MWF ISO BFF(S)

The title is misleading. I have a lovely BFF and she is and always will be my BFF so first thing on the list of criteria is that you have to love my BFF too. She doesn't have to be your BFF but you should know right off the bat that she's not going anywhere so you should endeavor to at least like her and if you're feeling left out of the 20 years worth of inside jokes we have going on just smile and nod. Thats what our husbands do and it works pretty well for them.

But, really, this isn't about her or any of my other lovely friends who I adore for various and sundry reasons. This is about me. This is entirely about me. You should be prepared to be AAAALLLLL about me too.

You see, there is this thing that happens as you age and go through life's hoops. You (hopefully find a partner - if you desire one) get married. And they say your spouse is supposed to be your best friend. My hubby is awesome. But if we weren't in love I don't know that we'd have ever even sat at the same table in the high school cafeteria. Actually this would have been impossible as I took art and music classes during lunch and he took.... I don't know.... probably extra super hard calculus. My husband compliments rather than matches me and I think that makes us a pretty well rounded team when facing the world. So, you reach an age where everyone pairs off and starts making miniatures and that takes up a great deal of our time. There are babies crying and children who need picking up from places and bosses with inhumane deadlines. There is just all this STUFF and it gets in the way of the really important things in life like talking to me on the phone while I clean my kitchen AGAIN, or answering my texts at all hours because someone I haven't seen since 1997 just posted a sonogram picture of her accidental 4th baby on Facebook and it has dredged up every sad feeling I have ever had about infertility and miscarriages.

I am understanding of my placement in the order of importance in my friend's lives. It is down on the list well below, families, and jobs, and homes, and gosh probably loads of other stuff and that is ok and expected because thats where I have to put them too. I consider myself lucky to even BE on the list and given how busy our lives are I suppose it is a miracle we see each other often enough to still consider ourselves friends.

My enquiry is the result of a problem I have encountered before but never quite so often as I have in the last 6 months or so. The days where I am really excited, or really upset, or I"m bursting with something to share and NO. ONE. PICKS. UP. THE. PHONE.

Or answers a text. Or seems to be on Facebook. or responds to emails or smoke signals or owl post, or federation hailing frequencies.

I realized my circle of close friends is very very small. I am sure I am not alone in seeking out different people depending on what is on my mind. So sure, there are sometimes friends outside of the very inner sanctum who are in the next closest circle. I could call them. They might answer. They would also probably have no idea what to do with the information I want to pass on or the need I have that needs filling. The same way a podiatrist may be a doctor but is not the first person you call when you're having trouble digesting gluten or cracked a tooth.

So I am seeking more BFFs. As it is unfair and unreasonable of me to expect my current BFFs to shoulder "the load" that is me.

So here is a little bit about me:

• I am short and round in all the right places and some that I feel are less right. My breasts play a large role in my life because well, they are large. They literally precede me entering a room. They cause all kinds of back and shoulder pain. They have been given many names by many people but I just call them the girls. Given all the trouble they have caused me in my life I feel it is important for me to abuse them in return by wearing the tightest pushy-uppiest (I also make up words) bras I can in whatever eye jarring color I can get them in and exposing them to the elements regularly.
• I am of more than moderate intelligence but rather than specializing in one particular area I seem to know a decent amount about a lot of things. Except knitting and childbirth and Jane Austen. I'm pretty sure I'm considered and expert in all of those.
• I am crafty. This includes arts, fibers, and witchiness. I have so many things I want to do and so many things half done that I am overwhelmed by it. There aren't enough hours in the day or days in the year. 
• I have children. I homeschool them. They're with all the fucking time and I use every excuse to get away from them because I"M WITH THEM ALL THE FUCKING TIME. I also chose this path willingly and prefer it to any other available to me right now.
• I am more than my children. I have all this other stuff I like and do and enjoy friends who have things that they like and do outside of parenting too. It makes us interesting and prevents us from (committing murder) becoming a front page headline. 
• I have fertility issues. Long, complicated, exasperating fertility issues. And I picked a shitty line of work for someone who has fertility issues. 
• I read. Lots. Mostly fiction. 
• I drink wine and I'm a happy drunk. A bit kissy-touchy but I can't help it I LOVE YOU!
• I"m a bit of a geek. (see chart)  Not in the way that it's now "chic" to be a geek so everyone says it - I mean a legitimate one. Old school I suppose. Not so far out there that I can't adapt socially but definitely on the spectrum. 
  
• I poke smot and it causes all of my worst dietary choices. BUT, its either that or an I.V. of xanex and it fulfills my oral fixation.
• I like to talk on the phone, not text. While on the phone I can clean, I can cook, and can do lots of things that need doing and still feel connected to the outside world. Texting allows me to do none of those things and autocorrect (or as I call it "auto assume") gives me text-rage.
• I"m a birthworker. I am passionate and vocal about many topics related to birth and child rearing. I frequently get into pointless Facebook battles with complete idiots or worse, intelligent people who believe idiotic things. I both admire and complain about the women I work with.
• I like being home so long as it is dotted with going out. I like eating really good food (who doesn't) especially when it is served to me and I don't have to clean up. 
• I like to laugh. Things I find funny: Satire, British humor, Louis C.K., Joss Whedon's comedic timing. I myself am only circumstantially funny, in writing, by accident, or according to my existing BFF who I am to this day unsure if we just exist in a world where we are funny only to each other or if she's just being nice. I'm also a very good sport. I take a lot of things seriously but *I* am not one of them.
• I like most music. Except most rap and most country. I like to share the new stuff I've found and have people groove to it. This rarely occurs. I am forced to face the possibility that... I may have terrible taste in music.
• I am socially tolerant. I am difficult to shock. I have a "hey whatever works for you" sort of attitude -except where circumcision is concerned. I'm pretty much rabid crazy about that one.
• I'm a witch. I become more of a witch with every passing day. I strive to really own that word. I was raised Jewish if being Jewish means lighting candles and eating foods comprised almost entirely of oil, meat, and onions. I play the Jew card when it suits me or when I"m dealing with dumb people. The rest of the time I just feel sorry for them because their ideas haven't changed in 6 thousand years and they brag about it, their art is hideous, and their messiah came and they were so busy arguing about old books and making ugly art that they were kind of a dick to him. 
• I like to do things WITH people. I need my alone time like everyone does and I certainly wouldn't call myself a social butterfly but I like to say "hey lets go to a movie... to a park.... to a museum...  to... stuff!". I like to be at people's birthday parties and make a small fuss over them. I like to be with people for their milestones and for people to be present for mine. I like to choose my "family".

