Okay, I can’t be THAT uncool…

…OR CAN I?

Brand About Town has graciously asked me to hostess a party for their “Girlfriend’s Guide to Gaming” promotion of the new Nintendo DSi handheld. Some other lovely lady bloggers have done these in their hometowns and it looks like they had a blast. I’m really flattered that I was asked to host. And seriously? Nintendo party? Squee!!!

Tiny blip.

“Girlfriend’s Guide to Gaming” is obviously targeting a female audience; therefore, my invitees must be female. And I’m coming to the scary realization that even though I was born and raised in the St. Louis area, I don’t know many girls in this town anymore. Most of my friends are boys.* And complicating this is the fact that one of my two good girl friends has a wedding to be in that weekend and the other is on-call to work the All Star game.

And I’ve realized on perusal of my Facebook friends that the girls I actually consider to be friends (i.e.: I really care what their updates say) don’t live here.

I’m going to try and get the date changed so my good friends can come at least. The other little quandary is the fact that the girl friends I DO have come from different parts of my life and don’t really know one another. I might take the “bring a friend” angle to get the numbers up, meet new people, and encourage mingling. It’s also an awesome chance for me to try and gather some of the previously un-met St. Louis lady bloggers together and get to know them. And what better way to do that than with food, drink, and Guitar Hero?

Tonight I’m going to holler at the girls in the St. Louis group on 20-Something Bloggers to see what they’re up to the weekend of July 11th.**

Still feeling uncool, though.
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* Because I heart boys.
** Join my group! Join my group! LOVE ME!

On Monday I mentioned a few things that people say on birthdays that really get on my nerves. I forgot to mention the other annoying bit – and that’s when they don’t say anything at all.

Even Tim, who forgets his own birthday sometimes, remembered mine and took a few seconds to send me a two-word text. And it’s not like the person who has been my best friend for three years was off backpacking in the woods with no cell service. It’s not like there was even a decent excuse. Seriously, why not just say “Oh, I thought your birthday was TUESDAY!” like everyone else who honestly forgets from time to time? Nope. Just “I was busy and didn’t have time.”

So that kind of stung.

I know this sounds petty – I know everyone forgets things sometimes. But I think that at the bottom of it all, the thing that annoys me about this situation today is the rude awakening. You see, this particular time with this particular person makes me especially sad because it really makes me feels like this is the end of the part of my life in which she really wanted to be there. I don’t feel that now. It’s all been falling through the cracks somehow, slowly but surely. Unreturned calls and refused invitations can only go on so long before they really make a girl feel pushed out. She has a different life now and I could blame the changes on a dozen different things, but there’s no point in laying blame anymore. At the end of the day, what remains is the inescapable fact that there’s not much room in that life for me anymore.

She asked me to go to lunch today as a belated birthday apology, but I said no. I was mad and didn’t want to pout or say mean things. I didn’t want to say anything. Lately we haven’t had that much to talk about anyway. When we do talk, the things we say sometimes seem contrived or fake, as though we want to convince each other – and ourselves – that things are still the way they were.

I’ll still keep her secrets because I still have a few of them that no one else knows. I’ll always love her for helping me through some of the worst times in my life. And I’ll still say “She’s doing fine” when people at work ask about her, because that’s what I want for her – even though I should be honest and say “I have no idea,” because most of the time I really don’t know.

Relationships come and go. Lives change, paths diverge, and some losses are inevitable. But I miss that friendship we had. I miss my friend.

I became friends with Tim this summer. It was a long path from our nasty breakup (two years ago this week, wow) to an actual friendship, with a few layovers in FWB-Land in between. When our best friends’ marriage began breaking up, Tim and I found ourselves thrown into identical situations with our friends and while they were falling apart, he and I had something to share that ended up with us in a much better relationship.

And then of course, E.

Tim and E met for the first time last winter and they got along okay. Like ex-boyfriends do, Tim always thought that the guys I dated weren’t good enough. He was fine with E at first, but in the early days of an improving friendship, I made the critical mistake of calling him once after E and I fought last spring, and it was all downhill from there. E was suddenly the devil to him and nothing he did was right.

E and I broke up and Tim was pleased that I was rid of such a terrible, terrible guy. Then when we got back together and Tim was skeptical, to say the least. For the first few months of the E and Me Do-Over, he was constantly saying “Are you REALLY serious about this?” and “I can’t believe you took him back” and other stuff in a similar vein. He couldn’t believe that we were doing things with each other’s families again (because that is serious shit, I say), so when he called me a few weeks ago and I told him I was with E at his mom’s house in Michigan, I was a bit surprised when he asked:

“What nights is E off work?”

I told him. “Why?”

“We have a pool league that plays on Thursdays.”

He wants E to play pool with him? Huh? “But he works on Thursdays.”

“Yeah, that’s why I was checking. We need a girl to kind of round out our numbers and I wanted to ask you but I didn’t want to have to take you away from him if it was going to be on one of his nights off.”

Whaaaat?

After I picked up my jaw from the floor, I protested about my absolute lack of pool prowess and he explained the way the APA scores so teams need people of all skill levels – even mine. He filled me in on some of the details and told me to ask E if it was okay. “I hope he doesn’t mind because it would be really cool if you could play, but let me know and it’s cool if you can’t.”

E was fine with it. Of course he doesn’t love the idea of me hanging out with my ex-boyfriend for hours every week, but he knows that he has to trust me and so he sent me off with a kiss and some sort of just-try-and-hit-the-ball-straight advice on the first night.

“How was it?” he asked me later.

“Meh,” I replied. “I lost, of course. But I had fun, I guess.”

“Any cute boys there?” he teased.

“There was one who talked to me a lot,” I said, teasing back. “But he looks like a 12 year-old with a beard. He looks like that High School Musical guy.”

