. . . And This Is Why I Tend To Be a Rock, Tend To Be An Island

The past few days I’ve found myself corresponding with old friends quite a bit. Some little tidbits from these conversations:

• A friend who married in 2004 (on my way to the reception, I crashed my rental car—joy) has come out of the woodwork after more than two years in seclusion. Get this: She would send out Christmas cards without her address on them. When another friend asked if she had perhaps forgotten to add an address label to my card, I informed her that my married friend had done it to everyone. “Oh!” was my friend’s reaction. However, married friend has been corresponding with me, and it is quite plain she’s out of the loop. She did not know that a mutual friend of ours just had a baby girl (I really, really need to get on the ball and send this kid a “Welcome to the World” gift) or that another mutual friend now had twin girls.
• Friend who wanted to know if maybe the address label had been forgotten is now getting married. She is the younger of two sisters, and to be honest, her sister’s a nutcase. A young Republican lawyer—possibly the worst combination in the world to anyone with a smidgen of liberal ideals—it always seemed to me like she was competing with her sister for attention. My friend is definitely the dominant sister, even though she’s younger—she’s the pretty, popular one to her stodgy, conservative hermana.  When my friend got engaged, I automatically thought to myself that her sister would not be far behind. She didn’t seem that happy with her boyfriend (the whole deal seemed kind of forced when my friend described the relationship to me), but I knew, knew that she’d be getting a ring (by pouting and crying, no doubt). Sure enough, I found out yesterday that my friend’s sister is engaged and is getting married in November. My friend’s getting married in August. Um, not to be an ass, but couldn’t her sister have waited like two more months? She’s apparently stealing my friend’s thunder by being a maid-of-honor-zilla and a bridezilla. I have to say, I feel sorry for my friend. A woman who actually bursts into tears when Reagan dies has to be psycho. I’m sorry, but this woman’s my age—if she was paying any attention in the 1980s, she wouldn’t be crying over Reagan. And she wouldn’t be competing with her younger sister over weddings. I hope her husband can stand her.

Dorkus, by the way—if you get married first, I promise I will not try to get married in the same year. I will utterly devote myself to corrupting you morally as much as possible before your wedding, just like any good maid of honor should be doing. And if I ever do get married, you have permission to slap me if I get to the bridezilla stage. However, IP, if you’re the groom, you do not get to slap me.  Them’s the rules.

• Another friend is getting ready to graduate from her grad school program, and is sending out feelers for jobs. I am not in the arts (and was never really in), so I’m not of use to her. But I did congratulate her on being so close to finishing, and got a whopper of an email in return. Boy problems, mostly. Those are always delightful, no? To be honest, this friend tends to choose the most complicated relationships to be in—there was fiance who was bi and obviously regretted asking her to marry him; there was the older man with a woman and child on the side who might’ve given my friend an STD (wasn’t that a delightful call while I was in Utah?); now there’s the guy who has chronic fatigue syndrome—they live 30 miles apart and she sees him only once or twice a month, and now he’s moving to be closer with his family.  I understand wanting to support someone, but it’s probably not going to work, and she’s trying too hard to hold on.  Am I sympathetic?  Of course.  Will I give her advice to move on?  Good question.  This is the friend who gets mad at me when I basically tell her she can’t stay a whole week with me in the DC area, so she might not take my advice seriously or happily. Hey, a woman’s got things to do, places to be, people to see! Or a woman’s got to get to her workout dates with her boyfriend, have random bar nights, and just relax at home without having to entertain. Because dears, I suck at entertaining. IP claims he’s not outgoing, but if he isn’t, then I’m a total loss.

I sometimes wonder why I haven’t made a concerted effort to make female friends in the DC area. I should at some point—there are some things that only women can understand, and though IP does a great job listening to me, there are many things he doesn’t need to hear (such as my latest shopping expedition tales). However, communicating with my friends yesterday absolutely exhausted me—and then I’m not so puzzled as to why I’m taking a break from our self-induced female drama.

However, another message to Dorkus—you should totally move here so we can bitch and drink. I know you sometimes team up with IP against me, but you’re mostly my ally. Right? Right.