Touching bases

I know that my usual ranting about being a Mom has suddenly screamed to a halt but lately, I've been reflecting on the past. I don't know what the catalyst is, but I'm letting it run its course.
There have been a lot of people in my life that have been a part of it that are no longer in it. Friends that I lost touch with. Friends that chose to walk away. And every so often, I wonder where some of them are. Because I miss them. Because I'm curious about how they've evolved X number of years later. Because I want to tell them something I didn't and should have told them then.
In the last few days, I've been looking up info on various people. Two very close male friends who dumped me when I got married and when I had Boy (respectively - the reasons they chose to discontinue being as we called it, my gay husbands). A former coworker who shared an enthusiasm of mine but broke off our friendship when I 'won' the game she thought we were playing (I had a job that paid better then I got married). An ex from college who fundamentally changed my life then left me because he couldn't get into my pants. A friend from high school who made me feel good about myself when so many were making me feel like a fat freak of nature. Another friend from high school who was constantly pulling my cookies out of the fire because I was so naive.
The coworker was what we would call high maintenance. She came from a well off family and lived in a nice part of town with her parents. She was in her mid 30s when I got married and told me she refused to leave her parents home until she could find a place where she didn't have to share walls, had a great view of the ocean all for $600 a month. Dragon Queen, as her other friends called her, would regale us with stories of her relationships with guys she'd meet through her latest enthusiasm but they never seemed to extend beyond a few weeks. DQ is now living in an apartment not far from where we used to be wage slaves. There is no ocean and I have a feeling she is sharing a wall.
Gay Husband 1 is living about five miles away from DQ. When he graduated from university two years before me, he fell into a job in our field completely by accident. At the time, he was working as a cashier at a local supermarket chain making decent coin. He took a two week vacation from the job and literally, was handed a job working for minor ducats in our field. He wasn't sure he could survive on minor ducats and just before the end of the two weeks, a miracle happened. There was a strike and he was co-opted into a union job that paid him MORE than he made as a cashier. He quit his apron job and spent 6 months making major money. When the strike ended, he spent a month making minor ducats before he got a job making money. He was at the same job 10 years later when he cooly gave me back the key to Husband and my house and told me that instead of coming to our wedding, he was in the same town partying with his posse. I was shattered.
Gay Husband 2 has managed to completely fall off the radar. I found his parents but he's somehow eluded my various searches. We were former coworkers who comforted each other through his coming out, various disasterous relationships we both had, changes of habitat and such. But once I told him Husband and I were starting a family, he said he wouldn't be friends with me since I could no longer dedicate myself to him solely. And he was as good as his word.
My X married less than a year after dumping me to a woman he met three weeks after dumping me. He invited me to his wedding and was actually upset I refused to go. We stayed friends as long as he could feel better about my being depressed about his never going to be mine. (Actually, he called all my friends after he told me he was getting married to make sure I wouldn't kill myself. They all called to bet on when they would divorce. Oddly enough, I said he'd never leave her since they would be wealthy and she'd screw him in the courtroom.) They bought a house down in SoCal and I finally told him that our friendship was bullshit and that was it. He's now living an hour away. I hope he never sees my listing on a social networking site we're both on.
The two friends in high school - both guys - were both really popular. I was this fat, bad perm wearing, brace faced girl with glasses who was the girl the guys came to for girl advice. My Dad had to ask his boss' son to take me to my prom. I just wasn't that attractive or that sure of myself (I have an Asian Mom who is petite - to her I was Godzilla in a Jessica McClintock dress). These two guys treated me with a certain amount of respect and gentlemanlyness that other girls got - the girls who wore the in jeans that I couldn't afford or fit into (okay, my parents were cheap about buying me clothes). I wrote them emails through Classmates telling them that I hope life had rewarded them for the kindness they exhibited in high school to the misfit that I was.
(Husband doesn't believe I was that big of a misfit. I can't find my yearbooks to confirm what a mess I was and my senior portrait makes me look like a supermodel. I had to tell him the story about how I went on a school trip where I was sitting in a room with three guy friends shooting the bull and one started telling about how he was having sex with a girl I knew. In graphic detail. One guy looked up and saw me slackjawed. He stopped the discussion, asked that I be escorted back to my room so I wouldn't be offended. I wonder what happened to him? What was his name? Kevin? Andrew? Geoff? I was one of the guys. With boobs that were overshadowed by my stomach.)
I think as we get older, we either forget or romanticize the past. The sharp edges get softer and the rose coloured glasses make a moment seem sweeter. No, I haven't forgotten how X dumped me and how he asked me to go Christmas shopping with him after he got married so he could use me as a sizing model for his wife's clothes. I bet this would've shocked her to know that I picked out her ensemble he bought her for their first Christmas as young marrieds. Or the fact that DQ really hated the fact that I bought a mutual friend dinner who was still in school after I was making sweet money - DQ complained that I couldn't afford it until I showed her my pay stub showing the amount I made in six months - what she made in a year - and she lost her nut. Or the last, horrendous confrontation GH2 had with me where he raved at me to the point where I could feel my uterus cramping ominously so I packed up my car of the stuff I had at his house and left without a backwards glance.
No, I'm not going to forget the slights. And I'm not going to be contacting them. (Though I wish I could tell GH2 that DQ finally moved out of her parents house.) Let's just say I'm curious to say where life has taken them in the last decade. Or so.
The other two friends from high school, well, if they never email back, I'm fine with that. I just hope they get my message and are feeling good about something they did once that was unselfish in a selfish time.

