Words I Should Have Said

Hey.  How are you doing?  I hope everything is going well with you in your new life.  I hear things are going smoothly and that you are quite happy, and I am truly glad.  Anyway enough with the small talk it's time I just came out and cut to the chase.  A few months ago I deleted you from Facebook and Twitter.  About a month after that I finally worked out the courage to delete your number from my phone.  This isn't my way of apologizing for doing that because in all honesty you deleted me first.

Yeah that's right you deleted me first.

If we were to take a ride in the Way Back Machine to four years back you would see that you were my best friend.  I could tell you anything.  We would text until the ends of the night.  It was because of you that I had to get unlimited texts you remember that?  You told me about how the latest boy you were dating was driving you crazy, how much you loved a certain show and the time you spent with your family (even if they did drive you to the brink of insanity from time to time). I would tell you it would all get better eventually.  I would tell you about my struggles with my weight.  With my job. With my friends.  With my family. With everything. My favorite times together though was just being around you and not needing to say a word.  In those moments I felt like nothing could hurt me.  No matter what was happening through my life there was safety in those moments.

I thought you knew me better than anyone, especially when I would go through my phases.  You knew everything there could be about me and how I worked.  Sure we would have our moments of difficulty but what friends don't?  You knew about my tendencies to worry about nothing.  To make fun of and ridicule people, especially when I first meet them. To get quiet and whiny when things don't go my way.  To lie and say everything is fine when they obviously aren't.  So many other idiosyncratic aspects of my personality that even I don't immediately recognize.  Maybe at one point you did.

When you decided to move you knew how much it was bothering me and how much I believed that things wouldn't be the same once you left.  You swore to me that they wouldn't.  You told me that I would still see you when you would visit.  You said we would still talk.  You convinced me things would stay the same.

I really should have known better than to believe you.

It started off small.  I would send you texts and it would slowly take you longer to respond.  I would write on your wall only to be met with silence.  The birthday present I bought you was returned because you couldn't get time off work to come up for the game.  You did make time to see me when you came up to visit your family so of course I forgot all about the past slights and thought everything was fine and that error in judgement got me through the next bit until I realized the cycle was continuing on.

Time went on and you told me about a boy you were dating.  How much you liked him.  How you thought maybe he would be the one.  I was happy for you.  I only made one simple request - Don't let me find out about your engagement on Facebook or Twitter.  You laughed and promised I wouldn't.  Four months or so later and you were engaged and I found out on Facebook and Twitter.  You claimed to have texted me but those things don't exactly get lost.

I blamed this distance that was growing between us on your new Fiancee.  He clearly was the one driving you away from any male friends you have out of jealousy.  Clearly if I could just make him go away I would have my friend back.  And so came the day that I finally met the man I disliked so very much.  I would make him feel  unwelcome among your friends he would leave you.  The plan was simple.  Obvious.  I made fun of him, ignored him.  Basically treated him like crap.  The funny thing was he took it.  He was a good sport about it, and he even seemed like he was actually a nice guy.  Now I realize that it wasn't your now husband's fault we grew apart and I am greatly sorry for how I treated him.  He didn't deserve that.  All he wanted was to be my friend and I pushed him away.  If I could take back the way treated him that night I would.

After that day things were awkward between us.  I never really quite felt like you wanted to talk to me.  You stopped following me on Twitter.  You stopped responding to my texts.  After I planned a trip to San Fran to visit you and get to know your fiancee more you magically had to go out of town the weekend I had planned even after verifying with you that you would be in town before I booked.  You essentially vanished from my life.  I did get an invite to your reception but the entire time I doubted if you actually wanted me there.  Even up until the week before the joyous day I needed reassurance from your sister that you wanted me there.  Of course the entire time there was awkward, uncomfortable and only salvaged by mutual friends who knew my situation.  We talked a little bit but it was superficial and empty.

okayness.  I decided that I wasn't going to reach out to you for this to happen because every time I've reached out in the past nothing was reciprocated.  If you wanted to prove you wanted to still be friends it would be up to you to initiate.  When the time came and you were in town I gave you three days before I reached out to talk to you.  We talked briefly and in vague terms about getting together for lunch or something.  And then nothing.  Our last conversation led to unmet expectations.  How fitting.

