Wow, that's weird. ("Plåta det du gillar. Skriv ut dem du älskar.") Hi, Veggiesaurus.

("Snap what you like. Print who you love.")

The things you find when you're trawling through Google for something completely unrelated are interesting. I was trying to Google up the link I knew I'd saved to someone else's blog entry about a delightfully raunchy advertisement for a photo printer (the advertisement featured a woman in bridal gear with an elaborate white necklace and frosting on her face, but on a second look, the necklace and frosting looked to be something adamantly not work-safe) and came across my high school best friend's ex or soon-to-be-ex wife's blog. I knew I'd probably posted a link to the raunchy ad in my journal, so I was Googling "azurelunatic" and "print" or something of the like, and ... well.

My high school best friend and his wife separated at the beginning of August, just before they would have been married for five years. I went to their wedding, and the clearest emotional memory I have of the wedding, besides the black depression and bitterness that I'd been passed over once again, was the sense of profound relief: He's not my problem anymore. I owed it to him to give him a great bachelor party and make sure the wedding went off smoothly, as much as it was in my power to do so, and then I was done with him.

In early September, Shawn offhandedly mentioned that his wife was reading my journal, and after a brief moment of typical Alaskan double-take, I continued with business as usual. I had no idea that she had a blog, because even while she'd linked to my journal, LJ doesn't give you your referrer logs. (*nudges Six Apart staff* ...hey, while you're taking feature requests...) So I hadn't gone back to her blog, and thus there were crucial bits of the picture I had yet to process.

Picture this: you're young, and haven't had the breadth of experience you'd like to have. You're introduced to a guy, and you wind up falling for him, and he falls for you. He's got a friend who's madly in love with him, but you're the one who winds up taking up all his spare time, and he winds up marrying you. You and his friend manage to alienate each other, and you find out, a few years later, that not only did she come to your wedding dressed as if for a funeral, but she was flipping you off behind the pew as you walked up the aisle.

Been reading my husband's best friend-from-high-school's livejournal since he told me that he talked to her about the impending divorce. ( http://azurelunatic.livejournal.com ) She's always hated me, and I can't say I blame her. I fully realize that if a single person clicks on this link she'll find her way here. That's fine. I don't care anymore. Hi Joan.

I didn't start out hating her, you see. We'd been introduced by mutual friends, and I was well on the way to thinking that she was one of the most promising friendship prospects I'd met there so far, before disaster in the form of Romance vs. Shawn struck. By the time they got married not quite a year later, there was enough hostility on both sides to start a war (or at least an ill-advised police action). But I got engaged and then moved. Things have changed, in my head, since then. When Shawn told me she was reading my journal, I was surprised, but all right with her reading about my life and all. I realized, when I read her journal entry, that I couldn't just leave her believing that the outdated status is still current.

( So I left her a comment. )

A clear argument in favor of smacking around certain defense lawyers...

Cheerleaders do it, so it's not torture to make prisoners do it...
Link via outofambit, who's better at outraged disgust than I am.

Training Schedule Week Commences

This (Monday) was a good day for training schedule to give me the day off. I woke up feeling absolutely dreadful, and stayed feeling dreadful the bulk of the evening. I was pondering the truth that my co-worker imparted to me: namely, that snot-thinners and blood thinners don't go well together. I'm glad that I don't have to use blood thinners, especially after the day I've been having. At least I didn't have any more of the dreadful sneezing that I was having over the weekend, the sort of sneeze that gives tonsil whiplash.

I spent much of the day trying to get my thoughts in order to leave the message for Fuzzy's ex. This was evidently one of the major underpinnings of my mind that had shifted without giving notice to me. I was aware that between them, Darkside and my Priestess-Confessor managed to clear away and heal most of the damage done by that idiot, but I wasn't even aware that my feelings toward his wife had changed in any way. When he announced that she was leaving, I must admit that I was cheering inside (and outside as well, to a few selected friends) -- definitely not "Hooray, he's single again, I have a chance again," and not (quite) "Hooray, finally he's gotten a kick where it counts, so he knows how it feels," but "Hooray, she escaped from the same thing I was spared." And I admired that she was able to up and leave him. I didn't have the strength to do that. I'm not sure if I ever would have, if he'd chosen me.

When I went to take a shower, it transpired that the hot water was not as advertised. Miss Alaskan took a brief and shivering shower, omitting the conditioning phase entirely, using language not befitting a lady.

I returned a bit of equipment to Fry's Electronics, and exchanged it for a paper shredder and a more up-to-date corded phone. It amuses me extensively that a low-end phone in 2005 has the same features that a reasonably high-end phone in 2001 or so had, and then some. I spent the balance of the evening at home with the shredder and the phone, setting both of them up, and working away at phrasing my note just so. It takes an immense amount of concentration and angst to get the words in the order I want them, when it's something that matters. I wasn't expecting this to matter so much, but I do feel a certain kinship with her. Fuzzy's still my friend. He's been my friend for so long, but nevertheless she and I both know what it's like to survive more than three years of him. I love him better from a distance, now that I'm an adult. *blink* Evidently Dagger (and evidently I) still love him, albeit almost maternally. Marah wants (sensibly) near unto nothing to do with him, and Naomi never knew him. Demonstratedly, it's difficult for me to unlove someone once I've loved them, though Marah who loved him most when she was Joan-prime still reacts violently when his name comes up.

Enough lost love; it's bedtime.