Life Under Construction

Archive for the ‘Experiences & Stories’ Category

One of the things I heard most often as a small child was “Take your sister and go play outside.  And stay out of The Gravel Pit.”

Of course that’s right where we headed.

In the way back of our backyard at The Gray House was a hill you could drive a car down that led straight to The Gravel Pit.  Almost at the bottom of the hill there was a little path through the woods that led to The Old Oak Tree (basically just an old tree that had fallen down that we claimed as a fort), so Alli and I would veer right down that path to go to The Old Oak Tree just in case.  I mean, you couldn’t see the path or The Old Oak Tree from the house but we were kids and being overcautious.  We didn’t want to get in trouble!  Alli and I usually climbed on the fallen tree (that wasn’t really an oak tree, but how were we supposed to know that?) and sat for what we deemed was an appropriate amount of time in case mommy came looking for us, then we’d sneak the remaining twenty feet or so to the edge of The Gravel Pit and run around the very edge to another path we’d discovered toward the very back.  It was a weird place we found, and we got in trouble one time because we definitely couldn’t hear anyone calling for us from there, but we liked it.  There was a discarded mattress we could jump on without getting in trouble.  There were some old baseball cards (my favorite was a Darryl Strawberry – I didn’t know anything about baseball at the time except that my dad said Rocket Roger was the best pitcher and Wade Boggs had a hole in his glove – and I really liked strawberries….) we’d look at and it was just our extra special secret place.

There was an unspoken code of honor when Alli and I were kids.  The I won’t tell if you won’t code.  And even then if one of us slipped up and told on the other, the offended party wouldn’t retaliate.  Because to retaliate would mean that we probably got into MORE trouble with the grownups, and if there was anything we understood as children it was that we had to stick together.  We understood what it meant to get in trouble, and we understood what we had to do to keep each other and ourselves OUT of trouble.

As we’ve gotten older that code has sort of dissolved.  I’m still the big sister, the protective one (the enabler).  But instead of being my partner in crime, Alli has taken another path through the woods so-to-speak.  She’s on some super secret path of her own that I can’t see ever going down, and our only interaction is when she reaches out because she wants something or needs something.  Do we adventure anymore?  No.  Not together, at least.  Our friendship, like our partnership, has started to dissolve over time.

The Old Oak Tree is crumbling and breaking and decayed.  The secret path to the discarded mattress and our super secret hideout is no longer discernible through the forest.  And Alli and I can’t rely on each other the way we used to.  Sometimes growing up is no fun.

But no matter what happens, I’ll always always always love my little sister.

It seems like everyone is moving these days, doesn’t it?

Back in 2003 I moved to South Carolina to be with a boy I’d only known for 8 months.  A boy named Josh who, after less than five months together, asked me to marry him.  I’m pretty sure people in my family were taking bets on how long I’d stay down there.  The move lasted a whole 5 months before I called my dad and asked him to come get me, which he promptly did.  Needless to say, Josh and I never got married.

I was impetuous.  I didn’t think everything though before I said yes to moving 1′000 miles away.  I didn’t think anything through, for that matter.  I agreed as if I had nothing to tie me down, nothing to hold me back.  In all actuality I think I just wanted to run away, and he simply presented me with the opportunity.  I didn’t realize at the time how much I still needed my family.  I didn’t realize at the time that the things I did could have the kind of consequences they’ve had.  I only thought about what I was doing, and not about what would happen down the line.

It’s been nearly 6 years since I moved back home from South Carolina, and I’m going to be moving again.  But this time?  This time I’ve weighed all my options.  I’ve taken all of the important things into account (and a whole lot of unimportant things, too) in making my decision.  Sure, there are some loose ends to tie up but I know I’m moving this time for the right reasons.  I’m not running away from anyone or anything.  I’m running to someone.  And that makes all the difference in the world.

I’m going to tell you this story about how I hijacked a van when I was a wee child, somewhere around ripe old the age of 5 or 6.

