and no one denies this!

[if you're not a reader of the hilariously vulgar football blog kissing suzy kolber, well, you should be, because it's insanely funny and VERY inappropriate. that's a combo that i love. they have a character named tommy from quinzee, and the title of this post is his catch phrase. boston sports fans who read me? sorry. it's just too funny. don't feel bad; there are some mooky weirdo yankee fans in this world too.]

the prom went down. and now that the hangover has waned, all pieces of jewelry have been located and enough gatorade to float the freaking white house has been consumed, it's time for the postmortem. first, for those who asked for pictures, the sparkly dress...

nice, eh? it was dirt-cheap, too. the man and i both clean up pretty when we want to. and the party itself was...

ok, look. i'm just gonna come right out and say this. LSU parties are superior to my new school's party, and no one denies this. for starters, they had a gala event - $50 a ticket - for ADULTS, and there was NO LIQUOR. yeah, that's right, no liquor. beer and wine only. um, sorry. this isn't a wedding, where the guests show up and drink on your tab. i paid $100 for our admission to this party, and for that much money, i should be able to have a damn cocktail or six. that's what brought the hangover on, actually; i drank eight glasses of wine in a spiteful attempt to get my money's worth.

secondly, well, it was just so... tame. nothing scandalous happened. the kids showed up and dutifully danced to the party band (the man christened them "alternate universe gaslight anthem"), but nobody really cut loose. well, except for me on drink five or so. i took off the fancy earrings, slapped the hair back into a ponytail and did what you're supposed to do at a party: danced like a fiend, damn the consequences.

sadly, as i predicted, it was just a tight-assed little soiree, not the blowout bash it's supposed to be. that's just... in a way, it's what i expected all along, but it's still kinda heartbreaking to see people who are that out of touch with themselves. achievement doesn't have to turn you into a pod person. you're still allowed to breathe, smile, and - gasp! - get radically drunk while dancing provocatively with your boyfriend. the world will not end. you'll be happier for it.

and no one denies that.

prom night!

so i'll be 30 in two months, three weeks and and three days. i am a mature and reasonable adult who pays her bills and all that business. so that's precisely why the man and i are going to prom tonight.

no, we're not chaperoning a high-school dance. (yikes, torture. could you imagine?) part of the beauty of law school is the fact that there's a big shiny formal dance every year, even for us grown-up LL.M. people. the ones at LSU were fantastic. 'course, louisianians do nothing as well as they throw parties. we put on pretty dresses and nice suits, respectively, and went to hotel ballrooms to drink, dance and cut up. then we went to after-parties to continue drinking, dancing and cutting up. it was a beautiful thing, even when they didn't have malibu at the bar and i had to drink vodka and pineapple juice.

i love sparkly dresses. it's another one of the ways in which i am thoroughly, irretrievably, irrepressibly a CHICK. but i'll tell you, i'm a little nervous about this one tonight. i mean, there will be alcohol and snacks, and i will get to gallivant around on the arm of the man, who looks sexy as all hell in a suit. but let's face it; the kids at my marble-floored bastion of top-fourteen HIGHER LEGAL LEARNING aren't all that good at cutting loose and having fun. they are very serious people, and they think of very serious things all the serious time. it's a lot to take, even for someone who's as serious as i am.

so it'll be interesting to see how the high-rollin' popular kids throw down. i'm not entirely certain they'll know how to get it done. in order to have a successful party, you need to have the ability to stop fretting and let go for once in your life. that's one of the best skills i learned at LSU. we worked hard in my JD program, don't get it twisted. law school is never easy. but we also knew that all work and no play makes law students... something, something. (go crazy? don't mind if i do!) kids here don't seem to know that. they really do seem to think that if they let up for one second, someone's gonna overtake them! oh, my god! then they'll have to work at the #4 law firm in the country instead of the #3 one!

pardon the sarcasm, but come on. that's no way to live. so even though it's prom night, we'll see how much revelry there is to be had. i mean, by the others, that is. i plan to have one HELL of a time. there's gonna be free champagne. that's good enough for me!

mushball

in case it hasn't become thoroughly obvious, i am an unmitigated mushball deep in my core. oh, i'm plenty tough around the edges, but scratch me hard enough and you will find my soft candy center. it's made up of marshmallow fluff and that weird dyed-pink coconut that encases sno-balls. (you've never had a sno-ball? oh, you poor deprived soul, possessed of way more culinary responsibility than i'll ever have. your humble blog proprietor would spend many a friday afternoon after elementary school in the 1980s gnawing happily on one of these.) this is the curse i carry through this life. i am powerless over bulldogs, boston terriers, pudgy babies, and mites (little kids who play hockey - oh my god, y'all, you should've seen the little ones on ice last night at the caps game; you'd have DIED). i own it.

but what really dissolves me into a little pile of pink-coconut-flecked marshmallow goo is when someone is unexpectedly sweet to me. i'm a hardcore sucker for the tiny gesture, especially when given by someone who's not known for that sort of thing. i think you know where i'm going with this one. where do i always go? enter the man. my attempt to make him a hockey nut was... well, it was a dismal failure. he spent the entire third period watching a gamecast of the giants-padres game on his iphone, which didn't even have images, just a scrolling list of plays. he wouldn't even chant "let's go caps!" with me when the horn guy blew his horn. he. was. BORED.

