Tag Archives: Friendships

Funky Facebook Friend Faye Fiercely Focused on Flaunting!

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Ever have an irritating family friend from childhood whose sole purpose in life was competing with you? You know those kind of “pals” — you don’t choose them, but they’re part of the deal because both your parents are good friends? I thought I’d seen the last of Faye in my teenage years until she suddenly surfaced on Facebook, or rather “Faye’sbook,” requesting her entrance into MY WORLD. Noooooooooo!

Now whenever I post an update that’s a happy one, Faye immediately posts her own “Ecstatic” status. And being the type who detests people portraying their lives as all rainbows, butterflies, and sunsets, I’ll often type out something extremely honest but depressing. And in the blink of an eye, Faye will elaborate on some catastrophic personal tragedy on her own newsfeed. She keeps an endless supply of cousins with cancer for this very purpose.

So basically if I’m happy, she’s Happier and if I’m downhearted, she’s Fantine from Les Misérables. 

When I wrote about my daughter going to her first prom last June, Faye’s daughter went to her first prom AND was crowned Prom Queen. I got in a car accident and was taken to the ER in an ambulance? Faye was sandwiched by two semi-trucks and airlifted to ICU in a coma. I made a crème brûlée and caramelized the sugar with a cigarette lighter? Faye made baked alaska flambé with a culinary torch!

Doesn’t this chick have anything better to do with her life than to concentrate on outdoing me on a daily basis??

“Stephanie,” you might say, “Will you get over yourself and your big ego? It’s not always about you, you know? Sometimes it’s just pure coincidence.”

Oh yeah? I’ll prove it. Look at my Facebook from last night. It’s so utterly specific.

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Suddenly on her Facebook appeared this status:

Gosh, my husband (the most incredible ophthalmologist in the world) says the crazies are coming out of the woodwork after the eclipse, claiming they’re going blind. What are you gonna do? It puts our kids through the best Ivy league colleges!

 

Fluke?  I think not.

But just to be sure it wasn’t a chance occurrence, I found Faye on Twitter and clicked “Follow.” Then I tweeted this:

stephtwitter

 

And needless to say a new Tweet from Faye soon went out like this:

Daughter has Lice, Dog has fleas, Kitchen has Ants, Basement has Termites! #The10Plagues!

 

See, she even outshines me in pestilence. What petulance!

So I went to Instagram, searched for Faye there and was successful in locating her right away. This called for a new clever tact. A “fluffy strategy” to be exact, because I make the most adorable memes in the world, featuring my two kittens. Here’s my latest Instagram post:

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How can it possibly get any cuter, (or cleaner!) than two kitties in a sink?? Well not even twenty minutes later, her Instagram showcased her bathtub!

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Needless to say on Pinterest, I put up a bunch of pins on turning a spare bedroom into a movie theatre. Then I clicked on her Pinterest account and she’d newly added photographs of a long, narrow hallway, remodeled into a bowling alley!

After friending her on LinkedIn, I made sure that my title prominently stated I was a published author. And instantaneously she got promoted from a boring “Technical Writer” to “Award Winning Screenwriter!”

Alright, this means war! And that’s why I’m writing this WordPress blog and then I’m gonna find Faye’s WordPress blog and become a secret new follower. There’s only one problem, I just found out Fay is on the East Coast, where she’s apparently three hours ahead of me in everything she does. And so this is HER latest post on WordPress:

Ever have an irritating family friend from childhood whose sole purpose in life was competing with you? You know those kind of “pals” — you don’t choose them, but they’re part of the deal because both your parents are good friends? I thought I’d seen the last of Stephanie (who now weirdly goes by “Little Miss Menopause”) in my teenage years but my mother insisted I find her on Facebook, so I grudgingly did so for old time’s sake. After that, she’s been stalking me on every social media in existence trying her best to upstage me. Can we say, “CREEPY??” Ewwwww. Get a life.

 

READERS: Do you have an online “competitor?” How about in real life….maybe at the gym?

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A Little Support for Support Groups.

photo 2 (4)I decided to join a support group.  But even though I fit every description of every psychological disorder in every self-help book out there, I couldn’t find a group  that “got me.”  So I figured I would start my own. How hard could it be? Give the younger kids to my ex for the night, put some folding chairs in a circle in my living room, set out some grapes, and throw out a topic. Easy peasy lemon squeazy.  Oh and I might serve lemonade. That was always refreshing.

I put this announcement online:

Hi my name is Little Miss Menopause and I’m starting a support group. I worry a lot so I was thinking of calling it,  WWW– ‘Women Who Worry’  but we can tweak when you get here.

