Dear Happy Hour Follow Friday

TGIF! 

(But not really because I work Saturdays.) 

So many Memes, so little time.

So what do you do?  Combine!

If you haven't played Friday Happy Hour, run on over to RXBambi's and play along.  It's good to take some time to remember the things in life that make us happy.  Too often we can get caught up in the negative turbulence around us and forget to take stock of the good stuff.

This week:
I am happy to be on my own path, taking control of my own life.
I am happy my roommate has an awesome  boyfriend who loves him.
I am happy the weather says sunshine and 50° temperatures next week.
I am happy it's the year of the tiger, and big changes are coming.
I'm happy to regain a friendship with an old friend.
I am happy to be getting out of the house and living more.

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I'm participating in the fun over at Trendy Treehouse.  So link-up and meet new people!

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I love me some Dear So and So hosted by Kat.

It's theraputic, so write some letters and join in over at the Bungalow.

Dear Universe,

I know, I know... I really need to start listening to you more and going with my intuition instead of doubting myself and ignoring it all the time.  It's pretty amazing of you to throw me a bone every now-and-then to remind me that you really do know what you're doing.  Thank you for bring friends back into my life, and for making me get up off the couch and go do something.

Signed,

A Willing Tool of the Universe

Dear Addict Acquaintances,

You have a problem, and I'm sorry to say it but at some point you have to grow up and take control of your lives.  You're both over 40, and you brought four children into the world-so you think you'd be adults by now.  Instead, one of you is an alcoholic and the other is addicted to narcotics.  I understand that these are problems, but the fact of the matter is that you have to face these problems in order to ever get better, and neither of you even want to try.  It's so bad in fact, that most of your friends have ostracized you for stealing liquor from their houses.  Don't you look at that and consider yourself a pathetic creature?

Also, what you've done with your children is horrible, but they're starting to be better off now.  They're teenagers, and if ever they needed guidance now would be the time.  However, being that you didn't want them to know that you drink and smoke, you'd go to friend's houses and hide out, and your kids were left to their own doing.  To top it off, you were evicted from ten different houses in the last 2 years.  How can you not see the irresponsibility in that?  Now your children are living with various family members, and your 14 year old daughter told us how happy she is to not be there with you now.  She said she's happy to have a roof over her head (because her aunt and uncle pay their rent instead of blowing it on booze) and she's happy she doesn't have to go weeks without food in the fridge.  I felt so bad for her, but you deciding you were done being an adult and leaving the kids behind turned out to be the best thing for her.

Also, when you go around complaining that all of your "friends" aren't really friends because they've voiced their opinion, you should stop to take a look at the common thread.  I made a comment about you not having a job or a home (which was the truth) and now I'm the devil?  Your brother made comments, and now he's a backstabber and shouldn't be trusted?  Another "friend" said something about you stealing her liquor (which you've done on multiple occasions) and so she's a horrible person?  Maybe all those fingers you're pointing should instead be turned around, and you should start taking responsibility for your actions. 

Signed,

Someone Who Wishes You Could Get Better.

Dear March,

Snow?!?!?!?!?!  Are you kidding?  I'll admit, when I walked out of Smiths with my cherry pie last night and looked up into the gigantic fluffy flakes falling on me, I thought it was pretty.  However, today I'm looking at the very white scenery outside my window and wondering where Spring went.  It was soooo pretty last week.  Can't we just stick with the rain?

Signed,

A Spring Addict Who Longs for Sun

Dear Management at Work,

I realize now that I can't rely on you to keep me on, and that I've been using this job as a crutch.  I stay because I know my job and I do it very well, and because the people I like around me almost make up for the ones that cause drama.  I stay because I am comfortable, and I keep hoping you hire me full time instead of seasonal this year.  However, I cannot count on you, and you've proven it time and time again.  So I will start looking for a job, because in a month and a half I don't want to be screwed.

Signed,

Your Valued Employee

Dear ARUP,

PLEASE HIRE ME!  I want to work for you so badly!  Yes, it's a pay cut, but it also comes with full benefits, bonus', on-site doctors, on-site pharmacy, on-site childcare (if I ever need it), and so many other perks.  Everyone I know that works for you, loves it.  I want to love my job and feel like a valued employee.  I want to work for you sooooo badly!

Signed,
You Wont Regret It, I Promise!

Dear Readers,

I love you all so very dearly!  If you missed it this week, I posted about my 1 year Blogiversary.  I am so grateful to have met you all and have you as my little online family.   Also, go back to yesterdays post and read about the Universe shaping my plans and pushing me towards a better outcome.  It's amazing!

