I have always had a very strong and very close circle of friends. They are the kind of people that you don’t have to talk to every day or every week to maintain your friendship. You can pick up the phone after months of not really talking and it’s like no time has really passed. They are an amazing, caring and fantastic group of people. The best thing about my friends is that no matter what, no matter where our lives have taken us or how busy we are, if one of us is in need or in crisis they are there.

In the past few weeks my love for them has really grown. There’s not a single person who I would call friend (not just that I would say I’m friendly with, but who I consider a true friend) who has not gotten in touch to make sure that in all the crazy my family and I are ok. None of them have judged, none have gone looking for extra gossip or more of the “story” of my fathers great implosion. I will never ever ever be able to repay them properly for that.

My friends are simply unbelievable.

I know that there’s some saying out there about knowing who your real friends are when you’re at your lowest and all the chips are down, and I can’t say that I am surprised by the people that have shown themselves to be the true friends right now. They are the people I have always known I could call on in a time of need and when I was at my most embarrased and my most distraught they all reached out with their care and concern.

I will never be able to thank you all enough, never be able to tell you how much it truly means to me and I hope with all my heart that you know that I will always always be there for you too. I love you guys with all my heart and if there’s one good thing to come out of all this bullshit it’s that we’ve been in better touch, it’s long overdue.

To give you all a little glimpse into the way things have been going lately, lets talk about my weekend. Friday I burned the crap out of myself on the oven. Nothing says “Yay Dinner!” like the smell of tasty chicken and burnt arm hair. Currently I am sporting a fantastic burn mark on my left forearm. I’m hoping it won’t scar, but if it does I’ll just make up a fatastic story about being in some kind of fight involving torches.

Saturday I decided I needed to do a little shopping, and for once not shopping that involved groceries or household supplies so I took myself to the local mall. I found one of those once in a blue moon right by the entrance parking spots and thanks the shopping heavens. I then got some killer deals on pretty girl underthings and returned to my car thinking oh, how wonderful, the stars are shining on me today. Then I promptly got into a fender bender while exiting my fantastic parking spot after netting my awesome shopping deals. I have to say for being little and cute my Scion kicked that Accords ass. I have a little dent and a bit of scratched paint, she has a totally busted out bumper.

Sunday it rained… ALL DAY. I swear it’s like we’ve been picked up and moved to the Pacific coast. This place feels more like a scene from the last Twilight movie than Kentucky, and has for the last several weeks. Apparently the slow steady rain was far too much for our poor power company to take and our power went out. At that point I was just WAY over the weekend and all the suck.

So now we sit at Tuesday. A1 has been sick the last few weeks, and especially the last few nights when we go to bed he’s been suddenly turning the bed into a hot box. The last two nights I’ve woken up feeling like I’m under a heat lamp so sleep has been a little hard to come by. Personally I prefer the freezer method when I sleep, where you’re covered by 15 different blankets and it’s so cold only your nose sticks out and you make little icicles with your breath. He’s more the mid-temp kind of sleeper, throwing covers off of himself mid sleep and onto me which just adds to my trapped in an oven feeling. Tonight I think we will be adjusting the AC again to try to find that happy medium.

This has been my last few days, how have things been with all of you lately?

Case in point- yesterday I get an email from someone who just connected on another social networking site with a person I used to date. Apparently he ex used to be friends with this guy, and he somehow figured out we (she and I) work together (still not sure how) and told her to tell me hi.

So I get an email along the lines of “Jackass from 10 years ago” says to say hi to you! Huh, well, that’s interesting. Especially considering the history that “jackass from 10 years ago” and I have. I’m saving what I really call him for later in the story since I don’t want to give it all away and ruin the surprise. As SarahSpace said, this is a story I could eat out on for years, and I realized I’d probably never shared this particular gem with you fantastical readers and she enjoyed it so much that I figured what the hell lets have story time. We’ll call this my early Christmas present to you.

