Tired of Waiting / Lucky Man

Monday, Aug. 11, 2003 - 6:55 a.m.

Yesterday did not happen. Well, mostly.

In essence, I got stood up for dinner.

I really can't stand holes in my life where people are supposed to be. Standing me up for dinner, not leaving a message on the answering machine, stepping away from an IM and not returning for an ice age...

I'm thirty-eight years old. My mother died when she was fifty-six, and my father died just before he turned sixty-six. So depending on whose dice-roll ended up as the part of my genetic makeup that determines when I go toes up? I either have twenty years left, or thirty years left. Frankly, I don't have time to wait around.

Or... maybe I'm just tired of waiting in general. I'm tired of getting caught behind the person who has caused a summit conference in the line ahead of me because they've decided the rules don't apply to them, and they want to use a check in the nine items or less line. I'm tired of the person ahead of us at the intersection with his left blinker on, apparently waiting for a blessing from the Pope before proceeding. I'm tired of the person driving along going vroom screech on the Great Highway who hasn't figured out that the goddamned lights are timed at thirty-five and if they would just slow down to that speed they wouldn't even have to tap their brakes. I'm tired of waiting for the waitress to bring us menus and water. I'm tired of the so-called 'friends' who prattle on in e-mail about how They're Coming To Town So Make A Moment For Dinner Sometime This Week, and then never show up. I'm tired of waiting for the post office to get back to me on the mail fraud charges I filed against the Erasure Impostor. Tired of wondering if Mute needs more info from me. I think I'm even tired of fucking -halftime- during a football game.

Where the hell was I?...Oh yeah. No dinner guest.

Oh well! Nanny Nanny Boo Boo! The standupper missed a -good- dinner. Baked chicken breasts with basil and garlic, with steamed broccoli spears. And the dipping sauce for both was sour cream infused with bacon bits. Nummy nums!...

I'm missing real sugar less and less. My skin is immaculate.

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I heard from Michael Winderman again recently.

I haven't mentioned him here before now, but I don't quite know why, as he was one of the most intriguing people in my life for a very long time. Michael was my second husband for awhile. We met at a science fiction convention, fell in love immediately, and got married after spending only about twenty days together over a period of six months. It was the time of life when passion and impulse were the primary controlling forces of our nature -- and although we went our separate ways less than a year after that, I've never forgotten him. Our parting was not the best, and I'd often wondered if I would ever get the chance to apologize to him for how things were handled.

I got that chance. And he accepted.

I spent a significant amount of time up in the Idaho panhandle where he lives, which is why I so love that part of this country. Anyway, I Googled him, sent him a ping, and he wrote me a lovely email back, saying he'd read about me here, and that he was so sorry about how terribly I was hurt by what the Erasure impostor had done to me, and that he couldn't imagine how I had gotten through it. The amount of kindness he showed me and has since shown has been astonishing.

We began corresponding again about six weeks ago. In subsequent letters, he's gone on to tell me what he's been doing since we parted; when I knew him, he was just in the burgeoning stages of a business plan development for a bookstore he was planning to open. He went ahead and did that, and now he's doing quite well. (The bookstore link is here, by the way, over on the left.) Additionally, in the process of catching up, he's let me know something else interesting about him; he's a practitioner of Ch'an Buddhism, which is the Chinese form of Zen Buddhism. I had investigated Zen about twenty years ago while I was in college, but had not done a lot of research. I sat up until the wee hours reading about it over Sunday / Monday, though. Wow. Knowing who he is, this is probably exactly what he's supposed to be doing.

Good for you, Winderman. Few people are that lucky.

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In a little over three weeks -- Utah. Six days. Two for travelling and four for the visit. It will be good for me to journey to a place I've never been before, by myself. I haven't done that in many years. I'm looking forward to meeting Paul and his family in person. And to travel by train is something I am really anticipating.

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Rant over. I feel better now. For some reason the Jon and Vangelis version of the song "State of Independence" is lodged in my head right now. Which I guess if I have to choose between that and, oh, say, Leonard Cohen's "The Future", this is not actually a bad thing.

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Of course, I have figured something about those people who never leave messages.

They're tired of waiting, too. :)

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6 of my readers commented on this entry

Patty - 2003-08-11 11:23:47
don't you just hate that feeling when you realize you actually ARE being stood up? i hate it! nad the really sad thing? it somehow taints any date you have after that. but i am glad your dinner was good.
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Bindyree - 2003-08-11 11:24:54
Yes, the feeling of burgeoning humiliation is something that few other things equal on this planet as far as sheer unworthiness goes! Arghgh!
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hysmith - 2003-08-11 11:29:31
You're a lot like me in that respect; we have a muse who lives in the kitchen. :) It's one of the things that I make a point to do for the people I care for. When it goes unappreciated it hurts just that little bit more. Sounded like a terrific LC meal, too. :) OK, it's been a long time since we experienced one of those too-synchronous-to-be-real moments. I leave my jukebox program running on random shuffle most of the time, for background noise. I'm currently packing about 90 hours of music around with me, so what are the odds that one particular track gets served up right when I pop in for my morning visit? :D
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Dana - 2003-08-11 12:14:15
*grrr* I loathe being stood up because it makes you feel as if they've found something "better" to do. That's quite frankly a crappy way to make someone feel!
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amanda - 2003-08-11 15:03:26
wow, i am so sorry you got stood up. i hate that feeling. it's tough to shake. being stood up is like the other person saying their time is more important than yours. and it's passive aggressive. maybe it's better to know now that this person can't even leave a message! GRRR! i promise. not all people are that shady. :)
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Feather - 2003-08-11 23:27:35
People who stand you up only do so because there terribly insecure and think you are far to good to be around loosers such as themselves. Therefore they choose not to taint your perfect existance with there imperfectness. That was a total crock of shit, but it always made me feel better ;)
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