frenemies
I just listened to a podcast exploring ‘frenemies’ – friends who are also enemies, or friends who aren’t really that great friends. It’s on This American Lifewhich I think is one of the best podcasts around.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/
Early on it asks the question: why do we keep friendships we don’t actually like? There are two cases I was thinking about in my life while they explored this one. The first was a friend who I basically grew out of and she never grew up and actually she fired me. The cheek! and in the usual way – just faded away so that I wouldn’t have even known if my brother-in-law hadn’t mentioned he was going to her wedding and I didn’t even know about it.
The second was a person I was really there for. Over and over and over again I listened for hours to her problems. But I was never invited to her good times. After years of this I was exhausted and more than a little pissed off – I faded away.
I thought – as I learned that people have incredible stamina and staying power for lousy friends – I thought what good training for husbands. Because if women (and women are the principal owners of frenemies it turns out) if women learnt to be more disposable and consumer oriented with their friends they wouldn’t last as long with their mates.
something cute
The kids were brainstorming the top six cities. my littlest suggested that city they built at night.
?
The big one figured it out first. Oh you mean Rome! Which wasn’t built in a day…..
Monday
Monday night now. I had 4 meetings at work today and a ton of work to stuff in around the edges of them. The rest of the week looks like more of the same. The great thing about my job is the day goes faster than a king sized bar of almond chocolate on girls night. My youngest daughter scooted down to my work from her school and we forewent the usual trip to the library after work and nipped to the supermarket instead.
Getting home I opened the back door of the car and found the five dollar note I’d give older daughter to get home that night on the bus. Arghhhhh! I navigate the welcome homing dogs and make for the phone book and catch her before her French lesson finishes. The administrator lends her bus money and then safe in the knowledge she is not a temporary street kid I make dinner, pay some bills, eat with the family, walk the dog, retrieve youngest from trampoline valley, comb the knots from Miss 7s hair, listen to her read then lie down and read her chapter book till she falls asleep. Time to blog – which usually means the phone will ring but so far so good tonight!
Blogging is a wickedly self absorbing and self indulgent thing to do. I know it must seem deranged to spend half my day at a computer and come home and do more of the same but really it’s not – there’s nobody trying to reframe, rescope, descope or nit pick the living daylights out of my thoughts. I don’t even feel compelled to finish them or end up where I wanted to go.
Ok, I’m off to fix the ingrown toe nail of my eldest, write a speech for my toastmasters group on Wednesday, empty the dishwasher then read a report I brought home in bed. Night night.