That's not what I meant to say;-)

I am writing tonight since I won’t be around tomorrow, and I know you all need your daily dose of me;-) Judging by the series of tongue lashings that I took via comments, IM and email today, I feel like people didn’t like my ideas.

However, I don’t think I described what I was thinking very well...because despite not liking what I wrote, everyone agreed with me! I got a whole lot of “You are so cold and bitchy and non-romantic about this,” but virtually every message ended with “I would never buy a house with someone I wasn’t married to,” which was exactly my point.

So, a couple of clarifications, and then you can all have at me again afterwards.

1) I just assumed that any discussion about marriage, children and home ownership would be prefaced with you being in love with someone. I didn’t mean to leave out the romantic parts, I just figured that by the time you consider marrying someone, you ought to be pretty well committed to them.
2) I should have clarified that I didn’t simply mean “Joint ownership of real estate” I meant “Home ownership” as in “We are buying a house for the purpose of establishing a home together.” People co-own real estate all the time, I simply meant owning it as a place to live and as part of a broader relationship.
3) I think marriage is meaningful and important institution. It symbolizes (and legalizes) a commitment between people to devote their lives to each other. I very much look forward to being married, and I don’t take that commitment lightly. There are two parts of it…the legal and the symbolic…and for the reasons cited in Item #1, I left out the symbolic.

So, I don’t think I did a good job of writing that post because the comments all focused on something I didn’t intend (my goal was not to belittle or demean marriage) and much of the ranting ended with statements that agreed directly with my whole basic point.

Ok, now that I have that out of the way…everyone has all day tomorrow to write all of the nasty things they want about what a horrid and un-romantic person I am:-) The bad news is that your comments won’t be approved until tomorrow night, at the earliest.

The good news is that, unless I feel the need to write more on this subject, Friday’s post will be about Munchkin’s Potential First Boyfriend…yes, that makes me smile;-)

Relationship Stages

The audience was surprisingly unanimous in its belief that buying real estate together is something that should wait until a very late stage in a relationship. I figured that there would be some more diversity in the opinions, but maybe there is no great argument to do it otherwise.

I withheld my opinion yesterday, but this actually fits in pretty well with my new theory of relationship stages. The theory is that there are different steps in a relationship, and the steps should be chronologically ordered based on how big a commitment they are, and how hard they are to un-do.

Start with living together, for example. It is surely a big step and a significant commitment, and represents a major stage in any relationship. But, there is no legal relationship (except for maybe a lease, and at least not right away) and if things don’t work out, it is pretty easy to undo. This is followed shortly afterwards by the “combining of stuff”. Joint bank accounts, etc. Some of this sort of comes about with living together, I guess, but it is a further step.

The next two stages are marriage and home ownership. Honestly, I think marriage is the less significant commitment, although I won’t argue with people who feel otherwise. It certainly has a much larger emotional symbolism, but in terms of its “un-doableness” it should come before home ownership.

I suppose this might sound a little antiseptic and cold, but I think that the comments from yesterday sort of hit on this. For one thing, buying a house together likely means a joint mortgage, which exposes one person to the risk of the other one becoming a credit risk. And many more questions…What if you break up but can’t sell the house? What if you can’t agree on what to do with the house? What if one of you wants to keep it and you can’t agree on how to buy out the other? What if BOTH of you want to keep it? Buying a house together is, in my opinion, a larger commitment because it is so much harder to get out of it if things go wrong.

My summation of this would be: whether you are married or not, owning a house together means that you have to get “divorced”. Hence, I feel like getting married is the step that should come first, and the ownership of the house should be a part of the already existing marriage institution. (Just to confuse things more…I think that the commitment to marry, in this context, is as important as the actual marriage, so I sort of agree with Ella that the engagement is really the important step in this…)

Finally, of course, comes having children. That is clearly the biggest commitment and one which ensures that your relationship can never really be completely dissolved. You can’t sell your kids and settle the relationship (well, I guess you can, but that is a whole other series of issues.) I guess you can argue that having kids doesn’t have to come after buying a house, since they are very different kinds of commitments, but I put it last because it is clearly a larger commitment.

Now that I have thoroughly confused you, I have to add the “Dependent Addendum” which says that the pre-existence of children changes all of this. If you are bringing a child into the relationship, then moving in together becomes a MUCH bigger deal. It is one thing for me to move in with my boyfriend, it is completely another for my little sister to move in with my boyfriend.

I am going to get a little judgmental here, and I apologize for that, but I feel like people are too quick to intimately involve boyfriends and girlfriends in their childrens’ lives. Especially little children (if your kids are like 17, it’s a totally different story). Even when I was like 10, I always got weirded out by kids who talked about “Mom’s boyfriend moving in.”

I am certainly not one to preach morals, so I don’t want this to come off as snooty of me. But I know that I always hated the idea of my mother bringing boyfriends around and of random guys staying over. I felt like it made her trashy and cheap…I always liked when she had people that made her happy, but that doesn’t mean I wanna see them walking out of her bedroom at 7:00 am.

Anyway, I am not sure that last couple of paragraphs came out the way I wanted it too (I hate people telling me what is “good” parenting and “bad” parenting.) But it is what it is.

As this applies to me, I have been very sensitive about having The Boy spend nights when Munchkin is around, and about spending nights at his place as well. Her presence also dramatically alters the aforementioned relationship timeline. If it were just me, I would probably be ready to move in with The Boy now, but it ain’t just me. I would like to wait until we are married before he moves in with us, and I won’t even entertain the idea before we are engaged.

So, I guess that is kind of a lot, fell free to tell me I am an idiot…

Co-Ownership

Sorry to be late in the day with this, but I had some real work to do. The nerve of them, making me push back my blogging time!!!

Anyway, I promised a discussion topic, which is kind of going to stretch over two days. Today I will outline some of it, and then I will collect everyone’s opinions, write my own tomorrow and then get responses to that. Kabish?

The subject involves a back story (shocker, huh?). We graduated from college in May of 2005. Smoking Hot Roommate bought a run-down condo in February and had it rehabbed, and we moved in right after school (well, I ended up staying in Chicago for a month or so to deal with dying Mom and stuff related).

The condo is really great…it is three bedrooms, two bathrooms, about 1,600 square feet in one of the best locations you can imagine. It is within about 100 yards of Boston Common (the State House end, for the locals) and is about a quarter of a mile from Munchkin’s school and my work. It is also within a very short walk of both Papa Bear and Big Sis’ places.

In October of this year, we moved…right around the corner. The place we live now is much bigger (3,000 sq. ft., 5 or 6 bedrooms, depending on what you count as a bedroom). This is most definitely the kind of “home” that Smoking Hot Roommate could conceivably live in for a very long time. Meanwhile, she kept the old place and her fiancée, The Rocket Scientist, currently lives there with a friend of his. The plan is that eventually Munchkin and I will move back there and he will move in here. The timetable on that is up to Smoking Hot Roommate.

Well, after I got a big bonus earlier this month, I set myself a long-term goal: I wanna buy our old apartment from Smoking Hot Roommate. I know she would let me live there forever and pay her not nearly the rent that the place is worth, but that is not the point. I would love to be independent enough to be able to buy my very own super-fabulous pad, and to be able to assure Munchkin that she will be in one place for the foreseeable future. Since that apartment is in the absolute ideal spot (and holds some sentimental value), I would love to figure out a way to buy it.

Now, the caveat…if I really want to buy it for what it is worth, I am gonna need a LOT more money than I currently have;-) Not only would I need to save a lot more, but I would need to make a lot more.

But…the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it wouldn’t just be me. This is likely a 2-3 year idea (at best) at which point I could very well not be making this kind of a purchase on my own. And, I mentioned this to The Boy in passing last week, and he was pretty much in agreement on the long term plan (like where, and in what kind of place he would want to live…no white picket fences and back yards for either of us.)

So, the question is…at what point is it ok for people to buy a house as part of a relationship? Clearly, it brings with it significant legal issues, in addition to financial and interpersonal issues. How do you reconcile differences in assets and income and all that stuff? Should you wait until you are ready to combine ALL of your finances before you should think about combining this largest part of them? How much of the decision is financial and how much is personal? Is there room for both?

And no, we are not thinking about actually doing this anytime soon, but I am just thinking about when might be the right time. (Ignore Munchkin for the time being…I am interested in people’s opinions in the absence of children…we will deal with kids tomorrow.) I think there are times when people move in together for reasons like “Our leases were both up, so we figured ‘What the Heck’?” I have sort of an open-ended arrangement, and The Boy owns his place already, so we will fortunately be on our own timetable.

Anyway, that is my subject for the day…fire away.

Teaser alert...

Monday, Monday, Monday…phooey. I like weekends better. It is not shaping up to be too terribly busy this week, although I do have to go to New York on Thursday, but just for the day.