Lets get in our way back machine and head back to 1999. I am 21, almost 22, and all about short skirts going out every weekend night and shakin what my momma gave me. As I recall I was very good at the shakin part. I meet a guy in a bar- which really was the whole intent of the short skirts and 4 inch heels to begin with. He works at the bar (score! cheaper drinks!) and he’s pretty damn hot. That whole dark hair blue eyes thing that has always gotten me, and he had that goin on in spades- that and the whole cheaper drinks thing. He is nice to boot, so we exchange numbers and proceed to that whole casual dating thing.

Things seem to be going well, he’s smart, interested in the things I like, working his way thru school, has his own place. You know nothing that is screaming to my naive little mind RUN RUN LIKE HELL IT”S ABOUT TO GET WEIRD. Oh how weird it got. This one man is probably single handedly the weirdest of all the men I ever dated. Weirder than the foot fetish guy, weirder than the guy who only wanted to talk about the tv show wings, weirder even than the guy that always like to cook for me but always got so hot when he cooked that he sweated all into the food (though that one was more gross than weird). This one too had a slightly higher jackass quality than most- but really that part of the story pales in comparison to the other stuff.

So anyway, things are going great! We talk, we cuddle, we seem into each other, the bedroom life is going well. Then the relationship hops on the crazy train and away we go. It started simply enough, he had a secret, something that he didn’t share with everyone, something “people have a hard time understanding”. See now with my jaded 30 something year old eyes I know that those statements lead you to a point of a man admiting to one or more of the following 1) he used to be a woman, 2) he WANTS to be a woman, 3) he wants to see if you could let him wear your shoes/underware/makeup and dance around the house in them, 4) he was in jail for something, usually something really bad or 5) he’s about to ask you to do some kind of freaky ass shit in the bedroom. Normally with 5 is something like, threesomes but with another dude, open relationships, S&M, whatever. What I was not, and I mean TOTALLY not prepared for was the version of 5 that I got. He wanted me to dress him up like a baby and “mother” him.

Yeah you still with me? By dress him up like a baby- I mean full out, I mean the whole adult diapers, baby powder, give him a bottle, pacifier, sing to him like he’s my newborn son. Apparently that made him “hot” or some such. Needless to say, that wasn’t so much my cup of tea.

Well whatever is a girl to do with that one? How do you even begin to broach that subject with your friends? Yeah meet my new boyfriend, what you don’t know is right now he’s wearing a diaper so that you know he’s REAL good and in the mood when we get home.

At that point, you pretty much know the relationship is on the downward trend. But we’d already planned a little vacation together, driving to BFE north of here for a week to see his family, the sights all of that. I figured well may as well do that- I’d already taken the time off work so whatever. Long as the diapering wasn’t a thing it would be fine, he was still a nice guy, whatever (esentially all the things that 22 year olds say to themselves when their brains can’t comprehend wtf just happened). So off we go on our 8 hour drive to meet the family.

Our vacation is for 7 days- on day 5 he dumps me. In BFE. When we still have to drive 8 hours home TOGETHER. THEN he asks if I want to just finish the last two days of our vacation up like nothings wrong. Again, I politely declined. In fact I let him sleep for most of the 8 hours while I drove us home in the middle of the night. That was the last time I talked to him (shockingly I know). Now 10 years later he is sending me remote Hi’s. I don’t even know how he knew where I was. I didn’t work here then, and my last name is not the same but somehow he did. SarahSpace thinks perhaps he’s been digitally stalking me these last 10 years which I spose is possible but either way I think I’ll not be responding to his greeting. Or maybe I should and ask him if he’s still all into that crap. BTW- he’s been diaper guy in my head since then

As many of you know, my mother was diagnosed with and survived breast cancer many years ago. As she was only 40 at diagnosis I have been somewhat vigilant in my monthly self exams. It was always a half fear, but then again not really something I was overly concerned with. Then this month I found a mass. I went to the Doctor, again somewhat worried, but not overly concerned. I’m only 31, the risk is certainly there given my family history but not something I ever thought was huge. Then all of a sudden my world went upside down.

