Cleaning house

Yesterday, out of what I am sure is my father's gratitude for providing him with the profound wisdom and insight of my blog, my dad gave me a few gifts.  Of course, not one to simply accept a gift without pondering the potential hidden meaning within, I was up late last night trying to discern the unspoken intent of the following additions to my home:

1. A vacuum cleaner that is also a robot.  We have named her Zumba, and Margot hates her.

2. Several cookbooks; and

3. A clay pot.  Clay-pot?  Claypot?

Being the ultra-sensitive and often irrational and paranoid person that I am, I of course assumed the following:
1. He thinks my house is messy;
2. His opinion of my culinary repertoire is that I need some new inspiration; and
3. He is tired of the le crueset calling the kettle red (ha!  if you read my blog regularly you would get that joke) and that he yearns for me to experiment with new cooking mechanisms as well as new euphamisms for hypocritical assholes.  Perhaps the clay pot calling the kettle kiln-fired?  Wow, that's pithy and really rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate these gifts, and I am kidding about the hidden meaning behind them.  In truth, he just needed to get rid of some extraneous cookbooks and since one of them was a clay pot cookbook, and I do not have a clay pot, throwing in the pot seemed logical.  Plus, I asked him to give it to me, which sort of put him in an awkward position.

He also sent me a book in the mail recently, which was very thoughtful and for which I failed to thank him because 1) I have been so busy blogging, 2) I have been so busy reading said book, which is very engrossing, and 3) frankly, I just forgot.  Bad Robin.

I know you are wondering what book he sent me, and the suspense must be killing you.

Chelsea Handler is funny.  She says what she thinks and doesn't pull any punches.  She also has an interesting friendship with alcohol and has had a somewhat rocky history of personal relationships.

I just can't figure out why he sent me her book.  Go figure.

Speaking of difficult relationships, yesterday (as I mentioned in my blog posting) I had an unfortunate encounter with someone I used to know.  More accurately, I thought I knew her, but I didn't.  Actually, that's not true.  I knew this person better than anyone, which is why we could no longer be friends.  Once again yesterday, the le crueset called the kettle red, and I am still pondering how she can go through life with such a major case of projection going on.  I like to think that I am pretty familiar with my own faults, and I have them listed alphabetically on my iphone so I can check in from time to time to see if I have made any progress on improving myself in these areas.  Here are the major ones:

Insecure?  Check

Overly-sensitive?  Check

Prone to dark moods?  Check

Too concerned about my appearance?  Oh yeah, big check there.

Yesterday, I was accused of being hateful, unhappy, and fat by a woman who was angry that I called her out on some shady behavior.  Caught in a major lie, this was her only way of expressing what I can only assume was major embarassment.  Since I have no interaction with this woman any longer and only run the risk of a chance encounter with her at my gym (and someday I suspect that won't happen anymore, once the Sugar Daddy stops paying her bills), I don't know why this bothered me so much.  I am not a hateful person, I just dislike her.  I am not an unhappy person per se, though it is true I suffer from feeling blue from time to time.  I chalk that one up to unfortunate brain chemistry and I don't really think it's very nice to fault someone for a brain wiring issue.  It seems almost as inappropriate as making fun of an amputee.  And finally, although I'd like to drop a few pounds and get a little more definition in my abs, I don't think I qualify for gastric bypass. 

Yet.

So, why does this person get under my skin?  I guess it's because I feel like a fool for ever trusting someone who I knew was lying to and about others who were close to her.  I was shocked and deeply hurt when I was told by mutual friends that she was spreading false stories about me to people we knew.  What I finally realized yesterday is that my shock in her behavior was ridiculous.  If you spend time with someone who is constantly deceiving other people, don't fool yourself into thinking they aren't doing it to you at the same time.

"Same old Robin," she said in an email yesterday.  And that's the thing - I am not the same person I was when I was spending time with her.  Tired of living an unfulfilling life and wasting time on people that were unreliable and toxic, I turned things around about three years ago.  I met a great guy who did me the honor of becoming my husband, and I am thankful every morning when I wake up and see that it wasn't all a dream.  I am not the same person I used to be, and I am proud of that.  Some people keep growing, even later in life, and some people stay the same.  I'd rather evolve, but that's just me.