What becomes the broken hearted?

I am fortunate enough to have two best friends: Eloise, who I have known for over 20 years and Hollie who I've known for 15 years. They are the best friends a gal could have. They are my touchstones to sanity when things have been completely out of control in my life.
The differences in our lives have never mattered (we all come from different socioeconomic backgrounds, cultures, religions) until a few years ago when I got married. Eloise had been with her boyfriend at that point for nearly 10 years whereas Hollie had been single for most of the last 10 years with sporadic dating. It took awhile for them to adjust to my life as a married chick but they sprung back. With Eloise, I think it made her a little more aware that her boyfriend's never ending line about how he didn't need a piece of paper to tell the world that he loved her.
Once Boy came along, the divide grew between me and Eloise. It was about that time that Eloise found herself becoming more oppressed by her boyfriend, Ken. Ken is an artist. Or in his mind, an Artist. He does big, expressive canvasses and I think his stuff veers between Jackson Pollock and Matisse. He believes that you give it all for art and you don't take a job to settle. You dedicate yourself to the art - and take side jobs to pay for it until you Hit It Big. So for the last 10 years they've lived in a duplex that looks like it'll collapse in a good earthquake that they bought with money they didn't have scrabbling for the dollars to pay for the mortgage, the various fixes that they patch because if they get just enough to fix it, Ken uses the money to buy something he 'absolutely' needs for his latest art project.
Ken is a good guy but single minded. He is obsessed with his own needs and believes completely in art. I've had some interesting conversations at gallery openings about the art displayed that wasn't his. For some reason, he takes my critiques seriously (maybe because I do know the difference between Monet and Warhol) so he doesn't have a huge problem with my friendship with Eloise. Passion is where he works from - be passionate or don't bother to talk to him.
Eloise is a far less intense individual. She is more of a country mouse to his city mouse. Her art is more on the side of native art. It's very good and better than 90% of the stuff you see at art and wine festivals. She would make more money off it if she would do these festivals but Ken has talked her out of it saying that the art should be in galleries which isn't her cup of tea.
She is also a realist. They have a mortgage and bills plus her 10+ year old car needs hundreds of dollars of work every couple of months. She has a job working at a museum that doesn't cover everything, but it's steady and gives her insurance. Ken thinks she is a sell out. He has gotten angry with her for not telling her bosses that she cannot work on the days of his gallery openings so she can stand by him to tell her that of course, the canvasses will all sell. Which they don't all sell.
In the last three years, Eloise has become distant. I can't get her on the phone more than a couple of times a year. In the last year, I haven't talked to her more than twice. And always when Ken is not home or if she's out running errands. She didn't send a birthday card to me or even a Christmas card. Which is out of character. I figured she had written me off because I had told her that I had my doubts about Ken's relationship with her.
Then she called today. She was grateful that I hadn't written her entirely off. She and Ken were breaking up - but Ken didn't realise it. Ken thinks that the couples therapy they are starting will help her realise how she needed change for their relationship to work. The fact that she has done everything within reason to keep his dream alive is beside the point. Some time this spring, she is going to move out of their duplex but she needs to figure out where she wants to go with her life. Find her path.
What do you tell someone who is just figuring out that she has spent the last 15 years with someone who still doesn't understand her? Who refuses to understand her? Who is still a hurt 14 year old boy who can't understand why his Dad is calling him a 'pansy' for looking at art books rather than building a go cart?
There isn't anything to say. You just have to let them talk to you. Let them come sit on your couch and play with your kid, eat cookies with Coke and say nothing or everything.