Recently I found out why you stopped being my friend.  It seems that you didn't know how to be my friend after I made fun of your new husband.  I have multiple problems with that logic though.  I have made fun of almost everyone you have ever dated up to that moment.  I make fun of almost everyone I meet.  It's how I operate and learn how people will put up with me.  We never had this issue until him.  Furthermore you were my best friend. Best. Friend.  One would think with that designation you would know what I was doing and why.  Clearly you were just looking for an excuse to cut off your friends.

I wouldn't be as upset with this situation we currently find ourselves in if you had just been honest with me when you moved and admitted that things weren't going to stay the same.  Is it really that hard to say "Hey I know things aren't going to be the same between us once I move but that's okay because you're going to move on and find other people that will take my place.  We'll always have our memories and you'll always be near to my heart."?  No instead you toyed with my emotions and led me on and now those memories are forever tainted and I have no desire to ever have anything to do with you.  You ruined it.  Congratulations.

Goodbye.

25 (actually 10 but I say a lot) random things about me

So i did this on my facebook a couple months ago but since then I have been tagged at least 3 times by other people so I thought I would take another stab and see just how interesting I can pretend my life is and see if I can come up with 25 NEW things you may not have known about me. I'm not gonna lie, these things are probably lame but it was fun to come up with. Also since I ramble so much there is no way I am going to get 25 of these things without boring you to death.

1. I hate the way I sound when I sing and yet there isn't a Sunday where I don't get invited to choir or told how wonderful my voice is. I am convinced all these people are tone deaf or just being nice. I mean I can't read music. I don't know my part. I just try to sing how I think it should sound. I have tried the choir thing (yes cute girls were involved they are my kryptonite) but I grew easily frustrated and spent the entire time wishing I sounded like the other guys in the group or at the very least understood and knew what I was doing which leads to me quitting the choir in an embarrassed mess.

2. I'm convinced my roommates hate me. Not necessarily a full blown I wish he was dead hate but more the block from my mind and pretend they don't exist in hopes that they go away kind of hate. Now this might be an issue to most people I can understand the situation enough to know that really it's okay. Our house has an interesting dynamic in that there is very little communication between roommates. For the most part I think I can actually manage to go 3 days without seeing a single roommate without much effort. And due to that it is very easy to assume I'm at work since I practically live there and my room isn't really around anyone else's it's easy to forget me when they are going to church or FHE or a party. Still it kinda sucks to be forgot.

3. I miss having a best friend. Now this is not a knock on Dean, she's still my best friend and I would do anything for her just as I know she would for me. No what I mean is I miss having that friend I can call at any moment and say "let's go do something." and then instead of being met with a cadre of excuses all you get back is "okay". I love my grown up best friend, she's amazing and I wouldn't change a single thing about her. What I miss is that childhood best friend. I don't have any brothers or sisters but I imagine it like that. You go everywhere together and everyone is surprised when they see you separated. I want what Sarah and Charity have. I may give them a hard time about it but it's mostly out of jealousy.

4. There are at least four girls that I can name off the top of my head that I would ask to marry me in a heartbeat if I thought there was even the slightest chance they would say yes. I don't have a girlfriend, as should be painfully obvious by the amount of movies I have the time to watch, but I do have a lot of very close female friends. I don't know how, or why they choose to be my friend but honestly they are so very amazing that I wouldn't have it any other way. That doesn't mean I wouldn't date them tomorrow if they asked, but rather that I want them to be the happiest they can possibly be and I know that isn't me, well not me beyond being their friend and watching out for them to make sure they find someone just as awesome as I am. I wouldn't want them to settle for anything but the best... well second best since clearly I'm too good for them ;).

