Friends, more friends, and cyber friends

This is extremely long, I'm just warning you. :)

I know by the time most people get my age (40ish) they have developed all kinds of friends from all kinds of places. If you are lucky you still have friends from elementary school (we moved too much when I was young so I did lost touch with most of my elementary school friends, at least the ones I had which is it's own sad story), or High School friends (I've been lucky to keep in tough with my closest High School friends, we don't see each other a lot but are always able to pick up where we left off when we do), college friends, friends from different places we've moved, and from different points in our lives. New friends (lot's of fun) and old friends (the rocks we lean on). Some friends are just there for awhile, the ones that come just as we need them, give us a special gift (or we are lucky enough to give them one) but float away, others stay and become part of who we are, friendships that you know are as eternal as any other relationship. I've been thinking a lot about friends since I lost my job, because after 20 years working somewhere, your co-workers often become close friends, they are the people I've spend more time with in the past 20 years than my oqn family (I started there before Im moved away from home, and often when it was really busy, I was with work people more than my own spouse, I certainly have friendships for work that lasted longer than my marriate). It's has been the hardest part of leaving Marriott, I though I would miss the job, and the easy affirmation you get (as any mom knows but esp. the ones that stay home, being a mom comes with affirmations but not quite a clear as "you were awesome on the project, here's an award) but I don't miss the work (in fact as the time goes by, I realized just how burnt out I was on the work). I deeply, deeply miss the people 9in fact for the last 2 weeks I've dreamed about various people from work everynight). I have felt like one of my arms has been cut off because I was lucky enough to go in each day and work with some of my closest friends, who not only have been with me and my life for the past 15-20 years, but were always there to listen, and bounce ideas off of. I can't say how many times I've though "I have to tell Jeff about this tomorrow" or "I just found the best kids clothes sale I have to tell Krissy about", or "I just found "The Joy of Yiddish" book Dee gave me that year in 1998 when we both made a New Years resolution to learn Yiddish" (I still think it would be awesome to learn yiddish, I'm not sure why, mostly because the sound of the word is so expressive, can you think of a better word than kvetch?). I realized that I haven't made a lot of friends I didn't work with (other than family, and old friends) because I didn't need to, my friends that I've not only worked with, but had lots of fun and life experience with were right there everyday. Where people had to arrange to meet friends for lunch, or book club, or holiday parties, mine where right there 5 days a week, 8-24 (yeah back in my single days we spent some serious time together sometimes :). i spend time traveling with these people (and sometimes esp. if we traveled with timeshare and stayed in the 2 or 3 bedroom suites in the same room). I've been grieving a lot for loosing this, to an extent that has surprised me, I guess you take things for granted, and I didn't realized how much of "me" these people have, and how much of them I have. I've been blessed to have some amazing friends, which is the best thing to come out of my career so far, really our relationships with other people are the best things to come out of life period, and it's hard to leave that easy friendship behind (it is what I think a lot of people feel at the end of High School). pretty o.k. as well). In the Anne of Green Gables series Anne describes some people you come across as "kindred spirits", I have always adored that term, as there is no other way to describe the way some relationship work, other than we knew each other in a previous life, or the term 'kindred" spirits. The friends that you know within 10 minutes of meeting them that they will always be some part of your life.

I met one of those close friends from work for lunch, we have set up a standing lunch date, neither of us can imagine our lives without our friendship (we sat in my office crying for an emabarassing amount of time on my last day at work), and now instead of just having it built into our day, we actually have to try harder, but I was really more excited that I thought to see him today (I'm glad the feeling is mutual or I would have felt like a dork). It was like we had both kept a list of everything we had to tell each other (or get advice on) we couldn't talk fast enough. It's amazing to have friends like that, the ones where you can just start, because you don't have to explain where you are coming from, they know you so well, they probably already know the end of your story. The amazing friends that can tell you exactly what they think, be honest with their advice, and you know it's because they love you. There are lots of people that you know love you and you love them, but there are only the special few that can really tell you how full of crap you are or how big a mess you are without getting defensive. You can't let those people go out of your life.

I have also been very aware the last fe weeks of another group of friends, ones I get to take with me whereever I go, I have made these friends over the last decade, and they (like this blog for talking about them) one provided by technology: they are the friends I often refer to as "my invisible" or 'my internet" friends.