The first two calls were from women worried they didn’t know how to twerk, until I explained what I meant by tweak.

Since this was to be an anonymous support group, I will not use any names to convey the dialogue at our first meeting. It could be any woman saying these things.  And trust me, it was.

Is this for women who worry incessantly and want to stop?  Or for women who feel guilty they don’t worry as much as they should?

Well I worry that what I worry about will actually come true. Kind of like the opposite of “The Secret.”

Can this also be a support group for women who have never read “The Secret?”

How about women who really hate “The Secret?” Secretly, of course.

I recently read somewhere that the act of worrying itself is eventually what we’ll die from.

Ladies, can we get started?  We’ll call it “Women Who Worry Too Much Or Not Enough and Aren’t Sure How They Feel About “The Secret” but Don’t Want to Die.”

And The Men Who Love Them?

No men.  I would need to wear foundation. And my skin really needs to breathe.

How about we focus on Joy instead of worry?  We’ll be The Joy Luck Club.

Kill joy.

When and where will you provide childcare?

That’s just like you!  I knew you would assume that women our age would all be mothers.

Don’t say that.  My name is Anonymous. You don’t even know me.

Well I know you’re catty.

I wish I could be a mother.

I wish I had a mother.

I wish my landlord let me have a cat.

Well, if all 17 of us pitched in, I suppose my eldest daughter could babysit for an hour upstairs. Say $2.00?

If we pitched in $5.00, do you suppose you could hire a housecleaner?

Can you start a support group for women who cannot afford support groups?

Shouldn’t we have said the Serenity Prayer by now?

I think this group could use more tweaking twerking.

Or maybe we could all turn our chairs toward the wall and sit facing away from one another.photo 1-21

After they left, I was exhausted but stayed awake all night tossing and turning.  I toyed with starting another support group for women with insomnia. But when would we meet? We’d be too tired during the day from being up all night. We could meet evenings, but we’d want to turn in early to try and fall asleep. Finding a convenient time was definitely a worry.

To distract myself, I read slips of paper I had all the women leave in the Suggestion Box before they left. It was mainly filled with more names of support groups they were suggesting I start.

  • Women Who Are Mean To Other Women At Support Groups
  • Women With Teenage Daughters
  • Women Without Teenage Daughters
  • Women Wanting To Trade Teenage Daughters
  • Women Who Have Lost Their Mothers (we should open with saying, “I’m sorry for your loss”)
  • Women Who Have Lost Their Mothers to Mahjong, Rummy Cube, and Other Games Seniors Get Obsessed With Today That are Considered Hip.
  • Women Who Hate Their Hips.
  • Women Who Have Lost Their Keys, Cell Phones or Glasses (should probably still open with saying, “I’m sorry for your loss.”)
  • Women Who Are Authentic
  • Women Who Hate Women Who Always Say the word, “Authentic”
  • Women Who Start a Support Group Just so they Can Have Something New to Blog About (I knew I recognized one of my WordPress followers sitting away from the group on my purple couch!)
  • Husbands Who Have Wives Who Go to Support Groups To Talk About Them and Are Afraid to Go To Work the Next Day and the Secretaries Who Love Them
  • Children Whose Mothers Cannot Drive Them Anywhere Because They Are Constantly in Support Groups
  • Couples Who Can’t Talk To One Another (We could meditate)
  • Couples Who Can’t Stop Fighting and the Therapists Who Love them.

And there was one question:

Will you ever have anything to eat other than grapes and lemonade?  I have IBS.  It would be refreshing if you could serve other refreshments.

At the next meeting I decided to do more of the talking and be more bold.

Thank you all for coming back.  I wonder if some of you feel as exhausted as I do.  I was thinking of starting a group for insomnia but does anyone have a suggestion when a group like that could meet?

In your dreams.

Cute. So I’ve gone over all the suggestions and I’ve decided there’s one name that will encompass everything . . . Ready?  It’s quite brief.   “Dysfunctional Households”

Women Who Grew Up in a Dysfunctional Household or Women Who Create Their Own Dysfunctional Household??

But I live alone.

Uh, I’m a guy, so this might be a typical male question. But by Dysfunctional Households, do you mean when the dishwasher and the floor sweeper break down.

No, I don’t mean appliances. I mean people.

Well I AM the dish washer and the floor sweeper.

Welcome to our group.

Great.  Just great. Does anyone have foundation in a porcelain beige shade I can borrow?

After they all went home, I knew I would never mention it, but secretly I would change the name to “Women Who Start Support Groups To Feel Important But Instead Feel Put Out.”

And as far as worrying?  I was no longer concerned at all.  I now had plenty of new material for months of blogs.