Karma

A couple of years or so ago, I had a falling out with an old friend of mine. Her name is Lori & things had been strained between us for awhile. It basically started when she & her then-boyfriend decided that they just HAD to move in the middle of Renne Faire & expected all of us, with our various commitments to different aspects of Faire, to just pick up & leave to help them. We all pretty much told them we couldn't, except for Dawn, and they worked her half to death, disregarding that she had a separated rib.

Lori refused to talk to any of us for a long time after that & things between us were really never the same. Troy & I both did help them get the truck loaded & ready to go when they moved to Las Vegas, though & they kind of acted like everything was ok after that. They'd stop in and visit for a couple of minutes every third or fourth time they were in town. That really hurt Rhi more than anyone, because she was very close to Lori's youngest daughter, Autumn, at the time.

The summer that the falling out occurred, Lori had sent Autumn up here to stay with her grandma for a couple of weeks, and she wanted to be with Rhi constantly, which, at one time, would have been fine with Rhi, but she was older & had new friends and a job, too. She was also pretty tired of being pushed around by Autumn by the end of the first week & started kind of making excuses not to hang out with her. One day, Rhi had to go to work & her former best friend had spent the night here, because she worked at the same place (Troy & I worked there, too). Autumn had also spent the night & didn't understand when Rhi couldn't hang out that day & had to go to work. She didn't understand that the other friend worked with Rhi & that was why she was going with her. She threw a fit, stormed off to Dawn's house & told a bunch of lies. When Rhi heard about them later, she was steamed & told Autumn's sister Sarah, that Autumn was a bitch.

Fast forward to Faire. Lori completely ignored me and refused to talk to me. When Dawn asked her why, she said that she just "had Autumn's back." Excuse me? I wasn't the one with the issues with Autumn. Rhi was. I didn't get into a childish fight with her, Rhi did. I figured if she wasn't able to separate what our kids did or said to each other, then I was done with her & blocked her email & took her off my MSN. After that, she & her husband started competing with us. They got a new car, then they saw that we had an SUV (its an XTerra), so they went out & bought an SUV. They knew that Rhi had a cell phone, so they ran out & got them for their girls. They knew I owned a house (its my mom & dad's I inherit it, not in a hurry!), so they went & bought one of those Las Vegas luxury homes. Lori sent out a bragging email to everyone, going on & on about how nice it was & how high their mortgage payment was every month, you know they type I'm talking about.

I didn't care. I don't want a huge mortgage. That's why I'm a renter. That's why I'm willing to wait as long as it takes to get my house. I like having a little money to do fun things with. Her latest email about the house wasn't so boastful. It mentioned that they were moving, because the bank had foreclosed on the house because they couldn't pay the mortgage. It kind of feels just a little like karma, you know? Brag about it & lose it or something like that.