Looking back at two friendships.

 

The above picture is of me and my former cruise partner (FCP) who shall not be named here.  The other day, she came up in an exchange of text messages between me and my ex girlfriend. Although I can sense some of my ex's ambivalence about how we handled our differences, I know that she may be learning something by chatting with me this way.  Whether or not we end up being good friends again is up to fate.  But with everything that went on in my life last year, she may have been in a worse place without losing anyone important in her life. And that could be the explanation why she fought so hard then and why she is ambivalent about a friendship now.  But I digress....

The ex and FCP have met once during the pandemic and have chatted on the phone several times.  It seems like the ex inherits friendships whenever she breaks up with a man - and now she has FCP for a friend.  I know that FCP and I will likely never find a way to patch things up - and I can't blame her for feeling as she does.

Several days ago, I had a dream that referenced FCP, and it wasn't pleasant.  I feel that I needed to send an indirect message to find out whether she is OK or not. And thus, the mention of this dream to my ex. I'm hoping that all is still OK with FCP, as last the ex heard, things were OK, as FCP has hunkered down with her pets for the duration.

- - - - - -

You might wonder why I once sent FCP a terse apology that may have sounded "matter of fact" and nothing more.  The answer is simple: If I were to say a "Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa" to her, she'd find a way to use the written word against me.  Thus, I don't want anything communicated in a form that could be used against me.

Regarding the ex, I want her as a friend, the type of friendship we could have had at the first time we broke up.  I don't push her.  Both of us still have some feelings that might complicate things if a friendship is rushed.   So I find it better to go slowly and work at rebuilding trust.  In our last conversation, I mentioned that there was a subtle wall between us during the relationship - and she gave as part of her explanation: "I didn't think about it."  People who build walls between themselves and others (and I'm including myself here as well), don't think of things that the other person feels should be obvious.  Over time, they may become obvious to the person, and by then it is often too late to fix things between the two people.  This is why I believe that an occasional argument between two people is a healthy thing - the walls we build are not started by our conscious minds, but can only be breached by our conscious minds.

- - - - - -

Some of my readers might remember that the big problems with the ex started with our breakup and how we handled things.  I am careful NOT to mention what's going on with my dating life with her, as it is none of her business.  If she were to ask, I'd give her the information she asked for, but I'd warn her that she might not like what she were to hear. (Whether she'd be pleased or not is not my concern if she were to ask the question.  But I think she'd be pleasantly surprised to find out certain things that I have not mentioned in this blog.)  Hopefully, this will not be an issue for us in the future.

As I've said earlier, I'm just trying to develop the friendship that my ex and I should have developed years ago.  Yet, at times, I feel that we're doing a delicate dance around an elephant in the room (not to be confused with the hose connecting us to our CPAP machines). Would either of us be able to overcome a fear of being hurt to risk opening up to a relationship again?  And if so, could either of us deal with potential rejection, or with a potential relationship failure in the future?  Right now, I'm only looking for a friendship, as that is the only realistic option open to us at the moment....

 

Will I be able to keep up this pace?

 

I seem to be burning the midnight oil lately, not going to sleep early enough and waking up too early.  Work is not easy for me these days, as it's hard to stay awake and do a mind numbing job.  

- - - - - -

Last night, I figured that I was going to go home, relax a little, and enjoy my Zoom meetup with my Texas friends.  Yet, it seemed like Grand Central station to me, as I did not manage my time well.  This is a skill that I think I've lost in the years since I had to work a 9 to 5 job.  (The census had a schedule, but it was not one of these jobs.)

The big question is: Will I get used to a schedule where I have to be up by 6 am?  I need to do all the things required of me to present as a female when at work.  In many ways, I am living the life of a woman with a body that was born with the wrong equipment.  And this keeps getting in my way in subtle things such as having to shave every morning. 

Yet, there are only a few things I'd change, one of them is living half and half, so that I could have a woman in my life who accepts me warts and all.  Being Marian gives me energy.  But being Mario can give me companionship.  It's hard to find a middle ground, but it's a place I need to find to have optimal happiness....

Sometimes, a vendor screws up fixing a screw up.

 

The other day, an online wig store I've used in the past had a sale that I missed on the above wig.  When I tried to use the every day discount code mentioned on the site, the code wasn't accepted.  This was not a big problem to me, but I wanted to buy my wig from a store with which I've done business before.  So I wrote the following email to ask what could be done for me.

Hi -

I am looking to buy the Upstage wig.  However, the discount code listed with the item today does not work when trying to check out and buy the wig.

Can I get the wig at the discounted price?