I’m also going to Chicago the weekend after next. Munchkin’s brother was gonna come out to visit, but I would like to see Tinkerbelle, and it is always good to see friends and (some) family. So, I told him to just sit tight and we would come and see them. The big news this time is that The Boy is coming…he has never been back home with me, so he is in for a couple of days of immersion. We will see how he does;-)

Then I am going skiing the weekend after that. OK, there is no way that I will do any actual skiing (although I have always wanted to be a super-cool snowboard chick, I feel like that would be a good time.) Munchkin’s friend’s parents are bringing five girls up to their ski house for the long weekend, so I volunteered to go with them and help out. I have no idea what I was thinking…lol. Actually, it will probably give me a lot of time to read, do some work and relax…I imagine that everyone will be out of the house all day and I will have some quiet.

I was going to present a discussion topic today, but I’m gonna hold that off until tomorrow. I have already heard from some of you via IM with your thoughts, but I wanna open it up wider. So, you have that to look forward to;-)

Oh, so "that's" what you mean by dinner...

I thought that I was going out with The Boy and his parents for dinner last night, which was only partially true...we were actually going out with his parents, sisters, brother, sisters-in-law, brother-in-law, two aunts, three uncles and three cousins. This was actually somewhat of a family gathering...

Which is all good...I have met them before and like them all. Truth be told, I know that he and his twin sister don't see their older brother and sister nearly as often as each would like [OK, that seemed confusing. He has a brother (35) and a sister (34) that are both married with little kids and live in New York...he also has a twin sister that would qualify as his closest friend and lives near us. Got it?]

I have a super weird follow-up to my running commentary on the weird psychic connection that the boy and his twin sister have, but I can't say what it is yet. I have to wait a while to write it here (but if you ping me off-line, I can tell you...yes, that is an invitation).

Anyway, Munchkin came with because she got home from the birthday party she was at in time. That was good, too...Smoking Hot Roommate was on babysitting duty otherwise, and this gave her plenty of alone time with the Rocket Scientist. She was maybe a little flushed when we got home...hee hee.

So dinner was good, and we went for a drink afterwards, and had the Munchkin home and in bed by 10:30. The Boy hung around for a bit (ba chica wow wow...) and then he got home pretty early, too.

It's finally not as grossly cold anymore, and I think is supposed to be ok all week. I have sort of come to terms with winter, but these last couple of days were just asinine...

Smoking Hot Roommate is in Mexico for a couple of days...F her...lol

More slumber parties

We ended up having another impromptu slumber party last night. I decided that it was way to cold to go out anywhere, so a bunch of people came over for pizza:-) Munchkin, Smoking Hot Roommate, The Rocket Scientist, The Boy and I were supposed to meet The Boy's sister and her wife and then some other friends for drinks and whatnot, so we just had all of them come over to our place.

This is one advantage of having the little one around...she makes a great excuse sometimes:-) If I just say "It's too cold!" I sound like a whiny bitch. But, if I say "I don't wanna have to get Munchkin all bundled up and have her outside in this weather, and I don't have a sitter," well, presto...everyone says OK.

It was really fun, too. I know it always sounds better to go out somewhere, be seen and do some people watching, but sometimes it is just more fun to watch TV, eat pizza and be silly. We stayed up kinda late just being goofy, so The Boy, his sister and her wife all stayed over. I know...this violates my "no Boys allowed" rule, but it was a special circumstance...and that rule probably needs some revisiting anyway.

Yes, the fact that there was no other way that I was getting any completely contributed to that decision. Hee hee. That also meant morning sex, which is just like the best thing ever...and something that I don't get nearly enough of. But today, I did...so there:-P

Anyway, that leads to a much larger subject and a much longer post, but I don't feel like getting into it now. And maybe not soon, either...it's not really a pressing issue.

The rest of the weekend is just kind of random stuff. Munchkin has a birthday party to go to, I am gonna do some shopping, and we are having dinner with The Boy's parents tonight (which I always really enjoy...especially when he remembers to show up;-)) And I have some work to do, and Smoking Hot Roommate is traveling next week, so I wanna hang with her a bit, too.

So...um...that's kind of about it...

Sushi and Sleepovers

Munchkin didn’t have a great day yesterday…she was kinda bummed all day over the events of Wednesday. When I picked her up at school, one of her teachers told me that she was kinda quiet all day. Munchkin is NOT someone who is usually referred to as “quiet” or “shy” or “reserved”.

So, I asked her if she wanted to go for dinner to try and cheer her up. And her response was “Can we go out for sushi?” I’m not real sure where that came from… But, the princess gets what the princess wants, so we grabbed Smoking Hot Roommate and headed to Coolidge Corner for sushi at Fugakyu. (Yes, I am pandering to locals…) That seemed to cheer her up a bit. She was back to her super chatty self. [Note: she won’t eat raw fish. This raises the obvious question of “Why did she want sushi?” for which I have no answer…]

Then our hot water heater broke. It stopped working and started leaking, which is really not a good combination for a hot water heater. Since no one could come and replace it last night (it was like 7:30 when we found out) we packed up and had a little sleepover at Big Sis’ house.

Since the Brain Surgeon was out of town, she appreciated the company. Things got a little silly in the end…despite there being seven bedrooms, we all slept in one bed:-P Granted, it is a big bed, but I am sure that Big Sis probably spent some time wondering how she ended up cramped in a little corner of her own bed. I say she is lucky that we weren’t baby sitting Papa Bear’s dog, too;-)

Anyway, I think all of that sufficiently cheered up Munchkin. None of us like to see her sad, especially me…it’s a really terribly, helpless feeling. She was in much better spirits this morning, though.

For the non-locals, it is colder than a motherfucker outside. It is currently 5 degrees outside, and the wind chill is 15 below. It is supposed to be a one day cold snap…back in the 30’s tomorrow…but it is absurdly cold outside right now. Ah well, that is why God invented food delivery;-) This has “Take-out night” written all over it…

Delivering Bad News

I had a little talk with Munchkin last night. There was a message from Whore Bag Aunt and Munchkin caught me swearing at her under my breath and finally asked me why we hadn’t seen or talked to her in a while. So I told her the whole story (it’s not a real nice story).

I had hoped to not have to tell her, just because it’s kind of a rotten thing to tell a kid about someone she thought loved her. But, at the same time, I felt like I owed her the truth, so when she asked, I told her the whole thing.

She took it pretty well…she takes everything well…but I can tell she was upset. I dunno…I try and protect her as best I can, but sometimes things happen that I can’t stop. I wish it were different.

So, when she went to bed she went into my bed, and then when I went to bed she woke up and said “I love you and I’m glad you’re my sister and that I live with you.” And then she fell back asleep and I cried for a while;-)

Bad tattoo stories?

Interesting thoughts on Valentine’s Day…people are kind of all over the place. If there is a consensus, it seems to be “Don’t worry too much about it, but don’t you fucking dare forget!!!” On the subject of it really being a kid’s holiday: Munchkin’s brother sent her flowers at school last year on Valentine’s Day, which was really, really sweet of him.

I have kind of a random topic today: really it is more of a discussion than it is anything else. I heard a radio ad for a tattoo removal product, and it got me thinking. Also, Tiffany has been telling about hers lately, as well, so it is front-of-mind. (If you missed it the first time and are curious, I have five tattoos and you can read about them if you’d like.) I like all of my tattoos, and all but one of them have some sentimental value.

My question is: do any of you have tattoos that you don’t like? Has anyone had one removed? Done over? What happened? Feel free to leave comments, or email stories to me and I can post them (or not if you would rather).

Obviously, some tattoos are pretty clearly going to last forever. Big Sis and Smoking Hot Roommate each have their dead mother’s initials done on their right hips. Very, very small (covered by a bikini) and really unlikely to ever be something that causes one of them to say “Gee, I wish I hadn’t gotten that done.” But obviously, not all tattoos are that well thought-out. So, I wanna hear some tattoo stories!!! Preferably bad ones, but I will take good ones, too!

Yes, this is totally a lazy girl’s post:-P

Somehow, this post ends up being about Al Capone

I got in trouble at school today…lol. On Friday morning, Munchkin and I stopped at Dunkin Donuts on the way to school. We don’t usually, but it was cold and we felt like it. So, I dropped her at school with her hot chocolate (just like 90% of people in the city show up for work with coffee cups).

I think we all know how impressionable kids in the fifth grade can be, and she is the coolest girl in school:-) so we can sort of guess what happened next. Yesterday morning, a whole bunch of kids asked their parents if they could stop at Dunkin Donuts on the way to school, and like 10 kids showed up with Styrofoam cups.

The school would rather that their fifth graders not be toting beverages around with them (that should wait until at least college, I guess;-)) so today we were told that no one younger than the high school kids can have drinks with them in class. Lol…I totally got in trouble for starting this whole mess. Good thing I am so darn cute…

Change of subject…I was reading Green Line Boy this morning, on the subject of Valentine’s Day. My question is: does anyone really care about Valentine’s Day? I mean, he seems to think that he needs to plan some sort of elaborate day full of chocolate, flowers, candlelight dinners, minstrels and rose petals (ok, I made that part up, he didn’t say any of that) or else his girlfriend will think him not completely devoted to her.

