I got “unfriended” tonight. I was pondering unfriending the person, but hadn’t quite the heart to do it yet. I was carrying on with someone who actually IS a friend, and this person assumed that we were talking about her. Wow, can we say “egocentric?”
She commented that apparently we weren’t friends. Well, DUH! Did she really think we were? Friends are people who have something in common, who share things. Friends are not people who just work with you.
I remember reading this fable as a kid and thinking that the boy who told the truth was very brave. This was before the days of never hurting anyone’s feelings, and of everyone being “special.”
Today I saw a picture that a young, overweight, girl had posted of herself, wearing a sweater she had knit. It was too small and too short. Every comment told her how wonderful it was. Every single comment. Surely there was more than one person thinking the same thing I did? Surely someone who cared about her could have quietly said, “hon, that really doesn’t look good on you. Maybe you should make it a big bigger next time so it doesn’t show every roll you have?”
Okay, I’ve never been accused of being too tactful.
Are we so afraid of hurting some tender little feelings that we can no longer tell the truth?
A couple of my friends have gone on a diet recently. They’ve chosen a diet that seems very dangerous to me – it cuts out whole food groups, and from what I’ve read, is not particularly effective once you go off it. One of them is a self professed sufferer of an eating disorder – she has a long ass complicated name for every little twinge she has – and she refuses to hear anything bad about this diet. I mentioned to her that this diet worried me. She pretty much told me to shut up, and all of her friends told her that this was just the most wonderful thing for her to do, and they totally support her!
Your stupid decision does not require my support.
One of my colleagues sent me a friend request on facebook a couple of years ago. This creates a problem – I don’t know her very well, and don’t particularly like her – I’m pleasant to her, polite, because we work together, but she isn’t someone I would consider a friend. Nor is she someone whose friendship I would seek. It’s not that I don’t like her, we just have little in common outside of work, aside from a love of books, and a love of yarn.
Even those things are really superficial – she thinks that spending $4 for a ball of yarn is a large purchase, her taste in clothing – which is reflected in the things she crochets or knits – is very different from mine, so other than saying, “yes, we both knit stuff,” there’s not much in common there. Nor does she read the same type of books that I do. On occasion, we will read the same book, but often she will think it’s the next best thing to Shakespeare while I’m going, “what a piece of trash.”
She’s also rather prickly about anything that isn’t quite, as she sees it, politically correct. Being pc is not something that comes easily to me, I tend to tell the truth and see stupidity as just that, whatever the source.
So the dilemma – if I didn’t accept her facebook request, I would most likely be questioned about why I didn’t want to be her friend, told stories of her childhood in which she was rejected and bullied, and attempts would be made to make me feel guilty. (I do not respond well to that sort of bullying.)
I have to work with this woman and see her quite often, so I took the path that I thought would cause me the least amount of annoyance. I accepted the friend request. I unclicked every box on the little friend drop down thingie, and made sure that her constant posts didn’t show up in my news feed. There, everyone is happy.
Or not. She had some health issues and posted daily, at length, about them. I was blissfully unaware, until she met me in the faculty bay one day and commented that she was feeling better, but of course, I must be aware of that since she’d been updating everyone daily. I bluffed my way out of that one. I felt forced to start reading her posts, just to keep this from happening again.
I started to be amused by her. I commented to real friends that this woman literally posts every time she farts. Her circle of friends and admirers rush to “like” each of those posts, and commiserate with her about the smell, sound, and frequency of the farts, and discuss at length possible reasons and remedies.
I commented to her once that she posted a great deal more than I ever would. She said she wants others to learn from her experiences. She’s very comfortable sharing intimate details of her life.
I, on the other hand, tend to be pretty private about certain areas of my life, especially with people I don’t know well. With my friends, my real friends, I’ll talk about almost anything, but not in public – have a little class, my mother would say!
She’s right now very annoyed with me, because I poked fun at her constant, incessant, posting about banalities. The situation got me thinking – before facebook, when I worked with someone like her, I didn’t invite that person into my home, into my life, outside of work. I am not comfortable with knowing intimate details about someone I don’t really know. I wonder, does the good part of facebook – the part has allowed me to reconnect with cousins I’ve not seen in years, and whose posts and friendship I thoroughly enjoy – outweigh this sort of nonsense?
Maybe I should just start a new account and only tell people I really like!
Ever have a day when you just feel like you’re not even breathing right? It started when I got up and tried to have a conversation with a tired man who had worked all night and wasn’t hearing only about half of what I was saying. Morphed into the dog refusing to come inside so I had to put him in the car and take him for a ride up the driveway. That turned into going to the hardware store and coming home to a huge spider in the garage – one that required half a bottle of spray and the shovel to beat it to death. (You could have put a leash on it and taken it for a walk, seriously that big.)
Then I take said dog outside to play with his ball and he heads down the driveway. I follow, thinking we’ll play by the creek. No, he wants to take a walk up to the front field and completely ignore me calling him. I’m tired of that game.
It’s Wednesday, tomorrow night is the Final exam for the class I’m not fond of, and I think the stress that’s been normal for every Tuesday – Friday for the last semester has just made its final appearance.
