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.

Sail and Steph said perfectly what I was framing as an answer so I just deleted it and will add a "What Steph, and Sail, said".

you didn't abscond with the church funds or run off with a senator's wife.

Now that sounds like fun.

you didn't abscond with the church funds or run off with a senator's wife.

Now that sounds like fun.

Surely you know what movie that's from...

(No fair googling!)

At Disney. Weather is awful because of Hanna. Native Floridian girl is laughing because it's just a little rain.

The love and support and truthiness of Bitches is a thing of beauty.

Cool discovery today! One of my client's tech people that I talk to all the time is a totally adorkable nerd and I didn't know it until today. He lives west of New Orleans right on the dotted line that says CAT 4 or 5 hurricane coming now. So I have been backing up his databases and critical stuff to our servers here in addition to the external drive and tape backups he is taking with him tomorrow when he has to evacuate. Scary shit really. He can't be sure his office or his home will even be there when he returns. One of the doctors is staying through the weekend on call and will unplug stuff before he evacuates.

Anyway, in the course of coordinating my additional backup of the data, he mentions he is also a weather nerd and has a website where he is tracking various sources, and hopes to have time to hook up a camera before he evacuates.

Name of site: Frodeaux's - not just a weblog, a nerdlog

I think I am smitten.