I guess this is really for the women out there…do you care about Valentine’s Day that much? I guess I would be pretty teed off if The Boy just totally ignored it, but I feel like anything more than a card and maybe some flowers would be overkill. Am I missing something? Was there a “you should be totally worshipped today” memo that I didn’t get? For crying out loud, it’s a Wednesday night! I don’t wanna go out and have some cheesy “romantic” dinner on a Wednesday.

I dunno…maybe this is a result of being from in a city where Valentine’s Day is most closely associated with a violent mass murder…

Clarification

e.b. (the world's most poetic lawyer!) has written about her love of the "One Year Ago" game. Well, one year ago I was almost dead....I weighed less than 90 pounds and had spent much of a week unconcious. I left the hospital on January 19, so I had just gotten home a year ago today. Just a thought...

I got some emails and comments and IM’s on the subject of Tinkerbelle that make me think that maybe I didn’t clarify what happened entirely.

There is no visit, there will be no visit, there can be no visit. He does not want to meet her, and will not see her if anyone were to bring her. Beyond that, he does not know that he has a second daughter and is taking efforts to maintain that ignorance. He thinks he might have another daughter, but he does not want to find out.

Tinkerbelle’s mother was working under the impression that she was somehow keeping her from her father. Which may be true, but ignores the fact that he is and always has been avoiding her. (Why he chose to find me a couple years ago and not find her is somewhat of a mystery…and open to guessing.)

Anyway, I am glad that no one told Tinkerbelle that she might meet her father, because I can’t imagine telling a little girl “Your father doesn’t want to know that you exist.” Maybe someday we can tell her, but not when she is 7. Both she and her mother spent the afternoon at our aunt’s house watching the Bears game (yay Bears!) with their new family. The family that does want to know about her.

Parties, etc.

Sorry I didn’t write yesterday, even though fewer people read on weekends anyway. I like to blog every day, but I was busy and the internet was all effed up for a bit, too. The good news is that you get a triple dose of my ultra-cute ass today:-) I have three things...

First things first…Friday night. Smoking Hot Roommate took Munchkin to the movies, and The Boy and I went out with some of his friends. I love his friends…they are a really close group of people that have known each other for between 8 and 20 years. It was a little weird to break into that kind of group early on, but once they like you, they are great people to be around. And I feel like part of the group now (I get invited to “Girls Lunch”, so I think I am in…) Like most of my friends (and I guess what’s his is mine now:-D) I don’t see them as much as I would like to. Which is my long-winded way of saying that I had fun.

I also had sort of a “moment”. I was talking to a couple of girls and I kept catching The Boy staring at me across the room. He looked like he was kind of listening to the guys he was talking to but wasn’t paying any attention. Because he was just looking at me…and that made me feel really special in a totally girly kind of way. Okay, that is super sappy, I know, and you can all make fun of me as much as you’d like. But I felt special:-P

And then I got laid like you wouldn’t believe…lol. That’s better, back to my old self again;-)

Second…my dinner party was awesome! I had so much fun playing hostess! The food worked out great, and I think everyone had a good time. I easily had the best looking date in the room, too…lol (if you forget, The Boy went skiing with his sister, so Smoking Hot Roommate was my date.) Incidentally, Big Sis took Munchkin to a benefit reception at the Museum of Fine Arts, which I just find hilarious. In all likelihood, Big Sis was the 2nd youngest person there…lol. Munchkin was just excited that she got to get really dressed up and wear fancy jewelry.

I also found out that two of the school parents are divorced, and have been for about three years (meaning longer than I have known them.) I never knew this, and always assumed they were still married because they are together at school events so much. Really, I hear so often about messy and debilitating divorces, and wanted to applaud their maturity.

My third thing… I talked with Tinkerbelle’s mom, who somewhat surprisingly decided that she wanted to bring ‘Belle to meet our father. That wouldn’t have been my decision, but I understand why she did it, and I guess I think it is a good idea if she does. She told me this, and also called my aunt to tell her (my father calls her regularly…every chance he gets to use the phone).

So, my aunt called me yesterday, kind of upset. I guess she asked him if he had asked me about what I found out after our last visit. He basically told her “No, I haven’t asked, and if you know anything, I don’t want to know.” And he wouldn’t budge from that. So fuck him, I guess…he clearly doesn’t want to meet his other daughter. I don’t know why.

Anyway, that is plenty for one blog entry. Once again, both the Bears and Patriots have games today, so there will be loads of football on all day. A friend has reserved a big section of a sports bar, so we are going over there to meet a whole mess of people. That means Munchkin gets another afternoon of hanging out with the big kids, chicken fingers, French fries and 7up and Cranberry Juice in fancy glasses…she’ll be in heaven!

Yea, I know I just posted 10 minutes ago...so what?

Two things have come up since I posted 10 minutes ago.

1) Microsoft word says that there is an "e" at the end of Tinkerbelle. The Blogger spellcheck says that there is no "e" and the end of Tinkerbell. Should we make a grand statement about Microsoft and Google battling for the hearts, minds and linguistics of the world? I think the "e" looks fancier, and she is a pretty fancy little chick, so I am going to keep using it;-)

2) Green Line Boy has posted an entire entry about Smoking Hot Roommate and Big Sis' hometown: Brookline, MA. And The Rocket Scientist's, too;-)

OK, now I am really done.

It's Friday!

Really weird...yesterday was really cold in the morning, and I never left the office all day because I was afraid of going outside:-D. But then when I left at 5:00, it really wasn't all that cold anymore. Maybe like 30 or so. I guess I never got the "It's going to warm up" memo. Today is kinda icky; rain and mid-30's. I hear there may be some snow and slush later on. Yuck.

Went out to dinner with Munchkin, The Boy, Smoking Hot Roommate, Big Sis and their attachments. All of my sisters:-) (Well, not quite, I guess). I think we are all going to go on vacation together over Munchkin's spring break in March, but that is a little bit up in the air.

Also, I have a blog announcement...The Artist Formerly Known As "The Adorable Dork" is hereby re-named as "The Rocket Scientist". How come? Well, for one...he is in fact a rocket scientist. He works on missile guidance systems for a defense company. And second, since Big Sis' fiance is The Brain Surgeon, I feel like it makes for a nice symmetry to name Smoking Hot Roommate's fiance The Rocket Scientist. And so it is done...

[It also dawns on me that I left him completely out of my ode to her. That was bad of me...they are definitely two halves of the same person, and it is really hard to know them without each other. Sorry about that...]

I got a great suggestion from one of the school parents the other day: random dinner seating. I am gonna have boy seats and girls seats (you have to alternate at a dinner party...I learned that) and everyone is going to randomly draw their seating assignments. I think it will be fun...everyone knows each other already, so it should work. Yes, I am being a dork:-)

That's about all, I guess. I am looking forward to some alone time with The Boy tonight. He is going skiing with his sister this weekend, but we have a date tonight:-) Not sure what we are gonna do...possibly just hang around his apartment doing x-rated things...hee hee. Munchkin is going to the movies with the aforementioned Rocket Scientist and his devastatingly gorgeous woman:-D

I think I will have some follow-up news for you tomorrow related to Tinkerbelle's potential visit to see our father. I have a call to return to her Mom, and I assume it is about that. I will let you know when I do...

Food, Cold and Sex Ed

So, I am getting pretty excited for my party:-) Which I know is really dorky of me, but whatever...I can be a dork sometimes if I want to:-P

The caterer is sort of a friend of a friend and is kind of doing me a favor. She is making a bunch of stuff that she can prepare well ahead of time so that it doesn't really interfere with her other (more well-paying;-)) gigs. As far as I know, the menu looks like: cheese and fruit tray when everyone arrives, salad, some kind of chicken/vegetable/pasta thing for dinner, cheesecake and strawberries for dessert. That should do the trick just fine. I have plenty of booze, so I can't see where there will be any problems...lol.

It is also grossly cold here. It was like 9 degrees yesterday morning and it was about 12 today. That is NOT fun. I have short walks in the morning (to school and then to work, total of like 1o minutes) but it was brutal this morning. And it was so cold last night that me and Munchkin and Smoking Hot Roommate all slept in the same bed...lol. Much of the reason I decided to go to Arizona was because I really don't like winter. I used to get seasonal depression, which I don't really have anymore, but I still hate winter. Maybe I should revisit that Arizona idea...

Munchkin starts Sex Ed today at school...I think it will be really funny. She isn't really shy about asking stuff, but this will definitely be her first real lengthy education on the subject. She definitely knows the basics or what's what, but this should still be interesting. I'm curious to see if she mentions it when she gets home or not...

