxious? The other was absolutely getting on my nerves. The extra-wide margins were just irritating. It had to go. None of the other Blogger templates appealed to me, and I'm not savvy enough to re-configure the old template to look how I want it to look, so I must rely on the talent of others for a fresh new look. I've requested the 'Blogging for Dummies' book from the library, but my name is far down on the list.

My best friend's new boyfriend...

Finally, a few much-needed days off from work to relax, spend time with the punkin, and catch up on blogging. I could use 2 weeks off, but they are stingy with the vacation days at the Casa de Insurance, so I'm only taking 3 days.

Do I have a desk yet in the new department I've moved to?
No.
Does my new supervisor seem overly concerned about the fact that I've worked for her for a month and a half now and still haven't relocated to her area?
No.
Has my old supervisor hired a replacement for me?
Yes.
Will he soon be needing the desk I'm still occupying for the person he's hired?
Yes.

The guy I've replaced is still refusing to move from his current location, and the new supe isn't really doing a whole lot about it. This does not bode well for the future.

On top of everything else, I'm vaguely annoyed with my best friend right now. Let's call her Mary...

At the end of March, Mary had been dating a guy for about 6 weeks, when he unexpectedly dumped her BY SENDING HER A TEXT MESSAGE. How crappy is that? She'd never used the text message feature of her phone, so this was the first text she'd ever gotten. Even crappier. Understandably, she was feeling pretty blue. Her birthday is at the end of April, so I decided, being the good friend I am, to make it a blow-out this year, to cheer her up. I planned the entire afternoon and evening, sent her an 'invitation' to the birthday extravaganza, even made a commemorative mix cd for the occasion.

About 3 weeks ago, just about 1 or 2 weeks after being dumped electronically, she met a new guy. Apparently, this could be the one. Don't get me wrong - I'm happy for her. She's an incredible person and it always astonishes me that someone hasn't already snatched her up. She has been talking about this guy constantly - let's call him John - and it all sounds great.

But...

I hate to say it, but I'm a little hesitant to meet him. She describes him as a 'not afraid to speak his mind, don't ask him a question if you don't really want to hear the answer' kind of guy (which is a good thing), yet some examples she's given of this make him sound just downright rude. He goes to church (as do we), but has commented to her several times about how boring he thinks our church sounds. His church has flashy video screens and they dance and clap their hands when the spirit moves them, and they serve bagels and juice. We're Presbyterians. Presbyterians just don't do stuff like that. But we do serve cookies & punch after the service. She doesn't want to bring him to our church on a Sunday morning because "I know he'll hate it!" That offends me. I get the feeling from the way she talks about it that she's almost ashamed of this church that we've gone to since we were babies together in the nursery.

And then there's the sex. I've never been one to share lots of bedroom details with people. I'm not a prude, and I'm not afraid to talk about sex, but I don't need to know your nitty-gritty details, and I probably won't be telling you mine. Mary's always been the same way, but suddenly with this guy, I have to hear ALL ABOUT EVERYTHING that's been going on. I've said several times "No really, you don't need to tell me all this stuff...", but to no avail. Uck.

So here we are this past Friday, which was her birthday. She got to my house a little after 1pm. I had lunch ready (a salad of baby spinach, dried cranberries, slivered almonds, thinly sliced red onion, feta cheese & balsamic vinaigrette dressing, crusty bread with herb butter, sparkling water, huge homemade lemon squares for dessert... Yummy!). We ate... she got a call on her cell from John.

We relaxed for a bit after lunch, then headed out for our first stop - manicures at the shop where I get my hair cut. I love my hair-girl. She's a miracle worker. She does great with nails, too. Mary seemed a little irritated when we got there, and kind of argued a little with my hair-girl about not wanting any color on her nails. Then she got a call on her cell from John while I was getting my nails done.

Manicures completed, we headed towards Cincinnati for dinner and a show at a place I'd found online called the Shadowbox Cabaret. Two hours of comedy skits and live music, think Mad TV. Cincinnati is about an hour-ish from where we live, which translated into lots of talk about John-this, John-that, in-between calls on the cell. Twenty miles into the trip and I was already extremely annoyed. This is completely unlike her, but I'm so glad that she's found someone that she's this enthusiastic about, I don't want to say anything. Somehow the (limited) conversation wound around to the fact that he's 5'6" tall, kind of short for a guy. "He's not shy about walking around naked after sex." Okay, that's a comment I can handle. "It's good that he feels that comfortable with you already," I reply. To which she responds, while laughing, "Yeah, well, um... he's a short guy with a big dick, and he wants everyone to know it!"

What???? Back the truck up, Nelly!!

Had I not been in rush-hour traffic on a bridge crossing from Ohio into Kentucky, I very well might have pulled the car over. This is NOT the kind of information I want or NEED to hear about this guy. Not to mention the fact that I've never heard her use the word 'dick' before, as hard as that may be to believe. I'm so taken aback by this comment that all I can do is let out a pathetic laugh, while muttering "Which exit are we supposed to take on the other side of the bridge?"

Thank heavens we were headed to a place where the music was loud, making conversation nearly impossible. At the intermission of the show there was, of course, another phone call. Apparently he was working until 9pm and was very bored because business at the furniture store where he's a sales person has been slow. 46 years old and he can't find anything to occupy his time while he's at work? Hmmm....

This should be interesting...