My Mum already sent a card with a forged signature on my behalf, as it turns out.

It's not that there will be guilt trips or repercussions or whatever - and, to be honest, my grandmother doesn't seem particularly interested in what WeeSisterJay or I are doing/where we are at any given time (we exist either to be an audience to her vague rambles about her carers, or else to be boasted about in an impersonal and rambling way to said carers, but what we're actually like as people, or what we're doing with our lives, is of very little interest to her. I think she babysat for me maybe ten times in my life, despite living 3 streets away - but she's fairly convinced that she helped my mother raise both of us, took us to school and generally had some kind of relationship with us.)

I'm just disappointed in myself, you know? I realise that's a fairly pointless emotion to some extent, but, Jesus, it's all of a piece with so many other things where I let people down/fail to communicate/generally suck at being organised or thinking about other people. I mean, sometimes I can be thoughtful, but I can also be just terribly self-involved and feckless, and I do hate that about myself. I've managed to lose the best friend I had in Thailand because of this over the summer - because I sort of curled up in a ball for a week and dropped off the radar, and she freaked out and then felt humiliated for giving a damn, and decided that she couldn't be doing with someone so unreliable. Which is fair enough, but rather gutting.

I don't know whether my Nana even noticed that I didn't phone - she's losing the plot these days. But I'm ashamed of myself, regardless.

Ok, Fay, you screwed up. You are a flawed person. Love you anyway. You are still fabulous, and you still love your grandmother. And she still loves you (to the extent that she is capable of, in her own flawed way).

Is it possible to reframe the self-involved, hedgehog-like fecklessness as Stewing In Your Own Juices, or something else productive and yet needing-the-alone-time? Perhaps as you feel yourself needing to do that, you can send out warnings to friends that it is coming on, and that you will come out of it as soon as you can, but for them to not be too worried about it? Or, even if you can't send up a warning about imminent stewing, at least as you get close enough that it could become an issue, you can let them know that it does happen now and then, and they should not take it as a reflection of you not valuing a friendship?

curled up in a ball for a week and dropped off the radar, and she freaked out and then felt humiliated for giving a damn, and decided that she couldn't be doing with someone so unreliable. Which is fair enough, but rather gutting.

No. Not fair. Anyone who can't live without another person's surface to reflect off of for an entire week isn't a friend. A friend waits until you're ready to talk about it and then offers ice cream, chocolate and a good scotch. Unless there was more to it and I refuse to believe that because I have never seen you be anything less than generous and giving without even being asked. Give to me cluestick, I fix her.

Huh. Interesting. Adam Savage tells how Discovery got bullied by credit card companies into keeping Myth Busters away from exploring how hackable RFID chips are: [link]

There's a sing-along version opening, too -- they put the lyrics at the bottom of the screen so that the audience can sing along.

We just got this. I put "Sing Along" up on the sign this morning (with the help of a tall employee thank-goodness. I hate climbing up on the ladder) even though it says Sing-A-Long on all our promo materials. I refuse to accept this spelling even though I typed it into Google and did not get a "do you mean sing-along?" prompt. Apparently people think this is OK even though the singing is not long. sheesh!

some of the best birthday cards are belateds. I once sent a friend a belated card even though it was on time because it was the best card they had in the store. Inside I wrote, "sorry this is on time."

A friend waits until you're ready to talk about it and then offers ice cream, chocolate and a good scotch.

Wants SailAweigh to be my friend.

(((((Fay)))))

she freaked out and then felt humiliated for giving a damn

Maybe she had a crush on you and was embarrassed by it. I'm thinking that feeling humiliated for caring for another person is her own issue and I feel sorry for her that she felt that way, and sorry that it hurt you.

I get like that, closed off and away. I warn Greg, now, or he tells me what I'm doing and I tell him I'm sorry but it's going to happen for a while. It's not really fair to the other person, but now he knows it's not something he's done wrong and we muddle along.

It seems like life overwhelmed you, and I wish it wouldn't and I wish I had a way for you to turn it around so it's not your "fault" but a thing that happened that maybe you can figure out a way to avoid or manage so that you don't feel so badly about it.

((Fay)) I do this too.

I actually just reconnected (isn't Facebook interesting) with a girl I felt I did this to in High School, and she told me that she just assumed I had less in common with her than in the past and still thought I was a nice person-- she didn't think I blew her off at all, just that we grew apart. Now we are playing Scramble!

Fay Fay Fay, just blame it on the international date line. It IS her birthday where YOU are.

True or not, nobody can keep track of that shit so she'll totally buy it.

curled up in a ball for a week and dropped off the radar, and she freaked out and then felt humiliated for giving a damn, and decided that she couldn't be doing with someone so unreliable. Which is fair enough, but rather gutting.

No. Not fair. Anyone who can't live without another person's surface to reflect off of for an entire week isn't a friend. A friend waits until you're ready to talk about it and then offers ice cream, chocolate and a good scotch. Unless there was more to it and I refuse to believe that because I have never seen you be anything less than generous and giving without even being asked. Give to me cluestick, I fix her.

Sail got here first. I'm sorry, but -- a week? *Only* a week? Your need to curl up in a ball -- mental health, emotional downtime, whatever you needed -- is WAY more important than your friend being humiliated because she worried about you. No offense intended to your friend, but -- WHO gets humiliated for worrying about someone? Even when it turns out that you didn't die/get kidnapped by Fay slavers/overdose, then what the concerned party says is, "Well, I'm glad you're okay, because my overprotective instincts kicked in! Want to get a martini and talk about it?"

What the friend *doesn't* do is make YOUR mental health about HER.

I'm sorry if I'm slagging on your good friend (or, I guess, ex-), but seriously, that is not appropriate behavior.

And I'm saying all that because it seems like your estimation of yourself has taken a few pokes in the eye over the past few months, and it just doesn't need to be so. These things -- your friend getting shirty, missing your Grand's birthday -- are emphatically NOT reasons to slag on yourself. Your friend behaved badly. You were not in the wrong there. And, seriously, *everyone* forgets their grandparents' birthdays now and again (some of us made it a yearly practice ::cough::).

You didn't punch your student in their wee faces, you didn't pee on the Thai flag or a photo of their King, you didn't abscond with the church funds or run off with a senator's wife. There is no need for you to be so hard on yourself. Your view of yourself as self-involved to the detriment of other people is simply not true.