Campfyre Stories

Earlier this month, I had a horrible experience with the local bus company.  I called repeatedly and even sent an email in complaint over this specific incident.  It’s not that I even mind the 1.5-2 mile walk into work, but I mind when I have done nothing wrong. 

In fact, just this weekend, I received a reply in the mail.  It essentially said "We’re sorry that you have problems with buses running on schedule and we will add additional time checks to all our buses that run that route."  Which was not my issue.  My issue was that when running late, this last bus that takes me (and usually only me) where I need to go, completely skipped over the part of the route where I catch the bus and also that the company had essentially lied to me about what my options were.

So this morning, when I found myself running 2-3 minutes late, when the bus didn’t come, I assumed it was my own fault and resigned myself to walking into work.  The entire situation was down to my inability to leave the house on time.  When the bus actually came, I was stunned.

Apparently, a woman had had a seizure on the bus and delayed the route by a little over 20 minutes, however, due to my diligence in complaining, they came and picked me up.  In fact, because she was running so late and trying to pick up some time, the bus passed by several stops, pointing to the next bus coming behind her, but now that they know that I rely on that route, and take it every day, they’re stopping to get me, even when running late.

A minor victory, but a victory nonetheless.  I’ll take it.

Sometimes people say and/or do things that have entirely unintentional results.  In these situations, an apology is almost always warranted and, with few exceptions, accepted by the wronged party.  I have patience for those kinds of situations when I am involved, but I don’t have a whole lot of sympathy for the person doing the wronging, at least not in that moment.

You see, I am damn tired of trying to allay the guilt that people have when I have been offended.  I am tired of having to be the one to make people feel better because they have insulted or offended ME.  "If you think that, you don’t know me at all," to my thinking, is entirely unacceptable in response to having said or done something to hurt another person, whether it was intentional or not.

I make every effort to give people the benefit of the doubt.  Often, to my own detriment.  But when it comes to the people I love, I am incredibly forgiving.  Unless the same wrong has been committed repeatedly and apologies have been rendered meaningless, I can step away from an offense, insult, etc. and move on, but when that offense or insult is perpetuated by an "I’m sorry, BUT…" or an accusation that I was purposely misunderstanding, it becomes something I cannot accept.

I am HARD to offend.  I am hard to insult and, frankly, even when I am hurt, offended or insulted, I will often pretend that I wasn’t.  It’s easier to assume that it was unintentional and lick my wounds in the privacy of my thoughts.  I’m not nearly as confrontational as people seem to think I am.

My friends are almost entirely very sarcastic people with slicing senses of humor.  I can take a lot, but no matter how sarcastic you are, no matter how thick-skinned, no matter how much you can take, there are ALWAYS things that are off-limits.  Sometimes you can find those things through trial and error.  Sometimes you need to cross the line to know where it is, but once you’ve found it, back off and move on.  The worst possible thing that you can do to anyone is stand on that line claiming that it shouldn’t be there.

People who think they know me really well are actually only let in a very small way.  I would have to say that, outside of my family, there are only two people that I trust enough to know what goes on deep inside, and those people have proven their loyalty, trustworthiness and friendship many times over, in ways that, to this day, still surprise me.  Everyone else knows very little and many think they know me through and through.

Strength, temperament, dreams, problems, jealousies, my personal history…  all of these are things that I keep from the vast majority of people I know.  Most of that is out of self-defense.  I have had these things used against me when I trusted more indiscriminately in my early 20’s.  The concept that my friends have of who I am is skewed because I am afraid that they will use these things against me, and some of them have come close.

There is a certain measure of competition that I feel among some of my closest friends.  And it’s a competition of who has it worst.  If something is bad, then someone will have something that trumps it, belittling the problem at hand.  Or they will have been in a similar situation and therefore assume that they know and understand what I’m going through, even when the situations are vastly different in detail.

I look around at the people I consider my friends and many of them, at this point in time, are doing really well.  Most of the pieces of the puzzle of happiness are in place and here I am still worrying about things that are no longer as much of a concern to them.  I try not to be jealous.  Envy isn’t really all that much in my nature, but when I am belittled or mocked for not having the things they (mostly) take for granted, it hurts that much more.  And, believe me, it takes an awful lot to get me to the point of hurt-and-you-know-it.

So I stew.  And I lick my wounds.  And I take the time to attempt to get over, not even the hurt, but the outrage directed at me for daring to be hurt by someone who says that I don’t know her at all.  I guess I don’t.  But I would have to go so far as to say that if anyone thinks that I’m going to try to assuage the guilt that someone has for hurting me, whether intentionally or not, then they don’t know ME at all.

The shame of it all is that this is the sort of thing that has lost me friends in the past.

