Boy did my 46th birthday turn out interesting! And fun, too. :) This is gonna be a super long entry, just to warn you.

I got a record number of birthday wishes and probably in a record number of languages, too. The funny thing is that I was thinking I might hear from Maliheh and Barbara, or at least I was hoping to. Instead, I heard from Nane and Marie!

Marie wished me a happy birthday which was very sweet of her. I’m kind of surprised she remembered, though when I sit and really think about it, she loved me most of all out of anyone I’ve ever had a thing for. A few others have cared for me and been attracted to me, but Marie wasn’t just obsessed. She really did love me and maybe a part of her always will just like a part of me will always love her.

I got up just before noon and found that Tom had returned from the store and with the mail. I was checking out the new beachy calendar he got, knowing that I prefer beaches and flowers to seasonable and that I was sick of making or getting free calendars that are ugly. He said he decided I deserved the Rolls Royce of calendars this year, LOL. It is very nice.

Then I noticed the mail underneath it. I got a wonderful surprise from Andy which I didn’t expect at all! All I thought I’d get were online birthday wishes, not that that wouldn’t have been plenty sufficient enough, so when I pulled out his homemade card and $10 Walmart GC, I was delighted. I loved how he wrote A HALLMARKCARD on the back of it, LOL. As I told him, it can go to buy me a ring in the right size since I got a size too big last time around.

So after I checked out his surprise, another surprise awaited me and this one caused pangs of guilt as well as surprise and delight. Well, Nane really did send me a postcard from Turkey after all! It seems we may’ve had a huge misunderstanding and that we both had each other wrong. Nane may actually have cared for me much more than I realized.

I sent her a message letting her know I was so, so sorry for going off on her the way I did. Between the long silences between messages, the card taking so long to get to me, and her saying she’d order my book and then not doing so, I really thought she was playing with me. I told her I was sorry if I jumped the gun on her and that I hoped she could forgive me for my cruel and foolish words, and how I realized that since Irene also hadn’t heard from her in a while, something could be going on with her that I was unaware of. I said I wasn’t trying to excuse my rudeness, but when one is attracted to someone, their feelings tend to run deeper than they do for those who are just friends. Just because Nane and I never did anything together much less ever even met, doesn’t mean I see her as just a friend, and I don’t doubt that we’d have met had we not been so far away from each other. I think we’d have become more than friends had we been single. It may not have lasted long, LOL, but it would’ve happened I think. As I also told her, she will always be loved by me and welcomed in my home if she ever does visit this area.

Well, it turns out that she thought I was playing with her and that’s why she knocked me off her friend list. She said she wasn’t sure her English was good enough to sufficiently say how she felt, but that even though we’ve never met and even though it may not have been in the way I would have liked, she felt accustomed to me and close to me. She said she knew she hasn’t been a good friend only because she doesn’t believe one can be a “good” friend to someone they’ve never met, but still, she’d grown to really care about me. She said I was a little weird, LOL, but warm-hearted and nice and so my plans to kill myself had her devastated and she wondered if I really meant it or was just trying to get people’s attention. So when she saw that I was still alive when she got back from vacation, she wasn’t sure what to think, though of course she was glad I was alive.

I assured her that I was in no way shape or form trying to play with her feelings nor was I just out for attention. I have plenty of attention from plenty of people, just not enough luck at times, and as wrong as it would have been I wished it had been just a cry for attention and that we weren’t really in the serious jam we were in. But we really were backed to the very edge of a cliff with one foot in the grave and seemingly no way out, as I told her, and I would never play with the feelings of someone I cared about. I tease and joke in a fun and playful way but I would never mess with someone’s head that I cared for. Certainly not intentionally! I had to wonder just what the hell was wrong with my own English that I could have given that impression but I was very distraught at the time I wrote those messages. As I assured her, though, if we’re ever again in a bad situation like that, I’ll just keep my mouth shut and either just kill myself or hope that a miracle saves us like it did the last time. And it was like a miracle that he happened to get the job in the nick of time after trying for 6 months just to get nowhere.

I also told her we don’t have to be on each other’s friend list, but it would be nice to keep in touch every now and then. It’d be nice to have her back in my life and I admit it felt weird and lonely on FB without her and I was spending less time there.

I also heard from Eileen who said she sent a surprise to me, as well as from Alison, Kim, several FB friends, Tammy and my folks.

