And then we came to the end...

I put on a good drunk Saturday night, could you tell?

I had gone to the Mexican joint up the road with Angie for margaritas and cheese dip (it was her birthday, it's not like I could pass up the opportunity), and when we got home, Jimi had picked up a case of cheap beer, and I was all PARTY ON!

I sat here at my laptop after Angie left, wearing earbuds and jamming out to Ben Harper and The Beatles and Allison Kruass.  Jimi said the house was completely silent, except every now and then I'd blast out some lyrics, or do a drum solo on the coffee table.  It was fun.

I was feeling all nostalgic and shit, the way I do when I've got a good buzz and too much brain time.  I was thinking about how many awesome people I have in my life, and how lucky I am for that.  I posted to Facebook:

Natalie Anderson

If you love me, could you tell me so now?

 ·  · Saturday at 11:00pm near Louisville

And the love poured in - well, mostly after I went to bed, but it came.  Steve and Maria were over last night and they were all, "What was that about?" and I told them how Jimi was already in bed, so immediate gratification wasn't available, so I went to the next-best source.  And that I was drunk.

What I didn't tell them, and what I haven't told Jimi yet, is that I wrote to Kat after I posted that status.  I know, I know.  Don't lecture me.  As soon as I hit send I was like "Oh, Natalie, what the fuck?"  I don't know what's been prompting me to write to her all of a sudden, twice in as many weeks.  Nostalgia?  The holidays?  Those fucked up dreams I keep having?  Whatever the reason, I did it.  And I regret it, thoroughly, and I won't do it again.  Promise.


I woke up Sunday morning and read her response, and I've thought about her words a lot in the last 36 hours.  I've considered posting them here, for the sake of full disclosure, if nothing else.  I don't want to present a false image of myself, and her words, while I want to say they're complete bullshit, they're not at all, and maybe it's only fair to share a short version of her side of it?  To show you the Natalie she knows and loathes?  To show you another side of the person I am, another facet that makes up my personality?


The truth, though, is that I won't read them again.  Once was more than enough, thank you very much.  She said I was the most self-centered person she's ever known, that I was a bad friend because I often left her with Date-Rape Joe so I could hook up with his friend (for the record, she was never date-raped, that I'm aware of.  I remember the time that one creepy dude talked her into trying dip and she got really sick and puked, but she never got date-raped), that I never could be bothered to travel with her, that I care so much about myself that I can't focus on anyone around me.  She spat a list of my character flaws at me like daggers, and each and every one hit its mark.  There's some truth in every single thing she said.  


At least I know she didn't stop being my friend because I smoked pot.

In her closing remarks, she said something about if I'm so happy, why do I keep messaging her?

Instinct told me not to respond.  My ego told me to blast back with an equally scathing psychoanalysis of my own.  She's right.  I'm happy.  Happier than ever.  And you know what?  All this happy?  It came into my life after she left it.  IS ANYONE ELSE SEEING A FUCKING LINK HERE?  Well, good for you.  It took me this long.  In the end, I wrote back to her, "I feel so much better now."  I imagine those will be our last words to each other.

And then I went and read all the awesome, kind, wonderful, loving things my friends said in response to my PAY ATTENTION TO ME Facebook post, and I felt even better.  (Because I really AM self-centered.)  And then Jimi got out of bed and kissed my face and made me coffee and I felt even better.  And then I went to Stacy's baby shower and saw generations of friends and family and felt even better.  And then Steve and Maria came over for dinner last night, and that made me feel even better.

Life just keeps on keeping on; one of these days I'll learn to roll with the punches and let things go. Till then, at least I'm done with this.



P.S.  The picture of the "Hold to the Rod" keychain I posted yesterday?  I bought that the day I went to the Washington D.C. Temple with Kat, back in 2000.  That day I had probably one of the most spiritual experiences of my life - we were walking along the Temple grounds, and suddenly, it was like there were hands on my shoulder, pushing me toward the ground, to my knees, telling me I needed to pray.  I was too shy and embarrassed to follow through with the whole dropping to my knees thing, but I grabbed Kat's hand and pulled her over to a nearby bench, and with my whole heart I begged her to pray.  She did.  She held my hands and she prayed for me.  I felt the Spirit that day.  Today, I don't know what exactly I'd call it, the feeling that touched my heart, but that day, I knew what it was.