After hearing about Princess finding and helping out a stray cat in her building, I started thinking about an old friend of mine who is no longer a part of my life.  However, he has, probably, one of the best stories of any animal that I have ever known.

It was 10 years ago, almost to the day (I remember because the story started about 3 days before my birthday).  A pure black cat, half-Siamese*, wearing a flea collar showed up on our porch and wanted to come in.  He was very friendly and affectionate and one of the most beautiful cats I had ever seen.

We didn’t want to feed him because if you feed a stray, they’ll never leave you alone, so we put out some fresh water for him.  After he showed up for three days straight and we had asked around the neighborhood, no one knew who he belonged to, so we decided to take him in and start the process for finding his family.  He must have had one, since he was wearing a flea collar.  We didn’t want to name him and confuse the poor thing, so we just called him Mr. X (the name stuck).

We put up fliers.  We put an ad in the paper, but no one claimed him.  He was ours, and let me tell you, our tortoiseshell was PISSED, as X was a very presumptuous cat and took over the entire house.  We took him to the vet, got him his shots and took him into our family.

We adored that cat, but he was a lot to handle.  He insisted on going out, though it was against the rules of our neighborhood for him to do so without a leash or tether (neither of which held him).  He was also incredibly social and was well-known about the area.  I think it was close to a year after we took him in that we realized that we couldn’t keep him anymore.  He was just too much.  He terrorized our tortoiseshell, he destroyed the house and he wouldn’t stay inside.

My mother-in-law, Mother Goose, had fallen in love with him and graciously offered to have him come and live with her.

He was very happy with Mother Goose and family, but their toy poodle, Santa K. Merlie, was not as thrilled at having him around.  Like he had done with our cat, he terrorized the poodle, who was significantly smaller than him.  Mr. X would (for example), see Santa sitting on the sidewalk and RUN down the street and over the dog.  Santa would find himself having been passed under the body of the cat and would just shake.

Mr. X knew EVERYONE.  He belonged to the neighborhood.  All the neighbors knew him and would feed him or pet him.  He was a great fellow and everyone loved him…  except the dogs.

But then Mother Goose moved to a condo.  She brought Mr. X with her, but he would go from yard to yard beating up on dogs that were trapped in their respective yards.  The condo residents were, understandably, not happy with this situation and came to complain.  Eventually, Mother Goose realized that Mr. X had to go.

My father-in-law has a cousin who owns a horse farm a few hours away from where they lived.  He checked in with his cousin, who was happy to take in Mr. X, since he needed a good mouse hunter for the barn.

Shortly after Mr. X was shipped off to the farm, he disappeared.  The cousin was a little sad, but also concerned that he might be trying to go back home to Mother Goose’s condo.  A week or so passed, but he never showed up and everyone wondered if he had found another family, but that was not the case.  He had been locked in a horse stall with one of the horses, and they had bonded. 

As a result, Mr. X found himself with a whole new array of horse friends.  He found them to be his equals, from what I hear and even would, from time to time, sleep on the horses backs and even ride them every now and again.

I haven’t heard about him in some time, but I know that he was a very happy cat, living on a horse farm with many equine friends.  And I take a lot of pleasure from the fact that, as passed around as the mystery cat was, he stayed in the family and remained extremely happy.

*The only pure black cats are half-Siamese…  it’s something genetic.  All other black cats are really either very dark brown, have pink noses/paw pads or stray white hairs.  They may also have very dark and subtle tabby markings that you can see in direct light.

When Spawn was around 7 or 8 years old, I took a vacation without him.  When I came back he asked me if I had missed him.  Even though I knew it would be hard to take at that young an age, I felt that it was an important point that needed to be made.  "No, I didn’t miss you, I was having way too much fun to miss anyone."

It took a little more explaining than the one sentence, but he did come to understand the point.  When you’re distracted and enjoying everything that goes on around you, you simply do not have enough TIME to miss people or places or even things.  The only time we ever miss anyone or anything is when we have the time to think about what it is that we don’t have.  So, for example, I’m a lot more likely to miss someone when THEY go on vacation and I lose my standards of communication with them than when _I_ go on vacation and am distracted by whatever adventure I have embarked upon. 

Even those fleeting moments of "I wish so-and-so were here to share this with me," isn’t so much missing them and I put it in a separate category.  Those feelings of wanting to share an experience are less about missing their company (which is usually based in a dissatisfaction with your surroundings) and more about wanting to share your own enjoyment of the moment (which is a desire to remove them from their daily routine and into your unique situation). 

When Spawn came home from his 2 weeks in Michigan, he was filled with stories of all the wonderful things that he did while he was there.  I’m sure we haven’t reached the end of the stories, as they will likely last for weeks.  One story he told me was about "The most expensive phone call" that he received from his father, who is currently in England.