OK, so there are three totally random and unrelated items. I guess I am a bit scattered today;-)

Smoking Hot Roommate, continued

OK, I threw a bunch of random stuff at you the other day, so today I want to kind of fill out the Smoking Hot Roommate picture. Really, what I want to talk about is how good she has been to me, and to my adorable little attachment;-) Also…I went over 2,000 visitors yesterday…yay!!!

As I mentioned the first time I wrote about her, I didn’t like SHR when I first met her. It took a little while (and meeting her now-fiance) to realize what a great person she is. My guess is that she knew I didn’t really like her that much, but she was always incredibly nice to me. That’s just how she is.

I would like to go back to the early summer of 2005, immediately after we finished school. We packed everything into my car (she, true to form, donated her car to the American Cancer Society of the Southwest, or someone like it) and the plan was to hit Chicago for a week, then go to Boston and get moved into our new condo. Actually her new condo, but that is just a detail:-P

It was during that week in Chicago that the bombshell dropped.

Now, a lot of people in this forum have noted the obvious difficulties of taking in my little sister. And most of it is true…but it is something I gladly did because she is my little sister. What is also true is that it is a HUGE imposition on SHR. It’s not her sister, and she has no obligation to her at all. But she has been an enormously important part of Munchkin’s life, and I couldn’t ask for a better role model.

She didn’t sign up for quasi-motherhood. I think most 21 year olds would probably shy away from living with someone else’s child responsibilities. And I really kind of assumed that she would, and thought a lot about how I might make other arrangements to live on my own. But she didn’t. Not only was she ok with Munchkin coming to live with us, but she was genuinely excited about, and took on her portion of that responsibility with great sincerity and dedication.

I would say that she is like an older sister to Munchkin, but really it is more than that. She baby sits all the time, she picks her up and walks her to school if I can’t, she helps her with her homework and does all kinds of other things that there is no real reason to expect her to do. It has been a huge sacrifice for her, and I think it speaks volumes about her character that she has been willing to shoulder such a burden. It has made my life immeasurably easier, and I could never thank her entirely.

She has been a great role model for me, too. I know that sounds kind of silly (I am older than her, after all) but it is very true. She is much more “worldly” than I am, and has opened my eyes to all sorts of things I never would have known. I have my job because she encouraged me to try it and because she helped me with the confidence to take on a totally new challenge. During my first month of full-time work, she encouraged me to seek out a mentor to help me professionally, which has turned out to be some of the best advice I have ever gotten.

OK, I am gushing now…lol. But it is easy to gush about her:-) She is gushable…

So, I guess that is sort of it. I hope I have managed to capture her at least adequately. She is brilliant, funny, kind, generous, caring, considerate, thoughtful and millions of other good words I can’t think of right now. She is my roommate, my friend, my sister and my role model. And, she looks absurdly good in a bikini;-)

So, Happy Birthday, kiddo! You deserve everything good that comes to you!

Back!

We cut our trip a little short...Big Sis had a quasi-emergency at work, so we left last night and got in real late. I chose to sleep in and come to work at 10:00;-) I'm not quite as motivated as the rest of them...lol. My additional thoughts on SHR will come tomorrow.

The trip was really fun. I got some quality time with my two west coast girls, made some new friends, won a little gambling (a very little, I don't gamble much!) and basically just go to relax and have fun with some of my favorite people. Nothing too out of control, although anytime you take that many girls away from their husbands and other attachments, funny stuff happens. One of Big Sis' friends has two little kids (Irish twins...lol...I learned that phrase;-)) and basically hadn't had a vacation (or a drink!) in like two years...she was like a little kid in a candy store!

All in all, it was wholesome, clean fun:-D Hee hee...at least the parts I am willing to cop to, were...

My next agenda item is that I am hosting a dinner party this Saturday. I am kind of nervous, to be honest, as this is really like an adult thing to do. There are going to be 32 people, which I feel like is a really big party. We do have enough room...although it requires clearing out the living room so two big tables can fit in.

I'm excited, too. The school parents have all been kind of looking out for me and for Munchkin, so I want to show them that I really appreciate it and that we are doing ok. The Boy is going to be out of town, so he will miss it, but Smoking Hot Roommate is gonna be my date, and she will suit the situation just fine...lol.

Anyway...I think everything is sort of all set for it (meaning that I have a caterer who says everything is all set...lol). Anyone have any words of warning? Things I shouldn't do, or should do? Anything?

A little about SHR on her birthday:-)

This turned out to be a much more difficult post to write than I thought it would. Not that it was hard to think of things to write, but it was hard to organize them, and it was hard to keep it to a manageable volume. As it is, I feel like it is a little bit scattered, but I think it gets the point across.

Through some IM discussions, it became clear to me that I haven’t really done SHR justice so far. I did write about her at length early on in my blogging, but I am not sure that really gets the message across, so I will elaborate. Actually, in re-reading that, I really didn’t tell you anything about her at all.

Start with the obvious…she is, in fact, ridiculously good looking. Tall, blond, lean, big boobs, great smile, athletic, so on and so forth. She also has a very palpable confidence about her that is incredibly sexy. In most social situations, she is the center of attention, just because.

The less obvious is that she is brilliant. Not just smart, not really smart, I mean downright brilliant. She is super young because she skipped 7th grade (or 6th…I forget). She graduated with a 3.9-something in college, and did so without actually spending that much time studying and by taking all kinds of chemistry, biology and graduate-level business classes (she was an economics major). In other words; it was a really hard 3.9-something (made to look really easy).

She started working for a Venture Capital firm after her sophomore year, and the firm found her valuable enough to continue to pay her $60 an hour to work for them during the school year. Her boss has told me that he has never, in 30 years of working, met someone who understands new technology as fast as she does. That is very high praise.

And they have no problem letting her handle major events for them. On one of our trips to Vegas (she got sent there for a lot of conferences) she was instructed to find a specific executive and sell him on the merits of acquiring a company that her firm had invested in. It took her about 20 minutes over breakfast to get the deal moving. [Ok, that is kind of an oversimplification…obviously the bankers and the partners at her firm ended up getting the deal done, but they sent her to make the initial contact.] Oh, she was 20 at the time.

She works incredibly hard, and always has. She probably worked a solid 40 hours a week during college, and considerably more than that now (Big Sis is the same way…works like a mad-woman). She spends an enormous amount of time and energy of philanthropic pursuits as well (more on that in a second.)

This brings me to a sort of awkward topic, and one which she may be a little mad at me for talking about, but which I feel is necessary to really understand her (and is not a secret to the people who already know her.) By any standard, both she and her sister qualify as “heiresses”. The actual amount of money is unimportant, other than to know that neither of them has to work at all. In fact, whatever money they earn is unlikely to have any effect on their lifestyle at all. The fact is that they are both really driven by a desire to simply be the best they can be at what they want to do.

I don’t think that Smoking Hot Roommate has always been completely comfortable with what she has been given, although she has certainly grown into it (she NEVER talked about it when she was younger, but can do so a little more freely now.) However, even when I first met her (she was 17), she had a clear vision of the good that she could do, and the way she wanted to use her resources to help others.

The family, not surprisingly, has been extremely involved and generous towards various Cancer causes over the years. They give large amounts of money, time, and fundraising assistance to national and local organizations. There is one thing, in particular, that I would like to mention because I think it is so neat, and so well sums up SHR’s commitment to doing good.

A couple of years ago, she heard a teenage cancer patient on the radio talking about how hard it is to have cancer when you are her age. The hardest thing, this girl said, was that you missed out on all of the fun things that go with being a teenager: school dances, clothes shopping, hanging out with friends. She spent so much time in hospitals, and being basically worn down, that she felt left out and felt like she missed her teenage years.

Hearing this, SHR decided that she could help. So, she got in touch with a doctor that she had met previously at a benefit function about organizing a “Girls Night Out” for teenage girls being treated at a local hospital for cancer. The doctor said it was a great idea and identified a handful of girls that could really use it. SHR made some phone calls and got some people to donate stuff, and what they wouldn’t donate, she simply paid for herself.

She lined up a couple of limos to pick the girls up, took them to a spa to get facials, mani’s and pedi’s (and to get their hair done, but many don’t have any hair:-( ) Then they went shopping, and finally went to dinner at a really neat restaurant way up near the top of one of the skyscrapers in town. Basically, she just arranged a way for them to be silly girls for a night. Now, she does this about once a month, and is trying to find a way to do it more often.

Anyway, I am rambling now, and this post is getting long;-) Looks like I am going to have to write a “Part II” tomorrow.

For today, though, I will close with this: she has at least one weird quirk…she doesn’t sleep. Not much at least, probably 4 hours a night. Her father and sister say that she never slept more than six or seven hours a night, even when she was a baby. And never took naps as a kid. So, most days she goes to bed about 1:00, gets up at 5:00, runs 7 miles, showers, makes breakfast, reads the paper and gets to work by about 7:00. I feel like I would get more done if I didn’t waste time sleeping, too;-)

Anyway, Happy Birthday to my mostest favoritest person in the world (except for maybe munchkin:-)) You are a great person, a great role model, a great friend, and a great sister!

