My Awkwardly Sad But Sort Of Happy Post

So.. January.. yeah. It happened.. and I'm sitting here trying to put the words together to describe it in its last couple of days because there's been good - even great, but also this crazy sort of scattered that I'm still trying to figure out. There have been days where the energy just seemed to flow and then a few where at the end of the day my heart felt a bit worn.

At the beginning of the year, a quieter friend I've made thru the blog relocated this way. The nickname we both decided on was Yoda (Trust me, this is much more appropriate than 'Newbie' that he suggested. Plus, he's much more colorful than that anyway.). So.. we're new friends and as he says, he's a blank slate, so we've gone to dinner to a couple of my favorite places and I've provided him a list of further ideas for venturing around his new city. We have these great talks about religion, relationships.. he gives me great guy advice, I get to hear all about his life experiences because wow.. he has some and it's enlightening and inspiring.. and I find I'm already neglectful of doing my rightful job as a tour guide due to my crazy busy social schedule and this new stage managing gig.. BUT I like new friends and I haven't made a new one that wasn't my roommate in a long time. It just reminds me that there's more to getting to know someone than small talk. Histories are so worth hearing.. and it's almost safer to talk about them to someone you don't know all that well yet. And also, I like that I leave our conversations with a smile on my face thinking about how to apply the kind words of guidance that were shared and wondering what adventure we'll have next.

Now, one wouldn't think you could find too much adventure at the shoe store, but, as you'll soon find out, one would be wrong. I'd wandered to Nine West in our fancy little University Village yuppiedom mall after picking up a necklace at another store when this sassy and cute woman asked me where one might go looking for purses. The shoe store had a great one in white, but she wanted it in black. Talk about where to buy purses led to chit-chat about the boots I was trying on and oh those are pointy and oh maybe you should try some on too and no I couldn't possibly, but maybe if they have a pair in my size and oh those are good.. what did you say if we buy two pairs we get 20% off sort of conversations.. and a couple of sparks flew back between our very wide-eyed clever selves and there we were, sharing a shoe purchase, each of us getting a shiny pair of over-the-top pointy boots in different shades. Hers a lovely plum and myself a random dark green, but for the same reason: because they were cheap! Do they fit? Sure! Do I want to rip off my feet and throw them into the nearest fire after wearing them for five whole minutes?! Absolutely! But hey, I think I made a new friend who is energetic and outgoing and has supercute style and this darling shade of short reddish hair, so I'm going to call her Red. Red is a life coach. A life coach with wine-colored patent leather pointy boots that I helped her pick out. How rad is that? I see many pink colored martinis in our future.

A different kind of adventure recently found Miss Shine and myself when we certainly weren't looking for it. She won't like me ratting her out like this but she was sick sick sick.. and I wish I meant like.. yo she's so mad sick, dog.. because well, she is.. but instead I mean sick as in coughing up a lung and cracking ribs from all the not being able to take in a breath while coughing for these really long, long, loooong periods of time. I don't know about you, but that didn't seem good to me.

So we made a little trip to the ER one night, which would've been a lot more fun had she not had a 102 degree fever and maybe had been able to walk a little faster but you know, when she did that, she started wheezing, which was followed by much coughing and that sort of negated the air getting to her lungs, which sort of made me get all bossy about getting someone with a degree that cost them a whole bunch of money that they're probably still paying for to look at her.. and hopefully, find an instant cure because.. ow.. she sounded like everything hurt.

Um.. FOUR HOURS later, two x-rays, two blood draws, one iv bag of saline, one breathing treatment, a bevy of nurses and techs with entire life stories (and accompanying pictures) to tell perfect strangers and one boisterous doctor who showed up TWICE in that time.. we get to leave. Completely dehydrated when she'd arrived, she had better color in her face and could walk a little easier. Yet, freezing our butts off - hospitals are not friggin warm people - we headed to get prescriptions that took another 30 minutes from people who wouldn't even make eye contact with us while my little bright girl was still not sounding awesome and becoming a pale version of herself.. and we were both exhausted.. she more than anyone of course.I crossed my fingers and hoped she was on her way to recovery. Diagnosis: bronchitis.

