I should NOT care so much!

Moms are crazy and manic, yo.

This weekend I have plans to drive down to Portland and visit my best friend from way back and I'm ridiculously excited. I visited her last June when she was still living on the WA/ID border and was about to pop pregnant with her first child. Now that boy is six months old, they live half the distance away that they did before, and I can finally meet the little man in the flesh and cuddle him for hours on end! Yet here I sit... apprehensive as all get-out. The main reason they moved to Oregon was to be near her mother - who has never liked me. The apartment they're renting is the downstairs of a house her mother owns. There is a very good chance we'll see her once or twice while I'm there.

A few weeks ago, as a bit of preemptive strike, I sent her mom a friend request on facebook. I figured, naively, that us girls are almost 30, we're adults now, we've grown and learned and blossomed and changed. There is really no reason her and I couldn't be friendly acquaintances! I'm thinking I may have underestimated her extreme dislike of the 17-year-old me. I'm thinking I may have fully misunderstood the root of it, the reasons for it, because I truly didn't believe it could still exist. The other day I was poking around facebook and noticed that it no longer said her account was pending my request. It showed the "add as friend" button as if I'd never sent anything... being the silly and well-meaning naive girl I am, I assumed something must have expired or she clicked the wrong thing or some such nonsense, so I sent another request. This morning it's back to saying nothing is pending. My gosh, I am thick. I have been DENIED!

Now, I know I've denied plenty of people from my past who sent me requests for myriad reasons - they were annoying, I didn't know them very well, they were still friends with someone I didn't get along with, they were really loud republicans, whatever... there's a lot of reasons and they are all petty and silly and useless. Being on the receiving end of such a rejection... is weird. I should not be affected by it. Frankly, I barely know her mother and she barely knows me. A lot can change in a person between high school and 30: A lot can stay the same. It varies. What I know for sure is that I haven't seen this woman in 5 years and whatever assumptions she has about me are her problem, not mine. So I'm trying not to think about it. Obviously, it's not working, or I wouldn't be typing on and on about it. Blah.

Regardless, I'm still very much looking forward to the trip. I haven't seen my friend in 6 months and I haven't been able to hold her little creation yet and these are very exciting things. I need to focus on that and not on being DENIED.