She bought me a CTR ring that day, too, and I still wear it from time to time, usually when I'm feeling particularly reminiscent or in another must-read-everything-Mormon phase.  Anyhow, I found the phrase "hold to the rod" yesterday in my daily internet skimmings, and it reminded me of that keychain, and that day, way back when, and it felt inspired.  So there ya go.  Full circle, and all that jazz.

Hate mail makes me popular, right?

"You are a fake ass cunt."

Definitely counts as hate mail, 

I'm sure you'll agree.  

Doubly so when it's left by "Anonymous" - 

because, 

you know, 

if Kim left it, 

it'd be another thing entirely.  

Eh.  

That's all I've got to say about that. 

I just wanted to make sure you all saw it.  :)  

Here's a picture I took with my new phone:

Happy Thursday!

Holy crap the sun's not even up yet!

It's twenty till six on Friday morning.  WTF?  In case you were wondering, if you need to start your period, GUARANTEED, tell the internet you're feeling yourself up because you can't tell if your boobs are sore or not.  Or take a pregnancy test.  Works.  Every fucking time.

So I'm going to go to work early.  Or I'm going to sit here and write some bullshit till it's time to go to work, and then I'll kick my own ass for not taking advantage of the fact that I was up at five till five this morning.  Well, if we're being honest, I was up at 4 - I just didn't get out of bed till almost five, when I'd finally gave up on getting back to that dream about ...  I can't remember anymore what that dream was about.  It was weird, though, and I wanted to see what happened.

I remember what I dreamed about before I woke yesterday morning, though.  Heather Donovan.  She was this geeky (before geeky was cool) chick who went to middle school with me - The Girls and I were tortuously mean to her.  We were in the sixth grade - as I remember it, sixth grade was pretty fucking awful.  (Except that I learned the word "fuck" in the sixth grade, so that's kinda cool.)  Sixth grade was full of awkwardness and not fitting it - a bunch of hormone-laden kids bouncing off one another and trying to figure out where they fit.  We all fell into our individual roles quickly enough - my role was outcast-wannabecoolkid.  Heather was like three rungs below me on the social hierarchy scale.  She wore blue eye shadow smeared up to her eyebrows.  Her hair was thin and she pouffed her bangs into this see-through bird's-nest thing and lacquered it with hairspray so it moved in one giant piece in the wind.  (Okay, we all did that, but hers was really bad.)  She wore button-up flower-printed blouses, buttoned all the way to the top, that wreaked of her mother's particular sense of  (old-lady) style.  (Let's not discuss the fact that I discovered jeans for the first time in this same year.  For the first half of the school year,  my favorite pants were a pair of stirrup pants in some pattern that involved big yellow flowers and purple something- I don't remember what was purple in the pants, but something was, because I always wore them with a long purple shirt that I thought made me look awesome, and I never would've worn a purple shirt with those pants unless there was purple in them somewhere.)

Anyhow, back to Heather.  She showed up in my dream yesterday morning.  We were maybe at a party or something?  There was a big open room, people mingling, and then she walked through the door.  I was startled by her presence - she looked, in her face, exactly the same as the last time I saw her, but without the crunchy bangs and coke-bottle glasses.  Her hair was sleek and smooth, and her skin was clear.  Her eyes were free of the magnification of the glasses that always made her look a little googly-eyed...and they weren't held down by a gram of blue powder, either.  She was pretty.

We didn't talk beyond a "hey, good to see you" because my alarm sounded.  But in the shower, I thought of things I'd say to her if I saw her now:

"I'm sorry we were so mean to you."

"I'm sorry we put Ex-lax in that caramel cookie bar and then let you eat it."

