Someone who has already seen the above pic mentioned he looked a little disgruntled in it. And whilst I do agree it is not one of his best shots, you need to know that I chose it shortly after the picture below was taken. Makes sense now, doesn’t it?!!!
I met Kim in the spring of 1998. But first I thought she was Monica Lewinsky. Seriously. She was the image of her and this was at the height of MonicaGate. I am not exaggerating the likeness; she was once chased through an airport in Germany by the paparazzi who too thought it was Monica. My co-worker, M., had gone to high school with her (Kim, not Monica Lewinsky) and she introduced us.
She lived in Denver and travelled a lot for business and
at the time I was still living in Boulder, but our friendship developed fast
and fierce, especially over the telephone. She would often call me from her
hotel room, bored and lonely. (It goes without saying I was as equally bored
and lonely but at least she had the excuse of being in a hotel room hundreds of
miles away from her friends. I didn’t.) Those phone conversations sometimes
lasted hours and they nourished my soul like nothing else could.
But we did get together in person occasionally – she had
a house party once to which I brought along my friend ?, who ended up giving a
blow job to this superhot guy up against a tree a block or so away from Kim’s
house. After, every time we drove past that tree, we shared a lascivious smile
and, Universe forbid anyone else was in the car with one or both of us, for
they got a blow-by-blow (see what I did there?) account of why that tree was
named “?’s Blow Job Tree”. We spent New Year’s Eve 1999 together on a rooftop
in Five Points (aka Denver’s “ghetto”). When I moved to Denver in the summer of
2000, our friendship got stronger - we went to the circus, where I discovered
she was afraid of clowns; the following weekend, we went to The Butterfly
Pavilion, where I discovered she was not afraid of tarantulas (I stood several
feet away whilst she happily petted one). I got to go to a concert at Red Rocks
Amphitheatre because of her (a 1980s trifecta of The Psychedelic Furs, The
Go-Go’s and The B-52’s). I took her to see Billy Elliot less than 24 hours
after I had seen it for the first time because I knew she would love it as much
as I did (she did). Over the telephone we both watched the opening ceremony of the
2000 Summer Olympics and made bitchy comments about the athletes and their attire
and had so much fun that we vowed to always watch the ceremony together (spoiler
alert: we never did again). On 9/11, she was the first person I called; she was
sat on her hotel balcony in New Jersey watching the towers burn. We saw Rent at
the Denver Center for the Performing Arts; we both loved Supermarket Sweep so
much we considered dressing up as a pair of contestants for Halloween (her plans
changed so we didn’t); she put together my IKEA TV unit for me (the day before
she’d attended Lilith Fair – she called it her Lesbian-in-Training Weekend). We
spent a Christmas Day eating Chinese food and singing and dancing along to the
soundtrack from A Chorus Line that my parents had gifted her when I told them
how much she enjoyed mine. We were pretty much inseparable.
Then she met a boy.
She’d met other boys during our friendship of course (there
was one with us on that NYE rooftop) but this one was different. It wasn’t that
she started doing things with him that she had previously done with me – that
was only to be expected and I would have done the exact same thing had hell
frozen over and I’d been the one to get a boyfriend. (He was the cause of our Supermarket
Sweep Halloween plans changing.) No, it was when, as the relationship
developed, she started doing stuff with his sister. That was when it began to hurt. Then she
started doing stuff with his sister-in-law. That really hurt. Then they got
engaged.
My friend D., whom Kim had met on several occasions, got
to see the ring first because she happened to live in the same apartment
complex as Kim’s future mother-in-law. Now, I am not that petty – it wasn’t the
fact that D. got to see the ring first, it was the fact that Kim had known
where D. lived for months and told her on several occasions that she would stop
in sometime. But she never did. Then she got a rock and she did. I think I knew
then that our friendship was doomed.
