Something weird you may not have known about me...

I have a compulsive need to touch doors before I open them.

Wait, hear me out.

I'm prone to static shocks sometimes, especially in winter, and somewhere along the line, I have picked up a habit of touching a door before I grab the doorknob, just to ground myself.

It's like I'm afraid that if I grab the handle I may somehow electrocute myself. Half the time I'm not even concious that I'm doing it anymore.

Well, I don't know about you, but I feel better having that off my chest.

Follow-up blues

The good news: My aforementioned friend (two blogs back, before the wiki-birthday thing), is not a total asshat, with the intentions of ignoring my heartfelt confession of my feelings. I finally got the call two nights ago, so I was not forced to make a second difficult phone call.

Which brings the bad news: Apparently there is a spark lacking somewhere. So boo for me. Needless to say, I've been a bit of a wreck the past couple of nights.

I knew as soon as I answered the phone and he started talking that it was not going to go as hoped. But, alas, I was prepared for such an eventuality - hence why it had taken so long to get to that place where I was ready. I had to know I would be okay with a no.

The most important part of the conversation I think was where he apologized for leaving me hanging. He said he didn't want me to ever think that he was taking this decision lightly, and that a day hadn't gone by where he didn't think about was going (or not going) to happen.

I think we're going to be able to be friends, and I told him that. I am going to need time to lick my wounds, but I keep holding onto the fact that it's out there in the open now. Now there is nothing to do but heal, and eventually move on.

The silver lining here (because let's face it, this fucking sucks) is that even though the romantic feelings I have are not reciprocated, after talking with him, I don't question his investment into our friendship. The worst part during the last two weeks was actually wondering if maybe I had read more into the last 13 years than he had... You know, like finding out that someone you consider a really close friend merely considers you an acquaintance? That was something I was beginning to fear, and that saddened me more than anything.

I'm glad that I don't have anything to question any more. And I'm glad I did this now. I've done a lot of growing over the last year, and say, a year ago, my confidence was so low something like this might have crushed me. Although my ego has taken a blow, I still have enough 'Awesome' left to rebuild the foundation of my self-confidence.

So Yeah. I guess this is the end of an era, in a way. I'm sort of at loose ends, actually... The 'Should I's ' have been a part of my life for so long, that I'm not sure where to go from here. I'm taking a break from dating for a bit.

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In other news: I'm broke. I need to budget better, and two steps I am taking are to quit drinking Timmies (have to switch to office coffee... GAH!) and start packing myself a lunch again. I've figured I'm spending about 160 bucks a month on coffee and lunch alone. That's my CAR INSURANCE. It's ridiculous.

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I'm feeling really creative lately, but also really lazy and rebellious. There are things I know I should work on (ie, the portrait I started painting for Nicky and Franks wedding present) but I find I have many other projects in my head I want to start doing prelim sketches for, and then I feel bad because I'm not working on the damned portrait. I also want to write more, and I still want to try writing some songs, put a little three-piece together for jams and stuff.

I met a guy in my building that lives on the ground floor and has been playing guitar for 40 years. He's offered to give me lessons at a reasonable rate. I was a little offended at first, because I Have been playing for about 15 years, but he got his guitar out and we jammed and I though to myself 'erm... okay, yeah. I could learn some stuff here'. Guy's phenomenal. And doesn't have much else to do all day, apparently. Is on disability (my guess is MS or fibromyalgia) so has not much else to do but take his dogs out for short walks, and play guitar. New, interesting friends are fun.

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Two weeks until the Dandy Warhols! *dances*

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Oh, going back to the 'creative' thing, I've posted some of my artwork for yer viewing pleasure. Constructive criticism is welcome.

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Work has been nuts this week. Between one of our Co-ops leaving, and the other admin girl going on a tradeshow and holidays, my workload has almost tripled this week. I've been leaving late every day this week. Things go back to normal monday though. Oh the exciting world of used scientific equipment sales *shudders with anticipation*

I'm out. Long weekend. Getting kids ready for back to school. They apparently finally got the new building ready for teh kiddies. Wooha. Tierney has a teacher with an un-pronounceable name. And we don't even live in the city.