The Doctor put me in for what I suppose could be considered an emergency mammogram and ultrasound. They insisted that I be seen and scanned that day. I was concerned (frankly I actually kinda lost it) but again, I kept the belief that the next Doctor would say there was nothing really to worry about and I would be fine. So I go to my next set of tests that same day, where technicians worked thru lunch to make sure I was seen. After the scans I saw immediately the radiologist who analysed my films on the spot. Then he said the words, I think we need to take a biopsy. However it was already Friday afternoon, so it would be Monday before I could get in for it.

Now I don’t know if any of you have ever been in that position, it’s a hard thing to describe really. It was like all the air just got sucked out of my body. I couldn’t think of anything, nor could I clear my head. (which is a concept that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense I know but that’s just how it was). Suddenly I wasn’t thinking about what to do that night, or later that afternoon. My mind shifted and each minute seemed like something I had to plan for, how to get the hell out of the exam room, how to get my shirt back on, how to get my appt rescheduled and get myself to the car without completely breaking down. Once i made it thru that hurdle, it was how to tell A1, how to get out of the parking lot. Everything went in some kind of slow motion.

I called work, pretty much still in hysterics (this was after my initial hysterical call between the first and second Dr appt), I called Sarahspace, who I then went to see. I don’t remember how I got to her house, I don’t remember what roads I took, for all I know I was running red lights and stop signs the whole way there. Everything just kind of took on this dream like quality, except it was a nightmare. That weekend was the longest weekend of my life, I wrestled with that whole I will be fine, but what if I’m not.. I had to tell my mom, which I dreaded more because I didn’t want to worry her than anything else. I randomly broke down crying all weekend, all while trying desperately to hold it together. I cannot be more thankful for my friends and family though who supported me and helped keep me distracted and otherwise busy so that i never spent too much time focused on the what could be’s.

Monday came and went, and let me tell you, needle biopsy is not a fun thing to go thru. I had literally six different needles of assorted sizes and shapes stuck in me. I made the mistake of opening my eyes and seeing the big biopsy needle vacuum thing right before they used it. The Doctor and nurses though were so very nice and comforting. By the time I was done and bandaged up and ready to go home I just felt hollowed out. I had one disproportionately HUGE boob which was already bruising around the giant bandage by the time we got home. It hurt to touch it/lay on it/bump it, put it in a bra or a shirt that clung too much.

I couldn’t focus, couldn’t work, couldn’t stay concentrating on anything for a long period of time. Every time my phone rang I jumped. I tried my hardest to avoid WebMD and the cancer society web sites and anything else that might just further freak me out. It only took 48 hours for my results to come back but I have to say every minute of those 48 hours crawled by.

I am happy to say that everything came back normal, or at least benign. I revisit for another scan in 6 months and now have apparently a titanium chip in my boob to mark where trouble was once found. I’m less than two weeks out from the scare and I think that it’s affected me more than I initially realized. I just do not feel like myself right now.

I think perhaps I just need to unplug for a little while, take a mini vacation and relax and try to get past it. It’s been hard to do with the visible reminders still so present though (I’m finally finally as of yesterday not bruised but still have the spots where the biggest of the needles went in which haven’t yet healed). The mental/emotional stuff just isn’t quite healed yet, I guess I thought once I was past it and knew I was ok that I would just bounce right back and that’s proving to be a little harder than I realized. I will get there though, I think at this point it’s just going to take a little bit of time.

In other news, I’ve just returned from Tucson where I was filming sessions for a sharepoint conference. It’s weird to know that I’ve just written and filmed these classes that people are going to pay money to watch. I am a little terrified of things like the reviews, I had that problem that seems to follow tech speakers everywhere they go, demos that just blow up. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a tech conference where the speaker has had every demo go properly every time. The nice thing about these sessions is that it’s springboarding me a little, and I’ve also been asked to start writing tech articles. This excites me, it makes me nervous, but writing at least is a little easier than in person (or in video) teaching. I am surprised that I’ve ended up here somehow, but happy nonetheless.