“Should I be jealous?”

“I’m not a pedophile and beards aren’t my thing, so no.”

The next week when I went back, I checked in with Tim to see when I was going to play. “You don’t have to worry about <dude> anymore, by the way,” he added after telling me to chalk up at 8:30.

“Huh?”

“He was talking about you like crazy after last week,” he said, not making eye contact. “Asked if you were single and stuff. And I said no.” He made a scribble on the score sheet.

“Good, thanks.”

“You seem really happy with E and guys like <dude> are just bad news. If he doesn’t respect that, tell me and I’ll make him back off.”

“That’s really sweet of you… especially ’cause you don’t even like E.”

“It’s pretty obvious that you’re really happy with him and he’s treating you right this time.” He still won’t look up at me.

“I am. And he is.”

Tim finally lifted his head. “Try to get at least one ball in tonight, okay?” he grunted.

I think that was Tim-ish for ‘I approve.’ And I did win one of my four games that night… only because the other girl scratched on the 8-ball, but hey. The night was full of miracles.

Vacation this year seemed a bit off. I was sick the entire time (and who doesn’t love that?) so a lot of it passed in a blur. However, in between Kleenex and shots of Cepacol, it looked something like this:

Friday:

Discovering the beauty of the borrowed iPass while navigating the Chicago suburbs to Jenn’s house.

Starting work on redesigning Jenn’s blog.

Golden Tee – a 91 foot putt!

Cold medicine, cold medicine…

Saturday:

Shopping with Jenn and Jess and getting a few sweet deals at Banana Republic

Meeting E’s executive chef friend at his restaurant and gorging on all sorts of food I can’t pronounce (free!) while waiting for E to arrive.

E getting to Chicago 8 hours late.

E getting us kicked out of a bar because he was drunk and kept “forgetting” that you can’t smoke in bars in Chicago. Me punching him on the sidewalk.

Cold medicine, cold medicine, cold medicine….

Sunday:

Lou Malnati’s deep-dish pizza.

Horseshoe Casino.

E loudly referring to me as his future wife and betting the craps table that he’d propose to me on the spot if he rolled a three.

E rolling a four. Me sighing in relief in between coughs.

Coldmedicinecoldmedicinecoldmedicine…

Monday:

Driving to Holland, Michigan while doped up on cold medicine.

Seeing E’s mom and hanging out with his high school friends.

Toothache begins.

Cold medicine coma.

Tuesday:

Hauling E’s butt down to the Secretary of State’s office to get some papers he needs to resolve The Legal Issue That Shall Not Be Named.

Chicago hot dogs and gyros at Mr. Kozak’s.

Spending all afternoon running iTunes backups for friend.

Toothache worsens.

Passing out on friend’s couch at 9:30 pm.

Cold medicine coma, coughing fits, near death.

Wednesday:

Driving home for 8 hours, still slightly hopped-up on cold medicine.

Toothache feels marginally better.

Checking odometer: 1,062 miles on the new car without a glitch.

Falling in own bed, coughing like cat with a hairball, passing out.

———————–

On Thursday I came back to work, still sniffling and coughing but feeling a bit better overall. My toothache was still bugging me though, and as one of those bad, bad people who hasn’t gone to the dentist for five years, I was getting pretty concerned. I’ve had intermittent minor toothaches for years, but the pain on the left side of my face was freaking me out, so I grudgingly called the office and they agreed to see me yesterday afternoon.

And just in case you didn’t know, your teeth should NOT be in your sinuses.

See the maxillary sinuses? See how high they are in your cheeks? When they fill up with goo, that’s why your face hurts around the eyes when you have a sinus infection.

See how your teeth should end below the maxillary sinus cavity? It appears that mine don’t. The roots of my molars are actually INSIDE my sinuses, according to my x-rays. So they hurt when the sinuses fill up with goo. Even the dentist grimaced a little bit while he was explaining to me that he wouldn’t touch those roots with a ten-foot pole. The prognosis isn’t bad – it’s just painful but not actually bad for my health. If I continue to have sinus infections and the pain gets unbearable or I experience nerve problems then I guess they do something icky inside my cheek to fix it.

I did not accomplish ALL of my vacation goals (no Bears shirt – I bought myself some cute cords instead) but I did refrain from getting drunk and hitting on boys. So that was my vacation, and all was not wasted. How are you?

There’s a line in “The Devil Wears Prada” (movie) that I just love to steal when someone is sick. I refer to that person as “an incubus of viral plague” and it sounds so haughty-funny and people always laugh. I’m no Meryl Streep, but I used it on E when he had the flu and he even thought it was funny.

But it’s hard to laugh when you yourself are said incubus and your throat is ablaze with a raging inferno of fiery germs that no amount of cepacol or pectin can extinguish. Happy New Year’s Eve, indeed.

I’m feeling better this evening though. Tomorrow I’m off to Chicago (woo!) for a day or two and then to the Great White North of Holland, Michigan for the annual rounds to see E’s family and friends. I kind of love that even though we did break up for awhile this summer, E and I are repeating things now so I can call it our “annual” whatever. Now we’ve had 2 Thanksgivings and 2 Christmases and 2 New Year’s Eves (neither of which we got to spend together) and this will be our second family-visiting Michigan trip. Awwwww…

To Do in Chicago:

Buy a Bears shirt (or a Bears something)

Shopping with Jenn

Dinner with blog friends*

Work my mad skills as Wordpress web designer for a friend’s blog

Buy some sort of suck-up present for E’s mom

To NOT Do in Chicago:

Get smashed

Pick up boys

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* Chicago blogger friends, if I forgot to add you to my watch-out-I’m-back-in-town email list due to my NyQuil-induced haze, I’m sorrreee! Please email me if you want to hang out.