Marian

 

I received the following reply to this email, a good faith attempt to resolve this issue:

That's a great question. We love that brand too and we're so proud to offer it in our store. However, the owners of this brand has requested that they be excluded from the ongoing 30% off coupon we offer on our site.  We want to keep selling their products, so we have to go along with it. :-( 

We are allowed to run occasional flash sales on these coupon-excluded items, so keep an eye on our newsletter! This is the place where Heather sends out her best coupons every month, which are often much better deals than the ones offered to the public. It's easy to sign up, too! (If you're not signed up already!) 

Thanks for writing into the Client Care Help Desk! Have a great afternoon!

As a one time policy exception we have granted you a discount code Marian Johnson30% for 30% off on your upstage.

We hope this is helpful. Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate and let us know.

When I got around to using this code a day or two later, it was not accepted on the web site.  (I can understand why the gentleman could think that I was going to place the order as soon as I received the special discount code, so I'm leaving him and his firm unnamed.) Instead of asking this firm to fix its second problem, I decided to buy the wig from a different vendor, albeit in a slightly different shade than I would have otherwise selected.  Hopefully, I'll have a second reliable firm from which I can buy my wigs at a reasonable price....

 

 

 

Dinner with Vicki

 

Today's entry is a short one, as I don't have much time to write....

Now that I work 5 days per week, I don't have much time to get things done.  So, I have to take care of my errands at night and on weekends the way the majority of people do in this world.  It is a shock to me, as I haven't had to live according to a "normal" schedule for years. Yet, I plan to adjust to my new normal for a while to earn a few dollars and bulk up my bank account.

When the day began, I took it easy for a while.  I sent a message to Vicki and suggested getting together. And she had the time to do so - today.  Since I didn't expect that she'd be available until later in the week, I adjusted my plans for the day and scheduled dinner at a Mexican joint that I've gone to several times before.

I took care of little things such as laundry during the day, and finally got around to changing the sheets on my bed.  (Don't ask how long they've been on the bed.  Often, there is a pile of stuff on the side of the bed where a partner used to lay, and it gets in the way of me changing the sheets.)  And then, I changed into Marian mode for dinner.

Dinner with Vicki was nice.  But it was more expensive than expected.  It seems as if we're seeing inflation hit the restaurants that are surviving the pandemic.  In suburbia, limiting restaurants to 50% capacity has forced these establishments to raise prices subtly to help them cover their costs.  In today's case, a dinner which we expected could cost us $40-$50 each cost us $70 each.  Assuming that this is part of a trend, I expect that we will see fewer people being able to afford to dine out at the end of the pandemic, as the fewer surviving restaurants will be able to charge higher prices to the fewer people who are able to pay those prices to eat out.

Another trip to the supermarket with FH and her daughter

 

The store in the Brooklyn Navy Yard was the first Wegmans to open in New York City.  It's been around for a while, and it is easier to reach than I first envisioned.  So, when FH asked me to take her and her daughter on a shopping run today, I didn't mind doing so.

- - - - - -

FH's daughter is a pretty young woman, and has a long happy life ahead of her if she can conquer the demons in her life.  No, I won't go into the details here, but she has many of the problems often exhibited by a woman her age. My impression of her mom asking me to include the daughter on our shopping trip was that of a mother trying to keep her daughter occupied in a time of stress.

When I arrived in Forest Hills, FH asked me if we could stop by a doughnut shop so that her daughter could eat and drink something, so that her stomach wouldn't fight a uncivil war.  Throughout the trip to Brooklyn, the daughter was complaining of how ill she felt. And it seemed as if she would rather have been left at home to deal with her problems by herself, instead of accompanying her mother on this shopping trip.

Arriving at Wegmans, I let them off at the front door while I hunted down a hard to get parking space. Entering the store, I looked around and found the daughter on a motorized shopping cart for handicapped people.  She was tooling around on the shopping cart, while her mom was trying to select food for the week.  Surprisingly, FH's daughter seemed to calm down after a few minutes in the store, as the cart distracted her enough from her sick stomach to make this shopping trip almost a pleasure.  $230 later, we exited the store and headed home.  While on local streets, the daughter got sick, and we had to wait for her to be ready for the rest of the trip home.

Eventually, we made it back to Forest Hills.  We were lucky to find a parking spot across the street from her apartment building.  This made it possible for me to join mom and daughter in carrying the afternoon's purchases to the apartment and loading them into the refrigerator. Both FH and her daughter had unsettled stomachs for different reasons, and we hung out at the apartment until FH was ready to go out to eat.

- - - - - -

Dining out in the age of Covid-19 raises many questions.  One of which is: How many people in a restaurant are "too many" people?  There is a legal definition of "too many."  In NYC, a restaurant is limited to 25% of pre-Covid capacity until 2/28/21.  In the suburbs, it is 50% of pre-Covid capacity.  The restaurant I chose was less than 100 feet from the Nassau county line, and was subject to NYC capacity limits.  This, I thought, would keep occupancy low enough for FH to feel comfortable dining at the restaurant.  At first, she was comfortable.  But, people started coming in, and she was ready to leave the place.  As for me, I have not yet had my first vaccination shot, and I'm the person at greater risk.  Yet, she was the person who was uncomfortable as the place approached 25% capacity.