needless to say, this made me feel bad. so i said, sorry to have dragged you to something at which you were clearly miserable. i wasn't miserable. you had fun. i'm glad you were so happy. so next time i should just bring my dad to the game? no. i like seeing you enjoy something like this. awwww. that made me smile. he's so freaking good at these little things. he's definitely mentioned in the past that he likes to make me happy. i just want you to be happy, in fact, is something he said to me a lot in the beginning. and not that other guys in my past haven't shared the same sentiment. it would be a stupid and/or evil man who didn't want the main woman in his life to be happy.

maybe it's because he knows me so incredibly well, better than anyone else on the planet, but he always knows precisely what it takes to melt me. this is, besides all the other reasons why i adore this relationship, my favorite thing about him. and i know i spend a lot of time gushing over him here. it's gotta get old at some point, i'm sure. but i want it made damn clear that i appreciate him, and his extreme skill at warming my heart. honestly, he's the central piece of the happiness in my life these days. the professional and academic achievements are awesome, and i am DAMN proud of them. but honestly, they wouldn't be anywhere near as fun if i couldn't turn to him and say, look what i just did, and hear back, i knew you would. i'm so proud of you.

mushy, yes. but it's so good.

72 degrees and sunny

i have been pent up inside for hours now, trying to be a good little scholar and finish that 10-page paper i alluded to last night. (some of you know what i've really been up to - damn you, facebook/twitter/etc.!) but it's all about to be okay. see, i am going to a hockey game tonight. god, i love hockey. and to get to my local hockey arena, i will head out of this library and take a nice, leisurely stroll in the sunshine.

yeah, sunshine. after the debacle that was yesterday's weather, and let's face it, the entirety of march in the nation's capital, it decided to be beautiful today. rock on. i've been staring enviously out the window all afternoon, watching tulip trees bloom and desperately wishing to be freaking done with school so i can go outside and loll about in the grass, reading trashy books and thinking about how i will never, ever have to go to school again.

the happiness has infected my soul today in a nearly-manic fashion. it's spring fever, i think. life is taking a turn for the smile-inducing on so many levels, and i'm actually able to get out of my own way and (gasp!) enjoy that. plus, i have the weirdest form of reverse seasonal affective disorder known to man, as i told y'all last year when this started happening. so in the face of the fresh hell that will be unleashed on the district (and the rest of the country, but acutely and especially the district) with the impending budget shutdown foolishness, i am happy. in the face of a lot of other not-so-nice things in the outside world, the inside world of your humble blog proprietor is 72 degrees and sunny.

productivity? nah, not so much. but happiness? all damn day. now it's time to wrap up the regular season for my boys in red and march strong to the playoffs. LET'S GO CAPS!

list of demands

as the song says, i've got a list of demands, written on the palm of my hands. well, written on the face of my blog. but still, it stands. here ya go:

1) i want someone else to write my seminar paper for this semester. oh, i'll give total credit; i don't steal other people's work. i'll cop 100% to the fact that someone else wrote it. but i do NOT want to write a 25-page paper this month. i also want someone else to write my other paper that's due in 13 days. this one is just toddler-level temper-fit petulance, because it's a 10-page maximum. i can do that in three hours, and will most likely knock that out tonight. it's a topic i know inside and out, and can probably conjure up an A-level work in no time. but i. don't. wanna.

2) speaking of tonight, when it gets to be mealtime, i want someone to bring me baked ziti, with extra mozzarella, a nice salad and some good, crusty bread. also, some tiramisu. hmm. not seeing this happening, though. it's looking like indian food from trader joe's for dinner.

3) i want the drive and determination to get into that freaking gym and bust tail. bathing suit season is coming down the pike, and i need some toning and shaping. (hmm. the song that inspires this list is kind of a run-through-a-brick-wall song. maybe that'll help.)

4) i want to meet butler blue II. i don't care if they got destroyed last night; this dog is the cutest freaking thing ever. the man has spent hours finding videos and pictures to show me, largely because he thinks it's the height of amusing to see, and i'm quoting, my bad-ass, tough girl reduced to a pile of mush, "oh, my god, how cuuuuute!" whatever. i own my mushiness. and if you don't think that picture is the cutest thing you've ever seen... well, i don't know what to tell you.

5) i want it to be tomorrow night. the man and i have hockey tickets. i love hockey; he thinks it's stupid. my daddy was once this way, too. then i took him to watch the caps beat the hell out of the st. louis blues one christmas, and it was all over. now daddy watches don cherry on the regular and can often be found yelling "hit somebody!" i foresee something similar happening with the man. well, maybe not. but it's still going to be fun. let's go caps!