I took my last antibiotic this morning, so tonight there’s a beer with my name on it. I seriously need a drink.
If you post how old you are, and how you can’t believe you’re that old, yes, people will comment that you can’t be that old! You don’t look that old! Can I be the one to say, “Holy shit, you look 10 older than that!” Please?
If you post a picture of yourself looking at your phone one more time, I may have to unfriend you. Seriously, if you have to advertise how much weight you lost, it isn’t enough for people to notice.
You’re going on vacation? Good, now where is it you live again?
So a waitress said that children should be kept under control in a restaurant. Hey, I happen to agree with her! If your kid has meltdowns in public, then take your kid where there are other kids, and parents who won’t care, not to a place where people are trying to enjoy a nice meal! I don’t want to hear your kid screaming, and I don’t care why he’s doing it, I have a right to a peaceful evening as much as your kid has a right to scream in public.
Lately it seems that my body lives in this place called Pain. Sometimes I get to take a walk away from it, and revisit the place I used to live, the Random Aches and Ouchies place, where once in a while a hurt would happen, and a bruise would appear, and then it would be done in an hour or so. Sometimes I get to spend there, or even a few days. But I dare not think I’ll be allowed to move it again. If that thought crosses my mind, I’m slammed back into Pain within minutes.
I’m very tired of this place. I’m tired of tears, of heating pads, of Bio-freeze and wondering which bra to wear. I’m tired of being an invalid – I AM valid, I am worthy, I am not ready to sit down and let the world pass me by while I rock in my chair with my hot water bottle pressed to my chest, reading about gardens, and dreaming of a walk with the dog.
I’m angry. I realized today that I’m not just angry, I’m furious. I’m furious with the stress that others have brought into my life (a certain student comes to mind) that adds to my pain, that makes me crazy and makes me hurt. I’m angry with doctors who dismiss my affliction as “it won’t last, it’s not chronic, just take a pill!” I’m angry that I have to consider surgery – and I’ll be angrier if the surgery is denied, as I expect it will be.
And being angry has moved me out of Pain and into PIssed Off. I think I’ll stay here for a bit, because it’s much more fun for me than that other place.
I just don’t feel motivated to do anything. Is it because it’s Tuesday? Maybe, this is not a good day of the week lately. Is it because of the tragedy in Boston yesterday? Maybe that’s part of it. I feel sort of distant from that, probably because I turned off network tv at 7 last night and watched mindless trash on other channels, until 10 or so. There was my meltdown period, when flashed back to 9/11 – but it was short. Are we becoming immune to such things? I sort of hope so, but I really hope not.
And I’m having a semi-bad chondritis day. Reminding myself to breathe in calm, and breathe out stress, sounds really stupid, but it does help. 🙂
Rambling randomly.
Yes, indeed, it is an affliction. I don’t care what the doctors say and what the stupid websites say, this is a chronic condition, and it lasts more than a bloody month and it is NOT one and done.
It’s called Tietze’s syndrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tietze_syndrome). It translates to “OW!” or “oh, shit, I think I”m having a heart attack!” It mimics the symptoms of a heart attack, and yes, I had all the tests done, and my heart is quite healthy. It’s my cartilage that isn’t. It’s been several weeks since a flare up and I thought things were all under control. I was wrong. It flared this weekend, sudden, flaring pain in my chest, my arms, my shoulders. My ribs hurt. It hurts to move.
I have stuff to do, I don’t, as the current cute, overused phrase got, “got time for that!” Well, the laundry got done. A few other things got done. No walking, no playing outside, one poor bored dog has been really good, even though I know he’s wondering why we haven’t gone anywhere or done anything for a couple days and why Mom is lying on the sofa with the heating pad.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading about this today. There are a lot more people with this affliction than I realized. It seems that no one is really looking for a cure, and while there are lots of posts from people recommending various OTC things, and strange herbs and things I’ve never heard of, there isn’t much of anything I would trust other than ibuprofen and heat. Or cold, apparently that works for some people, but it makes my pain worse.
Strangely, knowing that other people have the same symptoms as I do makes it easier to bear them.
So I’m not sure what kicked off this flare, but it’s been a good one. I slept with my heating pad last night, woke up still sore, and there go my plans for the day. I need to vacuum and do laundry and I wanted to walk Max and go to the nursing home. Out the window with that stuff. Well, maybe the laundry can be managed. Instead of doing what I want, I’m huddled in a ball with my heating pad and a book, thinking that a nap would be a wonderful thing.
I really wish this chondritis would just go away.
This is probably politically incorrect and I don’t give a fuck.
I have a “friend” who is an alcoholic. She fell off the wagon 4 years ago, after 17 years of sobriety. It’s been nothing but drama since. She won’t admit that she’s also addicted to ativan, klonopin, pain killers – any drug she can get her hands on. Denial, denial, denial.
And I’m sick of it, I could give a shit at this point if she drinks herself into the hospital again. She’s ruined every vestige of friendship that ever existed with me – and I used to consider her a good friend. She’s destroyed that, and she doesn’t seem to care.
Yeah, I’m supposed to be supportive and not toss her lies in her face because that makes her want to drink. Well, fuck that shit.
Suziecreamcheese Sings the Blues 
