Discovering Who Your Real Friends Are…Priceless

Well, I’m not sure what to think about this or really even if I should waste my time thinking about it.

*sigh*

A little backstory would help I guess.

About 5 years or so ago, I moved from one end of my apartment complex to another to get some more quiet and some more space. It was a nightmare. I think moving within the same place is totally worse than moving across town and you think it’s going to be easy. Anyway, there were about ten people helping me that day, including my parents. It was a Good Friday and I’d asked for help lots of time ahead. (I don’t recall if Peter was there that day. I know Meg wasn’t. I do recall that the last few times that PW and/or El moved, neither was available to help.) Well, after it was all said and done, I took everyone who helped to Cici’s Pizza (which is a relatively inexpensive place to go). Mind you cost did play a factor in my logic for picking the place, but I also realized that the guys would appreciate all you can eat pizza after a hard, hot day of laboring.

Flash forward to two summers ago when Meg moved to North Louisiana. She asked for help. I helped her pack. I helped Peter and Peter’s Dad load the truck. Meg did directing and clean up. I drove with them up to the new town the next morning after letting Meg stay at my house. I helped with some unloading but mostly unpacked Meg’s kitchen (which she later re-organized) and Meg mostly seemed to be directing Peter and Peter’s dad.

Flash forward to when I am moving to Maine and Peter is moving out of his childhood home and into an apartment with his soon-to-be bachelor dad, I offered to help Peter — lots of people offered to help Peter, but Peter wanted to do it himself and took a month to slowly move. PW helped me pack. Meg offered to help me pack one weekend but it was the weekend after I lost the Alabama job and I wasn’t packing then. I came to Maine and my parents went to New Orleans and with BJ’s help, loaded the van, which I would have done, had I been there.

Some months later, PW and El moved into their apartment together and again neither Peter nor Meg helped or even really offered to…though I believe BJ and 2Cool did.

So now it’s almost a year later and Meg is moving back to New Orleans and fast. She and Peter ask for volunteers. Peter and his dad load the van in the other town and the next day, PW, BJ, and 2Cool help them unload the van.

(I got this information from PW so it’s possibly scewed.)

I am told that the apartment is tiny and expensive. It’s in New Orleans because Meg won’t live in Metairie and Peter thinks it’s too dangerous to live in New Orleans so they had to get a high security place on the sixth floor in a building that is partially an assisted living building. The parking, I’m told, is horrible and there’s no wheelchair ramp in the lobby for El and it’s “a long walk”.

But back to the story. So PW says that Meg stood around in the apartment directing everyone while they unloaded the truck and that Peter tried to do the same thing downstairs at the truck but his dad made him help. Mind you, they haven’t moved Peter yet. He is going to move himself again and take a month to do it. PW thinks he just doesn’t trust them to touch his stuff. She also thought it was weird that it’s a two bedroom and they kept calling one of the rooms “Peter’s room.”

Afterwards, Meg and Peter took everyone to Applebee’s for dinner and PW said it would have been an o.k. day except all of a sudden, Meg said, “Well, we thought y’all were such good workers that you deserved better than Cici’s.”

When PW first said it, it didn’t bother me. Actually I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it but it apparently upset PW. She felt that Meg was insulting me when I wasn’t there and PW also felt like she would have taken people to Cici’s too or ordered pizza as a thank you as she doesn’t have a lot of money to spare. PW seemed to take the whole thing very personally.

PW said BJ and 2Cool immediately piped up and said they liked Cici’s. Heh. Guys always love a buffet.

My first thought was to give her the benefit of the doubt and maybe she was digging at Peter as maybe that’s where he wanted to take them and she poo-pooed the thought as she doesn’t like Cici’s and I suspect she is a bit of a food snob.

*shrug*

I don’t know. I wasn’t there. Peter and Meg and I haven’t been that close in the last year. In fact, I didn’t get a thank you email or anything for their belated but hand-made stained glass snowflake that I sent for Christmas. Granted, maybe Peter still reads here and knows that I wasn’t planning on gifting them because of the chasm between us and maybe he told Meg. I don’t know. I feel a little insulted because I spent some serious money on the materials for the snowflake and time too but then I wasn’t expecting a gift from them and hadn’t gotten them one before Christmas…oh, what a tangled web.

And probably PW shouldn’t have told me what Meg said in the first place.

But once again, I feel like this whole experience has taught me who my real friends are.

tags: dysfunctional drama, friendship

2 comments

1. on January 27, 2005 at 2:32 am

   Sharon said:

   I hate to always comment on your every entry - but I will anyhow.

   For some reason, I myself, in the last few years have taken on the attitude - ‘let them swim in it’. Lately I don’t care what anybody else thinks or says. I live my life the best way I know how - I color within my so-called lines. Sometimes it doesn’t meet with others approval but cest la vie.

   Some friends are for certain activities. Some I completely confide in, and others I have short visits with. They make my circle of friends, some just are given a bigger slice. One thing I’ve learned as I’m getting older, it sure is nice to have friends that you’ve known for many many years - one of the reasons I’ve tried to get and keep in touch with a childhood friend. There aren’t too many that I’ve tried to completely eliminate.

   Although this one right now that is abandoning her husband of 20 yrs, and kids, and her career to shack up with a cousin in Arkansas (no kidding) has really twisted things up. I’m thinking that she’s just giving it all up for the simple life - who knows.

   Maybe instead of just commenting in your blog - I should just write my own - what a concept.

2. on October 26, 2006 at 3:19 pm

   mr skin said:

   I don’t think Meg will ever top her performance in When Harry Met Sally.

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