Yeah.. not so much. About five days later, she had another fever.. Mind you, the original one was the THIRD ONE EVER in HER WHOLE LIFE, people.. now she's had two in one week? I ask you.. does that not seem like a lot? It does, right? It does.. so there. And her coughing was worse than ever thus making me rechannel the bossy in me and make her visit the doctor again. Besides that, the day before she told me that her doctor said due to the fact she brunched and did things that required her to be vertical rather than oh.. horizontally resting on a couch with a remote in her hand, her bronchitis developed into bronchial frickin pneumonia. BFP is serious people.. Jim Hensen died of it. At least that's what she keeps telling me.. like my own little morbid torturer because she then tells me not to worry about her. I was seriously considering requiring the doctor to make a house call and then not letting s/he leave until Shine was better. For good. That's all there is to it. Cuz this was fucking ridiculous. Also, the next day was her birthday, which she spent mostly alone, mostly coughing and mostly feeling like crap. I think you should all go read her cute blog right now and send her all kinds of belated birthday and well wishes.. because you're you and you're thoughtful like that. Yes you are.

And there is no way for me to really ease into this part. Treena's husband just left for Iraq and tho she is the one who is married to him and she is also in the military and she is the one who probably has a much more vast understanding of how it all works, I am sort of freaking out inside. Yeah.. awesome support system I make right? You're supposed to keep people calm and supposed to know these things will turn out fine. And they will. They have to. However, I'm a worrier and I have thoughts that scare me and it sort of makes me get all teary and all I can think about is that Miss Shine and I will be baking our little butts off because damn it if we aren't going to send the biggest and best care package ever so John knows he better not do anything stupid.. that's all I'm saying. And if he wants more where that came from, he had better get going on home because Treena made us promise we'd send some of that package of caring over to her too.. just for quality taste-testing, of course.

And Kari, one of the strongest people in my world, told me tho her father had gone thru massive efforts to fight the lung cancer he was diagnosed with last year and they thought he'd beaten it, they recently found eight tumors in his brain. Eight. Just absorb the weight of that for a second. I know I still am. That many make the idea of surgery impossible.. and the outcome of knowing that all too obvious. Already having watched my own father go thru a long and agonizing fight against leukemia that he lost, it's hard to know which is going to hurt more - watching the biggest man in your life struggle against a life-threatening vice that you can't save him from or losing him completely and knowing he's out of pain. You can't say. It all sucks and having gone thru it and seen the other side, I ache for my friend because I can't protect her from that. I can only be there for her and hope I'm helping in some small way.

Tho I know there has to be balance in life - the good and bad, ups and downs, the things that make us all grow even tho they're heavy and difficult - don't you just wish it didn't have to be that way? Why can't it all be moments filled with magic and wonder, random strangers and sunny days? I'm sure we wouldn't recognize those things if we had them all the time.. but it's nice to imagine.

And, if I'm going to be honest here, and I usually am, I feel like this post is one of the hardest I've had to write. I wanted to mention everything that's happened lately even tho it doesn't go together.. and some of it hasn't even happened to me. I should be able to make it all flow and find a rhythm, but I continue to go back and forth being happy for new acquaintances and funny moments to aching quietly for other things I can't even find words to completely express.

So, since I think I may be coming down with a cold and can't seem to find anymore words.. I leave you all for the night. I have to send virtual hugs to my girls - Kari and Treena - and another for Shine and her upcoming belated birthday celebration this weekend because she's finally almost back to normal. Y'all are going to be so sorry you missed her karaoke down with her bad self. Oh.. yes, there will be pictures.. I promise.

Sleep well, kittens..