So I asked, "Why did he call?  What did he want?" and Spawn’s reply was "Well, I don’t actually know…"  It was at that point that we both kind of decided that maybe he wasn’t having a very good time (or as good a time as he could be having) and found himself actively missing Spawn.  I’ve trained the boy well.  Instead of being touched at the sense of "Aww…  he was thinking about/missing me," he said it was too bad that he had the time to miss anything about home.

I actually had this conversation with a friend of mine a week or so ago.  He was pretty horrified that I would tell a 7 year old that I hadn’t, in fact, missed him while I was away.  Though he prides himself on his honesty, his response was "That’s one case where I think you should have lied."  But I find that children are pretty able to accept things that seem unpleasant on the surface if you take the time to explain how they are not actually unpleasant all the way through.

When I conveyed that conversation to Spawn (it took place while he was away), he said, "Before you even ask…  I didn’t miss you,"  to which I replied, "Good.  That means you were too busy having a good time."  He smiled and told me that this was the first time he really understood it from experience.  That he had understood it conceptually, but that it was nice to experience it.

Even though he didn’t say it, I have a feeling it was also pretty freeing to not have to answer the question of "Did you miss me," but even more so, to know that admitting that he hadn’t was not only acceptable, but something to be celebrated.

So, I’m a member of a website called Streetwise, which creates crews to promote movies, games, music and various other products.

I am not being enticed to make this post by them. 

We are assigned tasked based on the street crew that we’re on, which can include posting a banner (like the one at the bottom of my blog) or taking pictures of people with the swag (stickers, posters, buttons, and other weird things) that they send us.

It’s pretty cool because they do give you free stuff related to the thing that you’re promoting.

So, my point…  Right now I have joined the crew for the new movie that’s coming out, The Invasion, which is a remake of the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers (which is a remake of the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers - heh).  If you’re interested in this, let me know and I can send you an invite directly to the team, which will automatically make you a member of Streetwise.  That said, I don’t want to just spam my friends and family about this if they’re not interested, so from my perspective, you can opt-in.

Or, if you’re not interested in this movie, but you’re interested in the concept, you can still join Streetwise and wait for something that interests you.

Again, I do not get any rewards for this.  I am offering you the chance to get in on the ground floor with things you probably already enjoy and to get free stuff related to movies, video games, music, etc.  I have often gotten advance information about upcoming things that interest me and I like being one of the first to know.

I feel very isolated these days and I’m not sure quite how it happened.

Time was, I had a large circle of friends and rarely, if ever, lacked for something to do or someone to call, but in the past year…  maybe two, that has changed.  Part of it was my own doing.  A willful insistence that I wasn’t going to make all the effort anymore and several of them went away, because it was always me making the calls or setting up the scenarios.  The rest of it, I don’t know…  situations change, I guess.  I work a lot and the time it takes to get to and from work eats up a lot more hours than I think most people realize.

Time was, I worked with people that I had a lot in common with and who were around my age.  These days, I am surrounded by older people with families or people whose culture isolates them from people like me.  Being busy and working as much as I do leaves me with little time to form new bonds and friendships with people outside of the workplace, which is a common complaint of many people my age.  But when that aspect is coupled with not having people to go out with, it’s even more limiting, since solo adventures often garner such comments as "You’re so brave to go out alone."  I’m not as brave as I once was.

Time was, I met people wherever I went.  From conversations on the bus or at the bus stop to random encounters in every business I went into or even just walking down the street.  To some extent, I am cut off during the public transportation jaunts, simply because the crazy people got to me.  The encounters I have now are more limited because I don’t want to open myself up to the lunatics and crazies on the bus, or really anywhere.

Time was, I had an active online social life.  I did the internet dating thing and met a whole lot of people.  I participated in online games and forums and used those launching pads to lead into real world relationships.  I no longer have the time or patience for that sort of thing…  I had too many negative endings to want to continue in that particular venue.

So many of my friends are moving on…  I see them embarking on a new life, in a new town and I wonder if that’s not something that I want, or even need.  I know that it’s not something I can do right now, since there are too many things that need to be dealt with here, like selling my father’s property and figuring out where things stand with me, Spawn and the Dragonmaker.  But the longer I stay here, the less I want to remain.

Unless something drastic changes or happens, I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I feel like I’m losing touch with the things I want to be doing and, to some extent, the person that I want to be.

Once upon a time there was a princess, riding in her horse-drawn carriage.  (Ok, ok, that’s a lie.  There was no princess, it was me.  And it wasn’t a carriage, I was riding the bus.)  Partway home, the carriage stopped and a giant came aboard with her boyfriend, Jack.  (Well, no… alright, his name wasn’t Jack.  Well, it might have been, but I don’t know his name.  But there really was a giant!  She must’ve been about 7 feet tall!  Maybe even taller.)

