Desire. Ask. Believe. Receive.

God, I thought that being back at work was going to give me lots of blogging time.

Nope.

We just had the best weekend! I know that sounds kind of trite and high-school but we did and I'm so happy about it! I saw a ton of family, had a free night while Suz stayed with her grandparents, and then went to a great picnic with some nice new friends on Sunday. Really the only thing that would have made it any better would have been getting our bathroom re-tiling project finished.

The show was awesome, my friends' band rocks and their opening band was so much fun! Unfortunately I don't want to put their name in here as I'm still trying to keep this blog anonymous and don't want it coming up in a google search. I was the designated driver and was therefore stone-sober and still had a blast dancing my ass off. And I NEVER dance sober. Seriously now that I'm not in my 20s and going to clubs all the time I really hardly dance at all, sober or otherwise but I just really let myself get into it and out of my head for a few hours and it was most excellent.

Sunday's picnic was fantastic. The timing was pretty good too--there were a few rain showers, but the big rain hit mostly before and after we were trying to barbecue. Susie had soooo much fun running after a gang of four year olds. She must have ran for nearly 3 hours and then crashed by about 7:30 that night and slept for a good 11 hours. It was awesome. Not a single tear the entire picnic. She's so social, it's amazing.

Ever since she's been big enough to take her had off she's been loathe to keep one on--unless it's pretty damn cold out--but this morning, upon looking outside at the nasty, rainy weather, looked at John, pointed at the rain, and then signed that she'd like her hat before going out in it.

I've got to say that I really, truly love baby signing. It's so much fun to be able to communicate directly with her without having to go through the guessing game of what she might be needing. I mean, there's still a little of that, but the basics are covered. I think it must be so much less frustrating for her as well. Plus it's just really darn cute.

Gotta work!

One of my very best friends told me today that she'd been in the hospital last week for a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. My heart is so sad for her, she hadn't known that she was pregnant and hadn't, up until this point, even known if she was able to become pregnant. While she was under the knife for surgery the doctor had to do quite a bit of internal cleanup as it turns out that when her appendix burst and was removed when she was a newborn, most of her internal organs has fused together and were horribly misplaced within her abdomen. Weird, huh? And she never knew--she's never been in the hospital before or had any sort of gynological issues requiring any professional to take a good look in there.

My main point though is that she's in a lot of physical and emotional pain. Her internal organs have all but been disconjoined and she's had a sizable incision. BUT, and here's the part that makes me feel damaged, she confided in me today that she was worried she put her recovery in jeopardy by having sex with her boyfriend yesterday. Get this, she KNEW it was dangerous--BUT SHE JUST COULDN'T HELP IT--SHE HAD TO DO IT!!!

I'm not criticizing her--absolutely not. I'm so happy for her that she's still so in love/lust with her partner that even in such a difficult time they had to rent a hotel room so they could go at it. I feel so damaged that I have so absolutely little sex drive. I feel so guilty and horrible about it. John deserves to have a healthy sexual relationship with his wife and it kills me that for so long I haven't been able to give it to him.

My friend suggested I take some female viagra or something. I told her I couldn't because I'm still nursing but that I did intent to in the next 6 months or so once Susie is weaned. She asked if I'd talked to my doctor to see if there was something safe to take while nursing.

DUH!?! Why am I such a dumbass? No, I haven't even thought about asking my doctor. God knows I'm not a pharmacologist, for all I know female viagra or the like may be completely safe to take while nursing--what do I know? So, thanks to my smarty-pants friend I'm going to call my doc tomorrow and see what he has to say about it.

Cool, yeah? I'm very excited about it! Well, you know, not excited excited, but happy, and maybe that will lead to something more.

Of course anyone's welcome to read it--this is a public web page--I'm just sayin'--Boring Alert--You've been warned.


Ok, so I started back to work at my old place of employment about two months ago. I don't know how many of you were reading my old blog while I was previously employed there before I got pregnant and had Suzie and left the company but I was friends with a co-worker named, um, how about James. I work at a pretty redneck factory in a small town and don't really get along politically with most of my co-workers--I definitely work in a "red" company. I thought James was cool from the start--he was vehemently and vocally anti-Bush administration/Iraq War and stood up to anybody in the company about it. He talked about his wife a lot--that she was really cool, very into yoga and fitness, she was a stay-at-home-mom--that kind of thing, and I was so excited to meet a cool new couple. I was never attracted to James but I knew he was to me but I just assumed it was a friendly thing and flirted back. We would eat lunch together in the company break room and just talk about all kinds of stuff. It was so cool to have a like-minded friend in such a dreary environment.