That was confirmed a few months later when, deep in
planning the wedding, she blew off my birthday celebrations. Because of myriad
issues I have surrounding my birthday (the timing of it being the primary one) I
am ultra-sensitive to being dissed on my birthday. But when over a week later,
I had still not heard from her, I decided to be the bigger person and give her
a call. When I had had enough of hearing her woe-is-me tale of being so
overwhelmed by the wedding planning that she had taken to her bed for a week (one
of the issues she was grappling with was whether or not to have a koi pond at
the reception venue (oy)) I told her I needed to go and I hung up. That was about
20 years ago and the last time I talked to her.
Last month I found out she died three years ago.
I had reached out to her a few times in the intervening
years, some with positive intentions, other times, not so much. Like, at the next
Olympics after our break-up, I drunkenly called her during the opening ceremony
and left a message reminding her of the fun we had had together and asked her if
he was worth it. Then I developed an obsession with wanting to know what she
looked like on her wedding day and on more than one occasion sent her emails
asking if she would send me a picture. I never heard back. But then, maybe
about five or so years ago, I did hear back. Our communication did touch
briefly on our break-up and even though most of the exchange was cordial, it
was obvious that too much hurt still existed on both our ends and the
friendship was irreparably damaged.
Every six months or so I would check out her Facebook
page but there was no activity on it. But, for some reason, a drunken Friday
night a few weeks ago, I decided to Google her using her married name. That was
when the obit popped up.
I reached out to M. for more details. They too had
drifted apart, and so M. is not exactly sure of the cause of death but thinks it
might have been the result of a head injury sustained in a fall during an
alcohol-induced seizure. She’d been to rehab at least three times and after the
divorce (no comment) she relocated to a small Colorado mountain town and led a
rather isolated existence.
I think whatever the cause of death was I would have been
devastated by this news but the fact that alcohol was involved has hit me really
hard. We drank together, obvs, because everyone I hang out with drinks, but I
never saw any signs of alcoholism. But that might be because anyone who hangs
around me automatically does not have a drinking problem when compared to me.
I am not so full of myself to think that had we remained
friends her drinking might not have been so destructive, but I cannot help but
wonder what would have happened to both of us if we’d continued those late-night
hours-long phone conversations.
RIP, Kimbers.
For Christmas 2018 a co-worker gave me the magnet pictured above. A few months later she betrayed me/stabbed me in the back/threw me under a bus/threatened to report me to HR because I have a DNR order/took someone else out to lunch, etc., etc. I can’t remember exactly what it was (there have been a lot of issues with this particular co-worker), just that it was something. And I do not forgive easily and I never forget. And because I am petty I hold grudges forever. So on my next visit to Goodwill that magnet went with me. Because whenever I looked at it, it reminded me of her and whatever it was she did to upset me.
Cut to summer of 2020. During my once-a-week visit to the office during lockdown another co-worker happened to be there too. She approaches me and in her hands she has an object I could not see that she is cleaning with a disinfectant wipe (remember this was at the height of the pandemic and this person was a germaphobe before COVID, so, yeah, her wiping down something was not unusual). Then she starts to tell me that she has had this for a long time but had not gotten around to giving it to me before we went into lockdown. Now, here is when I have one of my famous clairvoyant moments (click here for an example) because I immediately and thoroughly and utterly knew that what she had in her hands was the very same magnet. And, Whoomp! (There It Is), indeed it was. What are the odds? Well, actually, let’s consider that: these two co-workers are of similar age and socioeconomic backgrounds so it is not beyond the realm of possibility that they shop in similar places (an aside: doesn’t that look like something they’d sell in Michaels or Stein Mart?).
Anyway, I decided to keep this one because, well, I don’t
know, when she gave it to me it reminded me of that cheesy saying “If you love
something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it is yours. If it doesn’t, it
never was.” This certainly came back to me! And I do actually like it: its
color scheme fits in perfectly with my kitchen and, well, I *am* the world’s
best cat mom. But it is one of the very few cat-themed gifts (hereinafter
referred to as C-TGs) that I have kept and, holy hell, there have been a lot of
them.