6) i want to go on vacation with the man, somewhere warm and beachy. i want there to be a convertible involved, as well as a fun dive bar. i want to indulge in all my favorite vices - eating, drinking, swimming, sunning and, well, the man - for a few days, basically on demand. sound good? i think so. just help me remember my sunscreen.

so that's my list of demands on this freezing cold and rainy day. anyone else in the mood to be petulant and demanding? i hope it's not just me...

backstop

it's no secret that there have been some scary incidents in my life, points where the edge was suddenly under my toes and threatening to pass under me, dropping me fast and far to god only knows what. it's not a fun place to be. but i have been beyond fortunate in my life. i've been surrounded by people who love me, in both happy times and scary ones. i love them back, and i appreciate the support and the love they've shown me more than i could ever articulate. it's a rare privilege to have such a fantastic coterie of nearest and dearest.

but alongside the external support, i have always managed to have a backstop, somewhere deep down inside me, that's pulled me back from the brink. sometimes it manifests itself in times of fun, when i need to make that decision to either not take that last drink or risk the hangover from hell. (now, in that circumstance, i don't always listen to the backstop, but i am always granted, somehow, a five-minute or so window in every drunken bacchanalia that lets me say "when.") other times, though... well, this is the first time i've discussed any of this as publicly as this, but here we go.

there have been two times in my life when the darkness was most dangerous. once, i was very young, and facing failure on a grand scale for the very first time. it threatened to overwhelm me. i remember this night as being at equal turns hazy and very sharp. there were perilous circumstances all around me as i sat alone in my dorm room. rational thought? forget it. but suddenly, quite out of nowhere, i thought, i should call the boy. ("the boy" here is my ex.) so i dialed him up and said something to the effect of, you need to come over right now. he did. thankfully, i did not lock my door in that dorm if i wasn't leaving, so he came right in and stopped me from making a decision that, let's face it, wouldn't have ended well. that bolt out of the blue, that phone call, saved me from some really bad consequences. backstop.

the other time was very recently. i've sketched it out briefly here. that was a long, dark night alone in my bedroom, drinking wine and considering my options. but somehow, some way, i had the thought, i should text the man. i know i didn't make sense. he kept me on the line, so to speak. are you okay? what do you need? do you want me to come over? you're scaring me. i'm coming to get you. and he did. he drove over, in a blinding thunderstorm, took me home with him and held me through the night. he didn't stop all the damage, but he certainly capped what could've gone down. i don't have a lot of recall at all about that night. there's blurriness, haze, and disorientation everywhere. but i do remember, VERY clearly, one gap in the confusion. for some reason, this song was playing (some late-night talk show, i guess), and the thought to text him came then. backstop.

this all came to me because of some stresses in the lives of friends of mine. people have thrown up their hands and admitted to needing help, and in a couple of cases, the choice to get that help was not theirs alone. help is an amazing thing, especially when you're suffering. having it foisted on you is one thing. but being able to stop yourself before the edge upon which you're balanced slips past you? priceless. absolutely priceless. i don't know where i get this power, this ability, this backstop i have. but my god, there's nothing about myself that i love and value more. my impulse to self-preserve, somewhere under all of this, has been vital. here's hoping i never, ever lose it.

embolism

y'all remember a separate peace? i read it in tenth grade, and it was one of the few compulsory novels in high school that i truly loved. i assume that it's so ubiquitous at this point that i'm not even gonna say spoiler alert, but one of the main characters dies of an embolism during surgery to set a broken leg. a piece of marrow dislodges and stops his heart. that's a really apt analogy for the new grief process of the post-detente divorce. every time i turn around, a new piece of sadness breaks off and strikes me, rendering me completely defenseless. see also: this entire weekend.

see, last night, the man and i had an argument. nothing terrifically serious on its face - we were discussing the legitimacy of the NCAA. but this argument lasted the entire length of the uconn-kentucky game. no exaggeration; we didn't wrap it up and say sorry until the horn sounded and uconn advanced. it was a fun debate at first, but i found myself getting more and more worked up. there were a couple of things that struck me as hurtful. first, the man said at one point, tell me why i don't get it. tell me why i'm stupid. i lost my mind. hey, stop. i did NOT say you were stupid. i wouldn't ever say that. secondly, he said, that was a ridiculous, if not dumb, point. um, what?

so i called him on it. dumb? what the hell? he said, what? i say dumb things all the time. YOU'RE not dumb. you're brilliant. that's why it's so surprising that you'd say it that way. i guess that makes sense. not thrilled with the word choice, but okay. now let's move on to the whole tell me why i'm stupid thing. i did NOT call you stupid. of course you didn't. i know you don't think that. i was talking about myself. i felt stupid because i didn't understand. yeah, those are loaded words. i don't use them in situations like this. and as i said that to him, i felt my eyes welling up with tears. i stopped talking. you okay? no, not really. it hit me in that moment that, when these debates would happen in the old life, when the word dumb came out, he meant it. when the word bitch came out, same thing. the enormity of the brokenness of our interactions slapped me full across the face. to look the man in the eye, to see his concern, his sincerity, and to realize how scarred i was by the patterns of the past was a tough thing to face. he opened his arms to me, and as i laid my head against his chest and felt him kiss my forehead, i once again told myself that things were different, new, better.

then, a few minutes ago, actually, another sliver of grief came free. he went out tonight on a business dinner. cool; an evening in, painting my nails and watching baseball. all i need is some provision for my own dinner, and that's totally fine. (not like he keeps food in his home. not his style.) but a two-hour meeting that was well into hour four had my dander up, to say the least about it. my temper was getting piqued. hmph. bet he forgot. he'll be here eventually; it's his house. but looks like i got brushed off. 'course, that's exactly when he calls to ask what i want for dinner, and to tell me he'll be home soon. and it hit me like a ton of bricks. i am so used to the man in my life letting me down and disappointing me. it's almost what i've come to expect. y'all have read my hosannas to the heavens about the nice things he does for me. he's heard this too, and he always responds with the same thing: i do what i can. he almost seems surprised that i'm so grateful for him. well, i'm grateful because a) i don't expect reliability and b) i'm way more used to having to yell at someone than to thank someone.