5. the greatest compliment anyone could ever give me is that they think I'm funny. It's not that I don't love hearing about my hair, or my huge heart, or that they are impressed with my copious amounts of pointless movie knowledge but I find more joy in making people laugh than anything else. You can fake a smile, you can fake interest in whatever someone is talking about (I do both on a daily basis) but there is no faking a good hearty laugh. When you try to fake it everyone can tell it wasn't honest. Sure I try really hard to get that laugh but that's only because it means so much to me. Your approval and your love is really only valid to me through laughter because as I said it's the only thing that I can trust.

6. I kinda wish I was gay. No not because girls aren't into me (they are, just not the ones I am into) and not for the fashion sense (I have plenty of that thank you very much) but for the sense of community. As a white heterosexual male I have no NAACP, I have no LGBT support group. The best I have is the Klan and while I hate people, I don't hate loosely, but rather specifically. I hate the man on the bus who refuses to understand headphones not everyone who doesn't wear Chucks or some other group of people (see how I avoided race there? I'm a smart one.) Let's face it, what it boils down to is I'm lazy and I don't want to have to find friends with common interests, I just want to be born into it, if for no other reason than that means they can't kick me out.

7. I focus on the absurd to avoid the personal. Now what that means is if I keep my relationships superficial there is no chance of you getting to know the real me and being scared away or me getting too close. This is why I tease you. This is why we aren't close. There are very few people out there who know me. Who know the real me. And even with those few I still have secrets I haven't told you. My parents divorced when I was 7 and shortly there after my best friend/father was out of my life (I would like to point out that he was not a deadbeat dad, the child support was paid right up until I graduated high school and he loved me very much). I know it's cliche to blame things on divorce, and I know a lot of this isn't the divorce perhaps my stint in foster homes in the 4th grade had something to do with it or something else entirely, but the fact is I went from a very vocal and friendly kid (I once went door to door for 3 blocks asking parents if they had kids I could play with without my parents permission) to someone who let's people come to him. Now I'm still vocal but I don't actively search for friends, I just let them happen.

8. I have a new batch of guy friends every year. Here's a timeline for you of my close friends since I was 24. First there was Brice and then he got married, then Zach. Zach then went on a mission and Jared became my buddy. Then I moved to Seattle and Sean was my closest friend. After Sean spent his summer with his family it became Kurt and Mark's turn as my close friends. Now while I am close to Kurt and Mark still I have been spending more and more free time with Jon and some people in a different ward closer to my age. I can't really explain it but i have noticed the trend.

9. Conversely any female friends I have I stay pretty close with. My friend Kim from the Tri-Cities became really close over the 6 months before I moved to Seattle. She even helped me pack. I still send her texts and messages on facebook when I think about her just to see how she is doing. Mallory is another close friend that logic would dictate that her getting married and moving on with her life would prevent me from staying in contact with her but nope I still talk to her and check in on her baby belly. That's two examples though I am sure I could name a hundred more. I guess this is one reason why Number six up there will never happen huh?

10. (this one is going to be the last one, you're welcome) I wish I was more cultured. I'm doing small things to work on this goal, I'm reading more. I'm going to concerts, I'm catching more live entertainment as opposed to movies, I don't eat processed foods. I try to experience new and interesting meals when I do eat out or when I cook at home. For so long I have lived a sheltered existence of my own doing and now I think it's time for me to live. What that means I am not entirely sure, but it's going to be fun to find out.

My interesting Thanksgiving

Alright so everyone has their own Thanksgiving stories. Some are funny, some are sad, some are weird, some are pretty boring. I honestly am not sure where this one falls but I'm gonna share it anyway.

Alright so my thanksgiving story actually starts a couple months ago. I work out in Bellevue and since I don't have a car I ride the bus every single night. A couple months ago I actually started paying attention to my commute home instead of the usual listening to my far too loud ipod and falling asleep and I noticed something. Specifically I noticed that there was this cute well dressed blond girl who got off at the same stop I did and walked in the same direction of me afterward until I turned up Roosevelt for the 30 minutes walk home.

