Wednesday, April 15, 2026

Five minute or it’s not worth it.

Platonic? I mean, yes. I think so. Probably.

My shrinky dink is convinced that boys and girls can’t be friends without someone wanting to get in the other’s pants.

To be honest, a lot of women feel that way, and I cannot wrap my brain around it.

My bestie turned 50 on Andy Moog’s birthday, and we’ve wanted to get to a Bruins game for a while, so I treated him.

Not a big deal; we watched a lot of B’s hockey when we were younger. I’ve missed watching hockey with him, so every chance I get, I will take it.

Unfortunately, I live five hours north of Boston and I hate driving into the city. My genius ass decided that it would be a great idea to take the train in.

Well, the MBTA decided to work on the tracks and end the commuter rail at Beverly, so I had to take a bus from Beverly to North Station. I triple checked the schedule and the original 9AM train I was going to take from Newburyport was scheduled to arrive after noon. It was a 12:30 game and Bestie was getting to Boston at 10AM, so I decided to take the 7AM train.

Remember when I said it was a five hour trip? My ass left the house at 2AM to get to North Station at 8:30, not the 9:30 the revised schedule said. ARGH!!!!!

But. I made friends with a guy in an Andy Moog jersey while I waited so it wasn’t completely horrible. (Yes, yes, I did. Normally, I would avoid talking to a stranger but I was hopped up on two coffees and a bottle of Coke. It’s like being manic, but without… the mental illness part of it? I don’t know.)

When Bestie finally showed up, I was over the moon. Fuck, I’ve missed seeing him in person. Texts just don’t hit the same.

I don’t even know how to do the day justice. I was a sappy mess, but he means a lot to me. He is my everything, My ride or die. My bestie.

And I needed him to know that.

Life’s too short to not share those sort of feelings.

But, you know, boys and girls can’t have deep, meaningful, platonic, friendships…

Wednesday, January 28, 2026

You two fill my holes… no. wait.

these boys own me

So, let’s talk Heated Rivalry because I cannot get it out of my head.

I have been so good about not watching the show on repeat because whenever I have watched it, it gets my full attention. Kind of hard to put it on in the background and do stuff… I’m also kind of annoyed with it. I found my original Drarry plot / sketch notebook and it’s like Tierney and Reid went through it page by page. There are just too many hockey tropes that writers - me included - lean on, but they did it better. Yeah. I’ve been fighting with the Drarry hockey disaster for years so now I’m on draft three. I’m trying to get away from the tropes, yet still fit in the framework that people find familiar.

Honestly, as annoying as it is to start fresh, the writing is better this time around. Or, at least, I like it better.

I finished all the books and I’m also very annoyed at the people on Facebook who are asking stupid questions about things that happen in the books, but say that they refuse to read them. OR they only read the two books that center on Hollanov, and miss the subtle things woven throughout the six books. Like Ilya colllecting gay people… It’s this whole thing that you don’t really catch on to, but it’s there. REALLY subtle and nicely done.

I’m also annoyed by the Skip haters who, well, skip their episode because they ‘don’t like it’. My siblings in Christ, if it wasn’t for Skip, WE WOULD NEVER GO TO THE COTTAGE. I think the show did the book dirty because the relationship was weird and angsty and kind of beautiful in it’s own way. I have to say that during every reheat I yell “SKIPPY” every time I see them on screen, I like them that much.

The cats are starting to worry about my mental health.

They don’t even know the amount of crazy I can bring to the party.

I could go on, but let’s talk about the title of this entry. Which, oddly enough, has nothing to do with the two hockey players.

I’ve been in a weird place lately. Not quite depressed, not quite manic, but definitely not normal. I’d say I’m cycling but it doesn’t feel like that, either. I’m stuck in this weird off-center bipolar limbo. Even my shrink picked up on it when we met this week. I don’t know. It is what it is and nothing is fixing it. I’m just going to ride it out and hope I come out the other side soon. I thought I’ve experienced everything the bipolar could possibly throw at me, but this is new. And I don’t like it.

This weird little place my brain is residing in led to me to texting Mr. First Guy and telling him I wish we were watching the BOS-MTL game together. We’re both huge Bruins fans and our favourite player is Andy Moog, a goalie. He shares a birthday with Moog and I share a birthday with Bobby Orr, so it’s like we were meant to be. We have, however, in the years since high school become friends. Good friends. Besties. It’s not outside the realm of possibility for us to go to a game together, or even watch a game on TV. More importantly, it’s a completely valid emotional response to watching the biggest rivalry in hockey. (Which, OK. Fine. The rivalry in Heated Rivalry is also BOS-MTL, which lead a bunch of fangirls to watch that game. Whatever. It’s weird, but, you do you, boo.)