this is a process, the man said as he wiped the tears away last night. but every day, it's going to get a little bit better. he's right. as i realize where i was hurt, what was broken, i can start to fix it. the pieces that break off won't kill me. they'll hurt as they come loose, but the more that come free, the closer i'll be to putting this whole, ugly mess 100% behind me. and believe me, that cannot happen fast enough.

home run

it's ostensibly spring, and with spring comes the beginning of baseball season. i LOVE baseball. i can't quite articulate how amazing i think baseball is. so when the man, his roommate and i lit out for our local major-league park, the air was filled with promise and hope. well, except for the fact that it was a) freezing cold, b) drizzling rain and c) the local major-league team, which is very, very bad at major-league baseball. oh, y'all, it's not even funny how bad the local team is. it's like charlie brown and his baseball team up in here. but hey, at least i got to lose feeling in my extremities while listening to drunken morons scream supposedly clever nicknames at the players.

and yet, somehow, even though the hometown boys got shut out in front of a half-full stadium on opening day, i left the ballpark with a strange sense of bounciness in my soul. interesting counterpart for the numbness in my toes. seriously, though. i was really happy. and for good reason. as the seasons change, for the first time in ages, i've got things set up pretty freaking well. i'm in basically good health, the dregs of flu-pocalypse 2011 notwithstanding. i have an amazing boyfriend, outstanding friends and an outrageously excellent family. school is ending (and there's a forthcoming post about how intensely ready i am to be shut of school). the job will start right on the heels of that. i get to go to south florida at the beginning of may and show off my professional acumen. and i have not one, but two occasions in the next two months to put on a sparkly dress and swan around town.

right now, it seems that all i do is win, no matter what. and i can actually recognize it, for once. i don't even need a reality check from the man like i have seemingly ten squillion times throughout the life of this blog (and honestly, throughout the life of our friendship/relationship). i am not meteorically happy; i am not down in the doldrums. things are humming along beautifully at a state of higher-than-average. it's a beautiful thing. and really, there's no reason to think that anything other than good will keep coming down the pike. sure, there'll be bumps in the road. i can think of two or three that just can't be avoided. six months ago - hell, six DAYS ago - that would've thrown me into a pout of biblical proportions. but now? without waves, it ain't the gulf of mexico (i know, that one is usually "without waves, it ain't the ocean," but i'm a gulf-coast kid, so i don't swim in oceans).

yeah, sounds like a home run, eh? and without getting too cocky, i think i've earned some smooth sailing these days. i've put in the work. and the start of baseball season is a great metaphor for the start of this new season of my life. it's been nothing but spring training for what seems like forever. i've been playing split-squad games, spending hours in that batting cage, swing after swing after swing. but now it's time for the regular season, and we're putting up runs, baby, all day long. i bring the pain, i hit clean-up in this life of mine. watch me swagger to that plate. tap those toes, level that killer look at the pitcher. bring it; i can take whatever you've got.

crack. boom. home run, son. and as i take my trot around those bases, i smile to myself. yeah, this will keep up all season long. all i do is win. and if i keep that in the front of my mind, this life will be cake.

epistle #1: narcissus

[i'm starting a series of letters to people with whom i have unfinished business. think of this one as the first letter of magnolia to the jerkfaces, if you're inclined to use biblical analogies. and why not lead the series off with a good old-fashioned dose of all-american vitriolic rage?]

dear narcissus:
well, well, well. i have been waiting for nearly half my life to unload on you. you've always thought you were just this great upstanding person, haven't you? i mean, you lord yourself around like you do. but no matter how many times life has come to you and said, hey, big boy, don't you realize you've fucked this up?, you just laugh it off and go right along the same path. whatever, right? someone will bail you out, just like last time, and the time before that, and the time before that.

in the words of ed helms from the hangover, you're... such a bad person! like, all the way through to your core! you are a selfish, cheap, nasty person who has no regard for anyone but himself. you were so incredibly hateful to me from the time i was seventeen until i woke up and realized that, hey, i don't ever have to talk to you again as long as i live. the last time i saw you, which my god, i tried SO hard to avoid, you were, even in the few minutes i was subjected to you, nothing but awful.

and the best part? you have no idea how horrible you are. you think that because you think something is funny, no matter at whose expense the laughs come, it is just objectively funny. no one's ever allowed to be hurt, offended or anything like that. hell, it was just a joke. the way you can blithely dispense scathing cruelties would be admirable if you weren't a real person. i kinda wish i'd invented your character in my writing. you'd be one hell of a super-villain. the smallest errors - turning away from the stove with the burner on, for example - would send you into fits of i can't BELIEVE you could EVER do something like that? what's WRONG with you? at the time, i thought you were just high-strung. looking back? you're an abuser. and the worst kind: an emotional abuser.

i still don't know how you've convinced another woman to take up with you. the only reason the last one stayed around so long is that the two of you had kids. i still remember what she said to me when she finally shook you off. i saw how you refused to put up with the way he treated you. that mortified me, especially with two of her children in the room to see how i was basically being credited with the death of their parents' marriage. but if that's what it took, then i'm glad. and i never even told the full truth to either one of you about how much i hate you.

yeah, that's right, hate. you are a venal, shallow, small-hearted skinflint of a man, one who seems to take unnatural pleasure in hurting others. if someone told me you died tomorrow, i would be relieved for the few members of your family for whom i still care, because they would be shut of you and your terrible, reprehensible behavior. you are painfully immature and totally unconcerned about your lack of adult skills. you're the living embodiment of the grasshopper from that old fable, thinking that you can live off your parents' largesse forever. 'course, you've come damn close; you outlived your father, and your mother's not longed for this world. you've managed to bleed them dry for sixty-plus years now. why not keep going?

you, sir, are a bastard. plain and simple. and with that, i officially remove you from my life.

