With friends like you,

Ok, so I mentioned before about K’s good friend Dan who was selling his house and buying a new one, but didn’t want to use me because he wanted “to keep his friends friends and his business separate.” It seems he'd had a bad experience hiring a friend of his before.

Now I’ve been in the business long enough to know that it’s full of disappointment – next door neighbors, acquaintances, even people who ask you to help them sometimes let you down. So I try to be understanding – I know friends sometimes have prior relationships with Realtors, etc.

But this wasn’t like that. He didn’t know anyone already, and he went out and found strangers to help him. At one point, after K advised him not to talk to me about it, he decided that he’d let me help him look in one little area, but of course that didn’t work out.

The weekend after he sold his home in Palmdale, he made an offer in Burbank with another realtor that was ultimately accepted. And now he keeps insisting that they’re having us over soon so we can see their new place!

My sister says that it speaks to his paranoia more than to my abilities, but when I think about how much money it would have been, I just can't see a way to be OK with that. Yet.

My feelings about the subject are summed up by Dan’s former neighbor, who is also a Realtor and probably also pissed at Dan. At a party at his house, I was saying that I’d made friends and lost friends in this business, and she said, “If someone knows you work on commission, and they don’t use you? They’re not your friend.” They get downgraded to acquaintances – people I’ve known for awhile or even like, but they’re not really friends.

So it's sad. When they first told me they were moving closer to us, I was really happy and excited. We used to be close, but after he got married and moved farther away, we grew apart. Part of that was not being invited over or his wife coming over our house for at least 5-8 years. But this was a chance to put ALL THAT (and more) behind us.

And now he thinks we're coming over all the time? I feel like he's insisting that I tell him its all OK, like the time he made me hug him through the car window. All I will think about when I see his house now is how nice it would have been if we could ALL be happy about it. About all the presents I would have bought them and how happy we'd all be. About how he says they moved here to be closer to us, but then did the one thing that would really piss me off.

Personally, I wonder if it isn't a Freudian thing where part of him doesn't really want to be friends with us at all. But when I talk about Freudian things, the Girl says I'm taking things too literally.

K is such a good person, so much better than me. He'll be able to go over there and act somewhat happy for them. This is the most angry I've ever seen him get towards a friend, though, and I see him making moves to cut down on the amount of Dan in our lives. I've told him not to, that he's usually so forgiving, but even he is having trouble this time.

I guess I am happy for them, but I'm more personally and professionally disappointed. And I don't think it's my job to make him feel better about the choices he's made by forcing myself to go over there and make it all better for him before I actually feel any better.

I think that we're in this world to practice forgiveness, and that's why I'm getting so many opportunities to practice. I'm sure in time I'll see that this was the best thing, but right now it's hard to see.

This is me, complaining and trying to move on.

Dodger Game

We had been planning to do one thing every week while The Girl is on summer vacation. So this week we went to a Dodger game. Dodgers vs. Florida Marlins.

The game started at 7:10 and we were there a little early. We saw some tv announcers getting ready near us, and one of them waved to us.

There were some funny girls sitting behind us, obviously looking for someone in particular. It turned out to be Mike Stanton, who is a local boy who got picked up by the Florida Marlins. They were excited to see him and ran down and waved, and he waved back at them.

This is the very player that hit a home run with 3 men on base, which gave the Marlins all the runs they got in the entire game. Enough to beat the Dodgers.

When we got home the Boy said this player Mike S was now on his fantasy team. Since he came out the same time as Stephen Strasburg. he didn't get any attention, but he's really good!

I heard one girl say, "Remember how good his butt used to look in his football uniform?" and another girl said, "Oh, yeah, I remember!"

Also funny, the Bachelor Ryan somethingorother got to throw the second first pitch. I didn't realize at first who it was, then a lot of booing was going on. The Girl yelled, "get a girlfriend!" and some guy behind me yelled, "You're a media whore!" V. funny.

His pitch didn't make it to the plate, by the way. This resulted in more booing from the crowd, but he just smiled and waved and walked away.


Well, it was cold for a summer night, but we had a good time. This summer has been really cool - I remember 2 years ago when the Boy graduated it was so hot that everyone's AC blew the transformer in the power pole, and we sat and watched as they fixed it.

The Boy is moving into his first apartment. One of his roommates, his best friend from High School, is living with him again. I think it's ironic that this friend of his seemed so judgemental about my having a list of stuff the Boy needed to do, but he didn't understand that without the list the Boy was not doing anything! No chores, nothing. He even told his Mom, who came to a party at our house to meet me because she'd heard about this list.

So now this friend gets to teach the Boy how to do dishes. Ha!

Where is her country?

It turns out the maids accidentally took the Girl's cleats. I didn't call them for awhile, as the timing didn't seem right for them to have taken them, but finally (after looking and looking for them) I called and spoke to the daughter of one of the maids, as she speaks the best English. She asked the other maid, and found that she did see them, but has already sent them to "her country."

They were just in a white plastic drawstring bag, on a certain chair, so they just mixed it up with stuff I'd given them. I'm constantly (it seems) going through my stuff and getting rid of things. The Girl does it even more than I do, so lately I'd been just giving it to them instead of Goodwill. Well, at least we know what happened to them!

The Girl is mad, tho, and imagines that someone in another country is running around in her soccer cleats. She's mad that she now has to wear what she calls "clown shoes."

She's second on a waiting list for a camp that starts in a week, so we'll see what happens with that.