During this conversation, I brought up Mr. FNFTF and said how the two of them have really helped me survive through the years. Like they filled two holes in me. Which, thankfully, didn’t go anywhere further than ‘shared trauma’ being the glue keeping them in my life. They were both around when my mother died and they were there when my dad died, too. I know my dad’s death affected Mr. FNFTF because they used to hang out without me. Which is weird, but gives me the warm fuzzies. I’m just fortunate that I still have people around from that time period because I don’t have a lot of people left who were there. A lot of people only saw the fallout from my mother’s death or they saw me hit rock bottom after my dad died. The people that came in and out of my life in the 10 years between just don’t get me. Neither do the ones that came in after my dad. I don’t know how to describe it. I mean, those are life changing events and they really form the basis of who I am. To not see the whole picture…

When Mr. First Time told me he loved me in that text conversation, I broke down and bawled. Ugly cried. It was so good to hear it - unprovoked and knowing exactly where it was coming from. I didn’t realise how alone I’d been feeling until he reminded me that I still have some worth to people. (Depression lies. Period.)

Everybody is fascinated by how easily I walked away from a relationship of 30 years, married for 26, but after all those years of riding the bipolar roller coaster with me, he still didn’t understand what I needed. And I wanted to move back to New England. Neither was something we could compromise on and I’d go so far as to state that keeping that relationship going was a compromise, but I wasn’t willing to continue doing it any more. We haven’t spoken in any way, shape, or form since his text asking how the drive to Maine was. I certainly didn’t go out of my way to text him on his birthday - I didn’t feel the need to. Unlike the other two, I don’t need him in my life and more importantly, I don’t want him there, either.

So. Yeah. It’s nice to be understood. It’s nice to be wanted. It’s nice to have, um, holes filled.

And on a completely random note, the breeder we got G-Man from has a new litter of puppies. I’ve wanted a dog, but I’ve been flip flopping over what breed to get. For $3,800 I can get an amazing German Shepherd. Good temperament, breed to be gorgeous, and smart as fuck. BUT that is a lot of cash I don’t really have unless I dig into my savings and my house really needs to have the vinyl siding replaced. Decisions, decisions. I think I’d rather spend the money on a dog, tbh. Not sure the cats will agree, though. The breeder hasn’t asked for a deposit, so I’m just going to wait and see if I make it to the reservation list or the wait list. I haven’t heard back.

Even more random, Fandom Running Club is doing it’s first Rumble of the year. I’m on a team (Razoom’s Back!) that’s fundraising for Razom for Ukraine. The race has three different groups with different caps (5K, 10K, 10 miles) to make it more competitive. My dumb ass has consistently been doing 10 miles since we started 16 days ago. I could drop to a lower level. I want to drop to a lower level, but I also want to win and doing 10 a day will keep us competitive. I mean, I can’t bitch about my teammates. We all have things going on and it’s easier to do lower miles. I’m not that busy. I can spend 4 hours on a treadmill, no problem. My feet don’t want me to - I have blisters EVERYWHERE. My toes are killing me and since 10 different blisters in that area wasn’t enough, they’ve moved onto my heel.  I don’t care. I can live with the pain. Ukrainians are dealing with a lot worse than blistered feet.

Even even more random, I have FINALLY moved into the kitchen. I ended up ripping out one of the lazy susans and finding some pull out drawers on clearance at Home Depot. The cabinets are much more functional now. Every thing I can’t fit is in the dining room. That was on my agenda to clean this weekend, but I tore the living room apart instead. I needed more light and I needed more space between the couch, pellet stove, and treadmill. The good news is that the living room is spotless and the kitchen is finally livable. I’ll get to the dining room soon. I do need the house as clean as possible ASAP. I’m tired of living like this. It just sucks that my time is so limited. (Also, the puppies will be ready to go home in March, so I have extra motivation.)

Speaking of things to do… I should probably get to my to-do list. I’m hopping on the treadmill for the Stupid Bowl if only because I want to see how Green Day and Bad Bunny comment on the current state of the union…. which only leaves me 5 hours to try to do eleventy gazillion things.

Wednesday, August 13, 2025

The Amazing Adventures of BeFri and StEnds

for the longest time there were two of us and we were inseparable

Ya’ll know I hold on to shit.

So, let’s visit some ancient history, shall we?

