It's hailing, and has been since early this morning. John R just returned from lunch and told us the streets are sheets of ice. That's good to hear--NOT! I'm supposed to meet Dan at the gym later, but suspect that won't happen; I'll be glad to get home in one piece and stay there! This is supposed to continue until tomorrow morning!

Here we are again, the day before Saturday, the day after Thursday. Although there was a bit of a fracas last night with Brad and the dogs between 9-10 PM, I managed to watch and enjoy the first episode of SUPERNATURAL following a month-long hiatus. It was a kinder, gentler ep, less gore, a combo of SIXTH SENSE and GHOST WHISPERER, and I was sobbing at the end, thinking about death, my mother, and all the other sad things bouncing in my brain.

Everyone on the Supernatural fandom boards is desperate for the episodes to be especially great so the show survives. Since they had a new episode of GREY'S ANATOMY on against it last night, I have my doubts if the ratings will be acceptable to the CW network, but I guess we shall have to wait on tenterhooks and see.

It took me a long time to fall asleep last night. I just kept thinking about that Supernatural episode, which, incidentally, was called "Roadkill."

At lunch today, Nancy showed me photos of prospective Buffalo houses she's going to be checking out next week. (Her plan to go this weekend was scrapped because of the bad weather and St. Patrick's Day tomorrow.) I felt my eyes welling up when she told me she can't understand why, after she leaves, a good-hearted, intelligent person like me will be spending my breaks alone (as I did before she came).

I had no real answer for her, because I don't understand it myself.

Sigh.

I will NOT indulge in more self-pity! I despise myself for that shit!

Bugsy is going for a clipping tomorrow. It figures it's going to be chilly tomorrow, right? Damn! Poor little guy is going to be cold. Yesterday it was in the 60's, today, we're hovering right around freezing. Winter, go away!

Enjoy your weekend, Merry Blogsters!

Love, Robin

I've been thinking about so many things today, mostly because of all the emails that have been coming in. Now that I've joined two Supernatural lists, I'm really getting inundated. I don't mind, but I suspect that after the show airs tonight, after a month-long dry spell, it's going to be hard to keep up with them tomorrow.

One of the ladies on my Dark Shadows lists left a sad message that her niece's husband of only a year was killed in an Arizona bar fight. He just stepped in to try to make peace and was shot. So much for being a good Samaritan. It sounds like something I would do, but trying to be a good guy doesn't always guarantee a happy outcome.

One woman on the Supernatural list (in an off-topic comment, obviously) talked of trying to housebreak her son. She showed him how the dog makes poop outside. Her kid came out, dropped his undies and took a crap on the ground--just like doggie! It reminded me of Brad's potty training days and how I despaired it would ever happen--that he would go down his wedding aisle in giant sized Pampers. I wrote that it would be great payback to give copies of my True Story article on his difficult potty training to his guests at his wedding reception.

Nancy just came to tell me she's flying to Buffalo tomorrow to house-hunt. It's in the 60's here today and very cloudy, but we're expecting a SNOWstorm tomorrow! DAMN it, with spring just a few short days away, too! Does this mean our snow blower curse is about to be broken? We're apparently getting much colder air flowing down our way, which thoroughly sucks, but snow? We don't need no stinking snow!

There's a great article on Jared Padalecki I just read in the on-line TV Guide. I enjoyed it so much, I printed it out. It's funny, but for the five years he was on Gilmore Girls, I never thought of him as a charismatic actor. His performance in "Born Under a Bad Sign" last month was outstanding, and I'm so pleased that Supernatural has given him the opportunity to spread his acting wings. He's certainly up to the challenge. I notice Jensen Ackles is the one all the girls are gaga for, and I can see why--Dean Winchester is the wisecracking, sleep-around "bad boy"--but I like the sweet, sensitive Sam, too. I'll take 'em both, believe me, not that they're mine for the taking, of course!

