I have been gone for way too long

I haven’t fallen off the face of the planet, I promise.

I have a million and one things going on and haven’t had much time (or internet connection) to be here telling you about my boring life! I am still in “new house” mode though not much is really getting done or unpacked!

I promise I will be back soon. (In case you have missed me!)

For now, go over to My Pajama Days and check out the blog roll for the essay contest entries. I entered and my post will be shared with the world mid-march. Though I didn’t win the prize, it was still fun to participate. I can’t wait to read everyone else’s submissions over the next couple of months. After checking out the blog roll you should blog stalk Emily. She has the most amazing way with words and is an amazing mom and role-model.

-m

I am breathing.

There are things in my life that are stressing me out.

There are always things in my life that stress me out.

Why do I let them get to me so easily?

It’s funny how the things that stress me are also the things I am so thankful for.

The holidays are done. The hustle and bustle is over. That makes me kinda sad.

The next 3 months are slammed full of plans already.

In 20 days or so I will sign my life away on a house.

The house that I will make a home. I will hang pictures, cook dinner, throw parties.

It will be full of warmth, laughter, love and hopefully a family one day.

In 60 days my office moves to another building. Who knew how much goes into a move like this?

It makes my head spin and the tears threaten to fall with all the things that have to be done.

In 74 days, 10-20 of my closest friends and I will descend on NOLA.

Hopefully we all come home without paying bail or having a court date.

I am happy, happy, happy to have a house.

I am happy, happy, happy to have a job.

I am happy, happy, happy to have my friends.

I am going to do my best to put a smile on my face.

I am going to do my best not to be a stressed out negative nellie.

I think this sore throat and fever I am running might be playing a part.

I am impatient.

I am stepping back, looking in.

This life I have is nothing short of amazing.

No reason to be stressed about amazing. Right?

Right.

-m

everytime (random scribbles in my draft folder)

*man, I found some good stuff in my drafts folder. I wonder why I didn’t post this when I wrote it. Here’s some scribbles from my brain… written a few months ago.

I wanna be in.

Over my head.

I will probably drown. (drowned?)

I think I am already past the point

of not hurting when the hurting starts.

I want to live my life to the fullest

knowing that doing so means

I will get hurt the greatest.

everytime.

everytime.

I spend my days in the mundane.

I spend my nights in the laughter of friends

or the boredom of a bedroom that doesn’t belong to me.

I want to spend an eternity

with the reality of a perfect ideal.

I fall easy. I fall hard.

I love easy. I love hard.

I give it away, and never get it back.

I am jaded.

Heart in lockdown mode

I learn from yet repeat the same mistakes

over and over

I guess I don’t really learn.

I trust. And shouldn’t.

But I am positive that someday,

Someone will be worth it.

-m

25 years of friendship can’t be ruined with 3 years of absence

” she needs you worse than me”

those were the words said to me in the midst of a break up between two friends.

So, I spent 3 years being a friend to my friend. And we have had an amazing friendship, with a million laughs. I am thankful for her and all that we have. That never ever changes.

But my other friend, the one who spoke those words, disappeared. Into a life of love and a future that she thought would be forever. I was happy for her, and knew she would be ok.

She called me last weekend while i was out-of-town in the middle of nowhere. I knew when i saw her name on my phone that there must be a reason. When I was back in a world with 3g coverage and a few bars of signal, I called her. we talked. her forever has changed. we made plans for beer.

Tonight I hugged her skinny, you need to eat a cheese burger neck. And we drank a beer. Or 4. or 5. And for 4 hours we didn’t shut up. We laughed. We high-fived. We remembered all the  reasons we were friends. And I put my foot down. An absence of a 3 year magnitude will  not ever happen again. ever. my foot is down.

It’s amazing the people who occupy your life. And the times that they occupy it. If i think hard enough, I remember grade school, middle school, puffy parachute pants,  blue tennis shoes,  dances in the gym,  softball games, first kisses, first loves, first fights and tears, notes, car rides, proms, graduations, wedding and divorces… after  25 years of that its easy to  ease back in to a perfect friendship in one hug and a “how the hell have you been”. With this one it’s easy. It always was. And probably always will be.

The past week has been full of old friends, family and love. I have wallowed in every second of it. And my soul is at peace in a way it hasn’t been in so very. very long. I can’t explain the perfect silence that fills my heart. It’s good. And I am going to enjoy it while it last. I hope to enjoy it for a long long time. There is still some uneasy there. Some consideration to what i want in my life. some questions of jumping in and letting my walls crumble. Some little cocooned butterflies wanting to escape and do circles in my belly. But over all the settled feeling is solid.