Back in preschool, I met this girl. We stayed friends all the way through until a stupid argument in our freshman year of college. I didn’t like her girlfriend and didn’t want to hang out with her (and the girlfriend) the one night we were able to hang out. She thought it was because I didn’t like that she was gay. Me? Have a problem with gay people? Haaaaaaave you met me? Thanks, T, for the 30-ish year disruption in our bestie-ness.

Asshole.

We reconnected over MySpace and moved it over to FB but we don’t live in each other’s orbits any more and well… we just never made an effort to see each other after we cleared the air.

Why am I friends with so many introverts who never want to hang out?

That’s rhetorical. Like calls to like.

N’s mother died after a long illness. I was so far out of the loop that I didn’t even know she’d been sick. When I saw the obit, I gave it a day or two before I popped into her DMs and was like, I know we haven’t been friends since college, but if you need to talk about losing a parent, I’m here.

The floodgates didn’t open. It wasn’t like we started partying like it was 1993. But it opened a line of conversation we hadn’t had in years.

The wake and service were three hours south, but this is a woman I would have flown back to honour. No matter what cost.

Yeah.

I decided to go to the wake and the service and the burial.

It was amazing to see N again, even if the situation was uncomfortable. We made plans to hang out, but who knows. It was enough just to see her and be there for her.

Plus, the wife? I want someone to love me as much as E loves N. No shovel talk necessary. She’s good people. I approve.

I was talking to one of our mutual friends and we were talking about how we had distilled our high school clique into two long lasting friendships. N had S and Soulmate Boy (!), I have two ex-boyfriends as my high school era besties.

God, that is soooo weird to say.

My First Boy (that means exactly what you think it means) and Mr. We’re Better As Friends With Benefits Than We Are Boyfriend and Girlfriend.

But, I still love both dearly. Although not with that heart eyed teenage love nonsense. More like the we have lived through hell and survived, I couldn’t do it without you, sort of love. Platonic-ish? I have no idea… Gratitude + respect + familiarity. Whatever that equals. Platonic love is probably the best description, but there is something more to how I feel about them.

And I’m definitely not interested in falling back into bed with either of them.

Everyone tells me how weird it is that I’m friends with both of them. I don’t know why everyone thinks it’s so strange. Friends are friends are friends. It doesn’t matter how they enter your life, only that they stay around when the shit hits the fan. Both of them stayed.

Mr. FNFTF and I got together a bazillion years ago at our old stomping grounds and it WAS weird to think that we were able to get past our rough breakup and then screw around and then remain friends when it fizzled out. (That’s a sentence I never want an English teacher to see.)

I think some people are really meant to fulfill a certain purpose in your life… and sometimes, that purpose changes. FNFTF was a halfway decent boyfriend and then scratched an itch when it needed to be scratched and then he became someone to lean on. 

The First Boy was a great boyfriend the first time. Kind of OK the second time. Friendzoned since before my father died.

It’s my understanding that I’m the reason he reconnected with his father and that side of the family.

Yup.

Besties for life.

My ride or dies.

But I don’t describe them as ex-boyfriends often. It’s just that S and I were in the same clique as the two boys and she knew both of them. She knew I slept with both of them… it wasn’t like I could reshape the narrative.

Anywhoo…

It’s a thousand fucking degrees up in northern Maine and it’s impossible to find fans any where. I could get a window unit (Air Con), but those are a pain in the ass.

It’s even humid enough that I had to buy a dehumidifier.

I even slept on the couch last night so I didn’t have to try and hit the fan into my over crowded bedroom.

Side note: that cheap little couch is comfy as fuck.

Definitely doing that again tonight.

It’s too hot to think and it’s definitely too hot to sit in front of the computer… I have more to say (don’t I always?) but that’s a post for a later date.

Saturday, April 05, 2025

I know I have roots there even if I don’t know where the trees are.

Hail! to the victors valiant / Hail! to the conqu’ring heroes / Hail! Hail! to Michigan / I forgot the words / GO BLUE!

A while back, I had this crazy plan to fly in and out of Boston - go see my friends’ band in Albany-adjacent cities and then catch a Bruins game. A nice, low-key, all-me, 50th birthday long weekend.

Yeah. That did not go as planned.

It became fly into Albany, see the two BMS shows, go to Boston and watch them lose to BUFFALO (BUFFALO! ACK!), drive to Maine and buy a house.

Dude, I bought a fucking house.

It’s the third one I’ve owned outright and the fifth house I’ve bought. Buying a house doesn’t get any less stressful the fifth time around, let me tell you.