[ooh, DAMN, did that feel good! this will have to happen again.]

pizza rolls

the weekend of a thousand used kleenexes has come to an end. i am up and moving, though still somewhat fuzzy of head and runny of nose. and the best (?) part of all of the illness was that it hit me while i was at the man's house, so i proceeded to ensconce myself there to wait it out. the man, in his own inimitable way, is the sweetest guy on the planet. he really let that show this weekend, as i sniffled, coughed and dozed. he made me dinner two nights running. (that's right, people who know him in real life - he COOKED.) and through his tender ministrations to my health and well-being, which included macaroni and cheese and pizza rolls, he showed me a lot about my attitude and how things have really changed for me over the last year or so.

yesterday was a big day on two fronts. first, i recovered a fair amount, largely through spending 72 hours in bed. second, as some of y'all already know, i finally, finally landed a grown-up job for after school ends in two months. and really, it's kinda my dream gig, back with my old pre-law school firm. i am thrilled. THRILLED. and it's funny: i was unwilling to even consider the fact that i would get what i wanted in this situation. i was so afraid of jinxing myself that i didn't even tell very many people about the specifics of the interview. (i didn't even tell my parents until i got the offer.)

but the one person who was 100% convinced that i had it nailed was the man. you know you've got this. it's a given. i refused to believe him. so of course, when the call came and i had the offer in hand, he was right there to say, see? i told you that you had this. and it hit me then, when the weight came off my chest, exactly what was wrong with me all these months. it's obvious that i've changed a lot over that time, but what i didn't see is how much i had allowed the negativity that came along with the old situation to seep into every inch of me. i'd grown harder, colder, and far less hopeful. dealing with the reality of the heavy tragedy that was the end of my marriage sucked all the optimism out of me and made me a hyper-rationalist.

but enter the man. people who knew us when will be stunned over this one, but he's been the optimist, the cheerleader, through it all. his faith in good things for me has really kept me going through it all. and his faith in me was rewarded, big-time, with this news about the job. and he was right all along. trusting myself would've saved me so much angst. trusting that good things would happen would've saved me so much pain. so he gets a lot of credit from me. he's really teaching me a lot about the rebuilding process, moving forward from the old life and fully embracing the new one. i feel so much better about where i'm going. i have a plan again, something to look forward to, and it feels amazing. my work life is lined up, my school life is winding down, and my personal life?

well. a man who brings me pizza rolls and cold drugs, trusts endlessly in my capabilities, and kisses my forehead while i sleep? hmm. seems like i win. and even as sick as i've been, it's the best feeling in the world. thank you, love.

throwback: one shining moment

[the amazing jobo is running an occasional series over at her place where she revisits old posts to see how far things have come in her life since the original words were written. with her blessing, i am totally stealing her idea. so, for your amusement, one year ago this weekend. first, the post; then, below, the commentary...]

march 22, 2010: one shining moment
on my way to the airport yesterday, i heard the local traffic reporter recounting the end of the michigan state-maryland game. lucious drains the 3, and just like that, a maryland victory turns into a crushing defeat. that's the nature of sports like basketball; one quick shot and the whole thing can change.

every so often, that sort of thing happens in other arenas too. you go through a situation thinking things are a certain way, and then POW - the entire game is changed. sometimes this is bad, and it leads to disaster, like if you're greivis vasquez and the rest of the maryland terrapins. but other times, you're tom izzo and the spartans, and the sudden change is the best thing you've ever felt in your life. that's where i sit today. never saw it coming, either...

here's a lesson for you: if you're confused about something that involves another person, it's really best to just talk it out. i took the initiative to pour my heart and soul out this weekend, and the clouds were lifted. things i thought were complex and potentially painful turned out to be crystal clear and completely perfect. perhaps you're seeking details of this. eh, not this time. some things a girl keeps to herself.

but as for results? well, that's easy. the playing field has cleared considerably. "contestant #3," while still incredibly beautiful, is off the board. the ball and chain? that's resolved as of the end of this year. and the other boy? well, all i'll say about that is that i have some incredible people in my life. one shining moment? yeah, you could say that.