"I'm sorry we made fun of you."

"I'm sorry we thought we were better than you."  I mean, there was a reason she was sitting at our lunch table, people; it's not like there were assigned seats.

"I hope we didn't cause any lasting damage."

Kids are mean.  We were mean.  Brutal.  I hope she's doing alright.

"Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever forgive myself for the sins I committed as a child."  I said that to Stacy not too long ago; I told her if I ever write a book, it'll be the first line.  Today, right now, I feel like I'm a pretty good person.  I try to leave a good impact wherever I go, even if it's just a smile or a few coins.  I've been a bitch, though; I've been a mean asshole, I've been cruel and vindictive.  For fuck's sake, I once convinced my 2-year old brother that he was adopted and mom and dad were going to take him back because they decided they didn't like him anymore.  When I say convinced, I mean, I only retracted my story when he started crying.

God, that brought tears to my eyes.  See what I mean?  I hate myself for that memory.  I hope Brother doesn't remember it.  Of course, is that better or worse?  That it could be seared into his psyche that he's unloved because his sister was an evil 11 year old?  Maybe it's all my fault he was all fucked up.

Stacy, too.  She and I are only 18 months apart; I treated her as if she were my minion, there for my personal enjoyment and entertainment.  About 10 years ago, she told me she'd always admired me and looked up to me; I've never been so ashamed or felt so low in my life.  I don't deserve her kindness, and sometimes, even now, I'm surprised that she wants to hang out with me or listens to my advice.

But people change.  We grow up and we figure out that our actions have consequences and we learn what empathy is and we start to not be assholes all the time.  I think Stacy and Brother have forgiven me; I imagine Heather Donovan thinks nothing of me at all.

I am my own worst critic, because I remember.

Namaste

(I'm assuming a lot of you are familiar with this story, as Katie is HUGE in the blogging world, but if not, the links are there.)

Katie Granju filed a lawsuit yesterday against two people who gave her drug-addicted son a large amount of methadone, which caused him to overdose.  Then they refused to call for medical help, which resulted in Henry's death just over a year ago, at the age of 18.

Today is my brother's birthday.  He's 22.  He could be Henry.  Their stories, they are so much the same.  My brother, too, is an addict.  My brother has done horrible things to support his habit.  My brother had been a very bad person at times.  My brother has been really hard to like for a long time.  But he is my brother, and I love him, and if someone did something that hurt him or caused his death, I'd fight like hell, too, to see justice served. Because he is my brother, and I love him, and he's a good person when he's not high or chasing a high.

On Facebook, Katie said something about how she'd made the mistake of reading the comments responding to the news story about the lawsuit...and because I could never not go look after reading something like that, I made my way to the comment section, too.

I wish I hadn't.  Why are people so mean?

I'm not copying and pasting that bullshit because it shouldn't have been posted in the first place.  I just cannot believe the callousness and heartlessness and downright cruelty people are showing toward this woman, this mother.  And Henry?  To so many, Henry was a nobody.  Henry was scum, he was unimportant, he was worthless - not because they talked with him and determined his views and opinions to be unimportant or worthless, no; Henry was an addict, he was weak, he did bad things, so Henry was a nobody.

Now, I'm not generally one to quote from the Good Book, but there's a first time for everything:

"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.' They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?' He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least among you, you did not do for me.'" Matthew 25:41-45 
 
Even if you're not a Christian, you're a shithead if you don't abide by that passage there.  Henry was someone's (Katie's) child, grandchild, brother, nephew, cousin.  But for the grace of God, he could've been YOUR child, grandchild, brother, nephew, cousin.  He was a person, with thoughts and feelings, who loved and was loved.  These people who are being sued, they let Henry choke on his own vomit and convulse for hours in the middle of the floor of their house trailer, refusing to call an ambulance for him.  And people are attacking Katie for wanting those shitheads to be held accountable?