Greetings...

I am up super-early this morning, checking some emails and figured I would catch up on some blog reading and such. Only to find out...apparently no one blogs on long weekends? What's up with that...?

Anyway, I was up early yesterday too (SHR and I had breakfast, a massage and a facial before 9 AM...what could possibly be a better start to a day?) Then we sat by the pool all afternoon, drank way too much, then gambled a bit before dinner. Oh, and we were complete boy magnets all day:-) This is what happens when you sit by a pool next to two girls in bikinis who look like Charlize Theron (SHR) and Carmen Electra (The Body): people buy you a lot of drinks. Many of those people are kinda-skeevy old men with all kinds of issues, but some of them were fun to hang out with.

One of the things that tends to happen when we go to Vegas is that we acquire friends as the day goes along...lol. Like, we met this girl who was at the pool with two of her guy friends who were mesmerized by the hot chicks, but too shy to approach (or, just noticed that MASSIVE engagement ring on SHR's hand and knew better...) So we hung out with her and her friends...both of whom were really nice guys, incidentally...and they were there with a couple other people, too. And then Big Sis was playing blackjack later on and I was hanging with her and got to talking with a 30-something woman who was there with her husband and some of their friends. Before you know it, me, SHR, The Body and The Mouth were having an impromptu happy-hour party for like 30 people before dinner. This is why I love Vegas;-)

The we had a pretty big dinner...just those of us with the birthday party...and did some more drinking and dancing afterwards. We were kind of anti-social in the club; I just wanted to hang with my L.A. girls, and SHR did, too. So we kind of stuck to ourselves in a corner and hung out. I was also wasted...lol. Being up early, sitting by the pool all day and drinking too much had me totally wiped out. So, I was in bed and sound asleep by 10, which is why I am up so early today:-)

Today will likely be more of the same...I may even gamble a bit on my own:-D. But...I will make sure to take a nap so I can stay out like a big girl;-) Also, I am going to publish Smoking Hot Roommate's birthday post later on...I have to finish it up, but I will definitely have time to do it this morning.

So, that's all for now...ta ta!

The Boy, Marriage, Etc.

I got a request yesterday to talk about how I met The Boy. I wish it were a more romantic story, but I guess not everything has to be en epic tale. The truth is that we got set up by Big Sis. He is a “friend of a friend” of hers, kind of. She has known him for a couple years and felt like we might hit it off.

Actually, I realize that I already wrote this story…lol. And, true to form, it is in two parts. I am starting to think that maybe I write too much…I should make more use of my editing skills.

Anyway, that was about two months ago, and not a whole lot as changed. He is still super-cute and I love him dearly, and I think he still kinda likes me, too:-) Obviously, going through the Holidays for the first time is kind of a big thing because it is such an important family time. He has a large, close family, and they are definitely in the practice of “passing judgment” on people. I mean that in a very good way…they all have very high standards for each other and look at new partners with a critical eye. Not that anyone is at all mean or unfair about it. Regardless, I am pretty sure they all like me…hee hee.

The obvious next question is marriage, which we have definitely discussed. Not in a “should we, when, etc.” kind of way, but more a “what are your expectations?” kind of way. I think it is more common for him to get the “When are you getting married?” questions …he is a little older than me, and is the only one of four kids that is not married. I also have no parents to bug me about it, which contributes.

And the answer is: not terribly soon. I can most certainly see myself marrying him…but I still don’t really wanna think about it for a while. Things are moderately more complicated because of the little one, but not really…just adds an additional priority. Mostly, I just feel like I am young and there is no need to be overly anxious to make lifelong decisions. If it is right, then it will still be right in a couple of years.

That doesn’t mean that I have never done imaginary wedding planning, though:-) I am a girl after all!!! And with Big Sis and SHR both getting married soon-ish, it has been sort of front-of-mind.

What I have realized is that I will likely have an enormous wedding party! I have been blessed over the course of my life to have a large number of extremely important people come into my life. Munchkin, BFFg, Smoking Hot Roommate and Big Sis will all have to be there with me, or else I would feel like I was leaving a lot of myself out of the ceremony. And…I would feel really bad if The Body, The Mouth, My Two Favorite Cousins and The Boy’s sister were not there with me, too. And Tinkerbelle, too! Can’t forget her! That is 10, and leaves out some really good friends and close family members…and doesn’t count either Papa Bear or BFFb (I’m allowed to have two people give me away, right? I have to work on that…)

Anyway, I guess that is a good problem to have, and I have plenty of time to work it out;-) Big Sis’ wedding is next summer and I am looking forward to it. Let’s all pray that I am still taller than Munchkin by then…I don’t wanna be the shortest bridesmaid!!!

Wanna impress a fifth grader?

Based on Ella’s comment yesterday about Papa Bear being clueless about dealing with an 11-year-old girl (he’s not, but it is still a funny image), I asked him casually… “What do you have planned for the weekend?” He got really excited, he is way too funny.

“I will see if she wants to take the dog for a walk around the Common, and then we are going to go over to BC for a basketball game that afternoon. And I think we will go to Grill 23 for dinner [kind of a fancy place, but they serve macaroni and cheese…lol] and walk around a bit if she isn’t too tired. And Sunday we can go over to Jamaica pond with the dog for a while, and then find a place to watch the football games.”

Both the Bears and the Patriots play Sunday, which means six straight hours of Munchkin sitting in a sports bar eating chicken fingers and nachos and making new friends. She will totally be in heaven!!! Actually, that sounds like kind of a fun weekend. I am sort of jealous…

I have started on my sappy birthday tribute to Smoking Hot Roommate (whose age I mis-typed yesterday…oops!...I fixed it, though, she will be 23.) Her birthday is Monday, so I don’t know if I will post it before we leave or after we get home…depends on how fast I write;-)

Umm…that’s about it, I guess. I don’t have a whole lot to write about today. I have lunch with Boss Foxy, and she says she has some stuff she wants to talk about. I am not real sure what that means, but sometimes she sees really interesting deals or something out of the ordinary and explains it to me. I imagine that is what she is talking about.

Also…I left out one last note from the Big Sam Story. BFFb and Sam finally buried the hatchet last spring. It took four and a half years, but BFFg finally convinced the two of them to sit down and re-connect. I don’t think they are super buddy-buddy, but they are back to being friendly. I feel good about that.

Yeah, kind of a boring post…lol. I guess I can’t be brilliant every day!!!

Ready for the Weekend

I wanna thank everyone for reading and commenting on the big long Sam story…I will say again that it was extremely therapeutic to write it all down. I have certainly told that story, but that really got me back to thinking about all the details and all the things that happened. And, in answer to a comment…it didn’t really take terribly long to write it. Once I started, it all flowed out really quickly.

Anyway…I guess that means I am back to writing about all the random stuff that happens to me. One note; I realized that people can Google Message me at the address in my profile. Do it! It’s fun and I like to chat with people…unless I have, you know…work to do.

Smoking Hot Roommate and Big Sis are both back from a little mini-vacation…they were in the Bahamas for a few days taking care of some stuff. So yes, everyone is tanned but me…how is that fair?!?! We leave for Las Vegas Saturday, though…so I can hopefully get some sun!

I am really looking forward to Vegas. It is going to be a girls-only trip to celebrate my two pretend-sisters’ birthdays. Big Sis turned 30 last month and SHR will be 23 next week (sappy tribute coming!!!). The trip will certainly be much less debaucherous than our college trips were, but I am still going to enjoy some goofy girl-time. Also, The Body and The Mouth are coming to meet us there and I haven’t seen them in nearly six months.

The bad news is that you will have to do without my witty commentary for a couple of days. I doubt that I will take any time while I am out there to post…but I guess you never know. Anyone going to be in Vegas this weekend? No, I don’t want to meet up with anyone…lol…just checking.

Munchkin and Papa Bear are going to have a little quality time, which they will both enjoy. I know I have talked about this before, but they have a really cute relationship, they make each other giggle a lot. I also like her having as much of a father-figure as possible. Obviously it’s not perfect, but you do what you can.

Funny story time…she picked up his lady friend for him. Lol. It was about October of 2005, and they were in the park one day. I think he was reading and she was playing with his dog and just being super cute. She got to talking with a woman who also had a dog, introduced herself, etc. Then she asked her if she was married or had a boyfriend…lol. Yeah, Munchkin was 10 at the time…and then said “You should meet my friend Papa Bear, he is really nice.” So she dragged her over to meet Papa Bear, they hit it off right away and a year later, they are pretty firmly entrenched as “companions” now. [I don’t know if you are supposed to call people in the 40’s and 50’s “boyfriend and girlfriend”].

Anyway, Papa Bear complains that he doesn’t see her enough, so he gets his wish…three and a half days of babysitting duty. That will teach him to open his big mouth;-)

I see London...

[This is part five of a long story. Read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5 first.]

