how does that mirror my life?

I was happily on my way to lunch today with my best friend of 14 years, Nida (knee-duh). We were going to what seems to be our usual lunch place these days, Eden Alley - a vegetarian cafe connected to Unity Temple here on the Plaza. To get in you have to walk under some trees. Should be no problem, right? Yeah, you'd think that... unless you're me and it happens to be Friday the 13th. This thing falls from the sky literally less than an inch from my nose. I am thinking that I almost got bird-bombed again (I got pooped on by a bird a few years ago while waiting for a concert). I look down where the glob landed... NOPE! This time it's worse...


falling egg

Yes, that's an egg that fell out of the tree above me. Sad for the bird, I know, but sad for me too, don'tcha think?

This was only the beginning of what proved to be a highly-entertaining lunch for us.

She explained to me the reason she was late for our meeting: how on her way to meet me she was pulled over by a cop for speeding. The cop told her that she was driving on a suspended license and asked her if she was aware of that. She wasn't. Not only did she NOT get arrested, she also did NOT get a ticket. Now, this would normally force me to react with awe and proclaim how lucky she is, etc... BUT! I started thinking "How come I can't have such luck?" Because not only once but twice I have been arrested for driving on a suspended license and taken away to jail where I was hit on by a girl I will call Whiskey Tango. You'd think I would've learned my lesson the first time but how else was I going to get to work everyday? The first time it happened I had no idea that it was suspended or what for. I had forgotten about the ticket that I hadn't paid almost a year before that. This all happened just this last September (the first time) and November (the second time). I hadn't paid the ticket yet because of financial issues but of course it has since been paid and taken care of and my license reinstated. The second time this happened I was driving the pick-up truck that was owned by the company I worked for at the time. NOT GOOD! I had to call them and tell them they were hauling me off to jail because I was driving their truck on a suspended license. NOT SMART! I got fired later that day after I had just spent 5 hours in said jail, with said Whiskey Tango, and 5 other girls in a cell about the size (and smell) of a bathroom. I made the mistake of asking Whiskey Tango what she was there for... Bad mistake... she was in for aggrevated assault and had been there for several days because no one could come bail her out. She looked like she'd been there at least that long. Anyhow, the first time Nida drove 45 minutes in the middle of the night to the city of Lawrence, KS where I was living at the time to come and bail me out. The second time I bailed myself out. So today I almost had to pay her back for bailing me out back then... We're true friends - we bail each other out of jail!

Now about the firing: my boss at the time swore she was going to do it anyway and that it wasn't really for the truck. I kind of believe this because there is a guy, a Mexican guy (but this in no way is going to be a prejudice statement against Mexicans, by the way) worked there and had very recently spent quite a bit of time in jail and in court and getting sued, etc for... cock-fighting... COCK FIGHTING! He was apparently the ring leader for a 14-person cock-fighting scandal and he didn't lose his job so why would I? The guy is just plain creepy in other ways too - the kind of guy who looks at you and you then feel the overwhelming urge to shower and scrub 'til you're raw. YUCK!

Nida also tells me that she met up with our friends Jim and Rod last night. We have known Jim and Rod as long as we have known each other, we go WAY back! The subject of Rob (another friend we met just about a month and a half ago) came up. We have hung out with Rob a couple times since we met. Jim mentioned that Rob likes to do things on purpose to annoy people on purpose (ie: push their buttons). He gave this example:

Say Rob thinks a girl is interested in him and he's not interested in them back beyond friendship? And say that girl has a pretty strong Christian foundation? He might, I don't know, say something along the lines of, "All Christians are fundamentalist, Bible-thumping freaks, who are highly judgmental, and I relate them kind of to the KKK, blah blah blah..." He would say this to get her pissed at him so she won't be interested in him anymore, to slyly let her know that the two of them just wouldn't be compatible romantically in his opinion.

Now this was funny because not 3 weeks ago Rob and I had this conversation in Nida's back yard in the middle of the night after I had called him and asked him to meet us at Fuel - a Harley bar similar to Coyote Ugly in that the skinny girls dance on the bar to Kid Rock and Lenny Kravitz while wearing low jeans and tummy-bearing tops - for a couple of brews. It was 11pm or thereabouts when I called him, mind you. I should also add here that, while I thought he was semi-cute, I was not interested in him romantically. We met through our friends Jim and Rod and he was fun to hang out with and that's about it. We exhanged info and I called him to hang out. Apparently, he was under the impression that because I called him I just had to be madly and desperately in love with him, "I mean after all, who wouldn't be in love with me, right?" he had to be thinking. What an egotistical, arrogant thing to do... But why also would you meet a girl at a bar in the middle of the night that she invited you to if you weren't interested provided she was interested to begin with? Jim told Nida last night that he does want to hang out with people even if he doesn't like them romantically. OF COURSE! Why didn't I think of that? Also, that night (you know in Nida's back yard after the bar - and by this time it was around 3am probably and we'd both had lots of brews) when he pissed me off about making the comment about "all Christians being related to the KKK," I defended my faith and explained to him that while indeed there are extremists who are like that, we're not at all all like that. He explained himself and everything was fine and we made up and everything was fine (I already said that, didn't I?). So... if he wanted to piss me off why would he explain himself and make sure everything was fine again before calling it a night? I asked Nida this at lunch today and she told me, "Well, he still wants to be friends and doesn't want to burn bridges and wants to be able to hang out," or something to that effect. Again, of course! What was I thinking? Because I absolutely love hanging out with people who I know purposely push my buttons to get me to not like them because God knows I must if I call you to hang-out! Who wouldn't want to hang out with that guy? I called him a couple days later to see if he could play on our sand volleyball team that night so he probably thinks I am still madly in love with him and he's probably uber-frustrated that his ploy didn't work. He's probably trying to think up something else to say to me to get me pissed... WHATEVER! Nida and I rolled about it though!

There were several other things that happened at lunch today that just busted our guts... like Nida falling for Rod asking about her belt and if the seashells go all the way around it, forcing her to spin around and show him her bootay! Which took us back to the time several years ago that we were both working at Wild Things (a surfer-esque store that sold Mossimo stuff (way before it was in Target) and Yaga and Billabong attire). I was wearing some Mossimo jeans and these guys were in there looking at Oakleys or something and one of them asked me, "Oh are those Gap jeans?" as he lifted up my shirt so he could "look at the label" or my butt - whichever! I fell for it! It was a looong time ago and I was only a naive high school girl and he was a far-more mature college boy just passing through on his way to Padre for Spring Break with his buddies.

It was a fun lunch - even though I am pissed at her for not getting arrested - not really, Nida, I would never wish that on ANYONE, especially YOU! Still, it irks me...