When I got married in 2001, at 31, I knew I wanted a family, and I as I wanted at least 3 kids, I knew I needed to get on that pretty quickly. I knew I wasn't going to get my original plan of 7 boys (I'm pretty sure that would have been modified along the way even had I started sooner, nine boys is a lot of chaos, but interestingly I always kind of knew I wouldn't be the mom to girls :) ). But if I was going to be done by 40, I needed to get started. So there were no delays for us to work on having a baby. At 31 I thought I had a pretty good idea of how this all worked, I did have a friend that had infertility problems, but most of my friends/family either got pregnant as a big suprise (some a REALLY big surprise), or were pregnant without a few months after they started "trying', it didn't seem all that complicated. So try we did, we were married in March, but by November, I figured maybe I didn't "get" this whole thing as well as I thought.

So i used this resource that I hadn't until then used very often, the internet (I truly never used the internet up unitil that point except for work, to read news, and occasionally buy books at Amazon). I started researching "getting pregnant" and found there was volumes of information out there on the subject (some much better than others). I found that I had the general gist of the whole endeavor correct, but also found some information I didn't know (I don't know if I was gone that day, but I didn't know until I was 31, the my egg was only living about 48 hours, I always thought the egg stayed around after ovulation until menses, which is probably way too much information), and that might help, and all the charting and keeping track of various gross stuff that is TMI but you can ask me about if you even have problems getting pregnant did work, at least they worked once. While digging up this information, I also stumbled across 2 other things. One was the "pre-blog", which were called on-line journals, the other was message boards. I first fond a site called "The Labor of Love" which had pregnancy journals, it was fasinating I was reading the TTC ("trying to conceive" in the lingo), and I learned all kinds of cool lingo to use, like "BD" (baby dancing, kind of obvious), DH (Dear Husband), AF (Aunt Flo), BFN (big *&(^%* negative on a pregnancy test), it was a new world and so interesting. It was weird to get all excited when someone finally got pregnant that you didn't even know.

The message boards were something different, they aren't like a journal or a blog, the interaction is, while somewhat anonymous, much more lively than comments in a journal or blog, it's a "real" conversation, you can put more thought into it than chatting, but it's much more interactive than what you get on a journal or blog (and there was no facebook, or social networking then, unless you counted "classmates.com"). TLOL (The Labor of Love) had a message board with the journals. I like to read it, but found it kind of annoying at the same time, because the rule was all interactions needed to be positive, and required a lot of "good luck sweetie", and "hugs". That was all well and good when someone had a baby, but there were places where say a 14 year old would post "I think I'm going to try to get pregnant" and even in the cyber world, 'hugs" wasn't the appropriate spot, you couldn't post anything but "what are you thinking", and then you would get in trouble with the site administrators for not being "supportive". I didn't have it in me to be that supportive, so I didn't post there often. If there was a confrontation or people didn't agree (weird side note A LOT more confrontation took place in forums about baby names than you would think, it's not wise to tell a preganant woman that Pluto wouldn't be your first choice for a girl), those people were sent to another place a sister board called 'Moms Who Think". Moms Who Think was a debate site and pretty much anything went, I couldn't believe my good luck, as one can imagine as much as I like to debate, and share my opinion was right up my alley. The great thing was that here was a place I could debate full force, without fear of hurting the feelings of someone I love (my husband was a horrible debater, well a good debater he just took it too personally, we couldn't debate without fighting eventually), and my family has always been good for a debate (we used to often debate at family holiday, I remember when I was a young teen debating "flag burning" with my aunts, uncles, and cousins), but still you don't want to go too far, you have to temper things a bit.

