If you're eating, you might not want to read this

All I have to say is thank God it's Thursday. Only one more day of unpaid leave left in this week. At this rate, I'll end up owing my company money by the time all of this is over...

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I don't think we're going back anytime soon

Yesterday afternoon, Monkey Man begged me to go to his favorite restaurant for dinner. You know, the Japanese steakhouse?

I really felt like maybe that wasn't such a hot idea, especially since it can take up to an hour to eat and he hadn't been "up" that long in several days so I wasn't sure he could handle it. Now, I'm not normally a pushover (nor am I a total hardass) but he threw such a fit that Joey and I gave in and off we went.

Of course, Monkey Man fell asleep in the car on the way over and by the time we woke him up, he was clingy, whiny, and tired. Eventually he perched himself in my lap like a sloth and wouldn't let go. Eventually he switched over to Joey's lap, then over to mine, then back to Joey...this went on for a good half hour. Meanwhile, the chef was cooking our dinner and Monkey Man had zero interest in eating one thing. He got up from my lap, walked over...

BLEEEECH...he threw up all over the middle of the restaurant floor. In front of everyone. And it wasn't just one good hurl, it was several sizable ones coupled with some good old dry heaving. We did our best to try and catch it in napkins and on his plate but the damage was done.

Luckily, they all know us so well that they were horribly kind about everything - they helped us get him cleaned up and gave us our dinners wrapped up - and FREE. Not like I had any appetite after all that. They also supplied us with a little jar to carry in the car in case he felt sick on the way home.

I'm assuming that he has a little sour stomach from all the antibiotics he was on in the hospital, because eventually he had some toast and pulled himself together enough that he didn't throw up anymore.

So I was telling Cat Door M about it today on my way home from work, and he was completely and appropriately mortified like any childless man would be.

"So, what are they going to do, start offering the Yak-yak platter?" he asked.

Very funny, M. Not so funny when you're cleaning Yak-yak platter out of tennis shoes and all the little crevices.

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Sometimes friendships can really surprise you

And while we're on the subject of Cat Door M, I have to talk about my peep a little bit.

I met M three years ago when we were put on the same project together. We didn't really gel at first - I remember finding him somewhat annoying and I believe that he thought I was a stuck up bitch. Both accurate assessments. As the project crawled onward, M and another one of the guys that I call SG, and I started going to lunch together and kind of became the Three Musketeers. And honestly, I was like a den mother in a lot of ways and took care of the guys the best that I could. (No, not that way - get your minds out of the gutter!)

M and I ended up working the punchlist together - this was a multi-month project requiring a lot of night and weekend work, so at that point we got to talking a lot more about our personal lives than we ever had before and discovered that we shared a common bond.

M is married to someone a lot like Joey in terms of being extremely career-oriented, she spends a lot of time at work or traveling, and they kind of lead separate lives a lot of the time. I feel that way sometimes too about Joey and his career, so naturally M and I shared a lot of our frustrations but also our pride in our spouses' accomplishments.

By the end of the project, things in our lives had calmed down and we settled into being friends rather than marriage counselors. We ended up getting assigned to another project together, but one night he came by the house and asked me if I could help him with his resume because he wanted to send it to a headhunter and see what kind of feedback he got. Well, I set him up with one hell of a resume, and as luck would have it he ended up getting a really great job offer at another company and he ended up resigning.

I was devastated. Not only because I loved working with him, but because I had grown to value his friendship so much that I was totally scared of losing it. You know how it is when you change jobs - you end up losing touch with most of the people who were your "friends"...and I was afraid that this was going to happen with M.

Well, it did. Two months went by and I barely heard from him at all. We exchanged a few e-mails and a few phone calls, but he was being very abrupt with me and we ended up in a heated e-mail "fight" where I almost told him to take a flying leap. As it turns out, his new job was truly horrible and he ended up having a fight with his boss and being shown the door only three months into it. It was truly demoralizing for him, and in typical M fashion he had shut himself off from everyone instead of sharing what was really going on.

With his severance package, he was able to do something he's been talking about doing for a while - going into business for himself. This week marks the six-month mark that he's been a licensed contractor, and he is really doing very well. As he told me this week, he went for a six-month "checkup" with his accountant and it looks like he's on the right path and managing things well. He has severe ADD so he's really had to work at being organized in terms of his accounting stuff, keeping clients straight, setting appointments, scheduling work, and all that stuff. I told him how proud I am of him for taking this huge leap and for making a success out of it.

But that's not really the point of all this. M is one of those friends that drives me crazy - I can go days and sometimes weeks without hearing from him, sometimes he bails out on plans at the last minute, you know - one of those friends. But you know what? Since my dad got sick, I've heard from him at least twice a week. Remember the big pep talk he gave me the day Builder Daddy was in the hospital? I owe him big time for that. And since Monkey Man got sick, he has called every single day. I give this new career of his a lot of the credit - he is back to being the M that I first met three years ago in terms of being happy and fun again. And instead of always being "me, me, me" like he was earlier this year, he's back to being interested in me and my life and what's going on with all of our friends.

He doesn't read this blog - and if he did he would be totally mortified to know I was writing about him this way - but damn, I am so glad for him that things are finally clicking. And I'm glad to have him as my friend.

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Big brownie points being scored by the husband

Anyone that has known me during football season knows that I absolutely go berzerk because every year Joey gets season tickets for his alma mater's games.

Why does this make me nuts? Because for the last four years, I got stuck at home all weekend with Monkey Man (who was pretty much sick all the time) and then Joey was useless on Sundays. Translation: my weekends pretty much sucked.

I have to admit, though - the last two years he has been a lot better about not being suicidal if he misses a game. I think last year he missed - gasp - two games. This year we're getting up to four games. I don't know how he's holding himself together.

So after I had a little bit of a pity party for myself last night, he went ahead and sent his former college roommate all of the tickets. He's not going this weekend. And I didn't even have to ask.

He is soooo going to get lucky for this. But don't tell him that, or he's going to give up going all together.

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Send some positive vibes, y'all - we're off to the ear, nose and throat specialist tomorrow and my brother-in-law's office for appointments for the Monkey Man. And if the ENT doesn't set us up for a tonsillectomy, I'm going to haunt him forever.