So, because it is around my half-birthday (even my half-birthday is near a major holiday - #FML) I am going to have a bitch session about this issue. Because this madness has to stop. Because I am utterly sick of it.
However, before we go on, I should address two issues:
not all C-TGs are useless – a calendar is a handy item whatever is emblazoned
upon it. But those are few and far in between. Most of these items would not be
given to me (or anyone for that matter, that is how rank some of them have
been) unless it had a fucking picture of a cat upon it and that is what pisses
me off the most: I don’t think many people realize that I don’t actually like
cats all that much. Only Sammy. (And there are times when I am not that overly
fond of him.)
And, secondly, I have been guilty of giving C-TGs on
occasion: the first birthday my fellow fur mama L. celebrated after Sammy and
me rescued each other I did bestow a C-TG upon her. But that was because I was
so giddy about being a new cat mom. And when E.D. adopted two cats (hello,
George and Graci!) I welcomed her to the fur mama club with a C-TG. But those
were one-offs.
And the reason for this post now is because Christmas
2020 was particularly bad. I can say
that easily 75% of my Xmas and birthday presents (and I lump those two together
because of the proximity of the dates) were C-TGs. One of them didn’t even make
it into my apartment – I went to my mailbox on my way out, opened the parcel in
my car and then because I just happened to be driving by it anyway, dropped one
of them off at Goodwill! (Goodwill has made a killing off my family and friends’
lazy and thoughtless gift choices.) Interesting aside: the remaining 25% was
pretty evenly split between alcohol-themed gifts (A-TGs?) or chocolate – and
you will never hear me complain about those two types of prezzies! But not
combined – I love liquor and I love chocolate but not together. Yuck.
I know some of you reading this might be hurt and for
that I do apologize. I value your friendship beyond measure, it’s just that I
want you to stop wasting your money on crappy C-TGs for me. When considered a gift
for me (that is if you still want to give me prezzies after reading this!) ask
yourself these two questions: what did you get me before Sammy existed? And
what will you get me after Sammy dies?
I think it might be time to accept the fact that I can be described as the “A” in LGBTQIA!
Meh. I think I am getting too old for this show. Or it is getting old. I did not get behind any one performer at all this season. But, as usual, there was a popular one who did nothing for me: Willie Spence. I don’t know why I did not like him because I am neither racist nor homophobic, and I am most certainly not sizeist.
And do you remember last year I wondered how much further
some contestants might have advanced if they had gotten the chance to perform under
normal circumstances, with access to wardrobe and make-up and a live band,
instead of their mum doing their hair before they sang in the garage? Well, I
guess the producers thought that too when they brought back some contestants
from last year. I don’t have an issue with them doing that, I just think they should
have brought them back earlier, say during Hollywood Week, to make it all a
little more equitable with this year’s batch.
And Paula Abdul’s stint made it glaringly obvious that there
needs to be at least one train wreck of a judge to make it interesting. Those
three are so bland and nice and… sober.
And I still hate Bobby Bones.
And I predicted Chayce’s win months ago. Yes, I know some
of you might think I am just staying that but for once, I have proof. I sent
myself an email and I had planned to place some sort of pic of it here but I
can’t get it to look right, it is tiny, so you will just have to take my word for it.
And I miss Brian Dunkleman.
One year ago today I started “working” from home. By a weird coincidence, tomorrow I get the first dose of the vaccine. What a year it has been. If I’d have known it would last this long I would not have written the six month review (see here). Then again, I don’t think anyone thought it would last this long. But I guess the end is in sight, what with the vaccines and all. Word on the street is we’ll be back at work on June 1st. But I do not want to go back to all that negativity and backstabbing, so after I am fully vaccinated, I am not going to volunteer that information. If I am asked by my boss I will, but any other co-worker who inquires can go fuck themselves. Sorry, didn’t mean to sound so combative, that’s how much I am dreading returning to the office.