The areas of debate were all over the place "general debates" which could, and often were about anything, political debates (my favorite at first), religous debates, relationships debates, and finally I was introduced to the world of parenting debates before I was even pregnant. Until that time I had NO idea there was some many controversial things in parenting, I had NO idea this world existed (or the extention of this world "the mommy wars"). Breastfeeding was a hot topic, I had not idea, my mom breastfed, most of the moms I knew breastfed for a least awhile, I assumed I would do the same myself, end of discussion. Except holy cow people were passionate about it, on both sides, I had NO idea there were so into breastfeeding and everything about it, and no idea there were some many people that found the whole idea "disgusting" (that was shocking to me, it really was, I could see not wanting to, but I didn't get thinking it was disgusting, and something one would never even consider). I learned about the circumsision debate (I didn't know there was a debate, I just thought it was something you did when a boy was born, I didn't even know it was a choice, that opened my eyes on the subject, I don't thinking it is 'mutiliating your child" as a lot of the anti-circ. crowd does, but it did make me think about it being something you just 'did" and we actually ended up not circumsizing Jake). I learned that vaccination was actually a hot topic (I be honest I'm still not a fan of the anit-vacination argument, to me it's extremely dangerous, and the evidence is consistantly comeing back saying the except for a few allergies vaccination is much safter than not doing so). I learned about the intensity of the "working outside the home mom" vs. the "stay at home mom", I learned there were real women that thought no mom "needed" to work outside the home, and real women that thought stay at home moms were lazy, and wasting their intellect raising their children (it's always been a touchy issue amongst LDS women, but I guess I didn't realize is was such a raging issue amongst other women). I learned how much these people could piss each other off. That was infant issues, I haven't even touched on the pregnancy and child raising issues, home birthing, spanking, c-sections, pain managment in pregnancy, private vs. public vs. homeschool (this was where I was first indroduced to extremely effective homeschool, the homeschool I knew about was from religious extremist, not normal people that thought they could educate their children better at home, and I gained a lot of respect for it, although I still think 'unschooling" is a crock. The whole idea of all these parenting philosophies going head to head, or even existed was new to me, I figured I would get pregnant, have a baby, do what you did with babies (I had been around a lot of babies I had a pretty good idea of what to do with them), and then do pretty much what my mom and dad did (with a few minor exceptions for things that didn't really work for me :) ). I knew it would be hard, but I didn't know until then how complicated even decision was, and how you could completely ruin you child forever so easily. That gave me quite a bit to think about while it ended up taking over a year to get pregnant.

So needless to say (I was going to say to make a long story short but who am I kidding, I don't know any short stories), I joined this fasinating entertainment. And I had a blast, debating everything, my favorite at the time was politics I'm extremely liberal for conservative Utah, so it was nice to debate with some other liberals, and it was also eye opening to see that Utah conservatives are for the most part actually pretty moderate as a whole, because I was exposed to a whole different set of conservatives than I was used to, it was absolutely crazy during the Bush/Gore election, actually it become extremely clear to me for the first time how divided the US was becoming.

Also there were women from all over the world, Canada (I know Canadians aren't exactly the most culturally foreign to us), the UK, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, Japan (although most of the women from Asia were actually military wives stationed there), it was amazing to get insight into all the cultures, mores, and norms. To learn more about socalized medicine (I'm a liberal of course I'm for it), and some of the amazing maternity leave policy (did you know in Canada our neighbor up north each parent gets 6 months paid maternity/paternity leave, and if you want, you can combine, so if dad wants to give mom his leave she can take an entire year off paid, I would pay higher taxes for that). In the religion debates, we had Catholics, Wiccans, Buddists, Pagans, Mennonites, JW's, LDS, Baptists, born again Christians, reform Jews, conservatives Jews, and orthodox Jews. I found out that Christians weren't the ones that argued the most amongst themselves, other religions (esp. the Jewish religions) were just less willing to do it in front of people that weren't their religions. On of the people that joined the site was an orthodox rabbi from Isreal (he joined after his wife joined), which was amazing to me as I have never known any orthodox jews, and he was so open about answering questions, and getting into the details of the Jewish religion, he was able to explain some of the major difference between the Jewish sects (which I wasn't familiar with), and I found the debates on prosylezing with the Jews to be so interesting, and eye opening. The religion forum is still one of my favorites.. Frankly I'm completely over the "are Mormons Christians" debate, I will still get involved in the "how to drive away missionaries" debates, by reminding people that they are just there to ask, no on is going to make you join anything, and the missionaries are truly not trying to insult your religion by assuming it's not good enough. The polygamy debates esp. when the FLDS where in the news and their kids were taken from them got hairy.

My favorite debates quickly became the "general" debates, because this is a group of the most intelligent women i've ever come across from around the world, that can also (much like me) debate just about anything. We had heartwrenching current event debates (Andres Yates, a group of moms get really passionate that subject for obvious reasons, it was the only debate I ever cried during), and fun debates about silly things. 30 page debates on whether Wheat Thins are better than Triscuits, whether you can wear brown and black together, whether we would call the police if a neighbor came over and pulled out weeds in our yard the middle of the night (i was suprised how many would call the police for trespassing, if my neighbor came over and pulled my weeds in the middle of the night, I would leave the door open the next night so they would come in and do my laundry), or whether we would give an uninvited kid a piece of cake if they wandered over while we were having a birthday party at the park (also suprised the number of people that would tell the kid to take a hike and assume the parents had never taught any manners for eyeing the cake, it's a kid, it's cake, my policy is "always have a square to spare").

