It's my soapbox and I'll cry if I want to

I just can't seem to wrap my brain around a 7 Quick Takes, or a Daybook, or any other "insert your info here" meme ... my days are defying compartmentalization lately.  Well, if by "compartmentalization" you mean "ready for the men in the white coats to put me in a nice little padded cell" then, why YES I can do compartmentalization. ;-)

The nightstand bookstack just saw the close of 7 by Jen Hatmaker that everyone seems to be talking about. I was lucky my library had it - it was a quick read, and entertaining.  For the average person, I bet it was convicting also.  I in *no* way want to sound high and mighty or holier-than-thou, but I'm beyond what she did in her drive to rid her life of excess ... except I have no book contract nor 10000 adoring facebook and blog fans.  I guess that's a good thing.  Anyway, it was a good book but I spent the whole time reading seething in jealousy and anger. Nice, huh.

It's not the fault of the book, just my life lately. I'm in a daze... an angry, jealous daze.

A week and a half ago, my mom almost died.

Have I said this already?  I keep mulling it over in my head, needing to talk to someone. Needing to process. I feel like it's all I talk about, but really I probably haven't said it outloud much at all.   She was put on oxygen due to restrictive lung disease, and it was turned up too high, poisoning her body with carbon dioxide that she couldn't blow off.  We didn't know *what* was going on, we thought it was just the disease progressing so we didn't push hard enough to get her help. I feel like God kept her heart beating until we got our act together and got her hospitalized.  It just looked like she was tired. SO TIRED.  But that was the poisoning... and eventually the high CO2 just tells your heart and lungs they aren't needed anymore, and they just stop and you "go to sleep" - never to wake up.

Now we know. And now thanks to some wonderful doctors and nurses, my mom is home and doing well, considering.

I spent the last two weeks visiting my mom, helping my dad at home, being his emotional support, thinking my mom was going to die, and wondering just when the tables will turn so that I can get some lovin' too.  Not like I want some tragedy to happen to me, no sir! But I don't think a person needs "tragedy" to have some friends show up and love on them, right??

This really is my soapbox.

The last few (umm, 10? 12?) years have been weird.  Many friends/acquaintances moved, a few "fell away" as we started homeschooling and their kids didn't so they went back to work, we left a co-op due to lack of time and emotional energy to teach other people's children and deal with the political mumbo jumbo.  Yada yada yada... and I'm left with ONE friend.  One friend in a big city/suburb where everyone seems to have grown up with everyone else or is related to everyone else, and I don't know how to make new friends.  Now this one friend also seems to be moving on.  I thought we were "tight" - now, not so much.  Something happened the other day (that I won't get into here) that was not at all big on the surface, but a symptom of a much bigger thing in my mind.  Even if it was a misunderstanding, it stacks up with a lot of other evidence that  .... that I now have no friends.  Real friends.  Not one of a hundred friends on a busy schedule.  I don't wanna be penciled in and crossed out when activity number 27 gets in the way.  I want The Council (you'll get it if you read 7.)

Hence the anger and seething jealousy.  SO PRETTY, I tell ya. My soul needs help.

Having only one friend stunk (a busy, almost never see each other friend at that), having no friends, when I really really need friends... just sucks. Sorry.

I mean, c'mon, my mom just came {} this close to death, and I want a hug, dagnabbit. I want to cry and have someone still like me the next day.  I don't want that to happen and then just when I'm the downest ... ((OK I just deleted all the details, but it involves thanking God that it looked like my prayers were answered, when really they weren't and it was even worse than I thought)).

My poor husband.  He gets the brunt of all this.  He deserves better.

This post was supposed to be about a bunch of different things, but it seems kind of wrong to talk about math manipulatives after spilling my guts, so I'll wrap up this whine and dairy-free cheese fest and let you all get back to your lives.

*as you all breathe a huge sigh of relief* :)

P.S. Don't tell me to pray for friends...I have been, for years. It's going about as well as my prayers for a new home and healing for my family's health problems.  As in, the more I pray, the worse it gets.  I *get it*, spiritually, but still.  Ugh.