Let's get serious

It's been an emotional few days. Last week, I was confronted with some truly terrible news: Wilford Brimley was hit by a car and killed in Bumblefuck, Indiana, where he has lived since I made the ill-fated trip to Peru with a dude that turned out to be crazy and mean. I am devastated because I loved the hell out of that cat and his future has been a great source of anxiety to me for many months. I feel like a terrible person for giving up my precious little demon for that insane tard in the first place, but also guilty for entrusting him to the most inept person I know in the entire world: my mother. I was inconsolable for the first two days and barely kept my shiz together at work (hope I'm not making a bad impression on my new boss!), but I did my best. I toured a historic home that my agency is using for the site of a fundraiser and in the backyard, I met the homeowner's little gray cat, Sheba. I burst into tears and the homeowner got me a paper towel. It was all very awkward. The night I got the news, I was beside myself with rage and grief and smashed some ugly candy dishes in the street that I'd gotten at a bridal shower I felt guilted into going to. . . which brings me to the other big thing that happened recently. . .

I have a "friend" that I was mostly friends with out of guilt and some other strange feeling that I can't quite identify. . .So she asked me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding that is to take place on a former slave plantation. The other bridesmaids are girlfriends of her fiancé's male friends except for one other girl who was apparently an acquaintance in college, but that girl dropped out of being a bridesmaid months ago by saying that she was moving out of state (which she was not). In the beginning, I did try to talk the bride-to-be out of bestowing this honor on me, let her know that I'd be thrilled to just be a guest, but she wasn't taking the bait. It's not that she's a bad person, but she is "high needs" in terms of friendship.

It didn't help matters that the maid of honor, head cat-herder, is a terrible human being. The first time I met this woman, who would continually demand that I send her money for all of the awful, tacky arrangements she was making, was bragging about verbally abusing the high school students she was teaching and being convicted of animal cruelty for leaving her dog in a hot car in the summer. I met her boyfriend, a former fraternity brother of the groom, at the bride-to-be's birthday party in New York. The groom and his friends got really drunk, one guy toppled into a stack of chairs at a bar, and they all reminisced about different times in their history of being drunk and inappropriate together and told of all the times they had pooped on things they weren't supposed to poop on. It was a surprisingly long list.

I just started a new job, I'm moving into a new apartment and I'm auditioning a new deodorant made of volcanic ash (who thinks of these things?) - I just don't have the time or the money to be a part of a wedding that doesn't have a special meaning for me, so I told her I had to drop out. Of course she was angry, I had to expect that. Her rage was expressed through the immediate unfriending and blocking of my profile on Facebook. Better than being firebombed at home, I guess. I'm relieved to be out of it, regret giving such short notice, but hope they have a happy life together, completely separate from my existence on this planet.

Today, I am trying to be careful because my horoscope says it's not a good time to get into fights because my energy isn't right for a conflict and I might not be in the "right" place to play by the rules. . .

R.I.P. Wilford Brimley (April 2010 - September 2011)