But, let’s start in Albany. Future me is going to wish I wrote this somewhere, so why not here? I share everything else important here. (This may be a long one. Strap in! (Strap on? Whatever works!))

I get to Albany to find out they’re charging me a $200 one way rental fee for the car. Not only that, they’ve decided me to give me a Hyundai Elantra. The Elantras are REALLY low to the ground. Like, really, really, low. Hated that car since the moment he gave me the keys. Grrr. Glad I didn’t get a nicer car - that fucking $200 would have made the car way too expensive and I was already pushing my budget.

(I bet this is the most expensive vacation I’ll ever take in my entire life. Altogther, I spent roughly $203,000.)

I have always had good luck with Super 8s in Upstate NY. I am sad to say that the original hotel in Cobleskill fucking sucked. It seems minor, but the room had a broken safe. (I had a laptop. I didn’t want to bring it to a bar in an unknown neighbourhood.) They tried to put me in a different room. Broken safe. Third room? So moldy, I couldn’t even walk in the door. I walked out of the hotel in full Karen mode. (Well, they must have thought that. I thought I was being nice about almost dying.  Mold has become something I’m super allergic to. So, yeah, no thanks. You can poison someone else.)

So, I went ALL THE FUCK THE WAY BACK TO THE AIRPORT and stayed at the Tru by Hilton. That was ah-mazing. I’m only staying at Trus from this point forward.

Black Mountain Symphony killed it during that first show. I sat back and let the songs roll over me. It felt like the first time I could breathe in ages. All the stress. POOF! Gone. So nice to be home, surrounded by friends, and the best music ever. Oh, it was amazing.

I left the Tru to stay a little family run hotel closer to BMS’ second show of the weekend. It was a nice room. Nothing too fancy. (The BMS show was great, as expected, and I bonded with Bill’s mom a bit. Love her!) The absolute worst part of the night was when I was woken up by something. The bed was shaking. Literally shaking. Like someone was fucking with the mattress. And then, once the bed stopped moving, it felt like something got on the bed with me. (It could have been Guinness or the ex for the way the bed sunk.) The room got cold and I could feel someone in the room with me. This started at about 3AM and lasted until 3:30. I barely moved a muscle except to breathe and cracked my eye to look at the time.

Turns out there is a cemetery across the street from the hotel.

I guess someone just wanted to say hi.

From there, it was Boston. Battery Wharf Hotel. Eh. It was hard to find and they had valet parking. (I hate valet parking!) The restaurant didn’t serve me the first morning and I had waited for over fifteen minutes, made contact with three different people and was not acknowledged once. Grrrr. It was just… eh. It poured all day Monday so I didn’t leave the room except to go to the Bruins game. It was so weird being back in the Garden. Everything changed from how you get into the arena vs where the trains are. Bruins stank it up, but UConn and BU had boys on Buffalo. It didn’t help that Sweeney traded Marchy and Coyle right at the fucking trade deadline. Bastard.

From Boston, I headed to Maine.

Fell in love with a house in Dover-Foxcroft. $230K, 1.25 acres, river front, a she shed that was livable. I also fell through the floorboards. Too much work for that sort of money.

Ate at Bob’s Clam Shack, spent a good hour staring at the Nubble Lighthouse, and spent the night in a hotel at Long Sands Beach. Nice to reconnect with my memories of my father, even if I didn’t make it to Ogunquit.

Made my home base in Bangor. Millinocket’s about an hour north, but I had some rewards points to use and I didn’t see any Hiltons up there. Spent the next two days looking at houses. FIFTEEN HOUSES.

It was toss up between the emotional choice and the smart choice. The emotional choice had a beautiful view of Mt. Kathadin, but needed a lot of work. They were asking almost $200K for it, and I really doubted it would appraise at $150K. I offered a fair amount and they countered at basically what they were asking. Yeah, that’s a no. The view is BEAUTIFUL and well worth $200K, but a house with dated appliances and asbestos shingles is not.

I ended up going with the smart choice. A little three bedroom ranch, in move in condition, with a garage and a basement I can finish.

We close on May 9th. Movers come May 21st.

Had Chinese for lunch and my fortune was perfect: Trust in the journey of self-discovery; you are evolving.

Saturday, November 09, 2024

*poke* *poke*

wands up…

OK.

That only took three tries and a panicked email to an EE developer I know… but I finally managed to upgrade the backend of my little blog. Finally.

So…

Detroit.

That was a trip and a half. So glad I went!

