Thursday, February 5, 2009

It's Been Such A Long Time...

Now that I have the Boston tune stuck in my head.... :)

I sincerely apologize for not giving a blog update to all of my buds out there in cyberspace. I honestly do believe that someone hit the "fast forward" button right after Christmas, 'cause life's been a big blur after that!

We all survived the Christmas holiday quite nicely. The kids were very pleased with their gifts (as well they should have been!), and busied themselves pretty much the entire time off with their new gizmos and gadgets.

On the 26th of December, we celebrated my oldest daughter's 10th birthday with a homemade cake and ice cream, and even MORE presents for the birthday girl. For several years now, she's been saying how she can't wait until she turns 10, so she can have a laser tag party like her big brother had a few years back. The place I took him (Good Times) only allows kids over 10 to participate in their laser tag parties, and she was so looking forward to it. She was completely crushed when I came home one day, and told her the bad news -- I was at the shopping mall across the street from Good Times, and as I was exiting the back of the parking lot, I noticed that not only was Good Times shut down, but it was COMPLETELY gone (apparently, they closed because of poor revenue). From what I heard, they're putting an IKEA in its place. Good for me; BAD for her.

I promised her that I would do my very best to search out another place that has a laser tag party as one of its theme offerings. After some hefty Internet researching (you wouldn't believe how difficult it was to actually FIND a place close to home!), I discovered that the Kid's Playground offers such a thing. The only thing was, because they shut down the entire place, to allow party goers the run of the joint, they only offer these parties either before or after regular store hours.

So... I promised her that we'd schedule an "after-birthday lasertag bash" for her. I'm waiting for the income taxes to come in, and then I'm heading off to Kid's Playground to book it for her.

January brought snow. LOTS and LOTS of snow. I was housebound for what felt like almost the entire month (except for the taxi service to and from school, and the necessary trips to the grocery store to replenish sustenance). Why didn't I update then, you ask? Well..... because I had a situation occur that kind of put me in a funk. Not the same kind of funk I was in months before, mind you, but one that left me with a LOT of thinking and resolving to do.

As a member of Facebook, I've been thoroughly enjoying reconnecting with friends -- especially those from high school and college, whom I'd lost touch with YEARS ago. One of those "friends" is actually a former buddy of an ex-boyfriend of mine. He and I have really enjoyed getting to know each other (really, for the first time, since he was only a casual acquaintance back when I was dating his friend).

One day, he asked me if I'd help him try and find this friend of his/ex-boyfriend of mine. He lost touch with him a LONG time ago, and apparently, their last encounter wasn't such a pleasant one. He really missed the guy, and wanted to let him know that he never stopped being his friend. I agreed to help out, in any way I could, and plugged at it a chunk at a time, whenever I could spare a minute on the computer.

The trouble is, this guy's name is fairly common, and I kept going so far into a specific search, then hitting a brick wall when I found out it wasn't the right guy. I hit on a nugget of unfortunate information, when I stumbled across his dad's obituary, archived in one of our local newspapers. As sad as I was to read that his dad had passed, it was still really helpful, because it listed this guy and his (then) current location, which at least pointed me in the right direction.

The next day, I plugged in his name and the location, and *poof*... there was some concrete information, which could have been a clear indicator that I'd actually found him! The only thing that concerned me was, this guy I'd found was a real "techie" -- a career path that was so far removed from the guitar-playing, artistic boy I once knew. But hey, one never knows what can happen in 20+ years, so I gave it a shot, and sent this computer dude an e-mail. That, unfortunately, hit a bit of a dead end too, 'cause I never got a response back.

I did, however, find out what this guy's wife's name was, from the Internet results I obtained. On a whim, I decided to try out Facebook, and see if she might have a profile on there. When I plugged her name into the Friend Finder, and clicked "search", there appeared before me a black and white photo of a youngish-looking woman, flanked by three adorable little kids. Upon closer inspection of one of the boy rugrats in the picture, I could see, for sure that he was DEFINITELY a "mini me" of the boy I'd once dated.

I FOUND HIM!!!!

I was giddy with excitement, not only because I'd found him, and could go back to his long-lost friend and give him the good news, but because, well.... I'd ACTUALLY DONE IT! I'd found him! (I was pretty impressed with myself, if I do say so myself! :)

I informed my new friend that I'd found the guy, and he, of course, was over the moon. He contacted the guy's wife, and wound up e-mailing the guy back and forth a few times. Before I knew it, my friend had sent me my ex-boyfriend's e-mail, encouraging me to contact him. I reminded him that he was one exceptional guy, and that most boys/men don't really want to rekindle a friendship with a former girlfriend. He insisted that this guy would love to hear from me, and that I shouldn't be ridiculous, and I should just go ahead and write to him.

It took me six attempts (deleting five in the process), to finally get up the courage to write. I kept my entry pretty benign, only relaying information about my life, and where it's taken me from then until now. I sent of the e-mail, and waited for a response.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And.... got NOTHING. The "silence" was so deafening, that I dropped a note to wifey-poo (on Facebook), announcing myself, telling her I was an "old friend" of his, and would love it if he and I could reconnect, and if she and I might become friends, too.

It took all of thirty seconds for HER to e-mail me back. She told me that she doesn't normally add people to her friends' list that she doesn't know (this AFTER she added the guy who was looking for her husband -- uhm, okay!), and that her husband was "a very private person" who was "very overwhelmed" by the surge of people who were coming out of the woodwork to contact him all at once. She also said that she was leaving it completely up to him as to whether or not he wanted to contact me, and that I should give him time.

1 comment:

Erica said...

Hey, hope you are well.