Man Pack Rat

Today, as I dragged an email to one of the many folders I have segmenting my inbox, I noticed that there’s still a “Sent to Mike” file lingering in there like old yogurt in the fridge. He is the ex who cheated, and a person who hasn’t been in my life since last July.

“I should delete the folder,” I thought.

But I couldn’t.

I don’t know whether I’m afraid of losing a chunk of my history. Or needing to go back to the folder and floundering when I find it absent. I’m not sure what my hang-up is.

I have “ex boxes” stuffed away in dark corners of my apartment, too. For a long time, one held pictures, poetry, a crusty rose and even the toothbrush of a short-lived ex. Eventually I whittled its contents down to photos alone…but again, I can’t bear to just get rid of the box. Because it might mean that the love affair connected to it never happened.

Somewhere inside, I think my children or my nieces will find my old relics after I’m dead and be fascinated by my life. But maybe I’m the only person who is—and ever will be—interested in all my stories. Journals alone don’t seem like enough…

Am I crazy? I need to delete the “Mike” file, don’t I?

Sorting through the Guilt

Having a close family is one of the greatest gifts anyone can ever receive. No one sticks by you like your family. No one is willing to help you out—whether you need your tire changed or advice on what career path to follow—like they are. They are your people in a way that most others can never be.

However, every rose has its sticker. And the pokey part of close families is that they like being just that: close. The idea of moving away is not a welcome one.

I had a dream—after writing my last blog—that my Grandma P. was alive and I left her birthday party to go do freelance work. Just like in reality, I put my life and my busy schedule ahead of my family. This is how I operate. They live near me, so I know I will see them eventually—and therefore, I don’t usually make time for them unless we have a date set on the calendar. My parents have taken to giving me the old “who’s this stranger?!” greeting when I show up at their house. And apparently, my subconscious is feeling very guilty about that.

So if these twinges of guilt can exist when one lives 5-45 minutes from the majority of her family, what sorts of ill feelings surface when she moves to another state or, God forbid, another country? I’m afraid the guilt might kill me.

And I’m afraid because there is a large part of me that wants to move away; experience new things; be somewhere unfamiliar after spending my first three decades in one place. This is exacerbated by a boyfriend who has Travel in his very core. He is not tethered to a family. They are spread out and he doesn’t grapple with guilt when he goes without seeing them for a year. He eats up the idea of living in an apartment in Paris or a villa in Tuscany. And there is a large part of me that wants to remove the screen around my fire and let him stoke it until it sprawls the hills and ends up in Europe.

But oh, the guilt.

I cannot even imagine how a move like that would be regarded. I would become known as the one who forever fractured the family unit.

So what do I do—try to develop sleeker feathers that allow the shame to slide right off? Force the man of my dreams to stay put (when I don’t even know whether I want to stay put) and then feel guilty for holding him back? Or is this some sort of deal breaking sign? That if he really were the perfect person for me, we’d be completely on the same page about all this stuff?

Birthday Girls

Today is my grandmas’ birthdays. Two years apart, they were born on the same day—although, they could not be more different.

Grandma P. grew up an only child. She was adopted by a wealthy real estate developer and his wife, and lived a privileged life, complete with fancy cars and clothes, a billiard parlor—even a wine cellar in the basement. She married Grandpa after about three weeks (or was it three months…?) of dating and tried for a very long time to have a baby. After two miscarriages and a newborn who passed away after coming home from the hospital, she finally got pregnant with my mom. A few years later, my uncle followed, and Grandma had the nuclear family she had always dreamed of. Always the lady, she wouldn’t leave the house without lipstick and earrings. She was feisty and opinionated, and a lover of tradition and everything beautiful.

Grandma H. grew up with twin brothers, and a mother and father who owned a jewelry shop. I remember her telling me that for Christmas she and her siblings usually got a book or a toy and an orange. The first time she received a paycheck, she used it to buy a watchband-like gold bracelet—which she gave to me when I was in junior high. Unlike Grandma P., she didn’t have to struggle to get pregnant. In fact, she had a shotgun wedding in her twenties after accidentally conceiving my uncle. My dad followed, and Grandma found herself running a household of men—which she did surprisingly well. This could’ve been partly because of her fantastic sense of humor. Grandma H. was known for pulling us kids aside at family gatherings to tell us dirty jokes. She was crass and easy-going, yet sensitive and fragile.

Despite any differences in lifestyles they led and opinions they held, my grandmas were dear, dear friends for over 40 years.

I was fortunate enough to inherit some of the best qualities of each. Grandma P.’s legs, outspoken nature and love of connection and communication. Grandma H.’s unwavering sense of humor, wild streak and easygoing-ness.

I think about these two lovely ladies all the time. Since both of my grandpas passed away before them, they became my single cohorts on holidays and at family dinners. Sometimes now, when I’m driving alone, I pretend the two of them are in my backseat and we’re heading out for a girls’ day somewhere. I can’t wait to see them again someday, hear the latest gossip from Grandma P. and a great nasty joke from Grandma H.

I’m sure they’re together somewhere right now, celebrating their birthdays with the pomp and circumstance they deserve, my grandpas and aunts and uncles by their sides, waiting for all of us to arrive and join in the party.

'Cause I'm a B-L-O-N-D

"You want a discount?" Rico Suave asked this afternoon, eyeing me up and down from behind the counter at Sport Chalet.

I assumed he was going to try to sell me on a store credit card. "These are already on sale, I don't need one," I politely declined.