I'm being totally honest here, you all know that if I'd have been interested I would have made something happen, or at least attempted it, it's not like I was holding back in those days. But I didn't want anything to happen, I just liked having a cool lunch partner. So John and I hung out at their family's house a couple of times, we met their kids, they came to our Memorial Day party--things were great. Then one day James came to me and said that he and his wife, (um, I'm just going to give into my bitchy side and call her PB--short for psychotic bitch), had had a fight, she'd hit him a few times and told him he wasn't allowed to have lunch with me anymore.

Fine. Lunches were done. I was pissed but got over it mostly. He invited us to a party at their house a month or so later but I declined, I still felt a little bruised and didn't want to hang with a woman who didn't trust me with her husband. A few months later he even came to me and said that PB had expressed an interest in having a foursome/swingy/swappy thing with John and me. I was like "HELL FUCKING NO--that woman is psycho and there's no way I'm walking into that bees nest." And it was never brought up again.

Four months later I went into labor, left the company and didn't see either of them again until I went back to work in April. Having had two years for my pride to heal I was so excited to see James again. I called him my first day back, he didn't know I was coming back, and said "I've been thinking about you guys so much!" To which he replied "I've been thinking about YOU so much." I guess I should have seen the red flag for what it was but I tried to shrug it off. He came up to see me in my office and I gave him my number and email and said "talk to PB and have her get in touch with me--I'd love to hang out and have a beer--no drama necessary."

So a couple of days later I start getting emails from PB, they were pretty chatty and really, really long. This woman is a stay-at-home mom with all her kids in school so she has a LOT of time on her hands. Red flag number two--after I'd briefly responded to two lengthy emails she commented that I was clearly not as interested in a friendship as I'm made James think as I wasn't taking the time to write in kind. We cleared that up--hello, 15 minutes of computer time a day!!! That's when she brought up the issue with the lunches two years prior. That was fine with me too, I'd kind of forgotten just HOW psychotic she was and was looking forward to clearing the air, and her picture of me. In her opinion I'd been teasing him and "playing up to his kinks" because once I'd talked to him about these awesome knee-high, platform, latex boots I'd bought. I knew he was into hearing about them, but again, I guess I was naive but I didn't think I was leading him on--I NEVER flirted with him like I do with guys that I'm interested in--I never once touched his arm or lowered my voice or did any of the other flirty things I do to express an interest.

Blah. Whatever. We cleared that up.

I told her I wasn't interested in having sex with her husband AND told her (because she'd expressed interest) that she was more than able to have sex with mine if either (well, preferably both) were interested but that I don't have much sex drive lately and that I really just not that into girls so no threesomes for me, thanks.

(damn it, Andrew, you totally owe me, this is so long!!!)

So we decided we'd all meet and have drinks at my friends' band's show that weekend. She, James and I were hanging out drinking for much of the night--John was doing sound so he wasn't sitting with us. She mentioned having some weed in the car if I wanted to go smoke some of it with James. I was like "cool, you sure it's alright?" she was like "yeah, I'm going to go hang with John."

Cool. James and I go to the car and smoke a little at which point he asks "ok, can I kiss you now?" I was like "are you sure that's alright with PB?" and he replied "yeah, she's practically pushing me into it so she can do the same to John." I didn't really feel like it, to repeat, I'm not that into James, I have very little sex drive anyway, AND pot exacerbates that even more; BUT I felt the tiniest bit obligated and didn't want to hurt his feelings so I was like "what the hell" and kissed him for a few minutes. Nothing hot and heavy, no petting, nothing like that. Just a kind of quick kiss. I felt absolutely nothing.

We go back inside and he's going on "god I've got the coolest wife, I can't believe she lets me do this." etc etc. But was also saying stuff like "my wife is crazy, don't cross her man, I mean it" and "I could totally fall in love with you." Red flag number, um, 3000 or so?

The rest of the night is fine. We drink, we dance, we talk. It's all good.

The next day John gets and email from PB, flirting and asking when they can get together. They set up a hiking date for the following weekend and have a couple more flirty emails over the weekend. On Monday he gets another email that's pretty flirty but with one line that said something like "your wife totally betrayed my trust, keep her away from my husband." Something like that. I've still got the emails but they're buried right now and I honestly don't feel like reliving them.