[the game-changer in my relationship with the man, formerly the other boy, encapsulated in an overwrought and ridiculous march madness metaphor. when i laid it on the line for him - again - and we became a couple, he referenced this weekend, this one shining moment, as the point in time when his heart started to turn. the events i reference here made him realize that, in his words, i think we have a future.

this journey was alternately exhilarating and terrifying. to get from our origin myth, to our one shining moment, to those first small steps, and finally to the truth straight from his heart... hell. it's rare to get something you want so much in such a clear and obvious way. this is the stuff of fairy tales. but it's not, really; it's the story of my life. of our life.

what a difference a year makes.]

temper fits

oh, man, what a week. crises, emotional freakouts, the whole nine yards. i have an exam in two hours. i should be studying, but i have approximately no attention span, because i am also ragingly ill with the worst cold i've had in years. when it rains, it freaking pours. i've been just a joy to be around, too. i've gotten into a series of really stupid arguments with the man, over tiny little things like he interrupted me! he must not respect the things i say! and hey, in this debate we're having over social issues, he keeps countering my arguments with blue-collar vs. white-collar examples. he thinks i have privilege bias! (the life of the mind, eh?)

boy, when i want to be, i really can be a petulant child. it's the curse of the self-aware, too, that even as i'm throwing fits, i recognize how stupid i'm being, and yet seem powerless to stop it. the other night, when i was decompressing over the missing neighbor problem, i started into another one of my world-famous worry cycles. as i unloaded, the man responded to my concerns with solutions. god, it turned into one of those stereotypical man/woman conversations: he wants to fix it! i want to vent! when i said as much, he threw his hands in the air and said, fine. talk.

when i did, he listened. he's good like that. but then he said, as he's taken to doing lately, is being upset or angry about this doing any good? what are you talking about? i'm getting it out of my system! no, you're not. you take all of this stress onto yourself, stress that really has nothing whatsoever to do with you, and let it eat you alive. then you come to me and collapse into a puddle, telling me that you're overwrought and you want it all to go away. here's the hint, darlin': YOU have to make it go away. just look these problems in the face and tell them that you can't do it right now.

good lord, he's smart. see, i've always fancied myself as managing my emotions when i go on these rants. i told him, have you ever known me in all these years to be any different? this is just what i do. i take on the problems of those i love as my own. yeah, you do. and i think it's killing you. but how do you stop? you just do. you have to, for your own self-preservation, limit your emotional exposure to other people's problems. you can't save us all, babe.

that's the big secret, i guess. i get so tied up with doing what i can to help people i love. it's like the old george steinbrenner quote: if i can help, i wanna help. my issue comes with determining where i can actually help and where my exposure is just hurting me and doing no one else any good, either. so that's the work i have to put forth in the short term: building up my little garden walls. i'll never have a fortress around my heart; it's not in my nature not to be empathetic almost to a fault. but i do need a little barrier, a little form of insulation, to keep myself - and those around me - from going insane. and hopefully, this'll keep the tantrums in check, too.

now if you'll excuse me, i need to go read about tax allocation language in operating agreements, while trying to limit the number of times i sneeze between now and the end of the test. happy saturday, eh?

it works. it really, really works.

just a quick update: she's been found. about an hour after i posted last night, emily was found, and unharmed at that. talk about a huge relief.

thank you, thank you, thank you to my DC-area blog-friends in particular. y'all came through for her so, so much, and it's a beautiful and inspiring thing. i can't say enough about it.

twitter revolution

i got so rankled during all the uprisings in the middle east over the last few months when people said, oh, all this happened because of social media! see! it IS important! i found it to be, really, the height of first-world arrogance, pretending that the things we as privileged and connected westerners were doing on the internet had anything at all to do with the complex, generations-old rebellions in these countries. there is just no way that freaking twitter had anything significant to do with it. it's not that important. hell, half the things i read on twitter in a day have to do with either charlie sheen, chad ochocinco or cats in unusual situations.

but then today happened. today, i found out that my parents' next-door neighbor emily, one of the sweetest people in the world, has disappeared. horrifying news: she's a young mother, with an 18-month-old baby, and (worse yet) a history of psychological issues. she left for work monday morning and hasn't been seen or heard from since. scary enough. so my stepmom and a few other people started a facebook group. as people started to talk to each other there, we all started spreading the word to people we knew.

enter the DC social media world. DC is a very internet-friendly town, and our social media community is peerless. i've been to a couple of twitter-centric events, especially right after i moved back here and needed some new friends. one of the people i met during all of this is the incomparable proprietress of the southified masshole, who i think might know every single person in the metro area. i reached out to her and the rest of the people i work with over at dcblogs for a little publicity help. and with that, we were off to the races. within three hours, several major DC news sources were on the story. for every question someone had, someone else had an answer. in a situation when getting emily's face all over the universe as quickly as possible was the A-1 most important thing, everyone came through in the best way possible.

now this is what twitter, and all that other social media, can really do for us. it's so incredible how well that worked out. thank you all so very, very much for getting the word out the best way you knew how. it's amazing to see that in action. as civilians, we can't really do all that much besides publicize. the DC social media world, rock stars that they all are, did an incredibly inspiring, fantastic job. it's an honor to be a part of such a great fabric of people.

and if you're local, and you've seen emily, please call 202-680-4181. thank you.

high school sweethearts

my parents met in tenth grade, in 1968. my mother was a do-gooder smart kid with a rebel streak; my daddy was an underachieving smart-aleck more interested in his music than being part of the mainstream. (he only participated in his high-school graduation because his grandfather asked him to.) though they had ups and downs, breakups and reunions, throughout their relationship, they were loyal to each other until her mental illnesses got to be too much for both of them.

i used to think that there was no way that you should ever settle down with someone you dated in high school. 'course, i settled down with the boy i met the first day of college, and well, you know how well that worked out. i basically made myself a hypocrite of the first order there, but i also kinda proved my rule. you don't know anywhere near enough about yourself when you're seventeen years old to have any idea what you're going to need when you're twenty-seven. god knows, i thought, i'm living proof of that.