The big question is, will Supernatural survive another season, up against powerhouses CSI and Grey's Anatomy? Who knows? I hope and pray so. Apparently, I've become OBSESSED once again. I want merchandise, I'm indulging in fantasies galore (sexual and otherwise) and it's making my life brighter and happier. How can I deny myself this small boon, especially with Dan involved in his own obsessions, Nancy leaving, my son growing up and apart from me and my writing relegated to nothing more than THIS?

I won't. You have to take your happiness where you find it, I've realized, even if it's a TV show. It's kind of sad that it's ALWAYS been TV shows for me, as far back as I can remember. At least it's not drugs or shoplifting or anything else illegal. But TV shows fade in one way or another--go off the air, lose their luster in your feelings. Then there's always another show to replace it.

The internet has made everything much more intense, given you people with whom you can share the fandom. That's nice.

Love, Robin

(Wistfully)

I haven't heard from a soul in a while to any of my entries.

You know how needy I am.

I know I've been kinda sobby lately, and I will try to lighten up, I promise.

Love, Robin

The market is in free-fall once again. Hey, I like being poor. I don't need money, except to pay the state and federal government, my accountant, the electric and gas companies, phone company, mortgage company, and every other bastard who has his or her hand in my pocket. Go ahead, take it all! I can live in a cardboard box as well as the next person, and put up nice curtains made of paper toweling.

I've been steeping myself in SUPERNATURAL lore, reading fan fiction, going to their boards and reading what everyone has to say about various episodes. It's fun, and takes my mind off Nancy's imminent departure from my life (she wasn't here most of the day). Like yesterday, I took my walk and break alone, getting back into being by myself. Alone again, naturally. That's a song title. . .Gilbert O-Sullivan? I don't remember. I'm finding myself crying in jags, pitying myself over how everyone I befriend deserts me. Look at Rose--I tried reaching out to her, asking if she misses me as much as I miss her, and if so, to contact me. It really hurts to put yourself so baldly out there and to get bupkus in return, to know how little your friendship is valued.

See, writing something like that makes my eyes well up again. Why do I even DO that shit to myself? It's so ugly, tearing down my tattered self-confidence even more. I should be looking at all this as Rose's loss, not mine, and yet it still stings so much.

It will probably be a month or two before I have to say goodbye to Nancy. I'll be staying at her house, babysitting her pets, from March 24th through April 1st, while she and Chris go on the cruise, which they have to take because they'll be forced to forfeit the money if they don't go. That won't be easy, either, and Nancy thinks she'll need my pet sitting services again before they move, so they can go to Buffalo to close on their house there. They have to sell their home here, which is the only potentially sticky point in the equation. There are MANY homes for sale in their town, too many, and whether or not they will be able to sell it for the price they want is the big question mark right now.

It's weird how there have been times I've WANTED Nancy to leave Long Island because all she did was complain about how miserable she and her husband are here. Now that it looks like it's going to happen, I'm sad! What do I really want? It's not as if we saw each other outside work, except for the one double date at TGIFriday's, which her husband seemed to regard as a waste of time. Nancy talked about the four of us going to the movies, but that never came to pass, either. I once told her I was perfectly happy with our "work only" friendship, and she got all upset that I'd said that and vowed is was going to change. I guess I should get used to people making promises to me that never get kept, yet I continue to get hurt nevertheless. My mother used to tell me I needed to be more thick-skinned, but I'm 53 and I doubt I'm ever going to change. Mom was the same, and she wanted to protect me. Problem is, when you don't fall far from the tree (which I didn't), those genes will get you everytime.

I've always had a spotty history with friends. Pam, who lived two houses away, would be my best friend for a while, get into a fight with me, become best friends with another girl, with whom she would cruelly belittle me, get into a fight with THAT girl, and befriend me again. She continued this pattern for years, but we were close friends in junior high, high school and shortly after college. She went to California to live and has remained there ever since. I have no idea what's going on with her now.