Anyway, the giant sat down in front of the princess me and tried to make herself comfortable, but being such a large woman, there wasn’t really much she could do to find comfort.  She found a distraction in the two little girls who sat in front of her.  She smiled at them, and then ate them!  (Sheesh.  Fine, she didn’t eat them, but it would have been a better story that way.)  She smiled at them, especially the youngest girl, who smiled back, but I could see the fear behind her eyes of the nice lady who was literally twice the size of her mother.

I was mean and laughing at the fear in the little girls eyes, but silently…  I wasn’t going to risk pissing off the giant who could have easily crushed me in one hand.  (Alright, maybe not one hand, but she totally could have crushed me if she wanted to.)  She did seem to really like children - for dinner! (Sorry.)

As the bus emptied, the giant found a spot where she could stretch out along two seats.  She only barely fit even there, but it seemed to make all the difference in the world.  Not just to her, but to the (dis)embarking passengers who were previously climbing over her mountainous shoes.  (Fine, not mountainous, but her shoes made my 9.5 womens look dainty by comparison and people were tripping over them, since her legs were so long that they stuck out into the aisle.)  I honestly can’t imagine where she buys her shoes.  Probably they have to be customed ordered.

When she got off the bus, I did feel pangs of empathy toward her.  Not only were people staring (unfortunately, me included), but she had to duck to get through the doorway of the bus and was risking smacking her head on tree branches, doorways, etc.  Her boyfriend didn’t come up to her shoulder, but he didn’t seem too fussed about it.

But, mostly, I’m intrigued by having had an encounter with a giant.

Now that Spawn is out of town for 10 days, I find myself with freedom I haven’t experienced in quite some time.  There are very few demands on my time and I am absolutely reveling in it.  They’re almost all really small things, but for 10 days, they’re really quite a lot to my well-being.

For example, I went grocery shopping without having to consider anyone else in the equation.  As a result, I bought *only* foods that I would eat, and didn’t have to listen to "Ewww…  why did you buy THIS?  I’m not eating that."  I also don’t have to ration what I brought home.  There’s an amazing comfort in, say, buying a bag of baby carrots and knowing that they are still there.  (Spawn can eat a 3lb bag of carrots in a single sitting.  I’m consistently amazed that he hasn’t yet turned yellow.)  It’s also nice to not have to hear "How come you ate…?" when a teenager fails to remember that you still need to eat - even when he’s not home.

I don’t have to fight for the television, which means I can watch whatever movie I want, play video games if I feel like it and not feel like I ought to be letting him have a turn.  That’s a really nice change of pace.

Any mess is my doing and my responsibility.  Spawn and I often go head-to-head when I ask him to help out around the house.  He’s very careless and takes up a lot of space, but doesn’t feel any need to help with the clean-up outside of his own bedroom.  Knowing that everything that needs to be fixed up was caused by me makes it easier to do the clean-up.

No curfew!  Woo!  I know that sounds a little silly, since a 31 year old woman shouldn’t have a curfew, per se, but when the boy is with me, I don’t want to just leave him on his own after a certain number of hours or a certain time at night.  It puts *me* on curfew and finds me often having to beg off joining friends in various situations.  "I can’t, I have to get home to the kid," is a statement I’ve made on many occasions, but I don’t have to now.

I hope to no end that he’s not missing me or anything about home.  I hope that he’s having a wonderful time and has forgotten about me, the cats, his dad, his grandmother, his cousin, his brother, etc., etc. because it breaks my heart when he says "Did you miss me?" to answer with a "no".  For me, the reality is that for 17 days (counting in my time at Falcon Ridge) we will have seen each other only once and it’s actually a good thing.  We make each other crazy when we spend too much time together and I’m sure we both needed a break.

And when he comes back, I’ll fall back into getting Netflix movies mostly for him and tailoring the shopping to his wants and fighting over the work that needs to be done just because.  But for now, I’m really enjoying the time off.

The following encounter took place as I was leaving the drugstore.  All players were at least in their mid-20’s, if not older.  There were 4 people in the store, not including myself.  2 men and 2 women.

*Female Clerk and Female Customer are having a conversation*

F Clerk:  How old is he now?
F Customer: He’s 9 and…  *thinks*  How many weeks are in a year?
F Clerk:  I don’t know.  48?
F Customer:  No, I don’t think that’s right…
M Customer:  50.  There are 50 weeks in a year.
F Customer:  Are you sure?
F Clerk: Hey, [M Clerk]!  How many weeks are in a year?
M Clerk: 62.
Me (*exasperated*):  FIFTY-two.  There are 52 weeks in a year.
All (in unison):  Oooohhhh…  FIFTY-two.  Thank you!

Adults old enough to know better and young enough to remember school.  3 different guesses and none of them right!  I am saddened…  and also kind of laughing at the blatant stupidity.