So for 10 years now I have been posting on-line with pretty much the same group of women, I shared my struggle/inability to get pregnant with them, I shared my pregnancy with quite a few of them (about 10 of us were prganant at the same time), Jake's birth, his childhood, etc. I shared things and feelings about things I have a really hard time talking about in a lot of depth without that is easier to share with people from the "space" of a screen. I can't really talk about infertility except clinically IRL, it's too raw a lot of my life hasn't gone exactly how I would have like it to go, and it is the only subject for which while I have peace can still make me unreasonably angry because of the lack of control over something so important. I shared with them my divorce, the feelings that were too hard to share with other people, the hard parts that people just don't get unless they have been there, the stuff no one really talks about but every person that has been through a divorce knows about. I have a very hard time talking about mental illness with those that are close to me, I wish that wasn't the case, but as I debate it and try to share what it's like at leasst in writing to people that truly don't "get" mental illness I at least feel like I'm accomplishing something.

I've debated every parenting decision I can think of and then some (I never knew about the "spare the rod" parenting philosophy before this site, which is basically a "Christian" parenting philosophy following the "spare the rod, spoil the child" idea in the Bible, and start training your children through hitting begining at 18 months, I've never been so sick to my stomach finding out people did that). I was told by a breastfeeding extremist that I couldn't count myself as breastfeeding becausae I pumped milk at work to feed my son, people that "really" believe in breastfeeding quit work and stay home to feed their child. I've been told that I am completely irresponsible and should have never brought a child into the world if they even had a small percentage chance of being mentally ill. I "met' the first person i've ever actually been aware of to breastfeed until their child was 9 (seriously? I'm not one to judge, but really?) I've watched the most spell binding drama unfold (there is no point in soap operas or drama T.V. if you are part of a message board, there are some SERIOOUSLY scary people out there making some really scary decisions, plus as we all know not everyone likes everyone and there are some real personality conflicts that people feel pretty free to let play out when they aren't face to face, makes reality T.V. look like a playdate). We have an online joke when the drama starts to go quick and grad a stick of butter to feed the kids and settle in for the night. I learned that no matter how mad a bunch of women get at each other in a debate, if you talk about food at the end, it's generally always better. I experienced my first "board explosion" (apparently they are fairly common, there are people that have been meeting each other at various parenting sites from the begining of the internet, and have seen 10-15 boards, come and go) when this happend a community of people that have been posting together for many years, blows up into a huge um verbal war, and friends (some who had become friends "in real life" as we say) completely divide,, I had never been involved in something like that, and I walked around literally sick to my stomach about it for a week. It was sad (seriously I never new I could be so upset about something online, and it's pretty hard to explain how things aren't going well with your invivible friends, you are all having one big fight, and you are really stressed about it, luckily most of the people I was close to were on the same side of the fight, but we had to leave the original site and start our own). When people on=line get mad they type things that I'm pretty positive none of them would ever say IRL, I've seen some pretty scary things said to people (luckily beyond some extreme debate stances as mentioned above no one has ever been really mean to me, I can be much more fiesty on=line than I am in person, but I've established that I can take it as well as dish it out, so people have been pretty fair, I don't go below the belt with them, and no one soe far has with me).

I've seen some pretty mean things go on (even with adult women when you get a bunch of us together "mean girls" and "clique" emerge, messages boards are an amazing sociology experiment, it is a small community with all the gossiping and personality conflicts that come with it. My cyber friends are some of the toughest (you do NOT want to go head to head with these women without a pretty thick skin), wittiest (never laughed so hard in my life, or as we say "I just spit coffee (or Diet Pepsi, pick your poison) all over my screen"), and intelligent women (again don't debate with them unless you know your stuff, because you will be asked for back-up studies, writings, books, and citiations additionallyyou have to prove they are from unbiased sources, and Wikipedia NEVER counts as a real source, writing college papers was easier sometimes). These women are stay at home moms, professionals, judges, lawyers, nurses, doctors, and everything in between (we do have a couple men, but they are really awesome, mostly laid back husbands, a few men have joined thinking they can outdebate us and get their rear ends handed to them).

We come from all backgrounds and all walks of life, it's an amazing community of diversity that I could never find in "real life" and I truly enjoy.

