It isn't always hugs and puppys

Sigh.  Over the weekend I received the following FB-mail from a former friend. 

Hi Icarus. I just wanted to let you know that I have unfriended you and I think it's only fair to let you know why as we have met face-to-face and are part of the same blogging group.

The bottom line is after your comment on my most recent thread, I no longer fully trust you. I was willing to even take a humorous hit directed at me on my own post about being a hack or a troll. But then when you let me know that you weren't joking and I specifically asked why, you did not respect me enough to respond. Nor did you in anyway stick up for me when fellow CN blogger said that I was not a good person on a comment thread that you started. I would never unfriend someone because they disagreed with me, but I feel that I offer others more respect than what you gave to me. And I have come to love myself too much not to have strong boundaries.

I just wanted to let you know as that is what I would want had the tables been reversed. I am glad that our paths crossed for a bit. And I offer a blessing to your and your lovely family.

Love,
AB

So much to unpack here, but let's try.  It's already understood that is a final message, not a request for clarification or attempt to preserve our precious friendship. A healthier more confident well adjusted person would reach out first for clarification and then unfriend if they didn't like what they heard

I don't know what my comment has to do with trust and respect per se.  I asked a relevant question that lots of people would ask based on her post: was her account hacked or was she trolling everyone.  She never really clairified and I got too busy to follow up.Because if it isn't clear that your FB post is not the most important thing in anyone's life right now, I don't know what to tell you.

When you take the time to write an essay like this to someone, instead simply just silently unfriending it is always about YOU.  You know deep in the darkest reaches of your soul you are the one in the wrong here and you are trying to assuage your guilt by writing this treatises of justification.

I'm not sore about the unfriending, truth be told I was thinking about clearing her from my feed as well since we don't interact (I know that is mostly because of the insane FB algorithms).  But what I really hate about this is she gets to dump her last words behind the scenes at me so she can feel better without the world knowing what a phony New Age SJW she really is.  This Facebook Friend not only unfriended me because I didn't respond to her 128 comment thread, but she took the time to unlike my Facebook Writing page too. 


I'm sorry our fellow CN blogger sibling attacked her.  Jenna is a fantastic writer and has a way with words. However, with respect to their interactions with other, she often go through life Cos playing as a tantrum-throwing child.  Especially if they aren't 100% in lock-step agreement with her.


But that isn't on me.  She cannot hurt her the way Jenna hurt her.  So she is using the unfriending and final say note as a way to try and hurt me.

***************

Thank you for reading and I hope you will comment below.  Please also do any and all of the following:
Follow Mysteries of Life on Twitter (@MysteriesOLife), Facebook or subscribe via email.

Is It REALLY worth that much effort

When I drop Moose and Squirrel off to daycare, I notice the other parents dropping off their kids.

They'd run us over for that spot

Everyone attempts to get the Good Parking Space, the one right in front of the building.  I can understand doing this in the middle of winter when it is the only shoveled spot.  But on an average day when it isn't raining?  People still struggle to back into this spot even if it means holding up traffic for a few minutes because some people just never learned how to parallel park.

Just after I took the photo above, I saw someone struggle to get their vehicle -- don't remember the make but it must have the worst turn radius ever -- into this spot in front of the silver vehicle even though there was (at the moment) a football field worth of space behind the silver car.

This is of course the same type of person who would park equal distance between cars and hog two spaces, or when driving at slow speeds, would still try to keep two or more car lengths between them and other vehicles, thus preventing you from entering the turning lane before your arrow expires.

What have you done for me lately

we use to be friends, a long time ago, but haven't heard from you lately.
--Dandy Warhols

So I tried to re-connect with a couple of old friends recently, with less than satisfactory results.  One was a friend from college who was in town with her family from St Louis.  We realized we were going to be within 2 miles of one another at the same time and explored meeting up for lunch.  Alas, it just wasn't going to happen.  She had to corral children and was running late and my free time between the two events on Saturday was in flux as well.  We promised to do a better job of planning something more definite the next time she is in town.

I reached out to another local friend to see about getting back a book I had loaned her many years ago.  It was a book that I kinda insisted that she read so the burden of getting it back was mine.  To be clear, I also wanted to catch up and maybe even re-connect.  However, I get the impression that she thought my out-of-the-blue contact was about hooking up.

It was funny during our text exchange one of the first things she said was "are you still married? if so, that is wonderful..."

Either she didn't have much faith in my ability to remain married or she lives in a world where people don't stay married long.  I suppose another possibility is that she was trying to head me off if I was trying to engage in some extracurricular activity (I wasn't) or if I was single and trying to explore something with her (again, not in this time continuum).

When I asked about the book she said that she had just seen it last week and thought of me.  Apparently not enough to initiation contact herself.  She did offer to drop the book off at my old condo or have me come over to her neck of the woods.  She lives in Andersonville and doesn't venture too far from the neighborhood.  She will go to Evanston and parts of Lakeview if she has to but prefers her little zone.