"You a real blond?" he said. Which, now that I type it, makes me think he was being dirty and wondering if the carpet matched the drapes...if ya know what I'm sayin'...

"Yes," I answered. "It's darker than it was when I was a kid, so I highlight it. But it's real."

He looked to be Middle Eastern, with dark, curly hair and a tiny moustache and trimmed beard. "You a real brunette?" I shot back at him.

"Black, you mean, not brunette," he corrected me.

What do you call someone with black hair? Yellow hair is blond, brown hair is brunette, red heads are...well, red heads—does that mean I have to call someone a black head if they have charcoal hair? That just doesn't seem right...

Anyway, next he threw out, "Men find blonds very appealing, you know..."

I wasn't about to engage this guy and say something like, "Romeo, do you find me very appealing?" So instead I asked the next logical question that came to mind: "Is that because we're supposed to be stupid?"

That was the end of the conversation.

Worth the Wait

I met a friend—my old art director partner—for dinner last night. Well, I had dinner. She had eaten beforehand and was supposed to just have a drink. A glass of Chardonnay, I thought. But when she walked into the restaurant and sat down, she ordered water with lemon.

“Were you boozing at your work party this afternoon?” I teased.

“No, I’m not drinking.”

“What?”

My friend and her husband were never on the fast track. They dated for 10 years before getting married in 2005, and have been volleying the kids idea around since then. Being the pain-in-the-butt friend I am, I ask her—every time I see her—whether they’ve made a decision. I thought the closest they’d gotten to entertaining the idea was buying a dog last year.

“I’m five months along,” she said.

I couldn’t believe it. I started to cry. I was so pleasantly shocked and overjoyed that she and her hubby had reached their point of readiness. Had they gotten pregnant right away, I don’t think I would’ve been as overwhelmed by emotion.

I’ve been realizing this a lot lately: That good things are even better
when you wait.

Ever the late bloomer, and always the last to do everything (get my period, get a boyfriend, lose my virginity, ah yes and now, get married) I’ve gotten accustomed to waiting for things. But up until recently I’ve always felt impatient. It was as though life was a To Do list and I was just trying to hustle my way through it and check everything off.

But I see now, that things seem to mean more when I slow down and allow myself to get ready for them; enjoy everything leading up to them; savor them when they arrive. It’s not about the end product, it’s about the process. Seems like a complete no-brainer but I don’t think I used to understand this.

Before Mr. W and I said the L-word, I remember thinking that I should embrace the time without it. Even though I wanted to hear it so badly, I knew that someday we would say it as though it meant nothing (okay, not nothing, but you know what I mean). So I tried to enjoy that anticipation and the physical ways it showed up before it was actually said.

People are now starting to ask me about the M-word, and as much as I want to indulge the fantasy and start looking online for ring settings and gown designs, I know that if I just relax and relish the moments we have, an engagement, a wedding, and a family will be so much sweeter.

The present moment is a great place to be. And if I can be patient, I know beyond a doubt, that everything ahead of it will be worth the wait.

Congratulations to my friend J on the impending birth of her
little baby girl!

Elevuuuun Hours

Remember the great scene in Spinal Tap where they talk about turning the amp to eleven? If my weekend were an amp, I would have liked to turn it down to one. Because my "eleven" this weekend was eleven hours spent working on a freelance project.

It’s rare (like I haven’t actually done any in ohh 3 years, I think) for me to take on work outside of my day job. I LOVE my free time and usually the money just isn’t worth giving up a couple hours at the movies or a run at the beach. But this time, when the opportunity came up to make some fat cash, I thought about my credit card bill. And my nest egg. And my hypothetical trip to Italy. And I felt like I couldn’t say no.

So 3.5 hours Friday night, 4 hours Saturday, and another 3.5 Sunday night were spent staring at my computer screen as I edited 43 documents. Thankfully, I gave my eyes a rest Saturday evening when I went to see Tropic Thunder (some chokingly, gut-wrenchingly hilarious parts in it, btw) and visited Bottle Rock for some much needed vino.

But last night, I literally dreamed I was staring at my computer screen. I kept tossing and turning because, in my mind, I was still proofreading and editing. And this morning, I was exhausted. There’s nothing worse than thinking about work during the one time you really shouldn’t be.

Anybody else ever had this happen?

Moving of the Toothbrush

I have issues with toothbrushes. The way they show up in your bathroom when you start dating someone and then linger there after you and that person have parted ways. I don’t like throwing them out. I don’t like keeping them around. I don’t like seeing my single toothbrush alone in the holder after I’ve disposed of an ex’s.

Last Christmas, my parents bought me an electric toothbrush. This does provide a dazzling and technologically advanced distraction, however I still keep a regular one in my medicine cabinet, and I still look at it every day, standing steadfast at its post.

When Mr. Wonderful and I began dating, and he started spending enough time over here to need his own dental care items, I decided to do the cautious thing and place his brush on the third shelf of the cabinet. That way, I wouldn’t associate it with my own brush, and miss it if it ever needed to be scraped along the lip of my toilet, torched and pitched into the trashcan.

It’s been perched up there since November, balanced carefully on a box of teeth bleaching gel, waiting patiently to be relocated to the porcelain cup on the bottom shelf.

Well, I don’t know whether it was the fact that I had a new box of Imodium to store on shelf three—or maybe Mr. W’s charming use of no-no hole—but this morning I moved his toothbrush down next to mine.

Yes, it’s a big risk. But I’m willing to take it and be hopeful that the only reason his brush will disappear is because he’s upgrading it to a new one. Or all his teeth have fallen out.