I have also never met a group of women, that can tell you where to put it one day, and then express extreme charity and compassion the next (Relief Society does the charity and compassion but not the "where to put it") There are about 600 people that are members of the site, but a core group of about 100 that really post together frequently, and have known each other for years. When I was going through my divorce, I got flowers, card, care packages, toys for Jake, etc. all sent to me from "friends" I had never seen. One year we did a "secrect santa" with women that were struggling financially from our site, and between the women at the site over $5,000 was raised to provide these families with Christmas. One person's home burnt down (and yes all this is established so there are now frauds or scams) and within 48 hours, people from all over the world sent her kids clothes, toys, gift cards, etc. When one of our members got a brain tumor within a week, babysitting (from women near her) was arranged for her chemo appointments, food was arranged to be brought in, almost everyone in the community made a quilt square and a quilt was put together for her to take to the hospital for her brain surgery, it was amazing. And 6 years (and 2 babies she didn't think she could have) later she is still around. We watched two of our members die of cancer, one right before Christmas, and the entire site got together to send a surprise Christmass to her family saying "we just want you to know how much your mom loved you, and how much she touched the lives of people all over the world", it was a pretty amazing Christmas, and a couple of her sisters were so impressed by the community that they have since joined. Last year one of our member's brothers literally caught on fire burning some stuff at his farm at had 3rd degree burns over 80% of his body, he was in the hospital for almost a year (he's doing remarkably well), and our site took turns supplying his family with grocerys for the entire time he was in the hospital (we contributed to a fund that was send as a reloadable gift card at their local store). Also last year one of our member's (someone that had only been a member for a few months) son was diagnosed with terminal cancer, it was the first time any of our community had lost a child, you can imagine how that hit home with a community of moms, i've never seen such an outpouring of love (and given the above examples that's saying something), it was amazing, people donated money for cleaning services, to help the family take a last trip together, toys for the little boy, and his siblings, after his death (which was heartbreaking he was so brave until the end) with lots of donations to his children's hospital in lieu of flowers, mom wanted a clean start, and people donated money and supplies to help her redecorate her home. This all for people you have never seen, and often have not one thing in common with. it has been really amazing to experience, at least for me some of the amazing things that can come out of technology.

This is a horribly long post even for me, amusingly enough on the subject, the thing I'm most known for, and teased about things with my on-line community is posting the longest posts (I got my own short hand "TL:DR" which means "too long, didn't read"), No i'm not going to share the site, I know how awesome I've made it sound, but I'm selfish, it's my playground, my place, my friends, and I just don't want to share. Plus it works pretty good when people stumble upon the site, there has been some major ugliness when people invite friends, relatives to the site thinking they would be a good fit and it doesn't work out. Trust me, you don't ever want to see a marriage slowly unravel online (some husbands have worked, but generally inviting husbands hasn't work, esp. as you can never post in the "does your husband do XXX anying thing" threads anymore.

I promise I don't talk about any of you except in the most glowing terms.

Anyway, to wrap up (finally if anyone is still reading and didn't say "TL:DR" paragraphs ago), friends can be found anywhere, and I'm so thankful to the wonderful group of "invisible" moms and friends that I've had for the last decade (I can't believe it's been that long). It's given me so much to think about in my parenting, in religion, in politics, in relationship, in good advice, in dealing with a community of people and in hundreds of subjects i've never thought about. I've felt passionate, played devil's advocate, and even argued against what I actually believe to see if I can really see where the other side is coming from (plus I hate to go into a debate where everyone agrees, that isn't debating that is patting each other on the back, I can generally come up with something to debate, it's one of my few talents).

The internet has so many scary things out there, but for a very shy socially phobic person the internet has been an amazing gift and way to make lots of friends and be social in a way to be safe. If when I was 12 someone had asked me for my "perfect" environment to be social, I would have said someplace where I can communicate mainly in writing, I could communicate when/where I want to, and I could do it honestly being me without people looking at me. I can't believe they invented that place just for me (just like I can't believe the dipped into my brain, took all the things I love in entertainment and then wrote "Glee" just for me).

I think I've now used all my allotted words for blogspot until June. i'm apparently pretty passionate about my cyber friends but I don't talk about them much in real life, it's really hard to explain without a lot of detail (obviously)

If you actually finished reading all of this I dare you to try to do a post longer (I've been working on this in my drafts on and off , adding and taking stuff outfor a week). :)