Naturally I exuded my usual level of confidence and started talking to her. Oh wait no I didn't. Instead I just kept walking and kept wanting to talk to her. And then a weird thing happened a couple weeks later, SHE started talking to me. Nothing beyond getting to know you stuff or talking about work but still she was talking to me.

Alright so fast forward about a month or so and it's now Halloween time and I'm trying to figure out how to make my John Belushi from Animal House costume work and turkey is the furthest thought from my mind, and she starts asking me about my Thanksgiving plans. Slightly distracted and confused why we are talking about this over a month in advance, I tell her that I won't be going home for Thanksgiving because I knew my luck and I figured I'd wind up working on Black Friday and a trip to the Tri-Cities would just be silly if it's just for less than a day. Then she did the unexpected - she invited me to her house for Thanksgiving. I'll be honest I REALLY wanted to say I couldn't. I mean we barely knew each other, why was she doing this? I didn't even know her last name, you would think that kind of information would be something you would want your holiday guests to know. However, it's October. I had no other plans yet (my step mom is notoriously last minute with inviting me and wouldn't get around to it until 2 days before Thanksgiving) and I didn't want to lie to this nice girl so I said yes.

The weeks went by and for the most part I didn't tell people about my plans, if for no other reason than I already knew the only two responses I would get. In the red corner of this discussion you have the people who think that clearly I will be spending my Thanksgiving making out profusely with this girl and she likes me and knew I am a coward so she took the first step to get with me. I didn't fall into this train of thought because of all the things about her from the months of talking I distinctly remember her mentioning a boyfriend once. I didn't remember her name half the time but I knew she had a boyfriend. Then we have the blue corner. These people thought she was going to kill me and bury me in the basement, or in the instance that she lacked a basement she was going to go cannibal on me and I was going to become thanksgiving dinner. I refused to believe this one too if for no other reason than she seemed too nice, and I'm far too fat to make for a delicious meal. I know fat is what makes it taste good but you're still gonna want a lower percentage of body fat if you're gonna eat someone. I just innocently enough thought she was being nice, thought I was funny and wanted people like that at her meal, especially if they aren't going to be spending the holiday with family.

The more I started talking to people about this though the more my mind started to wonder, mostly about the red corner's argument the blue corner is just silly. And honestly the more I thought about it the more I wanted out of this meal. However every single time I saw her she would remind me and make sure I was still planning on going. I was stuck and I figured I might as well have fun with this and enjoy myself the best I can.

She even gave me a small invitation. Nothing big, it was hand written on part of her schedule (alas not the part with her name on it, I checked as I was kinda getting tired of calling her Ann Taylor girl) but still it was a legit invite. I was obligated. On the invitation she said to bring something and the only thing I could think of were these delicious cheese biscuits my "mom" makes all the time. So I called her for the recipe. She laughed when I told her the story and then gave me what wound up being the easiest recipe ever. Bisquick, cheddar, water. I wound up making way too many of them and making them way too big. I forgot most people aren't like my family.

After I made my biscuits I threw them in a bowl and headed out to catch my bus. As is only natural for me I missed it by three minutes and started walking down Roosevelt carrying a giant bowl of biscuits. With my luck I wound up walking past at least 3 homeless people. I regret not giving them one but I was in a hurry and I wasn't sure if I was going to have enough. Or at least that's how I justified it in my head. I still should have given them one.

Dinner was at 4:00, so I left at 3:30 and magically even though I was walking I made it on time. Not even a minute late. I was impressed. Though my biscuits which I had purposely waited until the last minute to make so they would be warm were now quite cold, and not nearly as good. There was a total of 7 people including me there including Ann Taylor girl (her name is Britney but it's a habit) and her boyfriend. So it was clear early that the red corner was wrong. My eyes immediately started to dart around the room looking for the turkey to make sure the blue corner was wrong as well. Unfortunately it was in the crowded kitchen so it took me a few nervous moments to discover Ann Taylor Girl's boyfriend Alex carving the bird. Needless to say I was relieved but then I realized he had sharp instruments that could be used to inspire death and I remembered what my boss told me "If my girlfriend invited some strange guy she met on the bus to Thanksgiving dinner I'd be pissed. I'd probably stab the guy." I spent the rest of the premeal enjoying the room far away from the boyfriend with the knives.