You know what? This is depressing me, so I'm going to stop. It's almost time to go home, and since I don't have to go to the gym today, I think I'm going to stop at Kohl's and check out their sneaker sale.

Tonight, two-fer and American Idol. Dan will be happy about the latter, and I love having dinner with my two best fellas.

I've sent away for the SUPERNATURAL season 1 DVD and won a set of SUPERNATURAL 90 card set on eBay. So my collection has begun! Now, I just want to hear the show's been renewed another year!

Love, Robin

Lots of things are passed around on the internet, but one that I always liked talks about how people enter your life for a season, a reason or a lifetime. My husband and son, are, I pray, in my life forever--a lifetime, as is my friend Sharon. My reluctance to move away from New York is primarily because I don't want to be separated from her.

Nancy, my Buffalo friend of a couple of years (FROM Buffalo, not that she IS a Buffalo) told me Saturday that she and her husband are going to be returning upstate to that cold, forbidding town from which they both hailed. He was offered a job as a Postal Inspector there, and even though she really doesn't want to return, he does. She doesn't want to be anywhere near her own terrible, frightening relatives, or his. Stories she has told me about both sides of their families sound like the epitome of truth being stranger than fiction. Nancy and Chris' relatives (he has a self-proclaimed witch for a sister) have used and abused them in subhuman ways I'd prefer not to go into here, and it really isn't necessary.

They should NOT go back there!

But they will. No matter what Nancy wants, Chris wants to go back to his upstate friends, hunting, fishing, bitter cold winters and cheaper costs of living. It probably means yet another fixer-upper house, and Nancy will once again be stuck helping to fix it up, perpetually working, working, never having any fun, just as she did here. The sad thing is, they FINALLY finished working on their house here, after sinking three years of time and money into it, and the first real estate that looked into it wants them to ask only $500,000 for it! They paid $485,00 for it as a fixer-upper, and that's all she thinks they can get? Unfortunately, they moved here during the real estate boom and want out now that housing in essentially in free-fall, so the timing is terrible. But Nancy says that's the story of their luck since Chris' witch-sister put a curse on them years ago--all bad.

I know I've said that hanging out with Nancy often makes me depressed. When she phoned to tell me about all this, Dan and I got the call in the car, on our way to the Chinese buffet in Deer Park. I listened, stunned, because I was under the impression that the Inspector jobs had all been withdrawn and Chris wouldn't be able to move anywhere for a couple of years. She explained that, unlike their move from Buffalo to Long Island, the Postal Service would NOT be paying for their move this time, nor buying their house here, so they would be out thousands of dollars for those expenses. Then, there's the matter of their cruise, for which they didn't buy insurance in case they wanted out. Will they lose all that money or take the cruise? If they do the latter, will they even be able to enjoy themselves with everything hanging over their head? I assured Nancy I'm still here to take care of the dogs and cats for the week, and urged her and Chris to take a break from this havoc and go on their trip as planned.

So, my question is, was Nancy brought into my life for a season or a reason? Well, she's been here for more than one season, certainly, but I know that's not a literally what's meant by "season." Nancy has taught me a few things about myself:

1. Someone in this world worries more than I do.

2. Someone in this world has less fun than I do.

3. I put myself out for someone else, taking care of her pets, and it felt really good to do that.

4. I met someone equally sensitive as I am, and I can see how annoying that hypersensitivity can be to others.

5. I met someone who loves animals as much as I do, but who goes overboard so much, she can even be irritating about it.

6. I saw a woman who was once strong and self-sufficient be turned into someone namby-pamby by a man and appreciated Dan even more because he allowed me to be myself.

I guess that's enough schooling from one person, right? I like Nancy a lot, and will miss her. I imagine we'll keep in touch via brief e-mails, as I do with others who have left, like Cassie, but it won't be as nice as seeing each other twice daily, for lunch and break. I guess it's for the best we didn't become friends outside work, too.

She isn't the first postal friend who has left me. But she will be the one I'll remember most.

Love, Robin