The laughter that fills a friends eyes, the hurt that sits behind that laughter. I know her. As well as I know me. (We’ve met.) Nothing tops knowing that from this point forward I have a friend back in my life. for good.

-m

my butterflies are dead

My friend asked “does he gives you butterflies?”

I said “no, only because I think all my butterflies are dead. They live behind this gigantic, huge, jaded wall, that is broken and cracked, that has burned down and been built up again. It’s ugly and tall and I don’t think butterflies want to live there.”

She laughed until she had tears in her eyes.

I love my friends.

Because they get me.

(Somewhere in me a cocoon stirs. trying to open and let a butterfly out.)

-m

A Shooting star and a 3am post

I had a pretty amazing day with my cousin at the pumpkin patch. More soon about that.

I had a wonderful time hanging with friends and cheering bama on to another win. This one without Tebow tears.

I fought through a headache and drank coke in a bar to see a crazy band and laugh at weird movies on the tv with an old friend.

It’s amazing the things you notice when you are sober in a room full of drunk people. It’s funny to hear the bathroom banter of drunk girls talking about their extensions. It’s nice to catch the stares of boys who are too chicken or too smart to say hi. It’s sometimes awkward when they do.

I am up way too late blogging from my phone. Only because I wanted to get it out and didn’t feel like fighting with the wireless connection on my laptop.

I saw a shooting star tonight. It really brought up some weird old emotions in me. Which caused me to want to write. So I came home and started scribbling out words.

This is one of the scribbles. It’s pretty typical of my brain and thought process.

Shooting star
Catches me off guard 
I gasp
Mouth open 
In a half grin
Half amazement
Mind racing through
A hundred thoughts
A thousand half wishes
Never settling on one I can commit to

I am going to scribble some more. Then sleep. I have family and my puppies to go see later today!
Goodnight/good morning
-m

someone call the psych ward. get my room ready.

(I am posting this. Against my own will. What is this blog for, if not to put myself out there in all emotional states? Please don’t be harsh… and don’t call the little men in white coats. I am not totally bananas.)

________________________________________________________________________________________

why is dating so weird?

When did it get weird?

I remember my 1st boyfriend. His name was Michael. He kissed me in a gigantic tire on the playground. We were 4? 5?

I remember my 2nd boyfriend. He was deaf. I was the only kid in the class that could talk to him using the little bit of sign language my mom had taught me. We were 6?

I remember a little boy in 1st grade that told me in the lunch room that he was going to marry me and I was going to have his babies. We were friends all the way through graduation. High school graduation. I had a crush on him the entire 12 years.

I remember when it was “you like me, I like you.” Then all of a sudden you were “going together”. Though you were 10, 11, 12,13 and couldn’t actually GO anywhere. Maybe a football game. Where you walked around and never actually watched any football. You wrote notes. Hundreds of them. Stupid notes that meant nothing. But you kept them forever in a tin can in your room. Just in case you got married later so you could have them. You throw the notes away. But you forever remember the boy. You might even “friend” him later on something that wasn’t even invented when you kissed him after/before a football game.

Then you are 14, 15, 16 and it turns into more than hand holding and football games. You can actually go to the movies. (my dad took me and my boyfriend on our first date). Eventually one of you gets a car. You can go hang out after school. Go parking at the softball park that’s not been built yet. Drive yourself to the movies. Write each other notes. Hundreds of them. eventually you throw them away. Make eachother Birthday/Christmas presents. Spill grape juice in your spaghetti plate. fight, cry, make up, break up. Don’t speak.

17, 18, 19. Real love can happen here. It does happen here. A lot.  For a lot of people. It works for some, not for others. This is where you are formed. You learn love, you learn hurt, you learn trust and heart-break. You learn friendship. You work together, live together, love together. Or you live far away from each other, you think you can make it work. Time, age, distance and youth have it out for you. Or you love someone your parents don’t agree with and you have to hide it. How ever it happens, you have that first love. You write letters. You keep them in a shoebox. You should throw them away. But can’t and you hold on to them for too long. unopened. pointless. It ends. You cry for years.

20, 21 life slaps you in the face and you make bad choices. You use those bad choices to make better choices. You still make bad choices.

 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28 you date. you fall in love. you forget all the other love you thought you knew. you get married. have a family. take care of bills and houses and dogs and cats and hamsters and kids and dying mothers. things are good. things are horrible. You dance in the kitchen. You have cookouts. You throw vegetables at the trampoline. You write notes, and cards, and letters, you text, you email, you spell stuff out in magnets on the fridge. You build a life. Then you let it fall down around you. You sign papers. You pack boxes. You question what to do with all that love. You tape it up in a box. To be opened later. When you can deal with it. If you can ever deal with it.

