Things, and the Having Thereof

You guys are brilliant. First of all, Jane, oh goddess Jane. I can't even BELIEVE I didn't think of "I have things"! (And while I did say it with the emphasis on the have--thereby contrasting it neatly, or so I like to delude myself into thinking, with the 'not having' implied by the first part of the sentence, "I'm not a hypochondriac..."--a things emphasis would work, too.) (Um, yes, I did just kiss Jane's ass. But I lurve Jane. She gossips with me. And I have an insatiable need to foster and retain her unmitigated approval. And she's way way way naturally funnier than me. So I kiss. Sue me.)

Actually, there wasn't a single suggestion that didn't make me laugh and nod my head in agreement. In particular, though, loved the irony in Libby's "There is no word, phrase, or saying so universal that I would wish to transmit it to everyone with whom I have contact each time I contact them." In fact, I am going to HAVE to send that one to the annoying (but really one of my closest friends) brother-in-law who started this, because it will earn me one of those gratifying chuckles.

And, Leila, my lovely, that Camus quote! "Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal." It's perfection! I love the others as well, but Camus' sums me up in a nutshell. (Get it? Nutshell? Hee! I crack me--and only me--up.)

So now, a quandry. I'm thinking that I'll use one of these three as my real-life email sig, another as my Tiny Coconut sig, and--having now been shamed by the brilliance of these ideas into despising the insipidness that is my tag line on my blog--one of them as the new blog tag line. But which one where?

Discuss.
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On another note: I had a yummy, non-Core-but-not-too-bad lunch today with the soon-to-be-world-famous Tamar and her mother, Leya, with whom I immediately fell deeply in love. It never ceases to amaze me--though perhaps it should have ceased by now, having happened to me time and time again--how immediately comfortable I can feel with people I know only through words thrown out into the ether. I cut my teeth in this regard with my homegirls, aka the LA Moms, who I met on our birthmonth list, and are now my closest friends and confidants. And I have yet to meet an online buddy towards whom I don't feel an immediate closeness.

Blogging or journalling or whatever-the-heck-it-is-we-all-do kicked it to another level. Long before I left my first comment on Tamar's daily log about her son (which has since morphed into Postscript, which ranges far and wide and deep), I knew so much about her, and about the things she struggles with and the things she takes pleasure in. It's weird to think about knowing that much about someone who doesn't even know you exist, or that you're reading her thoughts, or that you're even sometimes applying some of the literary deconstruction skills you learned in college to look even more deeply into what she's saying.

My first comment to her, if I'm not mistaken, was a bit belligerant: I disagreed with a post she'd written about the grocery strike last year here in LA. But that quickly morphed into a friendly correspondence, and a simple innate conviction that this was someone I was going to like. A lot. And when we met up for the first time, bam. I remember walking away from the restaurant at which we met for lunch that day, and thinking, "I'm usually shy and cautious when I meet new people. So who was that chatty, opinionated, stick-your-nose-where-it-doesn't-necessarily-belong person in there? And how did I know that the chat, the opinions, the nose-sticking would be welcomed and accepted?" But I did. And it was.

I felt much the same way today, saying goodbye to Tamar and Leya and hugging them both. (I'm also not usually an immediately "touchy" person, either.) It just felt natural. After all, I've known them forever, right?

I'm getting obnoxiously sappy, but what I'm trying to say is that there's a level of comfort in this new way of forging relationships, in which you can prescreen your potential friends and thus walk into a relationship that's already gotten well past the feeling-out stage in which you try and figure out where the potential pitfalls are ("she seems nice, but what if she's an anti-semite? what if she's a gay-basher? what if she thinks working out of the home is equivalent to child abuse?") and straight into the "you're interesting, and we have a lot in common, so now let's take it to the next level of getting to know one another."

In short? My life would be much poorer, and much more narrowly defined, were it not for the internet and the opportunities it has brought me. I am Geek Girl, hear me roar.