Not to be confused with the time that same year I had decided to see what smoking a cigarette was like when my mom left one burning in the ashtray of the old blue Chevette in the driveway at The Gray House to run back into the house to grab something, and thought I would die but hid my discomfort because I didn’t want to get in trouble as she came back out and got in the car to take me to I Don’t Remember Where.  Yeah.  Not to be confused with that day.

We were in the van – I don’t remember who’s van it was – in the driveway of my grandparents’ new house (( at least I’m pretty sure that’s where we were… I think… )) with both of my sisters, Alli and Sarah, and our cousin Jerin.  I don’t know how I got the notion in my head that pulling the lever next to the steering wheel was a good idea (( come to think of it now, there might have been a lit cigarette involved here, too )), but I did it and suddenly we were in what I now know to be ‘neutral’ and the van was slowly rolling backwards.

Toward the street.

I was crying in the front seat while Sarah and Jerin were panicking, and Alli was “reading” a Winnie The Pooh or Where’s Waldo? book – completely oblivious to what was going on the entire time.

Where were the grown ups, you ask?  And why were we children often left unattended in vehicles?  Well, I’ll tell you.

It was the late 80’s.  There were no rules about leaving children or pets unattended in vehicles for any period of time (( or wearing seat belts, for that matter )).  I mean really, how much trouble could 4 kids aged 11 and under get into while waiting in a van in the driveway?

Quite a bit, the grown ups learned, as my uncle ran around the back of the van to try and stop it from rolling into the road.  I’m pretty sure Sarah jumped out too and was trying to help him, but I was in full on panic mode by that point (( what can I say, I started early )) and all I remember from between fits of sobs is that a) Alli in all her 4 year old glory was still oblivious to what was going on, and 2) I was terrified that my sister and uncle were getting sucked under a gigantic moving vehicle and it was all my fault.

Oh, and I think the front driver side door was open beside me.

That’s a lot for a small child.

It’s what I feel for the BlackBerry.

I’m blaming Sarah, because she’s been talking about getting a new cell phone for a while now and when I said “Maybe I’ll get a new cell phone too!” she said “You can give your old one to Daddy!”.  Well… that sealed the deal.  If I can do something nice for my dad, I’m on board.

That afternoon I drove on over to the AT&T store and bought a new BlackBerry Curve 8520.  Everyone I know that owns a BlackBerry LOVES it, so I was destined to love it as well.  Or so I thought…

It wasn’t even in my possession for 24 hours and still I hate it more than I hate all the people I dislike in the world put together.  INCLUDING TONI BRAXTON.

I hated the texting.
I hated the five billion icons in the menu.
I hated how hard it was to change settings.
I hated how small it felt on my face when I was talking on it.
I hated the mobile web.
I hated the FaceBook app.
I couldn’t find a single thing about it that I liked.

I was freaking out.

Less than five hours after owning it I wanted to smash it with a hammer and watch shards of it scatter all over my room.  I couldn’t get to sleep that night because of how much I hated it.  I was so anxious about it.  Did I want an iPhone instead?  Did I really hate the iPhone when I had it?  Rugby or iPhone?  What if they didn’t have a Samsung Rugby when I went to return the BlackBerry?  What if they had them, but only in yellow?  I hate the yellow!  I wanted the black!  Would I rather keep the BlackBerry than get a yellow Rugby?  If I had to get a yellow one, would my dad trade me my old phone back to me for the new one?

‘Separation anxiety’, anyone?

Of course all that worrying was pointless (it often is, after the fact).  I drove to Groton because it was the closest place with a black Rugby (I wasn’t about to wait 3 more days for them to get one delivered in town), and I didn’t like the new one either so I went to my dad’s and traded the new one for the old one.  And now we’re all happy.  Daddy has a brand new phone, I have my beloved Rugby back, the BlackBerry is forever (FOREVER) gone from my life, and no one has to listen to me complain about it anymore.

I had planned to share something else with you today, but after the BlackBerry incident I felt I needed to get that out of my system first.

How was your weekend?
What kind of phone do you have?
Does anything keep you up at night?

I am going to be an awesome wife, thanks to Sarah.