28, 29, 30. You think you have this shit figured out. You don’t. You let yourself trust and love. You get let down again.

You keep your head up. You look toward the future. You hope for the best. You jump in when it feels right. You end it when it doesn’t.

(I started this light-heartedly. Just wanting to get something out of my head and onto “paper” and this is not exactly what I expected from me.)

When did dating get weird? At 30. That’s when. Or maybe it’s just me. It’s me.

You meet. You like. You laugh. You start confessing baggage and current life issues within the 1st hour. Because what else is there to talk about?  My friend said something to the effect today while we were talking about this “hi my name is… I am 30,  I had chicken pox when I was 12, my favorite color is blue, I have been married 4 times, I take meds, I like dogs.”  That’s not exactly the quote, but her point was that it is no longer what dating was before. It’s less cutsey and more real. By the time she got to “I like dogs” I was crying from laughing so hard.

So it got weird at 30. For me. Probably because I am 30. And dating other 30+ year olds, with baggage as big, deep, beat-up and full of drama as my own.   We have so much baggage and past that comes with us at 30. You might as well lay it on the table, because it will end up there anyway. Better to get it out in the open so you can run screaming after then first date, and not after the 10th. I like it this way. It works for me. Maybe not for some. But for me.

I think why it’s harder when you are older is because, well, you are older. Time is ticking. When you were little, the “old” people always said “when you get old, time flies”. THEY WEREN’T LYING. The “older” I get, the more my dreams and goals are slipping away. The more I look up and it’s almost Christmas. Again. When you are in your 20′s you have time. Tons of it. And I know, even in my 30′s, I have time. Tons of it. But the clock is louder. It ticks faster and more irregular. It needs a little more attention to its gears.

I am not going to just settle for the 1st person who comes along. But I don’t want to pass someone by, who can make my life great, because I am too busy trying to make my dreams happen alone.

I have no idea where all this is going. Or where it was supposed to go.

This is what happens when I sit at home and think. I wish I could learn something from all the thinking I have had time to do. I convince myself I have it figured out. I convince myself I am ok alone. I am ok doing this shit by myself. (and I am ok.) I convince myself I don’t need anyone.  I don’t NEED anyone. But I can’t convince myself that I don’t WANT someone. I think I have it figured out.  Then maybe something comes a long and hits me upside the head. And I am put into this crazy tailspin all over again.

So. before someone calls the men in white coats on me, I guess I will shut up. I don’t even know if I can actually post this.

The rest of 30. There is not much of you left. I wonder what we will do together.

 31, 32, 33, 34… I have plans for you. They are in motion now. I have no idea how many times those plans will change. But I am in. For whatever happens.

-m

beautiful lie

 

It’s really hard to breath today

I don’t want to be 30.66666 and be where i am right now

thankfully regret does not rule my brain

but “what the hell am I supposed to do now” does bounce around quite a bit

always each experience

tucked away

for a rainy day of reflection

recently every day is that rainy day

aware that this stems from

the joy of being  female

irritated by the sound of everything

each beep, each phone ring, each shuffle of a paper

just leave me be

and hold me

while telling me how beautiful I am

whisper a beautiful lie

about forever and tomorrow and today

-m

*I am posting this because today Shutterboo reminded me to “Be Real”. The need to express myself in this manner is heavy on me today. So I typed. I have years and years of notebooks full of words. I read them sometimes and wonder where my vocabulary vanished to. Those notebooks remind me how therapeutic putting something on paper can be. The difference is, this isn’t a notebook stashed in a drawer. This is here for you and everyone to read. I am not a “my life is puppies and unicorns and I shit rainbows” kind of person, as Brooke put it, but I do like to keep things on a positive note.  Today, this is what I have. And I am sharing it.

the search continues

So.

I was buying a house.

I am no longer buying that house.

But I do get to pay money for the inspection of said house that I am not buying.

Nothing like throwing away some money and a dream.

My little heart was set on that little house.

It’s going to take a bit to get over it and find another.

My little heart has been set on a lot of things before that I had to let go of and “get over.”

“Get over” is so much easier said then done.

I am a pretty strong individual. And on the outside it looks like I have it together and I am not hurt.

I do not have it together. And I am hurt.

I surround myself with people.

People who make me laugh, cry, smile, sing and dance.

Those people amaze me with their love.

Those people also keep me out too late on a “school night”.

I am not an uncertain person.

But I am a good person.

To have an uncertain future is uncomfortable.

Living out of my suitcase, not knowing, is making me crazy.

So.

The search continues.

For a home, a life, a love.

For me.

-m