Again I wonder just how with it my mom really is. I kept offering to call her back so it wouldn’t cost her anything, but she said I didn’t have to do that. She also said she tried calling me earlier and I thought it weird that I didn’t hear the phone ring or that I didn’t have any VM alerts. Dad got on the line afterward and said she dialed the wrong number. She also kept saying she was worried about me because she heard there was a big storm in Cali and she didn’t know where in Cali we were.

Didn’t know where in Cali we were??? How can one not get a sense of where 30 miles east of Sacramento is?

After the usual pep talk on how life is about sometimes being up and sometimes down, but that we will get up once again after we’ve gone down, LOL, she asked if I’d heard from my brother. Now why would she ask that? I told her I heard from Tammy, but that I hadn’t heard from Larry. The part I didn’t tell her was that I don’t want to hear from him. He has a great sense of humor but he really pissed me the fuck off, and well, there’s only so much I can forgive. I think we all have our limits in that department. Every time we kiss and make up we end up fighting again and I just don’t want to go through the same old bullshit cycle all over again with him or anyone else. I just want to live as drama-free as possible. I don’t hate him or wish him bad things; I just think we’re better off ignoring each other.

Tammy’s messages always bring a slew of mixed emotions. First she wished me a happy birthday, said she has to give her love to Tom if we all chat by phone, said we should move to CT so Tom could work with Mark, and that some Arab guy tried to scam her by phone. I guess they tried to claim they were government officials and that she’d be going to court if she didn’t pay up. She said, “They called the wrong person, because we hacked into their phone line letting people know that it is a scam, called the Dallas PD, and much more. So I am not a saint when someone pisses me off.”

Yeah, I know. That’s why I keep my distance. I learned the hard way a few times over just how mean and vindictive she can be when she gets pissed. She makes my most vindictive deeds of the past seem like not much of anything. And so that’s why I wouldn’t want to be her neighbor, much less have Tom working for her husband, even if she lived in an ideal climate. As soon as she got pissed at me, Mark would let Tom go and leave us up shit’s creek. I’d hate to return to the cold, snowy winters and the muggy summers. If I’m gonna do muggy I’d do Florida where it was at least summer year-round. I realize, though, that being near her would be having someone around we could run to when disaster strikes, something I’ve wished for several times since leaving Arizona, but we’ve survived this long without any local friends or family. Despite having a temper that makes mine seem like a pussycat, I do appreciate the offer. :)

She told me the girls are doing great with one as a hairstylist, one as a grocery store file manager and another in nursing training, and again I thought to myself – big fucking deal. I wish I could care, but I’m obviously never going to be the sister Tammy wishes I could be or anyone’s aunt anymore than I’m ever going to be president of the United States.

I thought she was on disability and that Mark was on Unemployment and they were both poor and struggling, but I guess Mark is working. He’s the maintenance manager for some non-profit agency and they have a business on the side doing home improvement.

I also wish I could care that her Sjogren’s is worse, but I just don’t. She said it’s spread to her tissues, muscles, nerves, lungs and chest wall and more and she’ll need chemo. I can understand where she’d be miserable with this thing, so long as she’s not exaggerating anything, but from what I’ve read this is a perfectly manageable disease. It’s a bitch to live with at times like my ear can be, but it’s not fatal.

She really wants to chat by phone. I’m not thrilled about that idea and Tom certainly has no desire to chat with the woman who called the cops on his wife when she verbally lashed out at her abusive ex, thus landing her in jail for an unknown warrant connected to the freeloaders/crooked pig and losing us thousands of dollars, but I did give her my number.

Lastly, I told Tammy we’re not exactly in a position to move now. Tom can’t see himself spending 10 years with the company he works for now since they’re so damn incompetent which really puts him out and makes things harder for him, but it’s not the worst job, no job is perfect, and the pay is good. I also refuse to move long distance ever again with less than 10-15 grand after what happened the last time, so odds are we won’t move to Florida till he retires. The best we can hope for is to get into a bigger, newer, nicer rental sometime next year. I’m still hoping it’ll be a real house in a senior community next summer, but things don’t usually go as planned so we’ll see. I also still worry about him being laid off too, and us thrown right back into the same old desperate situation we’ve spent the better part of the last 4 years in, but I sure hope that doesn’t happen!