but then something hit me today as i was playing around on facebook. i've had quite a few friends who've married and divorced since high school, just like me. some of them are on to second relationships, and a couple are on to second marriages. and a very significant number of these people have gone on to date and marry people they knew and cared about in high school. i'm one of them. i met the man in tenth grade, in 1996. i was a do-gooder smart girl; he was a slightly underachieving smart-aleck more interested in his computers and his politics than being part of the mainstream. hmm.

maybe there's a little something more to this whole initial instinct thing than i once thought. i mean, lord knows it's not a hard and fast rule. i'm learning quickly that there is absolutely no such thing as a hard and fast dating rule. anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something, and something that will do nothing good for you. but there's an immeasurable comfort in having someone near you who knows you so thoroughly, so completely, that there aren't any surprises. you don't have to work as hard, be something or someone you're not. all i have to do is love him.

so the whole high-school sweetheart thing, maybe all it needs is a little revision. go out, see the world, learn yourself... and then, at the end of the day, you just might find what you needed in the first place you thought to look. i know i did.

landslide

i've been afraid of changing
'cause i built my life around you
but time makes you bolder
children get older
i'm getting older, too.
 - "landslide," fleetwood mac (or about six million other people)

i always thought i owed it to the past, to what's happened in my life, to try to maintain a positive relationship with my ex-husband. we grew up together. kind of, anyway. at any rate, we lived together, shared so much for so long. i felt it proper and right to make the effort to normalize relations. and honestly, the marriage didn't end because he sucked as a companion; he sucked as a partner, which is completely different. but i realized something yesterday: what i thought was good-faith progress towards detente, and possibly even enjoying one another's company again, was a lie, an elaborate ruse designed to manipulate me. i'm fond of using the line someday, you will ache like i ache when i'm angry, stung. he has apparently decided to use it to bring me to his level. he hurts. he's mad. i broke his dream. so because i did these things, i should suffer the way he did. it's only fair.

yeah, funny thing. i'm sorry for his pain, legitimately. i did not set out to injure him in saving myself from mediocrity and discomfort. but that's how this works.  you're happy, aren't you? his words stung. he informed me, in no uncertain terms, that if i won't take him back, he doesn't want to be friends. oh, and then he hands me three envelopes with goodbye notes. one for my dad. one for my stepmom.

one for the man.

yeah, that happened. so i brought the envelope to him, and he read the contents. as i poured out the hurt and the heartache, then demanded to read the parting shot my ex-husband threw at his (unbeknownst to him) replacement, the tears flowed. again. one. more. time. the man dealt with it. again. one. more. time. we talked, and as we did, it finally hit me, the knives that have been twisted into my side, the pain that's been wielded like so many bludgeons. i parroted his words to me in my talk with the man: you're happy, aren't you? the man responded, so what if you are?

it was the quintessential saul-on-the-road-to-damascus moment. just like that, the scales fell from my eyes, and i saw exactly what he'd done to me. i owe him NOTHING, not after he treated me like this. i did everything right, and my reward was twisted manipulation. so guess what? you get what you wished for. if we can't be lovers, and we MOST ASSUREDLY cannot, we can't be friends.

i was afraid of changing, of thoroughly abandoning that relationship, because my adulthood had been completely confected around that relationship. he was all i knew of grown-up life. but time has passed, and lo and behold, i got the nerve to let it go. i'm better than a cheap manipulation thrust into my most tender places. i've gotten older, aged a lifetime in the space of a night, and i've gotten bolder. so i'll take the machete to my past, because i owe it to my present. more vitally, i owe it to my future. i owe it to that gloriously loyal, reasonable man who's been left far too many times to rebuild what my wounded, rage-crazed ex husband has sought to destroy.

for you, my love, i let it all go. wash it all away. never, ever again. i promise.

just a brief list.

i need this off my chest:

1) i want my life to settle the hell down. this up and down is going to kill me.

2) i humbly ask the universe to continue this unexpected rain of job-related kindness and intrigue. it is much, much appreciated.

3) i really, really, REALLY miss having my own car. rolling metal = freedom.

4) i love my profession. i really do.

5) if that's the way you want it, he who will not be named, that's the way you're going to get it. but you know full good and well that you're being unkind, petty and ridiculous. and i might be using a platform that you don't have to call you out, but frankly, i don't care. it didn't have to be this way. it's how you made it.

6) march madness is an amazing, beautiful thing. one shining moment after another.

i'm scattered tonight. thanks for dealing. more coherence later.

straight from the heart

i love this cheesy, god-awful pop song. i just love it (though i'd love the studio version on youtube a lot more than this one, bryan. jeez). it's a fabulous shower-singing song, when you're sure you're 100% alone and no one can hear you belting out lyrics like you're on stage at carnegie hall. it's been on my mind pretty much nonstop today, too, which would seem kinda random... except that last night, the man and i had THE TALK HEARD 'ROUND THE WORLD. ok, i'm being a trifle overdramatic. but y'all made me think, you fabulous readers you. why should i just stew in my own juices (or vent to y'all)? he's a grown-up. moreover, he loves me. he wants me happy and satisfied. he also doesn't want me to worry. so let's talk about some stuff.

so after dinner last night, we went back to my house and sat down. i started with the uncertain and wide-casting job search in which i find myself in the middle. from there... well, the road was long, and the topics were many. we actually (gasp!) got serious for once. and of course, my honesty and openness was well rewarded. why wouldn't it? i got a lot of concerns answered, a lot of questions settled, and many reassurances, given to me in his own inimitable way.