This looks fun, so Imma do it too.

This is stolen from Mari, Queen of the Desert and Kaydeelicious...

What happened on your birthday? Did empires crumble? Did sports dynasties form? Did nothing particularly interesting take place? Go to Wikipedia and enter your date of birth (month and day only), then post four events, three births, two deaths and one holiday.

EVENTS

August 14, 1908 - The first beauty contest is held in Folkstone, England.
August 14, 1936 - Rainey Beathea is hanged in Owensboro, Kentucky in the last public execution in the United States.
August 14, 1945 - Japan accepts the Allied terms of surrender in World War II and the Emperor records the Imperial Rescript on Surrender (August 15 in Japan Standard Time).
August 14, 2003 - Widescale power blackout in the northeast United States and Canada.

BIRTHS
August 14, 1851 - Doc Holliday, American Gambler and dentist
August 14, 1945 - Steve Martin, Comedian
August 14, 1950 - Gary Larson, Cartoonist

DEATHS
August 14, 582, - Tiberius II Constantine, Byzantine emperor
August 14, 1952 - William Randolph Hearst, American Newspaper Magnate.

HOLIDAYS
National Creamsicle Day

I think finding out that I share a birthday with Gary Larson may just be the single most incredible discovery of my life.

And yeah my 25th birthday was a memorable one, for many people.
I could have sworn Elvis died on my birthday.

Bite Me Hollywood, you lying sons of bitches.

I will never in my life watch another romantic comedy. I have been lied to. There are no happy endings. It's Action and/or Slasher flicks from now on. At least when life doesn't imitate them, it's a GOOD thing.

I should probably explain my blog previous to this, for those who could access it. That, my friends, was the written equivalent to my general reaction Tuesday before last, when I finally bit the bullet and confessed my more-than-friendly feelings to a friend of many many years. In my time on earth, I have never felt so close to a full-fledged cardiac arrest, or at the very least, hyperventilation to the point of passing out. I won't get into the conversation, but it was not terribly long, I came out and said what I needed to say, and told him to think on it for a day or two. No knee-jerk reactions please. At the very least, I thought it was at least a little promising.

It was time to come clean, anyways, because I had been holding onto this knowledge for over four years. I had always waited for a good time to tell him, but there was never a good time, and I came to realize that there will be no 'perfect time' - there will pretty much be bad times to tell him, and worse times to tell him. I figured one random night over the phone while he was kind of between relationships was better than drunkenly banging on his hotel room door the night before his wedding.

I have not had much luck in relationships over this time, and I think along with the hurt from the separation, I also think that I have been holding most guys up against this one particular friend.. I would fear commiting 'just in case'. Sabotage. I eventually came to the conclusion that until I had this 'what if?' question resolved, I would never give another man a fair chance.

Things have not turned out well. Definitely not as I hoped. I don't even need to say what I hoped, the hollywood ending would do. But this is not even as I had expected. Having prepared myself for the worst, I had prepared myself for the 'I don't think this would be a good idea, lets just be friends'. I also prepared myself for some weirdness, but I figured the weirdness would mostly be my doing.

What I was not prepared for was a week and a half of almost utter silence (other than a short birthday text). I was not prepared to be held in limbo. I don't like limbo. Hell, I don't even like TO limbo. Of all the people in the world, he was one person I thought grown-up enough to be able to deal with being faced with one's feelings. I thought him capable of paying me the respect of at least speaking with me about it.

I don't know if he's at all cognizant of how difficult it was for me to come out and say what I did. And now what I feel is worse than rejected. I feel utterly disregarded. And like perhaps 13 years of friendship meant more to me than it ever did to him. And it's breaking my heart.

So fuck you Hollywood. Fuck you Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal. Fuck you Ashley Judd and Hugh Jackman. Fuck you Julia Roberts and whoever you happen to be starring opposite this week. John Cusack, you can take that big old Boombox and Shove it up your ass. Fuck you Molly Ringwald, because Andrew McCarthy is a pussy and Jon Cryer was totally the shit. Screw you all for giving girls like me hope for jumping the gap from friendship to something more.