Once I was done with my dinner, we took a drive to Hicksville, and then I dropped her off at her apartment.  This was a night that I didn't go back upstairs - she was getting tired after a long day.  And I was just as happy to drop her off at her front door, since I was getting a little tired myself after a long week of work.

A year ago, things were so different.....

 

A year ago, things were very different than they are now.  For example, in the back of my mind I still had hope of getting together again with my ex girlfriend.  Today, I'd have to think long, hard, and carefully if that option were to present itself to me.  But that's the least of things I can mention today. My father was still alive, and I had no idea that he'd be one of the over 400,000 (and counting) Americans who'd die of the coronavirus over the next 12 months.

Both as individuals and as a culture, we would have to ask questions posed by a once popular song:

Can it be that it was all so simple then?
Or has time re-written every line?
If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me, would we?
Could we?

Most of us thought that the good times we experienced prior to 2020 would last forever.  As the virus taught us, they were only fleeting things.  

- - - - - -

I spent most of 2020 employed at the census as Marian.  Recently, I applied for and accepted a job, working as Marian again.  Although this would have been a job better suited for Mario, I figured that I wanted to see how I would do in private industry without the official protections of a government bureaucracy.  Is this the job I really wanted?  No.  But it will have to do when there are 75 people (or more, in many cases) applying for jobs in both public and private sectors.

If things had progressed as most of us had expected, most of us would have gone on our usual vacations, not really noticing what they did for us as people.  Now that we've been largely isolated from others for a year, many of us feel it's time to get out in the world again, even if we are taking big risks in doing so.  I look forward to taking my Hawaiian cruise when cruising opens up again.  But I will not give the cruise lines a penny more than I have to for their products.

Travel and work are not the only things affected by the pandemic. Our nation's political future was affected as well.  Many of us gave our former present better than an even chance of being reelected because of the then "booming" economy.  The pandemic put an end to that, as the then president made light of the virus when people were more concerned about their lives than whether they had jobs or not.  How many of you think that our current president could have won the election if things were as they were in 2019?  I certainly don't think he'd have had much of a chance, as people usually vote with their wallets.  This time, they voted as if their lives depended on their votes - which they did.

 

- - - - - - 

2021 looks like it will be a better year for many of us.  Hard-line Evangelical "Christians"  are no longer able to use the federal government as a tool to attack transgender people.  We are on target to see most Americans have access to a Coronavirus vaccine shot by some time this summer. And we will soon be able to resume outdoor socialization when Spring comes.  We will be entering a time where a "New Normal" is evolving, a period where growth starts anew for both individuals and for society as a whole.  I look forward to this future.

 

The Snowman Cometh

 

Again, we have snow falling on the ground in New York.  But I'm not as inconvenienced by the snow as folks are in Texas as evident in the picture below. 

The left hand side of this Texarkana street lies in the state of Texas, while the right hand side of the street is in Arkansas.  Do you notice the difference?  Arkansas thinks ahead, and tries to plan for rare events such as this year's frigid weather.  Texas, on the other hand, takes a Laissez-faire approach and is often unprepared for extreme weather events.  It's hard to take pity on a state's residents when they keep electing scoundrels who have no interest in true public service.

- - - - - -

I woke up today after another sleep deprived night. The roads were clear when I drove into work, the salt spreaders were out trying to keep roads from icing over, and people were driving safer than usual.  No one wanted to get into an accident on a day where the tow trucks would have more than enough business.  Unfortunately, I was delayed on the way to work by one of these salt spreaders, as it blocked two lanes of traffic all the way from Croton to Pleasantville. Even with this delay, I still made it into the office 20 minutes early - enough time for a cup of coffee.

None of the people I usually deal with were in the office due to the weather. Yet, I was able to get some work done while fighting the urge to go to sleep.  However, I made a big mistake which could have been a big problem. Luckily, one coworker who was in the office resolved it for me, and I was able to proceed without incident.  Around noon, I realized that I had to pack it in for the day.  As I was leaving, I took my pocketbook out of the locker and screwed up the combination on the lock.  That'll be something to take care of when people are back in the office.

On the way home, traffic was moving very slowly.  There was good reason for this.  I must have passed by at least 3 accident scenes, with one of them being serviced by police cars, tow trucks, and ambulances. It made me glad that we had some daylight, and that I knew how to drive in bad weather.  

- - - - - -

Now that I am home, I'm going to wait for an alert from the office.  Sometime in the next 16 hours, I'll find out whether I'm going in to work in the morning and at what time I'll be expected to start work.  Until then, I'm going to relax and hope that my Texas friends will be available for our Thursday night Zoom meeting.