So, after the bad summer, I didn’t see, hear from or talk to Sam for a very long time…over four years. I still knew where he was because BFFg kept tabs on him though his mom. The total sum fallout of our relationship’s dissolution was substantial: the close bond between me, him, the two BFFs and all of our families was gone forever, and Sam’s life deteriorated significantly. He stopped returning BFFg’s calls and lost tough with her, too.

I never really stopped thinking about him. Not in a longingly romantic way, but just out of curiosity…and guilt, too. But the memories faded over time, which was good…it let me ignore the bad and remember him only for the good. I like it that way better.

BFFg called in October of 2005. Nothing unique about that…I talk to her a couple of times a week, at least. What was unique was what she had to say "AM, I will give you one guess who called me today. And who I am meeting for lunch tomorrow." Sam had called her because, well…I think because he missed her, he missed us and he missed how things used to be. He was fresh out of a second court-ordered drying out period and was looking to get himself back on track.

So BFFg met him, and all went well. He had just started taking classes, had moved back in with his mom so he could concentrate a little more on that, and was working as well. So, at the end of their lunch, he asked a predictable question and delivered the answer I had told her to. Yes, I did want to see him. [Actually, I told her to use her judgment…to kind of decide whether I would want to see him or not…I trust her.] So she gave him my number and he called me the next day.

Seeing him again was extremely difficult. I met him for dinner when I was home one weekend, and I literally burst into tears when I got to the restaurant. It was really good to see him again, and to see him well again. Years and years of stuff came back to me…all of the emotion, all of the memories, and it was just too much for me. I was shaking when I left the restaurant…just too much emotion.

It was good, though, and things are pretty good now. He is still doing well, we talk occasionally and I have seen him a couple of times since then. That includes an extremely emotional day that I brought Munchkin over to see him and his Mom, who I think is finally forgiving me. I don’t think we can ever be that close again…too much water under the bridge…but I am happy to call him a friend.

So that, everyone, is pretty much it. It is a long story, but I hope you have enjoyed it. I thank you all for reading it, because it has been really helpful for me to write it down. It is a HUGE part of me and of my history, and intertwines a lot with some other important parts of my life. Sam was an invaluable friend, a really good boyfriend, my first real true love and someone who made me a much better person. He also put me through some of the worst times of my life and cost me immeasurable amounts of worry. But…he carries a piece of me, and me of him.

[The End…finally…]

Me = Dork

Quick note: I just got home and put Munchkin to bed.

The Boy called this afternoon and asked if I wanted to go out and watch the football game. I didn't really know there was a game...but I assumed Munchkin would want to watch. Then when I went to get her at school and asked her if she wanted to go out, one of the kid's fathers said that he and a couple other Dads were taking their sons out to watch the game. The place they were going was really close to place The Boy was going, so yay!!!

I told Munchkin that she could only go if she took a nap first (the game didn't start until about 8:30) so she put herself right down when we got home, and slept for an hour or so.

Anyway, I think it was one of the most fun nights I have had in a really long time. Not that there was anything special about it, it was just really fun. The Dad's all laughed at the fact that Munchkin ordered cranberry juice and 7up in a martini glass (which I am willing to go ahead and call her "Signature Drink" at this point...lol). And then all the little boys got super excited and tried to get things in fancy glasses, which led the waitress to say "No, she can have them because she is cute. You guys are just trouble." Yeah, Munchkin liked that one, too;-)

The Boy and his friends changed plans and came next door, which means I got to see The Boy and hang out with Munchkin at the same time. And the school fathers are all really fun to be around, too. The guys all got overly wrapped up in the football game, but that is too be expected.

By halftime, one team had already won the game, so Munchkin didn't even complain about having to leave;-) So yes, I am old and boring enough that eating nachos, chicken wings and mozzarella sticks on a Monday night counts as pretty high fun for me. Ahh well, we can't be young forever, I guess!!!

The sentinemtal heart that beats...

[This is part five of a long story. Read part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4 first.]

When we last left, I agreed to let Sam come out to Arizona to live for the summer, somewhat suspecting it was a bad idea. He quit his job, packed up and moved out on Memorial Day weekend, right after I had moved in to my summer apartment. In the interest of full disclosure, I told the two guys I was living with the entire story (both are still good friends.)

Things were actually really good, though. He found a job…working as a bar back/doorman/occasional bartender in a bar nearby. I had a couple of waitress/bartender jobs that worked out pretty well. And we got along really well, too…nothing awkward or anything. It was just really good to have him back and to be able to hang out and have fun again. BFFg came out for July 4th, and we had a blast (I just remembered that she hooked up with one of my very best friends that weekend and I always meant to try and get them together again…shit, I seem to have forgotten…)

Things were still pretty good until later that month. I went out with a new guy a couple of times, and I really got the sense that Sam was kind of weird about it. He didn’t say anything, but his whole mood kind of changed. Sometime around August 1, he finally told me that he wanted to get back together and would be completely broken if I sent him back home.

I told him that I hadn’t changed my mind and that it was still a ship that had sailed and wasn’t coming back. I tried as hard as I could to leave no wiggle room…I didn’t want there to be any mixed signals. He got really mad and sulked for a couple of days and then he tried again. This time, he wanted to move there permanently, get an apartment together and work while I continued at school. Again, I told him no, and he got really pissed again.

It is sort of hard to describe what happened next. He was there for another couple of weeks, and while there were no specific instances…he never got violent or anything, and we never had a real big fight…it was really uncomfortable. He was a complete asshole…he snapped at me whenever he could and made all kinds of really nasty comments.

Originally, I had just figured that I would wait it out until it was time for him to go home and be done with it. That, however, went out the window a week before we were all moving out. I was out with a couple of friends (not any of them romantic interests) and ran into him in a bar. He was kind of belligerently drunk…oh yeah, he had started drinking again, but not much…and made a complete scene in the place.

He went on a rant about how I had ruined his life, and had totally manipulated his feelings to get him to move out here and then crushed him again and I was an evil bitch and thought I was too good for him. There were some really nasty things in there, too. He got thrown out of the bar and I followed him home (with some other people:-)) and we had it out. He called me more names and I laid into him for trying to guilt me into feeling bad for him. I was really, really mad because I thought he was trying to take advantage of my already feeling somewhat guilty over the way things went in Chicago.

I said something that I genuinely wish I hadn’t…it was really mean-spirited and not true (I’d feel bad, but he said like 12 things worse) and told him that he had to move out in the next two days. I went and stayed at The Body’s house (her family lives a couple miles from where we went to school) for three days and when I returned, he was gone. He packed everything, left me a letter and went back home. The letter was much the same…kind of incoherent, really mean-spirited and not at all pleasant.

I didn’t speak to or see Sam for nearly four years when he left Arizona. Things got bad again for him when he got home. The drinking continued, he bounced around through a couple of different living and working arrangements, and he ended up back in a substance abuse treatment program again. He even lost contact with BFFg, likely out of embarrassment. She continued to talk with his mother, so she always knew what was up (and therefore so did I.)

His mother is another point of this story. She was very much an important part of my teenage years…as I mentioned, I spent quite a bit of time at all of my friends’ houses during those years. I lived with Sam and his mom for about a week during a particularly bad time with my own mother. Since the bad summer-ending, his mother stopped returning my phone calls. She blames me, and it kills me. I understand why she does…it is her only child and she was just upset to see him spiral like he did…but that doesn’t make it any easier to lose someone you care about like that. I would have liked the chance to explain my side of things to her, but it was never a realistic option.

Anyway, there is still a little bit of this story left, but I will have to leave that for an epilogue tomorrow…this is already too long. It does get better for everyone, though, I promise:-)

[To be continued]

Random notes

I just checked my sitemeter stats and I have two comments:

1) People in Georgia love me!!! I seem to have like five or six regular readers in Georgia. I know who like 3 of you are, but not all.

2) Someone at UCSF.edu (Cal-San Francicso maybe?) spent an hour and had like 50 page views yesterday. Send me an email...(contact info on the profile page)...did you read my entire blog in one sitting? Just curious...

And for those interested, my advice to Tinkerbelle's mother was that she should not bring her to meet her father. I understand why she is thinking about it: for all the reasons articulated here. I just don't see how anyone benefits. When she is 18 or 20, she may be sad that she never knew her father, but meeting him for half an hour in a prison when she is 7 isn't going to change that. Really, she will regret that she never knew her father...and unfortunately that ship has already sailed.

It was interesting, though...a lot of the discussion here revolved around whether my father had the right to meet his daughter. Y'all are much more forgiving than me...

I am not sure that Tinkerbelle's mom has made up her mind yet...she seemed a little torn over it (it is obviously more complicated for her than for me.) I actually told her that I would take Tinkerbelle if she didn't want to. Not that I want to go back to that place, but I would do it, and I know that Sweet Aunt #2 would be happy to go with us. So we'll see. I think she will decide against it, but you never know.

I've got this energy beneath my feet...

