EEEEEEFML Friday. Watch out for crazy snail lady.

You may have read it in my twitter and facebook updates this week (which you should totally be following me if you’re not) but my POS car took yet another unfortunate turn for the worse this week.

About halfway to work on Wednesday, just as I was quickly  turning left at a very busy intersection, my brakes locked up. I skid(ded?) across the road, and eventually ended up going up onto a curb, barely missing 3 parked cars, and finally came to a complete stop about 2 feet away from a light pole.

Luckily I was OK, but it put me in an especially retched mood.

Naturally, the first thing I did when I got to work was update my facebook, twitter, and googlechat status updates with the news, and emailed my closest friends with something like:

“I hate everything!!! My brakes went out and I almost died!!!! I am done with this shit!!!!”

I was obviously hoping for a few words of comfort.

The first reply I got was an email from my friend Moops, whom you can learn all about here.

“I thought this was an interesting article, and it kind of reminded me of you. Especially the second to last paragraph. It may be your fate. It’s a book review on this  biography about  Patricia Highsmith, a crime novelist(from Texas)… she’s the one who came up with Mr. Ripley from “The Talented Mr. Ripley.”

At first I didn’t even take notice of what he wrote, except for that he didn’t offer me any kind words of consolation. So I wrote him another email:

“Thanks for thinking of me and all, but you didn’t even mention anything about the fact that I ALMOST DIED! Then you would be less one best friend and who would you call when you have nothing to say but just don’t want in your own silence so we both sit in silence together while your driving home??”

His reply?

“Ohhh.. glad you’re ok. Sorry, didn’t catch that. Never mind, you probably shouldn’t read that article.”

Which of course I immediately did. It started off great!

” Patricia Highsmith, one of the 20th-century’s most powerful writers…She was “comfortable only when she was uncomfortable. Discomfort—the condition with which she was most at home and least at ease—was a productive state for her; it usually kept her writing.”

I like where this is going as a comparison with me…

“Pat couldn’t look at a flight of stairs,” Ms. Schenkar writes, “without imagining someone falling down them.”

I totally do that!!! I kept skimming reading… she wrote books… blah blah …she had a problem with one of her parents … blah blah…she had a deep distrust in men … yeah, yeah, me to…she could fall in love in minutes.. oh girl I feel ya… she would stalk women… whaaa?? OK that’s cool. I’m not a lesbian, but I’m pretty feminist… So down to the second to last paragraph that Moops said reminded him so much of me…

An oddball, Highsmith made furniture, kept pet snails, loved tools and wrote incessantly. In later years she grew into a feisty, difficult, phobic, unappeasable witch in old clothes with an osteoporotic hump on her back, a woman raddled from cigarettes and beer seeking solitude and harboring murderous fantasies. She locked horns with just about everybody. She died of leukemia in 1995, at the age of 74.

That? is what he thinks is going to be my fate?

At first it kind of pissed me off. But the more I thought about it, he’s probably right.

After all, I love making furniture… (or at least decoupaging it!) And snails, as pets? Why haven’t I thought of that???! Feisty? Check. Difficult? I can be. Phobic? Ummm yeahhhh. Unappeasable witch in old clothes who smokes and drinks while fantasizing and hating people?

Not yet, but I suppose I’m on my way.

Which is why I’ve decided to take the first step in preparation for my life as recluse crazy snail lady. I’m done with dating. If I’m going to end up just hating everyone and all alone anyway, why am I wasting my time trying to find someone now?

Plus… after a long conversation with my sister last night about this topic, I’ve decided I’m pretty content with not actually dating, but just obsessing over what I like to call, my” Facebook crushes. ”

You know, those people who don’t have a clue that you stalk check their page, but you talk about them to your friends like you know them well? Like you have actually hang out with them in person or something?

Or maybe that’s just me.

I’ve had “Facebook-like-crushes” before there even was a Facebook. Two of the biggest crushes of my life, the two boys who I will ALWAYS refer to with their first and last names as if they are celebrities, probably have no idea that I even was like, in love with them. Or at least to the extent that I was.

And now, though I may not have a man in my life, I’m resigned to let my facebook crushes be enough.

And every once in a while, when they “like” or even better, comment on my status update, it’s like we just moved to a new level in our relationship.

I figure this new way of life will save me dozens of hours in heart break, as well as the heart break of others who will be upset to learn that I have dumped them for my snails.

Or maybe I’m just crazy…

Crazy snail lady, here we come!!!