KH lived around the block from Monica

We worked out meeting at a nearby coffee shop.  Unfortunately, the window in which she was available collided with some of my scheduled conf calls.  It would have been tricky to make it all the way over there and then back for a con call (though one got canceled last minute).  My intention was not just to get the book back but also catch up and possibility re-establish contact.  Alas, it wasn't meant to be and that's a good thing.  KH is representative of a recurring theme I'm discovering among many of my so-called friends. They really don't want to put in the work to maintain a friendship, especially once they decide there isn't anything in it for them.

If ever a Week Needed a Do-Over

Lots of things going on. Very stressful things. First, we had a glitch with our financing. Apparently my mortgage broker not only has blonde hair but works overtime to perpetuate the stereotypes to the fullest. When I was getting my pre-approval, I asked her to run the numbers under two circumstances:

• The first if we rented out my condo, covering most of the carrying costs of that expense.
• The second if I didn’t rent my condo at all. In other words, as if I were just going to continue paying two mortgages.

I expected two vastly different maximum ranges something like X if you keep your condo, X + a boatload more if you rent it and are able to cover mortgage, tax and HOA. What I got instead was a very large Y. Blondie cited my excellent credit and good salary. Turns out Blondie didn’t run two scenarios; she just ran it as if I didn’t have a condo to worry about at all.

Fortunately I had the foresight to figure something wasn’t right and I brought in my paperwork and had her crunch more specific numbers again in more detail. Suddenly she realized that I had a condo and obviously the price I was approved for dropped significantly. The lesson learned is you have to make sure that your mortgage broker is an anal detail oriented type who knows what they are doing and doesn’t flake out.

Second Stressor of the week: So Nightingale and I decided to test our commutes to the one house we like. The first attempt failed miserably though it wasn't a good test. She has a habit of driving her car until the gas light comes on, which it did during this test, while she was driving through the less desirable parts of town to get to the potential new home. Women take notice: Cars are designed to run out of gas when it would be the most inconvenient. In fact, if you are driving through a neighborhood where a young lady would likely get raped, just assume a full tank of gas will magically evaporate.

How hard is it to park closer to the sign?

As fortune would have it, when I got to the house there was a car that advertised home inspector on it. It turns out, someone had engaged an inspector to look at the home. So this could all be for naught if someone else decides they suddenly want this overbuilt and overpriced for the neighborhood home.

After my second attempt to drive there yesterday taking a different route I'm of the mindset that if we get the house, we'll deal with the sucky commute but if we don't get it, we continue to target our preferred neighborhoods and accept losing out on this home as a gift from the Realtor Gods.

The two motivating factors for moving out of this place is we are tight on space and we have no dedicated parking. Street parking is inconsistent at times especially with people parking like jerks.

Finally some good news: Work is slowly starting to get busier which is a good thing. Our fiscal year is Aug 1 - July 31 and the last few months have been painfully inactive for me. There hasn't been budget to do things or free bodies or other resources available if there were so I’ve had to keep my head down and hope no one noticed me. I've never been good at waiting until the 5 o'clock whistle blows to go home when I have nothing to do.

At the Low-Rent Consulting Company, there were lots of times I’d be in the office with nothing to do sitting there waiting for 5pm. Once I made the mistake of shutting down my laptop at 4:50 and my Menace decided to punish me by making me help another engineer who was frustrated he couldn’t figure something out – and wanted no help from anyone.

The Quintessential Definition of a Chick

So I have this neighbor friend whom I've known casually for years. She and I run into each other from time to time and recently, we discovered we could help each other with a mutually beneficial financial transaction. Get thee mind out of the gutter --Nothing like that. She has a parking spot that we could rent, albeit only until she finds a renter who in all likelihood will require that parking spot.

After we talked a few weeks ago, I sent her an email to follow up. It took about a week for her to respond. Yeah it was the holidays and she apparently didn't have internet at the new crib and apparently doesn't own a smart phone or have other access to the internet.

Still when I got her message, there were still some details to work out so I write back and provide my number. And more days go by without a response. At this point we are two days into January and since this could turn out to be just one month of parking, time is ticking.

Didn't hear back for three days so I forward my last email asking if she got it and if we can start parking there and could she please call me. Get a response via email about not having internet in the new place. She provides her number.

And this my friends, is the quintessential definition of a Chick.

Yeah I get it, it is most likely that at that particular moment, it was easier to shoot an email back than to pick up that cell phone that is probably in her purse a few feet away. But I suspect part of it is something else. I have no empirical proof, no government funded research to back it up. But I think part of it is Chicks prefer guys do the heavy lifting.

Even in non-romantic relationships, which this clearly is, chicks prefer guys to make the plans, initiate the phone calls, etc. Let me be clear, being a chick is not gender specific. I know a few guys who display these chick tendencies as well.

This is the type of thing that drove me crazy when I was single. I'd get it from the girls I was dating or trying to date and I'd also get it from some of the ladies i was just friends with. This probably also explains why I was single for so long. Until I accepted that this is just the way it is and learned to adapt my behavior, it was a point of frustration.

It's still a point of frustration but by adjusting my reaction and mindset, I can handle it better. And we really wanted that parking spot, which we got.