I wrote her what I thought a clear, honest, almost friendly account of my take of the situation, adding that I was shocked that she felt betrayed and that I really thought I was within the bounds of her comfort. She fired back what was at the time the meanest, ugliest email I've ever received. The next morning I awoke to another one, while she'd sent John another flirty, friendly one, and the next day I received yet another! I never responded to any of them. Not that I didn't have plenty to say--boy was I hot--but she clearly didn't understand the first one I'd written and had completely twisted it. There was really no reason to go further with it--besides I loved thinking about how frustrating it must have been for her to not get a response.

The last one was the creepiest one though. It was kind of like she was trying to take the high road or something, advising me to get some therapy for my obviously low self-esteem and weight issues, but then went into how she'd completely beaten James up on the car ride home, scratched him and given him a black eye--and he'd THANKED HER FOR LOVING HIM ENOUGH TO DO IT!!! OH MY FUCKING GOD!!! "Thank you for beating me up, that proves to me that you love me." My god, you don't have to work in a domestic violence shelter to know how absolutely messed up that is!

James called me at my desk the next day to inform me that he'd fucked up and hurt "his best friend" and that he wouldn't be talking to me anymore. I have to admit, that stings my pride a little bit but by and large I think it's just best to not having anything to do with either of them.

Ok. Done now.

I mean, I am in my early thirties--to be honest it's long past about damn time. Props to Suzie for helping me finally get my priorities straight. (Did I really just write "props to Suzie?"--that's just so wrong...)

So anyway, I've been flirting with this guy at work for a couple of weeks now. We'd gotten beers a couple of times a few years ago, before I was pregnant with Suzie, and I think we've always had a connection, but he's really kicked it up this week at work--tons of compliments, innuendos, myriad reasons to come to my office throughout the day--and I must admit it's been fun. I've been feeling that kind of fluttery, excited feeling in my tummy that I haven't experienced in quite a while and I'd forgotten how much I liked it. So he's a really great guy--guitar player, of course, I mean, what have I been with like three people in my life that weren't guitar players--pretty laid back and very nice looking, but to be honest I'm just not looking to have it go any further (farther?) than it has already.

I mean, I'm having fun with it, and I don't want that to stop, but it's so my nature to kick it to the next level, mostly just to see where it'll go. My mind was wandering the other day to things progressing and then in my mind I had that inevitable and weary "we really shouldn't do this for x,y,&z reasons" that I've had with so many people, always with the full understanding that we were going to do it anyway. Even in my mind I was bored with the conversation and I decided that if things did progress I would absolutely not have that conversation again as it's really a waste of time and seems quite honestly a bit cowardly besides. I mean, if I'm going to do it, than I need to take responsibility for what I want and just go for it, not try and shirk some of the responsibility, at least emotionally, by having a big talk first about why it's a bad idea. Does that make sense?

So all that led me to really question, if indeed I thought it was such a bad idea, why choose to go through with it in the first place. Especially since I know doing anything with a co-worker is a bad idea, and especially since I really don't even have a sex drive these days! I mean, why risk a good working relationship for a sexual relationship that I don't even really want?!? It's just habit, man.

Just a habit.

How wild a realization is that?

God, how backwards does that seem? It's just like the old days back at this place though, 8 long hours stretched out before me and only about 3 hours of work to fill them. Well, on a slow day. On a real slow day I'll have about two hours of real work and on a busy day I'll have about 7. Take yesterday, for example, a pretty full day. I took a physical supplies inventory and did the subsequent ordering, a virtual materials inventory and did the subsequent ordering, ran a budget, filed a ton of paperwork, talked to about 10 vendors, and literally (really, literally) cleaned my office from top to bottom with sanitizing wipes, oh, and sat in on a 1/2 hour meeting with my boss and I was still done in 6.5 hours. I'm too fast for my own good.

Today my boss is out of the office at a training, as his his boss, so it'll probably prove to be exceedingly quiet around here. Which is why I decided to put my two hours of work on hold and write a blog entry.

Fascinating, isn't it? Truly fascinating.

Really though things have been pretty quiet around my place. This is a very good thing. Suzie's fantastic. She's been sleeping a full 10 hours a night, straight though, and when she's up she's at daycare for a few hours or playing in the yard or with her toys with her dad and me. It's working out really well, actually. She's getting a much more well rounded diet at daycare than she'll accept from me and is so tuckered from playing all day that she's ready for bed by 8. I'm 98% happy with our current situation. When I get my first paycheck that just may bump up to 99%.

God, here I am with tons of time to blog and not really a damn thing to say. Hmmm, well I guess I'll get back to work and see if anything else strikes later.