I did love Tucson, SarahSpace and I actually were there together, and it was a great time. I can now also cross Arizona off the list of places that I’ve been. Our favorite part was probably our rental car. It was a Grand Marquise, and let me tell you going from driving my little TC to driving the massive Grand Marquise was a bit of a shock. That car was so big I swear to you it echoed when we laughed or talked too loudly. I also got to add going thru border patrol to my list of new adventures. We had one off day which we used to visit tombstone, and for whatever reason border patrol was sitting outside of what I think may have been the only road out of tombstone checking cars. I do have to say that I was a little surprised that it was way easier to get thru border patrol than it is to get thru airport security. The only thing they asked us was if we were US citizens and if we had anything in the trunk. there was no ID’ing, there was no looking in the trunk, just answer the questions and away you go. I would have liked to have a great story about being chased by border patrol in the Grand Marquise thru the Arizona desert, but alas, no such luck for us. In fact we didn’t really have a whole lot of weird/crazy shit happen to us which is especially unusual considering how SarahSpace and I seem to attract weird and crazy shit fairly regularly.

Here’s hoping that some of my normal interesting crap starts happening soon so that I have more entertaining stories to share with you all.

End of January we got what I like to call Winter Thunder 09. It was inchese of snow, covered with inches of ice, covered with another few inches of snow. This went on for a few days, but most importantly end of night one we lose our power. It does not return for 6 full days. MiniMommy and SisterDear also lost power, however theirs stayed off for about 9 days each. By day 4 MiniMommy and I had both purchased generators. I spent 4 days therefore hauling 5 gallon gas cans around between our houses. I think I probably spent more in gas can filling then I did for my car payment this month. However now we all have generators in the event that we have another winter storm/windstorm/assorted weird weather crap.

Last week was my birthday, I’m now officially all the way in my 30′s. I’m not sure how I feel about it, at the time it didn’t really phase me, and it still kinda doesnt. As I said to FriendJen when I turned 30 my thought was Oh Shit, when I turned 31 I just thought Oh Well. But A1 did get me a shiny new camera for the occasion so I can cross that off the list of things I want. Next is going to have to be some form of fancy phone, Iphone… Crackberry…. I cannot decide.

I have landed a speaking gig, I am excited and a little nervous about it, but I still have a little less than a month to write my 4 sessions. The money isn’t too shabby, and SarahSpace and I get to take a little girls trip to tuscon together as she’s speaking for the same event. We’re very excited.

I have combined my Twitter Account with my blog, I am not sure if I’ll like it, or if you guys will like it, but I will try it out for a little while at least and see what I think.

Does anyone actually turn off their cell phone at those “blasting zone” signs? I never ever in my entire life have ever turned the thing off when going thru one of those, and my cell phones remain active and in one piece. I wonder to myself what exactly is supposed to happen that should mean you turn off your phone. Is it to protect the phone from going apeshit if they happen to blast while you’re going by, or is it to keep your cell phone from maybe setting off the explosives?

Do people still use phonebooks? I mean really when was the last time you drug out a phonebook to look up a number or anything. I probably haven’t used one to look anything up in at least 4 years, maybe even more than that. Doesn’t it seem like a huge waste of paper that every house keeps getting these bigass books every year?

Do people actually buy those things that you pour boiling water into then dump your pasta in so you don’t have to go to the trouble of actually putting pasta in a pan to cook? Is it really that difficult?

Why the hell don’t people change their names when they get old enough to? I just saw a commercial for Overstock.com featuring Stormy Simon. Really? really you’re ok with that being your name? That name seems more stripper/porn star than pusher of discount home crap.

How the hell did I stay in touch with ANYONE pre text message/IM/email? My god, 98% of my friend communication happens this way, why talk on the phone when you can just screw around electronically.

I am proud of this line. I don’t know why.