Working Mommy is exhausted

My friend Valentine went back to work after taking the Christmas to New Year's week off. She has one child, a boy around my Boy's age. They are best friends. She is a research scientist for one of the big biotech firms around here and puts in a boatload of hours each day. Her job is really intense and really interesting (even though I don't understand half of it).
During the week off, she let her nanny take the time off to visit the nanny's family in San Diego. Valentine was in charge. She was cooking, cleaning (the cleaning lady was also off during that week) and taking care of her son. On the first day back at work, she emailed me saying that it was too hard to do all those things and she was grateful that her housekeeper and nanny were back at work (the cleaning lady comes by once a week). Her actual sentence was "thank God the nanny is back to do this!"
I had a good laugh and told Husband about it. He asked, "Does she realise that this is what you do every day?" We both know she didn't even think about the fact that my life is about cleaning, cooking, watching Boy and trying to keep Husband happy. Valentine is the woman who constantly asks me if I'm sure I don't want to go back to work. Of course, every time I've been at a party with her friends, they all are overachievers with South American nannies/housekeepers who can't understand why I'd give up all that Gloria Steinem and company fought for.
On another note, Nosy Nancies can be male.
Today, Boy and I were out running errands that we couldn't do during this weekend's nasty storming. As we went out to buy Boy new jeans, he decided to dump the contents of his sippy cup all over his sweatpants. It appeared that he had peed through from the front to the back of his crotch. After telling the cashier that no, my son didn't get ignored in his request for potty time but that he had spilled his sippy cup all over his crotch (and getting the 'likely story' look from her), Boy and I went out to our car. As I hoisted him out of the cart into the car, a man sitting in the car in front of us spied Boy's wet front and rolled down his window as I returned from putting the cart in the cart corral.
"Your son peed his pants."
"He poured the contents of his sippy cup onto his sweats."
"No, he definitely peed his pants."
"No, he poured water onto his pants. He thinks it's funny."
"It looks like he peed his pants. You should change his pants."
"I'll get right on that."
The man looked less than pleased at my dry final comment. I got into my car, started it up and reversed out of the spot. Boy was waving his almost empty sippy cup around like a little mad man was we drove out of the parking lot. I wished that the windows on our car were less tinted so Nosy Neil would've seen what boy was doing.

When you don't say no to a kid (poor Britney and Jamie Lynn)

Britney Spears' latest cry for help is getting a lot of media attention but no one has the balls to put the girl into a tough love detox program. She needs to get off the booze and drugs that she is self medicating herself into whatever state she wants to be in. She also needs a long couple of years with a psychiatrist who will tell her that she needs to just figure out who she is and what she needs from her life - except for a normal relationship with her parents. Because it sounds like she ain't gonna see that from them
I feel bad for the young woman. I have a hard time typing those words because she is really isn't a young woman. She is a little girl screaming that she wants to be loved completely but the whole world but finds that it isn't filling that emptiness in her soul. You want to slap some sense into her then give her cookies and milk and make her take a long nap. My fear is that because no one around her is willing to get her the help she so sincerely needs and the next time she is in the headlines, we're going to see she has overdosed and killed herself. And everyone will say they could see it coming - from her inner circle of leeches to the public.
Her kid sister with her teen pregnancy isn't doing much better. She's watched her sister spiral out of control and now, she has started her own legacy of insanity. It's almost like she wants a child so that she has someone who will love her. Because she believes that a child will love her absolutely but doesn't understand how wild being a parent is.
But then again, neither does Britney. She has never been a child let alone been told how to be an adult. She is acting out on a life that she doesn't understand. She has two children - the most important production that she has ever created - that she figures will fill the void in her that no one has been able to fill. The thing is your kids can only fill so much of that void. Filling the rest is up to you. She needs someone to take her by the hand and tell her that it's all right to be angry at your parents for not being parents but you have to let it go some time.
Hopefully someone can get passed the enablers and leeches that are allowing her to kill herself to drag her out of her mess. Get her the help she needs. And I don't mean Scientology funded help. I mean the kind of help that Tom Cruise says isn't good for you, glib bastard.