Interesting feedback thus far on my question from this morning...continue to chime in, please. Meantime...the next installment

[This is part four of a long story. Read part 1, part 2, and part 3 first.]

Sam and BFFb beat the shit out of each other. Sam was convinced that BFFb had ruined his relationship and his life by encouraging me to leave him. I know it is a tough spot, and BFFb was sort of stuck between two friends with no way to make everyone happy. I think, for an 18 year old boy, he saw things a lot more clearly than anyone else did…and his assumption that things would have turned out terribly wrong if I had stayed is right.

I had some issues adjusting at school, and was really disturbed at the mess I had left behind (I certainly could have handled it better), but I sort of got on ok. My mother could throw all the tantrums she wanted…and not speak to me for a LONG time…but she was over 1000 miles away (actually 1,742 per Google) and couldn’t be a bitch to me any more.

Things didn’t go well for Sam, though, and for that I will always be sorry. He had lost his girlfriend and his best friend, and he sort of retreated from things for a while. He started drinking a lot, and probably doing some drugs (hmmm…I wonder if he knows my father?) and got into some trouble. It bottomed out for him early the following year when he got arrested for something and ordered into a treatment facility for a couple of months.

He stayed in touch with BFFg during all of this, so I knew what was going on, and when she told me that he wanted to talk to me (that was while he was in rehab) I said that yes, I did want him to call. [I had spoken with him two or three times during that fall semester, but it was out of guilt and the conversations were ugly. He was really nasty and really angry, until I stopped returning his calls].

It is remarkable what drinking and drugs can do to someone, because he was a completely different person after he got out. He was right back to the fun, bright, super-sweet guy he had always been. He spent a good deal of time apologizing and trying to absolve me of guilt…he finally admitted that he was glad I did what I did because I would simply have never been happy in Chicago and deep down he had known it.

BFFg kept reporting to me that he was doing well…he even went on a couple of dates…and I kept talking to him pretty regularly for most of that spring. Honestly, it was really good; I always loved him, he was one of my very best friends, and I genuinely appreciated him more having thought that I lost him.

I wasn’t welcome at home that summer, so I had decided to stay in Arizona (ever spent a summer in Arizona? It’s…um…hot). Then in the beginning of May, a couple of weeks before school was over, Sam made an interesting proposition... “I could really stand to get out of here for a little while, what do you think about me coming out there to hang out for the summer?” He was abundantly clear that he would completely understand if I said no and would never hold it against me, but that he thought it would be fun, and would be good for him.

So I thought it over, talked it over with the two guys I was gonna live with all summer (we had room for a fourth person) and then thought about it some more. After a couple of days, I called Sam back and told him “First things first…there can be absolutely no idea on your behalf that we are getting back together. If I get any idea that you are thinking that way, and you are going to have to leave immediately. But if you are ok with that, then yes, I think it is a good idea.” He said he was totally on board, and with that, I had a new roommate for the summer.

Now, in the course of our lives, there are certain things that we wish we could take back, and certain decisions that we look back on with regret. I don’t have many of those…I am pretty comfortable with everything I have done. But if I have to make a list of things I would take back, this goes right at the top of the list. I think I knew it was a bad idea at the time (I actually remember thinking that the other two guys were both very large and would offer some buffer if things somehow went bad…that should have tipped me off) but I did it anyway.

[To be continued]

Quick break...

I am taking a brief break from the Sam Story, but I will post the next part today...I just have to edit it and make sure it is in good form;-) Yes...I am a blog dork.

I got a message from Tinkerbelle's mom last night, and I have to call her back (for those unfamiliar with 'Belle...read this and this). The gist of the message was this: "Listen, I have been thinking a lot and I wanted your input on something. I am wondering if I should bring Tinkerbelle to meet her father while she still has the chance. Anyway, give me a call so we can chat."

So I will call her back and we can talk about it today. My first thought is that I am glad she called...obviously it is flattering that she would want my input. I still don't know exactly how I am gonna fit in to her life, but I am certainly glad thather Mom seems to want me.

My next thought is that I really don't know what to tell her. It is almost certain to be the only chance she gets to meet her father, and there is a chance that she will always regret not meeting him. On the other hand, so what if she never meets him? One visit in a state prison doesn't really do someone much good in the grand scheme of things. And, she is still only 7 years old...should she be anywhere near the inside of a prison?

I am pretty sure I know what I think on this, but I would be interested to hear some opinions from the crowd here, so pipe up if you have one;-)

Nobody ever pulls the seams 'round here...

Quick note: Munchkin got home yesterday from her Caribbean sailing vacation. She is really tan and cuter than ever and had a great time. And the people that took her report that she is just the most fun kid in the world to have around:-) OK, done bragging!!! Back to the story...

[This is part three of a long story. Read part 1 and part 2 first.]

I told Sam maybe two days later. He didn’t really seem to believe me at first, and told me that I could take more time to decide if I wanted to. I tried to tell him that I had made up my mind, but he didn’t really take the “no” as being permanent. I also told my mother, who completely hit the roof and called me all sorts of hideous names. Most everyone else I knew seemed to concur with her, although they were nicer about it (some people were very supportive, and I always remember them.)

The second significant event was about a week and a half later. My mother’s husband and I never got along (that is Munchkin’s father). Not sure why, but I didn’t like him and he didn’t like me. Not really a bad guy, I guess, and he was the one who finally made my mother stop drinking, for which he gets credit. But we never got along…and at this point, we rarely ever spoke.

So, it was out of character one day for him to come into my bedroom to talk to me. My mother was in the shower, and he came in quickly (I was reading, I think.) He handed me an envelope and said “I am taking your mother away for the weekend. Leave your sister at her Grandmother’s house, she is expecting her. This is all I can give you, but take it and go to Arizona. I will deal with your mother.” The envelope had $1,000 in it (or maybe $1,500…I forget).

Keep in mind, before then I still hadn’t figured out exactly how I was getting to Arizona, but I was determined to go. I guess I was planning to sneak out of the house one night and get on a bus. He very intentionally scheduled a weekend away for about a week before classes were to begin, which gave me all of the cover I needed to pack up and get going. And the money was awfully useful, as well…so I guess in the final analysis he did three great things for me: made my mother quit drinking, gave me Munchkin and sprung me from home.

This leads to event #3, which was that Friday night. I had reserved a U-Haul and had everything I owned packed up and ready to leave in the morning. I had my last meal with the BFFs, and then I sat down with Munchkin and told her everything…that I was leaving and wouldn’t see her for a while and that Mom was going to be really mad at me, but that she shouldn’t worry because I was going to be alright and I would always come back to see her.

The knock on the window came at about 1:00am. It was Sam, ring in hand, begging me to reconsider. I didn’t tell him I was leaving, I just told him that it was late, that I didn’t want to talk to him then, and that I would talk to him the next day. Yes, I owed him more than sneaking away without saying good-bye, I know. I never felt good about it…none of us are perfect.

I was up and out the door really early. I had a really tearful goodbye with Munchkin, and then I was on my way, terrified, liberated, scared, exhilarated and excited. I can’t really describe the feelings of that trip. I was a wreck…I felt terrible about the way I left Sam, and about running away from home. I also knew I was going to a very strange place, with all kinds of strange people and an environment unlike anything I had ever known. I cried almost the whole way there. (This post covers what happened when I got there).

I didn’t go home for a year and a half after that. My mother told me that I was not welcome at Thanksgiving or Christmas, and I spent the summer at school (more on that in a bit). It wasn’t until the following Christmas, fully 16 months after I had left, that I finally returned home.

Meanwhile, Sam called me at home all morning and got no answer. So he came over to the house, and found that I wasn’t there…eventually he went over to BFFb’s house to see if he knew where I was (BFFg was there, too). They told him and he blew up...at me, but mostly at BFFb for “selling him out” and trying to ruin his life (he either knew or strongly suspected that he was the person that finally convinced me not to marry him).

I wasn’t there, so I don’t know exactly what happened, but it wasn’t pretty. They got into a fight that immediately got extremely serious. BFFg couldn’t stop them, and they eventually beat each other seriously enough to require both of them to go to the hospital. They didn’t speak for over four years.

[To be continued]

Nobody ever has a dream 'round here...

[This is part two of a long story. Read part 1 first.]

When I left off yesterday, I was pregnant. Or at least I thought I was. I missed a full cycle and I took a home pregnancy test that came up positive. However, when I actually went to the doctor a month later (I know…) I was, in fact, not pregnant. My cycle started again regularly about six weeks after the missed one. So, I am not real sure what happened, but for four weeks or so, I thought I was pregnant. Incidentally, I had (and still have) been on the pill since I was 15, and this has made me paranoid about being overly cautious about getting pregnant again…

Anyway, my Mother was not that disappointed to find out I was pregnant. She was convinced that this would make me stay home. Sam was ecstatic…he didn’t want me to leave either, and wanted to get married right away. I have to give him credit for this…I knew a whole bunch of girls who got knocked up and suddenly were boyfriend-less, but he really wanted to do this together. The thing about not being pregnant is that it saved me from having to tell Sam that there was no way I was having a baby. I never actually told anyone that, but I had already made up my mind.