Hope you all have a fantastic weekend, and please say hello if you're visiting!  I'll be sure to do the same over at your blog!

Signed,

An Eternally Grateful Blogger

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Best Friend Nostalgia

 Yesterday was one big example of how the Universe can step in and make things happen in your life if you only take a moment to listen to the promptings it is giving you.  I made a bunch of plans, that were quickly changed on a whim, and those changes provided me with an alternative path that turned out to be amazing.

You see, it was only a few days ago that I typed up an incredibly long blog post about a friend of mine who I hadn't seen in a very long time.  I hadn't posted it yet, I was saving it for a good day to tell a story from my past.  Now I see that the Universe didn't want me to post it because I had stuff to add to it. 

Yesterday, I had planned on going into work to make up hours from being sick, but the plans were changed because The Roommate didn't have to go into work until later than usual, so we all went to breakfast.  However, breakfast had to be done by about 11:30.  (Funny the little time-lines the Universe provides!) So I went to breakfast with David, Josh, and Zach and then they dropped me off at home.  I was at a loss for what to do after that, but all I knew was I did not want to spend another day sitting around my apartment.  There had been enough of that when I was sick.

It was a nice day out, so I thought I'd go to the park and read.  Ten minutes later-it was gloomy and the forecast said rain.  Thinking that was just my luck, I decided to go to Barnes & Nobles and get coffee and browse around, but worried I'd be too tempted to buy a book when I'm saving money right now.  However, both my mother and my coworker prompted me to just go. 

After I got my Green Tea Latte and started browsing the shelves and started thinking about leaving, my friend Cristina called to ask if I wanted to do lunch, and said she'd meet me there in a half hour.  So I changed my mind and kept browsing through the books.  When she finally showed up, she told me she thought she'd seen Melanie (my best friend through High School and the few years after) over in the Cafe, so I walked over to see.  Sure enough, there she sat with her laptop after just having met one of her photographers to pick up a CD. 

We were both shocked at the way the Universe had brought us together!  We'd been living within blocks of each other for months and had never found the time to meet up, and here it was pushing our paths back together only days before she moves to San Francisco.

So she joined Cristina and I for lunch, and then after Cristina had to run to class Melanie and I spent the rest of the day together.  We ran a few errands, visited my apartment for a bit, and then I helped her move her stuff from the storage unit to the place where her moving truck would pick it up.  I was introduced to her boy (submissive) and to her super-hot boyfriend, and found them both to be agreeable company.  It was a lot of hard work (which I actually loved) and I was rewarded with spending a few amazing hours with my long-time best friend that I had not seen in a very long time.  After the moving, we had sushi and then I went home to bed.

In my personal opinion, if we had not spent yesterday together, we may never have rekindled our friendship.  I may have never gotten her new phone number, or made plans to come visit her in San Francisco... I'm glad to have my friend back.  Yesterday was awesome.

 Here is the post I wrote up a few days ago.

 ***

03/01/2010

The other day, I took the time to look at an old friend's Myspace page, and it was astounding to me how much can change in a few short years.  I know, I know, bring on the nostalgia, but I can't help taking a moment to think about how different my life is today than it was six years ago when I graduated High School.

Senior year I was the Costume Mistress for Macbeth, which we also happened to be taking to Shakespeare competition that year.  That was my first time accompanying the Masque club on their annual trip to the festival, and I was so very excited.  It was on that trip that I truly made friends within the drama department and found what would be my place for the rest of the school year.

It still makes me smile when I think of the bus trip down there. Melanie and Scotty making out in the back right hand seat, Bob and Gus-Gus pretending they weren't crazy about each other in the back left seat, Alicia and Moses to the right of me under a blanket, some crazy red-head planting herself next to me for the trip, and Pookie in the seat directly in front of me.  Little did I know at the time, that darling redhead would quickly become one of my good friends, and the boy I was flirting with the entire trip (Pookie) was gay.  One of the chaperon's even made an announcement: "If you are under a blanket with a member of the opposite sex, we ask you to do the right thing and come out from there."  It was hilarious.

 Anyway, it all really started by sharing a hotel room.  It was my friend Alicia, her friend Melanie, the chaperon, and myself in a hotel room.  Alicia and Melanie were in the middle of a fight, and since I didn't know Melanie very well yet, I shared the queen size bed with Alicia, who wanted to make sure that Melanie knew she was the outsider.  However, as the trip went on Alicia ditched me to hang out with other people, and I found myself growing closer to Melanie out of our mutual anger at Alicia's actions.