Thankfully Alex, and the rest of the people there (I'd use their names but I really feel bad for the roommate and her boyfriend who's names I forgot. Maybe I do care a lot less to remember girls when there isn't a chance they are into me.) were really cool and seemed glad that I was there. We ate a lot of food, they talked a lot about people I had no idea who they were, I sat silently laughing when everyone else did and interjecting some to the conversation when it seemed to fit. Thankfully it seemed all of the guys did this.

I wound up with two delicious plates of food, and a helping of both desserts. Traditionally I keep myself as a just a pie guy for Thanksgiving. I mean you don't get pie every day. In fact I feel lucky when I get pie. Meanwhile most other desserts are available year round, for some reason I think this makes pie more valuable where the only time it's popular to have a pie is Thanksgiving, Christmas, and a couple days in the summer. Oh sure you CAN have it whenever but socially you're not going to bring a pie to say your St. Patrick's day company party. Anyway they had one pecan pie and then a rather laboriously crafted trifold. So Laboriously crafted in fact that it deserves it's own paragraph of story.

So one of the roommates, Karen, has a gluten issue. And by issue I mean she can't have any. So in her quest for the perfect gluten free stuffing recipe I guess she found a great gluten free brownie recipe for dessert since she also unfortunately can't have pie. When she made them they came out too soft and moist and fell apart on her. The frustration with the lack of perfection caused her to break down into tears while I was up getting my seconds. Everyone assured her that it would be okay and they could salvage it and it would be delicious. After about 30 minutes of calming her down and finishing eating it was decided that the brownies could be salvaged by making them into a trifold. One layer brownie, one layer whipped cream, one layer chocolate sauce and so on and so forth until it was complete. there was talk of adding more things to it but it was decided that simpler was better. Now while the whole thing didn't come together exactly as it should Karen was happy and this potential disaster was adverted and turned out really delicious.

After dinner and desert we spent plenty of time just lounging around trying to decide between playing a game or watching a movie. Movie won out simply because it involved less work. Originally they were going to watch episodes of Entourage but my immense hatred of that show and the Thanksgiving miracle I was praying for saved me from that disaster and we wound up watching The Incredibles and so many commercials for Desperaux that I thought we watched that one too. Seriously it was ridiculous. After The Incredibles there was an episode of the Office that Karen DEMANDED we watch even though it was a repeat and she was the only one interested in watching it. I know this is sacrilegious for me to say in my circle of friends but I don't watch the Office. I think I have seen 3 total episodes and quite honestly I fell asleep during the first 2 so I'm not sure they count. However this one was actually kinda funny and though I am still not a huge fan of the awkwardness of the show which near as I can tell is it's bread and butter, I did enjoy myself. Maybe it will grow on me but honestly if I'm not hooked right away I find it hard to get excited for a show.

By the time The Office was over it was getting late and everyone was going to bed. So at about 11:30 I left, and of course I missed my bus and got to walk home carrying my bowl of left over rolls and some leftovers. This time there were no homeless people for me to give my food to, but i swear I would have.

All in all what could have been a really REALLY awkward experience turned out to be a lot of fun where I made a lot of new friends. I'd like to thank Ann Taylor Girl (Face it you Brit, I know you have a name but you'll always be this to me) for making all this happen, and I'd also like to thank Alex, Karen, Vicki, Amy, and Vicki's boyfriend (I REALLY hate that you're the only one who's name I have forgotten) for being so nice and cordial to me and letting me feel comfortable when you could have excluded me and made me feel weird. You guys are the best and I hope I will be allowed to hang out with you guys again sometime soon.