So, turns out I wasn’t pregnant, which was a relief. Sam, however, really liked the idea of getting married, baby or no baby. The first time he formally proposed, ring and all, was in March of that year. I didn’t really answer him, which was wrong of me. I told him that I had to wait until after graduation to figure things out. At the time, I already knew that Sam and I had very different plans for our lives, and that those plans unfortunately could not include each other. But I didn’t say "no", because I could tell how much he liked the idea and I just couldn’t bring myself to hurt him.

So I did the cowardly thing and just didn’t do anything. Graduation came and I put Sam off again and again, always using somewhat lame excuses that he had to have known were not good news. By the end of July, I think most of my family and friends sort of took it for granted that we were basically engaged and would be getting married quickly. My mother told me that I was a dreamer and a fool and that a good man wanted to marry me and that I should take the chance when I had it because that chance might not come again. She basically told me to get married and start pumping out kids like a good woman is supposed to do.

Virtually no one voiced any dissent. My friends all thought that this should be my dream…get married and start living. My family said the same. Even BFFg told me that I should forget the idea of moving 1,000 miles away for college into a strange place, and should settle down right here. [By the way, if you read the summary of this blog at the top of the page, this all falls into the second sentence].

I was in a really low place…it seemed like everyone I knew was pushing me to do something that I knew in my heart was the wrong thing to do, and that I just couldn’t bring myself to do. I knew that I wanted to move away in a month, but I still didn’t know how…I had no money, no car and no support system. More than that, I had a mother that would do all she could to prevent me from doing it. I had finally started to think that I should simply give in and marry him and move on.

There are now three critical events in this story. The first was August 25th. A bunch of us had gone out, and at some point (maybe 5:30 am?) BFFb and I were the only two left stranding. We went to an all-night diner for breakfast, and out of nowhere, he said the following:

"AM, You don’t want to marry him, do you?" I didn’t even have a response, so he kept talking.

"Sam is my best friend, and there is nothing in the world that will make him happier right now than for you to marry him. But if you say yes to him, I will never forgive you. Fucking never. It will kill him, but you don’t want to do it and you will be miserable. And that is gonna make both of you miserable." I couldn’t speak, I just burst into tears. I think the people in the restaurant thought I was nuts…lol. But I immediately became a sobbing, blubbering mess, and all I could do was hug him and bury my face in his shoulder and cry for like ten minutes.

I am not sure that the emotion of it really comes through, but that was an incredibly dark time. I felt like I had no one in my corner…that everything I wanted was being kept from me by all of the people that should have been helping me…that not even the people I thought I could count on the most were behind me. And then, at the very worst time, right when I was about to give in and resign myself to the life everyone told me I should have, there was finally one, single, solitary voice of support. This, not coincidentally, is why BFFb holds a very special place in my heart;-)

That, however, left the not small matter of telling Sam...

[to be continued]

Sam's Town

OK, I can’t promise that you will find this interesting, but it feels really good to write it all down. There are some people I know that maybe have never heard the full, long version, either, so maybe this will help them a bit, too. It covers a lot of time, a huge part of my past, and a big piece of my soul. So without further ado…

There is a key new person in this story, and I will introduce him as Sam…with no explanation as to why I chose that;-) Sam moved into the same neighborhood as me and my two BFFs when we were all about 11. Immediately, he became our fourth;-) He was a little bit mischievous, super-cute, and an absolutely devoted friend.

Sam, BFFb, BFFg and I were as close as friends can be for the next couple of years, spending all the time we could together, getting into and out of trouble together and basically keeping each other afloat. It is the worst imaginable environment to raise a kid in, and the fact that we are all alive, out of jail and thriving is a tribute to how much we cared about each other and looked out for each other. I spent a lot of time at my friends’ houses in those days, always because they were more comfortable places than my own.

Things sort of moved along like that for a couple of years, and then in our sophomore year of high school, Sam and I started dating. It was really good, especially at first…he was one of my best friends, I cared about him deeply, and he felt the same. It was really a pretty seamless relationship, especially for high school kids. It was also a rock for me during some very stormy times at home (my mother and I never fought when she was a drunk, but once she sobered up we sure did!) I spent quite a few nights at Sam’s house, and his mother was an extremely important part of my life as well.

The only thing that ever really came between us, honestly, was “expectations”. I always knew I wanted to move away…I didn’t know what I wanted to do, I just knew that I didn’t want to live in a crime and drug infested ghetto where virtually everyone is on some form of government assistance. Sam had a more limited vision…he really just wanted to graduate from high school, get a job, and get on with living. He certainly didn’t want to live in the same place we did, but a lower-middle class area nearby was probably what he considered ideal.

When you are 16, those sorts of things are kind of irrelevant. However, as our senior year approached and then finally started, it became clear to me that we wanted very different things in life. Still, I loved him, he was always great to me and I enjoyed virtually every second I ever spent with him.

This “clash of expectations” did not exist solely between me and Sam. My mother, in her never-ending efforts to force me into the same exact kind of life she had, was adamantly opposed to me going away to college. She wanted me to graduate, get a job, get married, start having kids and maybe go to a community college part time if I was feeling ambitious. She had a million reasons…it costs too much, I wasn’t like any of the other college kids and wouldn’t fit in, I would start but never finish and then owe a ton of money, college was for “rich kids”.

I applied to colleges completely without any help from my mother, and in fact against her wishes. I applied to a school in Arizona because it was a) warm, and b) far away. That was it…I had never been south or west of St. Louis. Arizona seemed like heaven to me.

These parallel stories came to a head in the winter and spring of my senior year of high school (I graduated in 2001). The first major event was my receiving a fat envelope from the school I had applied to without my mother knowing. On what should have been a great day with a major sense of accomplishment, my mother threw a fit you wouldn’t believe, broke a window by throwing an ashtray and called the school to tell them I wasn’t coming. She told me that I was “forbidden” to go away to college. Luckily, the school ignored her, and I sent back a deposit on my own.

[Special thanks to Mrs. Willsey, the guidance counselor who walked me through all of this at school. Being a guidance counselor at an inner-city public high school is not an easy job, but she was invaluable in helping me apply, get in and then apply for financial aid.]

I wasn’t quite sure how, but I was going to move away to school, and she could go and fuck herself. My mother and I stopped speaking, she was trying to wreck my future, and about a month later, the other shoe dropped: I missed a period…I was pregnant (or, at least, I thought I was).

[to be continued...and yes, I am being obnoxious by leaving it at this point:-P]

The Big Story

Since I had no motivation today and did lots yesterday, I spent most of the day writing "The Big Story". Which is actually really therapeutic, as it turns out.

It is too long to post at once (I am on page 5 of a Word Document and still have a ways to go) so I will kind of post bits and pieces at a time. And yes, I am going to intentionally cut it off at the most cliffhanging of moments:-P

So, you have that to look forward to tomorrow;-)

Sin City

I think I had the most productive work day I have ever had yesterday…I feel like I got two days worth of work done in about four hours. I’m not sure why, but I got going and was just tearing through stuff like no one’s business. The good part of that is that I don’t have a huge amount of stuff to do today.

Maybe it is because my mind was completely free of sex…lol. It could be that sex normally takes up about 85% of my brain, and during the rare times when I have had enough and want no more, I can really accomplish amazing things. Wasn’t this a Seinfeld episode? I am pretty sure it was…

And don’t take that to mean that I didn’t get like a solid hour and two orgasms worth of no-need-to-reciprocate-fall-right-asleep-afterwards oral sex when I went to bed. Now THAT is how I like to be tucked in;-) [Note: I was awoken later on by The Boy, Smoking Hot Roommate and Adorable Dork screaming at the television…apparently there was some ridiculous football game last night that ended way past midnight.] And because I am such a sweetheart, I returned the favor this morning.

Anyway, only two more days left of my uninhibited winter-sex-romp until I have to go back to being Mom again. Stupid responsibilities!!!

I talked to Tinkerbelle and her Mom yesterday. She is still super cute;-) And it looks like they are going to come out here next summer with the rest of the family, which is awesome. This will be the first time that most of them have been out to see me here, and I am really looking forward to showing them around. Tinkerbelle still hasn’t met Munchkin, although that will likely happen before then.

We are going to Vegas for a little birthday celebration the weekend after next…sort of a joint Big Sis/SHR birthday extravaganza. Smoking Hot Roommate, The Body, The Mouth and I used to go to Vegas a lot during college, and there are some seriously debaucherous stories…hee hee. I don’t think it will be quite as bad as any of those (like, without naming names, having sex with a married couple…), but I guess you never know;-)

Ah well, back to work, I guess. Hope everyone’s New Year was good!

p.s. Ally...I am still waiting!!!