From the Left: Me, Alicia, Melanie, & Ms. Curley

Masque Club Awards Ceremony 2004

After that trip, Melanie and I were inseparable for the rest of the school year and the following summer.  Together we did many shows, acted, house-sat for her boyfriend while he was away, quit religion and found religion, held circles in the park, filled sketchbooks full of morbid drawings, wrote poem after poem, cried and laughed.

 Working with lights in the AP.

When summer ended, Melanie moved a few hours away to go to college.  We spoke nearly every night on the phone, and I spent a lot of weekends with her.  She made a slew of new friends, including a guy that would become my first boyfriend (read some of that story here) and her awesome roommate CJ.

Visiting her introduced me to an entirely new world, a world where people didn't live with their parents and they led their own lives.  It was my first awakening to the world of  being an adult, and it was a huge prompt to go and start down my own path.

Melanie and CJ. 

I moved to Ogden to live with my first boyfriend, and we lived right around the corner from each other.  We spent massive amounts of time together again.  We made it through the both of us losing our virginity, her breakup with her boyfriend of 4 years, my breakup with my live-in boyfriend, her and CJ both moving in with me, CJ moving back to Montana, me moving to California and back, countless other boyfriends, Melanie moving out and me nearly getting evicted, until finally we ended up living together on Jefferson avenue in Ogden.  

Halloween 2006

They say that sometimes, no matter how much you love someone, you can't live with them.  Melanie and I found this to be true, especially since we were living on bunk beds in a one bedroom dump of a house.  Living together nearly destroyed our friendship entirely.  Eventually, when we couldn't handle it anymore, she moved with her boyfriend to Denver, and I moved in with my grandmother.  We didn't speak for nearly 3 months, but eventually the bond that we'd always had helped us to remember how much we cared about each other, and we made up.  She even came to visit.

Melanie and me on her visit home from Denver.

Now it's been several years and I barely talk to her anymore.  The occasional hello on IM or Myspace, no more phone calls or emails... Our friendship has seemed to drift further and further apart, as our paths in life are leading off in two different directions.  She's no longer my confidante when I need someone to talk to, and it's no longer my advice she looks to.  We don't buy each other little gifts for every sabbat or holiday; the Christmas ornaments I make her every year are piling up in a box in my closet, and she's moving yet again to another state.  It seems we have outgrown that friendship that made us call each other sister.  We are two completely different people now.

It is what it is, and I realize that everything changes. For every birth there is a death and rebirth.  I realize that there are so many new and wonderful people around me that I would have never become close to if we hadn't gone the directions that we both did.  I'm in a really good place, and I love my life.

However, now and again I do take the time to stop and wonder how my old friend is.  I browse her Myspace photos or check up on her blog to see where her life is taking her and what new and exciting adventures she's experiencing.  Then, after a small twinge of sadness at the thought of how close we used to be, I close the computer and go back to the present.  The past is the past, and I regret nothing.

 Beautiful Witch Sister, I wish you the best of luck in your travels!  If you ever need anything, I will always be here for you, even if it's just in spirit. Blessed Be as you go about your path!

You're So Vain

You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you, don't you?

Well guess what, this particular one... IS!

I thought I'd just take a quick moment to tell you that every time we're over here laughing and having a good time, and you get all butt-hurt because you think we're talking about you.  We're not.  Sure, sometimes one of your idiotic actions gives us something to have a good chuckle over, but mostly we're just having fun without you.

Whaaaaaa?  You mean you actually thought we couldn't have fun without you? 

News flash:  It's A LOT more fun without you! 

Also, the fact that I'm somewhat of an ex, and I'm friends with your big-time ex-doesn't have anything to do with you either.  We get along, we sit by each other, and we have fun!  Sure, you being a total dick-face to us both probably encouraged the bonding, but now?  Now we're friends despite your constant pleas for her not to speak to me because I "don't really know you."

I don't care what you do, I don't care what you think, and I certainly don't care enough to be over here telling her things about you.

Not everything is about you, so BUGGER OFF.

Really, go cry in a corner or something, you're pretty good at that.

This lovely little insight into the psyche of The Pothead, is brought to you by Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop, and this weeks Prompts.

1. You’re so vain. You probably think this post is about you…don’t you? 
2. Tell us about your trip.
3. A difficult conversation.
4.  Can you almost stop time with your words? Write about the fastest ride you ever had, but describe only a few seconds of it…as though it was happening to slow motion.
5.  Who blind-sided you? Write about a time someone caught you totally off guard.

Choose one, or as many as you want, and write about it, then head on over and link up with the fun!