The second six months have been a little different from the first,
however. I added a second snack cake choice to the breakfast menu:
And I lost about half the weight I gained the first six months.
But I am still not showering
as often and in fact broke another length of time without a shower record (seven
days!). And I not slept a full night in my bed this entire year (I‘ve just
stayed on the couch) and I have not eaten yogurt (I do not particularly enjoy
either the taste or texture of yogurt but it makes for a cheap and convenient breakfast
that I can eat at my desk. And seeing as I wasn’t at my desk, no yogurt for me
this year!) and I have not gotten my hair cut (well, actually, there was one unfortunate
incident involving my bangs and a couple glasses of wine, causing me to be
guilty of a TUI – Trimming Under the Influence!).
I know that was a weirdly
random (randomly weird?) list and all very trivial, thereby proving that not much
has changed in the year of lockdown. See, I knew one day I would find the
silver lining in my miserable, lonely, boring life – a worldwide lockdown didn’t
affect me one bit! Well, that is not entirely true – I now own more rolls of toilet
paper than I ever have before:
Well, that was an interesting year, wasn’t it?!
Several co-workers caught the virus, as did a
family member back in the UK (a child, interestingly enough, considering how
few children get it) but so far, thank the Universe, I have not and neither
have any close friends. It’s weird, considering how intense this whole thing
was, the virus, the pandemic, the lockdowns, the quarantining, it all had very
little effect on my life. In fact, the only major difference between my life
now and this time last year is that I now own more rolls of toilet paper than I
have ever done before!
So, below is the usual round-up of facts and
stats of my year. I have including parenthetical details on what effect, if any,
the virus, the pandemic, the lockdowns, the quarantining, had on them and because
out of all those it was probably the quarantining that affected me this most, I
have called it “The Q” for brevity.
Still a born-again virgin! (The Q: not even a pandemic is going to change that!) And now that Anderson Cooper (who I may or may not have met this year – see here) decided to have a kid, he is out of the running to help me break my streak. Single fathers are not for me; sorry, Coop.
Got two pedicures. (The Q: it’s usually
around seven.)
Saw one movie in the theater. (The Q: that was
the same number as last year, once again proving how unaffected my life was by
this situation. And I saw that movie on March 5, just before everything closed.)
I lost 1.2 pounds. Not a lot, obvs, but considering
that most people gained weight during the quarantine, I am happy with that.
Spent $129.64 at Target; $414.28 at the dollar
store; and $219.83 at the Post Office. (The Q: that dollar store number is way
up, mainly because that was where I bought all those rolls of toilet paper I now
own.)
Voted in my second Presidential election
and this time the right person won (thank the effing Universe – I was considering
going back to England if the Cheeto-in-Chief got in again).
What else? Oh, yeah, so after my car crapped out on me in 2019, my digital mouse, wireless router, cell phone, and my landline phone decided to follow suit. (When I asked the kid in Best Buy where their landline phones were, he got a very confused look on his face -I don’t think he even knew what a landline phone looked like!)
But probably the biggest development in my life in 2020 was the introduction of Words With Friends into it. I am completely and utterly obsessed with that game. Prior to this year, my only experience with it was through the media; some celebrity was kicked off a plane for still having his cell phone on because he was playing it; and Sheldon was playing Stephen Hawking in an ep of The Big Bang Theory. But then my dear friend C. sent me a link inviting me to play. The rest, as they say, is history. I am obsessed! I ask everyone I meet if they play and in my holiday cards, I even included this:
(Yes, that is my actual screen
name, so if any of you reading this play too, HMU).
Anyway, that was my boring year. I hope you and your loved ones and family members (they are not always one and the same) survived 2020. And remember - wash your hands, wear your mask, stay six feet apart!