It's easy to want to blame the victim, to say Henry was nothing.  If he just fades into the woodwork with all the other druggies, everyone can pretend that Henry wasn't JUST LIKE their son, daughter, brother, sister, cousin, niece, nephew.  If Henry was just some messed up junkie, there's no correlation between him and Todd, who's the Captain of the football team, or Jessica who's Head Cheerleader.  If Katie was a bad mom, if she just turned a blind eye and let her kid become and addict, then there's no way that'll ever happen to the child of the Patty the PTA President, because Patty really pays attention to her children.

Wake up!  The drug problem is in your back yard!  Hell, it's probably in your bathroom medicine cabinet.  But no...better to pretend this problem belongs to the margins of society and brush it away from our sight; shame the "good" victims into keeping quiet to protect themselves - there is so much guilt by association.

I've lived with this fear in the back of my mind and heart for the last few years - a fear that one day I'm going to get a tearful, hysterical phone call from my Momma or Daddy saying my brother's dead; that he's overdosed, or he was robbed and beaten horribly, or someone's thrown him from a car, or he was shanked in jail.  Drugs are really bad - they make people do really awful things - and when you've got a loved one living in that world, your imagination runs wild.  Brother's currently on an upswing of sobriety, and he's making good steps toward the future.  We're all cautiously hopeful...while we're telling ourselves we're fools for being so optimistic.  This is the hilly tightrope we walk, those of us who love an addict.

Those commenters said those horrible things about Katie and Henry for one of a few reasons:  maybe they've never known unconditional love; maybe they or someone they love have/has an addition problem about which they're in denial; or maybe they're just assholes - you've got to be a special kind of low to direct a bunch of hate and vitriol toward a grieving mother who's only trying to help get a couple drug dealers off the streets before someone else's kid dies.  Mostly I think they just can't possibly understand - they can't relate to Katie's grief, they can't relate to Henry's addiction - and what they can't understand scares them, and so they attack.
I hope Katie comes to realize this before any more of those word daggers find their mark.

Try to leave the world a better place than you found it, would you please, friends?  Show some love to your fellow humans and remember that we're all fighting our own private battles.

If you want to help Katie in her quest for Justice for Henry, go here to sign the Petition, or visit Justice for Henry for more information.  

Thoughts formed over Mexican food

What kind of woman actively pursues a married man?  A married man with a child?

What sort of character must you possess to text things like "I'll leave the door unlocked, in case you're able to get away"?

What kind of woman ignores a wife's plea of "I need you to go away, like you promised you would"?



What kind of man actively pursues a woman who is not his wife?  What sort of father hurts the mother of his child in that way?  What is he teaching his daughter about how men should treat their wives?

How deeply flawed must one be to repeatedly lie and cheat?

What kind of man ignores his wife's plea of "If you love me, if you love us, please stop this"?



What kind of woman actively allows herself to be disrespected and demeaned?  What example does she set for her child?

How badly has she been hurt that she accepts that an unfaithful spouse is simply her lot in life, the way of things, nothing that can be helped?

What sort of woman is able to live in a world of instability and insecurity and fear that's been created by the man to whom she's devoted her life?



What kind of friend can listen to a tale such as this and not want to punch the lying cheating bastard in his face?  How could you not want to pull the triflin' bitch's hair from her ugly head?

How much trouble can you really get into for egging someone's car?

What sort of friend could ignore a scorned wife's plea of "Let's just go for a drive - please?"?

Worst. Day. Evar.

Warning:  I use the word "fuck" a lot in the following post.  If you're offended by the word "fuck", or the excessive use thereof, you're probably in the wrong place anyhow.  I'm sorry in advance for being such a classless whore.

Today has been the suckiest, hardest, worst day evar.  I told Kim, "Today is the day of FUCK.  Not  the good fuck, either, the bad FUCK.  Today is the FUCKiest day of them all."

And you know what the bitch of it is?  It was so much worse for other people.  At least one.