one of the things that's been weighing on my soul is the distinct possibility that the job i take will make me have to move. i've been trying for weeks now to figure out his position on this subject. it's an opinion that, while not make-or-break, is pretty freaking important. i've done a long-distance relationship before. i do not enjoy them. i think they're stressful. so what would we do then? ('course, because this is me, i ended up traipsing headlong into related subjects that won't be discussed in public, which further complicated the matter.) this has always been a huge concern for me.

when the time comes, he said, we'll make the decision as to what we're going to do. but until then, apply where you want, do what you want. i'm not going to tell you that you can't do something. wow, love, i thought. was that so hard? so i said to him, what if the only thing i get is far away? what then? he kissed me and said, do you really think i'd let you take off somewhere and leave me here?

answers. straight from the heart. your humble blog proprietor is one happy woman today. and all i had to do was ask. y'all are smart. thanks. :)

sleeps with butterflies

you say the word, you know i will find you
or if you need some time, i don't mind
i won't hold on to the tail of your kite
i'm not like the girls that you've known
but i believe i'm worth coming home to...
so go on and fly, boy
 - sleeps with butterflies, tori amos

one of the central themes of my life, and if you'd known me at age fourteen you'd never have seen this coming, is non-stop male companionship. i have not been single since june 7, 1998. one boy bled into another boy, who bled into the man, and that was it. now, obviously, that span is DOMINATED by my relationship with my ex-husband, which ran from september of 1998 until very, very recently. but the fact of the matter is, i've been half of a whole for thirteen years.

needless to say, this probably explains why i am not particularly fond of sleeping alone. i just haven't done it very much, and i got damn used to having the sound of breathing/snoring/dreaming next to me as i drift off. when the man took off to africa last month, one of the main things i hated about it (besides the whole exposure to malaria, being way too close to sectarian violence for comfort thing) was that i'd be on my own for all that time. but that distaste for alone-ness brought a cold, stark and really unattractive truth home.

i am clingy.

yeah, that's just not something you want to face as a grown woman. so i am faced with a serious dilemma: own the clinginess and risk pushing him away from me through the sheer burden of being more intense about us than he is, or enforce a romantic austerity program that will cause me sheer and unadulterated pain, all in the name of changing things. talk about a hobson's choice, eh? 'course, i suppose i could just bring all of this up to him, but honestly, he's not going to have a clue in hell how to deal with this. in fact, i'm sure he has no opinion on the matter whatsoever. he's very much a cloud, so to speak: he prefers to float along, doing whatever, in this regard. if he can avoid being wedded to a plan, so much the better.

did i mention i also overthink the hell out of everything?

yeah, so i think i'm just going to work on not worrying so much. on that score, the man has a very definite opinion: don't worry about it. don't worry so much. i'd ask you not to worry, but i know better. i just need to toughen up a bit, get a thicker skin, and oh yeah, learn to enjoy my alone time. just because there's not a man next to me as i lay me down to sleep doesn't mean something's wrong. (and it also doesn't mean the man doesn't miss me, either. food for my own personal thought.) i am worth coming home to, and both of us know it. so i don't have to cling so hard to the tail of his kite; he's not going anywhere. breathe in, breathe out, and relax.

besides, it's easier to sleep without the snoring. i think we can all agree on that.

a woman of letters

i am an excessively educated woman. i started school at age three, in pre-kindergarten, in the fall of 1984. i was in school without interruption until the spring of 2002 (for those keeping score at home, that's eighteen years). i took five years off to find myself, then went back in the fall of 2007. i am still here. four more years of education gives me a grand total of twenty-two years in school of a total of thirty years of life. i will have the following credentials when i am done:

1) a high school diploma, advanced with honors
2) international baccalaureate diploma, which means i took six tests at the end of twelfth grade, wrote a couple of papers and did some community service to earn an extra piece of paper that proves that i really, really learned a lot in high school
3) bachelor of arts degree, american history
4) juris doctor degree (my law degree)
5) graduate diploma in civil law (my special louisiana law diploma)
6) master of laws in taxation (my second law degree)

that'll make me magnolia, B.A., JD/DCL, LL.M., esq. that's an alphabet soup of credentials. i say all this not to brag on myself, but to pose a question. i've spent a lot of money and a TRUCKLOAD of time over my life attaining knowledge. book learnin', if you will. but why is it that this automatically makes me "smarter" than other people? i've had a couple of conversations over time with brilliant people who don't have these credentials. the basic idea that's been posed to me is, you have brains; i have wit. um, no; we both know that's not true, you have just as much "brains" as i do. but you've got the education, and that makes you smart.

does it? i mean, i'm not going to sit here and tell you all that i am not an intelligent person. i've learned a lot in my life, and i'm hungry to learn more, more, more. but what makes me smart isn't the fact that people in robes have handed me pieces of paper with categories on them. it's the fact that i think, i read, and i consider. you don't need special training to be smart. why don't we value intelligence gained in other ways? there are so many circumstances to consider as to why people don't tack the letters onto the back of their names. why is it that we've just decided that the one way to be "smart" is to do it? that's unfair, and it costs us a lot in terms of societal ignorance of people without these benchmarks.

i love my education. but there's more than one way to smart. we'd all be better off if we remembered that.