Sometimes, I worry.
About people. About my friends. About my family. I’ve given up worrying about the government and the stupid (times twelve) things that it does a long time ago.
And maybe it’s because I was the oldest child (and was, some have argue, the default parent) but I have this fiercely protective nature over the people I consider friends. Sometimes I get an upset stomach when people close to me are going through rough patches. I want to make it better. I want to feed them chicken soup and juice when they are sick. I want to cheer on the sidelines and maybe distract the referee so they can cheat just a little. I want to wave my Glinda wand and tell them to click their heels together three times. I want to help them rebuild themselves, brick by brick, ideal by ideal, until they can achieve that perfect image of themselves. Or perhaps it’s the difficult standard that exists in my head.
It’s probably dysfunctional as hell, related to the belief imbedded from childhood that I was responsible for keeping the world afloat, that if I did things well enough and helped out and was a friendly person, that I could keep people from destroying themselves.
I tend to believe the best about people automatically. One of the reasons that it’s so hard to get into my ‘inner circle’ is that I simply don’t have arms long enough to encompass many. I have very strict guidelines and if you seriously disappoint me somewhere along the path to becoming a friend, that’s it. You’re out. That warm welcoming place will be closed to you for a very long time.
However, a few make it through and when that happens, I believe the best about them and accept their faults with love. I have friends with traits of freakish proportions, but I am totally willing to accept that because I believe wholeheartedly in their good qualities. I believe we are all, every one of us, a little train that could.
It’s unfair of me. I know it is. I feel like a big jerk for it, setting the bar so high. But at the same time, why would I be a friend if they were not worthwhile people? I don’t expect anything that I wouldn’t expect from myself. And that, right there, is the crux of the issue. They are not me. They are each their own lovely mix of kooky and brilliant and stubborn and artsy and tragic and hilarious and fun.
It’s such a delicate balance, this seeing people as super heroes but also knowing that the red cape is just a faded towel held on with safety pins and there are wires helping them to fly. But while I sometimes forget that I’m not the person guiding the wires, I don’t think I’ll ever stop running beneath them to catch them if they fall. And cheering when they soar without them.
Esteban has gone off to the wild enchantments of Vegas. Later this week he’ll be in Chicago and then coming back home sometime late Sunday. Thus, I am alone all week. Time to find some cute 21-year-old college boy who looks like an extra from The OC and who has a little free time on his hands and lots of energy resources. Oh, because do I have ideas! Adult ideas. For instance, my potting shed needs painting.
And by potting shed, I mean’my potting shed. The small grey house in our backyard with the paint peeling off in enormous sheets. Yeah. Make me moan, studling, and paint my damned potting shed. He would make me curl my toes if he took the World’s Ugliest Recliner ‘ to the dump.
Last night, I went shopping for Single Girl Food (and apparently, were I not married, I would eat lots of Boca products and cheese pizzas and strawberries). Afterward I had the best single girl dinner ever, which involved slices of warm rotisserie chicken on buttered (with real butter, whoo yeah) 12-grain bread with a chaser of ice-cold skim milk. I gorged myself on that nutritionally questionable dinner and then waddled around the house in my pink boxer shorts, my gut filled with all of this white food, and couldn’t help myself from chomping several decadent stem-on strawberries that make me want to pose for portraits with my naked body covered in these things. They are giant, five- or six-bite strawberries, for the unheard-of price of $5.99 for ten ounces and packaged single-file on a bed of giant bubble wrap, but oh, oh man are they totally worth it. And then, my tummy was hard with chow and I felt like chasing the cat like some giant troll woman, shouting ‘LERG!!! LERG!!! Laaaaaaarrrrg!!’
Tonight, dinner will be saut’ed scallops, followed by chocolate mini Tofutti sandwiches. And, if the scallops are as good as the chicken was last night, more ‘LERG’ing. Mostly because that makes me laugh, that lerg thing.
Now, off to find a cute boy to attend to my potting shed needs.
By the way? I so totally called the winner of Survivor.
Ok, not totally. And probably points should be taken off for thinking that Rob C would have lasted longer (or even said a single word in the reunion). But still. Very pleased with myself. Except, also, very disappointed that I feel the need to gloat about it.
LERG!
Dear Kiefer Sutherland,
Call me. Let’s chew on each other’s lips talk.
Love and boobies,
Weet
PS. Sting is so totally kicked off my List for you. I’m just, um, saying.