For as much fun as I had, there were a lot of bad things, but let’s start with the good:

Shannon picking me up and giving me Faygo pop (It’s a Detroit thing.) and promising to leave both my kidneys. It is fun to get picked up at the airport by internet strangers!!!

Going to the Red Wings game with Heather. The Wings lost and it was a shit game, but I was pleased to see a lot of familiar names on the Rangers’ roster. It was nice to be at a pro hockey game again. I am finally healing. Not healed, it will still be a long time for that, but healing…

THE SPIRITED FISTING WALKING TOUR!!! There’s a very famous statue called the Spirit of Detroit and a random statue of a fist. So… yeah. A bunch of us got bored and went on a trek so that we could get fisted. (God, even my pocket friends are weird!)

I ended up walking the 1 mile and 5K with Heather. It was nice to have the company, but the walk itself was odd. Instead of combining both races, like they’ve done at every one 1/5 I’ve gone to, you had to do each race SEPARATELY. Two bibs and about two minutes to change them out, if you were as slow as we were. It was nice, though. I can’t remember the last time I did a race with a friend.

The half marathon was the best experience of my entire racing career. It was cold as fuck that morning and walking up the Ambassador Bridge will forever live on in my nightmares. I’m kind of disappointed I didn’t get pulled over by the Border Patrols, because that would have made it even better. The sunrise over Detroit, the views from the bridge, doing the world’s only underwater mile… it was definitely a once in a lifetime experience.

Then, like idiots, we went on a ghost tour. Because after doing a half (or in one case, a full) marathon, the one thing we should do is go on a walking ghost tour. It was horrible. Absolutely fucking horrible. I’ve been thinking about sending a review myself. The girl didn’t know any of the good stories and it was… you know it’s bad when the highlight of the entire tour is a ghost cow. (Don’t ask.)

As for the bad (?): I cried as we approached Detroit. Like I didn’t even know how badly I missed the fall foliage until I saw it.

I was so energized by the cold that it was sort of terrifying. I know I miss the cold, but I didn’t realize I missed it that much.

I didn’t wake up with a barometric pressure induced headache the entire time I was there. Not a single headache all weekend, which is really rare for me during Hurricane Season.

I had the uber driver from hell. He asked how much the trip cost me (a 5AM trip to the airport) and I stupidly told him $80. HE BITCHED THE ENTIRE TRIP THAT HE WASN’T GETTING PAID ENOUGH. Like, dude, that is not my fucking problem. I tipped him too well - and got charged twice for the damn thing - and decided, yeah, never taking an uber again. Once was enough.

And… not only was I miserable to get off the plane in Fort Lauderdale, MY CAR BATTERY DIED. I waited three hours for AAA to get there and replace it. The guy was great, though. We had a really inappropriate conversation (Titties and a stick shift? I LOVE YOU!), but the test he did on the battery answered a lot of questions I’d been having. I’m due for an oil change, and was going to wait until then. But, my luck is shit.

I didn’t have much company during the half, so I spent probably ten miles of it deep in my head.

I decided that I was moving sooner rather than later, but now that I’m back in my shitty Florida life, I’m not sure I can speed run the move home. There’s absolutely no reason to stay, but I’m also very loyal to my boss. The man is a saint and I don’t want to hurt him. I can probably manage my job remotely, but I don’t even want to say that to him yet. There’s stuff and things going on at the day job and I’m not sure the timing is right for my exit. My lease is up on 6/25 so I have some time to think about it.

Oh well, like I told my shrinky dink, I need to break the cycle of staying in Florida for men who treat me well. But it’s not that easy and it’s causing me a lot of mental turmoil. She thinks I should leave now, but… She also thinks I should move back to New Hampshire or Connecticut, but Maine is calling my name. And, yeah, I am looking at Presque Isle which is about as far north as I can get. Which would mean I’m “isolated” again and working remotely won’t make the “loneliness” better. But she doesn’t understand. I like being “isolated” and I’m not lonely. The big thing she’s missing is that Presque Isle is only like 6 hours from Boston. Will it suck to still be a decent distance from my friends? Yes. But I’d rather be a car ride away than have to deal with airports and that stupidity.

I don’t know. I still have a lot to think about and a ticket to Epic Universe on Labor Day. So, maybe I wait until the fall to move home - it depends on my lease. If I have to renew it for a year, I will, but I won’t be happy about it. I don’t like renting and I definitely don’t like this place. I’d rather see if I can do a six month lease.

I don’t know. There’s too much going on right now and I just need to take a step back and breathe.

Trump won the election. Four more years of hell on earth and that’s all I’m going to say on that.