One of my employees (S) was arrested last night.  S got an equipment citation back in December.  The fine wasn't paid and the court date wasn't observed, and a bench warrant was issued.  At some point after midnight last night, the sheriff's office attempted to serve that warrant - at S's parents' house.  You see, the permanent address S uses, the one listed on his commercial driver's license, belongs to his parents.  When told S wasn't there, the sheriffs searched the premises.  Can you fucking imagine?  (Should I mention now that the citation was for a grand total of $192?)  Eventually convinced S wasn't there, the sheriffs left and headed to the correct address, where they woke S and his wife and their children at the ungodly hour of 1 a.m.   To serve a bench warrant for a commercial equipment violation.  For a total of $192 in fines.

I can't even explain the clusterfuck that ensued.  I was confused.  And scared.  Yes, I had a copy of the inspection, but no citation!  I pay citations immediately!  I give the drivers a copy back, for their personal records!  There was a lot of nearly vomit-inducing fear that maybe I'd lost the citation.  Oh fuck, can I even begin to explain what that feels like?  Like I told Kim, as I sobbed into my paperwork, "It's one thing if I fuck up and someone doesn't get their fucking order.  It's another thing entirely if I fuck up and someone's entire fucking life is ripped upside down.  A man is in jail!!!  Oh my god, what if I've done this?!"

I got in contact with a very nice lady in the county clerk's office where the citation was issued.  She put me on hold for a long time, but was kind enough to come back halfway through to ask me to bare with her, that she was working with a new system and taking longer than it should and she was sorry.  I love calling people in small towns - they're always so nice.  She told me that yes, he was being detained for the $192 citation, and yes, we'd be able to bail him out today.  Yes, she was happy to fax me a copy of the citation.

I've never seen it before today.  I swear to you, oh lords of the internet, today was the first day I've laid eyes on that ticket.  I didn't throw it away erroneously, I didn't lose it.  I've never seen it before - it never came to me.  I can't take full responsibility for the complete and total FUCK that this is/was.  As a manager, of course, I still carry responsibility.  There was an associated inspection report that listed a citation number - obviously, I never noticed it or paid it any mind, because I wasn't immediately on S's ass to get me the documentation so I could get the ticket paid.  But still.

I had to tell my boss.  My boss is a pretty fucking awesome.  (I'm using "Fuck" a lot already, what's a few more, right?  And I might be a little drunk.  That makes it easier to say fuck.)  Anyhow.  So I had to tell him.  I sent an email.  "I need to you to call me, please.  Call me on my cell when you have a moment."  I sat there, with a rock in my stomach, jumping every time I got a fucking email because my fucking blackberry is set up to vibrate every time i get an email AND/OR a phone call.  He called on the office line.  I started pacing immediately.  I do that when I'm on the phone - I pace.  I can't help it. He was having lunch at Arby's.  He didn't believe the one $192 citation could be the only reason S had been arrested.  "There has to be something more to the story, I've been doing this a long time, and I've never heard anything like this."  "I talked to the clerks in both counties," I reminded him. "They both say it's only this ticket.  I can't help but feel like I've fucked this up somehow."  "Did you ignore a citation and not pay it, Natalie?"  "No!  Of course not!  I'm certain I never even saw it!"  "Exactly,"  he said, always the voice of reason. That's why they pay him the big bucks, I guess.

Long story short, C and I spent our afternoon at the courthouse paying the bond.  S was released some time around 7 tonight.  Poor fucking guy.

But wait.  It's not over yet.

S was scheduled to deliver a critical load tomorrow morning.  His wife put the smackdown on him running the load.  I've spent three hours tonight trying to find an alternative, because I get it.  If I were her, I wouldn't want my man leaving me in the wee hours of Good Friday a.m either.  And I wouldn't stand for him leaving out only a handful of hours after being arrested, needlessly, for a $192 citation incurred while operating under the employ of the company now asking me to give up a large chunk of my weekend.

Fuck.  I didn't have any options, though.  I called a dozen carriers; no one can help me.  I called S.  "If I offer an extra $100, can you make the trip?"  I'm not above bribery when in a desperate situation.  I don't want to get the man beat by his woman, but he's all I've got - he's got the hours available to make the trip.  Any other driver would have to spend the entire weekend three states away - on Easter weekend.