Ideal new BFF:

• you should be short like me so we can commiserate or tall enough to be useful for fetching things from high places. you should be pleasing on mine eyes but not so pleasing that I cry before going out with you because that makes me the fat ugly friend. Give yourself extra points if you are good with your hands and can massage my breast-induced aches. And a couple more points if you applaud my daring wardrobe choices which have been known on occasion to border on burlesque costumes. When I make up words you totally understand what I mean.
• you should be of more than moderate intelligence too. I don't mind if you are "smarter" than me, in fact I prefer it. So long as you are not smug about it (in public). Dumb people need not apply. Dumb equates to a wide variety of things besides intelligence for me and has nothing to do with grades or IQ scores but discontinue reading if you are any of the following: an Altima driver, Hummer, or Jewish BMW Mercedes VW driver, a republican/conservative/Ayn randist/teapartier, someone who panics about "weather", someone who would "rather watch the movie", someone who scheduled a c-section for no medical reason, a devout Christian. or Jew. 
  
• You can either be crafty too OR you can be in constant awe and appreciation of my craftiness. Your choice. You should also understand that for every project i have going or talk about doing there are about a dozen that I haven't told you about yet.
• You can either have your own children or you can adore mine and never mind that they are around me all the time and not let that stop us from having a good time.
• You agree with me that women whose worlds begin and end with their children are boring. If you have kids of your own - double points.  If your kids are for whatever reason so high maintenance that you can't chill with me and mine (did I say mine... I meant wine) or sit down for more than 30 seconds without catastrophe occurring don't bother calling, that position is more than amply filled. But basically believe that kids are great - but they're also suicidal assholes.
• you have unlimited patience and tissues for listening to my fertility woes. You had to work at it a bit too and you too, hate those bitches who just have to look at their partners to get pregnant. Extra points if you're a chiropractor, acupuncturist,  herbalist or endocrine specialist.
• You should read  a lot too. This point is non-negotiable.
• You should drink wine too. Also non-negotiable. You can drink other stuff too, you just prefer wine and you are totally ok with wine induced snogging and totally ok after snogging. You should agree with me that it is always "wine o'clock" and that no wine glass is too large. 
• You should be a geek too but able to pass for a normal person when necessary. If you speak another language (i.e.: droid, klingon, elvish, or enough Chinese to translate the lines in Firefly) give yourself extra points) I need someone who appreciates the things I like even if they're in to different things and whose "stuff" I can appreciate too. It would be cool if we could recommend things to each other and sincerely like  most of the things that we recommend to each other.
• you should poke smot too. I already have enough friends who don't do this or do it regularly and I want one who does. Extra points if you have a steady connection.
• You have to enjoy talking on the phone. You have to answer your phone at least %50 of the times I call and you have to return calls you miss at least 75% of the time. Always being the pursuer and never the pursued is totally overrated. I need to feel loved too.
• you should be either passionate about birth too or defer to me because you have no idea and you know I'm speaking sense. I don't need you to have had the same experiences as I have but you have to agree that the  ideal is natural, vaginal, free birth, mother's milk, and intactivism and those things though not always attainable should be striven for whenever possible.
• You should like coming to my house and having me (us) over. You should also like going out and having really good food or making it for me and insisting I shouldn't help in the kitchen to clean up. 
• You should be funny. You don't need to perform for me or anything just that we can chuckle at the same things. You should also be able to take a joke made at your expense. Again, I am full up on people who take themselves WAY too seriously. Any joke, no matter how slight is as likely to cause anything from a pout to a pummel and I just don't need any more of that shit.
• you too should like most music. Except most rap and most country because I will never want to listen to that dreck. You should take time to actually listen to the things I'm in to and have things you think I'd like to share with me.
• you should be socially tolerant too. Especially where my intactivism is concerned (did I mention I'm a bit cray cray with that?)
• you don't have to be a witch but that'd be just awesome. Especially if you were public about it. Especially if you weren't entirely solitary. Especially if you had kids you were raising with it. But really, just Pagan would be great. Or open minded. Or an atheist who isn't a complete asshole in their self righteous insistence in the infallibility of science (reminiscent of religious fanaticism a bit hmmm?)
• You must, and this is an important one, you must have NO intention or desire to move away. I have been plagued these last few years with a deeply upsetting situation that seems to be a theme. I make a friend. A friend who fulfills these requirements in one way or another. And then they move away. And it breaks my heart. And my children's hearts. And I just can't do it anymore. So you have to be someone who is stuck on this turd shaped shmuck filled shithole of an island with me. Extra points if I can walk to your house from mine. 

So dear new BFF if you're out there, unlikely though it may be,  please respond to my plea. I miss you already. And thank you past and current BFFs for putting up with me.