S agreed to take the load.  He'll still be home for Easter Sunday, and I've agreed to give him a short run on Monday.  And to leave an extra $100 in his box tomorrow night.  And I think I'm going to send his wife flowers tomorrow.  Bless her heart.

Work is so fucking dumb sometimes.  I'm grateful for my job, I am.  Days like this are few and far between, but holy FUCK they're hard.

And seriously.  We're in a fucking budget crises, and our county is expending - what? - $1500 to serve a warrant for a $192 DOT citation?!  When the entire issue could've been solved and paid and all said and done with a simple $0.44 letter saying "YO! Bitches!  Pay your fucking fine!!"  I would've put that shit in the mail the same day, I fucking promise you.

Ugh.  It makes me sick.  I only recently stopped feeling like I was going to vomit in response to this entire fucking situation, which has managed to drag on for 14 hours now.

S spent something like 18 hours in jail, so I'm going to shut the fuck up and stop bitching and drink the rest of my beer.

Sweet dreams, friends.  I sure hope your day was better than mine.  And S's.

I hate drama. (In a not-at-all sort of way.)

I love drama.  I really, really do.  I love a good trainwreck.

Well, wait.  Let me clarify:  I love drama...in other peoples' lives.  I don't want or love drama in my own life, which is why I live such a boring happy little life.  I don't love drama when it adversely affects my friends or loved ones (my brother's drama?  Totally not funny).

BUT, I really love watching from the outside looking in.  Girlfriend wants to get all passive aggressive on her blog toward chicks who make passes at her man - knowing the other women will read the rant and know it was meant for them - LOVE IT!  There are at least three people in my Facebook friends who I'm friended-up with only because they are the sort who love drama in their own lives, and, as a result, I love watching their news feeds.  Kim will say "I thought you couldn't stand them?!" and I'll be all "Well, I don't AGREE with their choices, but I sure do like watching how they play out."

I'm a bad person, I know.  I should be ashamed of myself, but I'm not.  It's no worse than watching Jersey Shore, I rationalize - except I know most of my drama-sources in real life and so I can get the inside scoop, not just what an editor decided was most television-worthy.  I'm a really bad person.

Not all of what I consider "drama" is bad, though.  Some of it is good.  Watching Monica Bielanko via the internet for the last year or so via her blog and Babble posts, her husband's blog, reading about their efforts at raising their daughter, trying to conceive a second child, ALL about her pregnancy, and now, the birth of their son, born yesterday, and who was named, I assume, in honor of the deceased eldest child (Henry Granju) of another blogger, Mamapundit, - that's been pretty awesome.  And I know way more about the reality of pregnancy now, too - apparently it's not all big boobs and cute baby bumps and little flutters.

Reading Mamapundit's tales of life after the death of her child, the birth of her youngest only weeks later, and, recently, a pregnancy that ended in miscarriage - it's heartbreaking...  inspirational, also; it reminds me of how amazing humans are, women in particular, at adapting and overcoming the ridiculous and horrible obstacles life throws at us.

And then there's Allison O over at O My Family - she makes me want to join a church, get pregnant, and quit my job.  Go look at her pictures.  Seriously.  Have you ever seen a cuter family?  Reading her older blogs about her struggles with motherhood, I think "'O' goodness, if it's this hard for her, how would I ever manage?  I'm not half as patient and sweet and good as she appears to be..."  But oh my goodness, she also makes it look like so much freakin' fun!  I want to be more like her.  (I'll start by trying to make the baby, I guess.)

Anyhow.

Not all drama is Jersey Shore quality, but it certainly has its place.  As do the uplifters, the encouragers, the redeemers, the examples.  I love it all.

I was going to call it voyeurism, and it hit me...

I just realized...

I think I've done this post before.

I'm pretty sure I have.
I think I even linked the same blogs.

Oh well.