No, really.  If Sarah was married she’d be the best wife ever.  But since she isn’t married yet I get to take the Wife With The Most Skillz Ever medal.  She gives me all the good ideas.

This here is me.  You see… I was sweeping the hallway outside our apartment door and there is a lot of salt and ice melt and dust out there.  And it was getting all up in my nose.

Gross.

So I whined to Sarah.  “I wish I had a mask.”  And she said the smartest thing ever (she’s always saying the smartest thing ever, you know).  She said “Why don’t you wrap your scarf around your face?”

People, my sister is the smartest.  And when I move away, I’m going to be calling her every other day (at least).  You can bet your fortune on that.  And that way I’ll seem smart to everyone.  I mean everyone except her, because she’ll know the truth.  She knows me so well.

Because you know what else?  After wrapping the scarf around my face, she told me to get my camera so we could take a picture.  Because I was going to want to blog about it later.  She just knows me.

I got this idea from Shauna’s blog a couple weeks ago and thought I’d do the same thing.  You know, only with my things instead of hers, though hers are much funnier and more interesting.

THINGS

• I do not like pets.  I do not want to own pets of any kind.  Not dogs or cats, nothing with fur or scales.  Nothing that requires regular care but won’t outlive me.  Children = yes plz.  Pets = big fat no.
• My mother told me that she wanted a boy, and if I had been a boy my name as going to be Christopher.
• She also told me once that I was an accident, and that before I was born she always had at least $60 in her pocket on any given day of the week.  In light of this new information (given to me at some point before my mother got pregnant with my brother and after my parent’s had gotten married), I realized that my parents probably got married because they had two kids together and it seemed the right thing to do at the time.
• When I was in the first grade, my first crush was on a boy in my class.  I loved dinosaurs and I used to take books on dinosaurs out of the library every week.  When I found out he liked them too, I traced a picture of the Tyrannosaurus Rex out of one of the books and gave it to him.  He didn’t like me back and thought I was weird.
• When The Little Mermaid first came out, I wanted to marry Prince Eric, and I pretended to be Ariel in the bath tub.  Sometimes I still pretend I’m Ariel in the swimming pool.  I guess I’m still weird.
• My first high school crush was on a gay boy.
• So was my second.
• In high school I was in the Drama club.  I performed in Cabaret, Pippin, Charlotte’s Web, Go Ask Alice, and a few others.  For me it was the best part of high school, making friends, learning lines (what little lines I had), wearing costumes (except for that horrible real fur coat I had to wear in Auntie Mame…), and being part of something.  I loved the way my heart pounded, the rush of getting it just right.  Oddly enough, these days I get stage fright whenever someone asks me a question I’m not prepared for.  I like to rehearse everything in my head before it happens.
• My right leg is longer than my left leg and my right hip is higher than my left one is, probably to compensate.
• I used to pick my nose and eat it.  For a long time.  That was probably the toughest habit to break ever, and so I compromised with myself.  I still pick my nose, I just don’t eat it.  And don’t even pretend like you’ve never picked your nose before.
• I smell everything.
• I’m terribly afraid of alligators.  Like… really afraid.  Irrationally afraid.  I live in Rhode Island, where the only alligators you’ll find are in the zoo, and they might not even be there (I haven’t gone since I was in elementary school).  Sometimes I think they’re out to get me, alligators, even when I’m in broad daylight and there’s no sign of water anywhere around and nothing for them to hide behind.  Everything about them frightens me, but at the same time I think they’re beautiful and I’m fascinated by them.
• I’m afraid of the ocean.
• Growing up, I never knew what I wanted to be.  As a small child I wanted to be normal things, like a paleontologist (the dinosaur thing, remember?), or a singer (I loved Madonna), or a back-yard-in-the-mud-maze-builder.  But once I hit the 2nd grade I developed this lazy view of life, and my aspirations were (and still are most of the time) very short term.  Pass a test, sleep through the night, make it through the day without crying.  Now, as a small adult (lolz), I still don’t know what I want to be… but if ‘happy’ is an acceptable answer, then I want to be happy.
• I’m extremely sensitive and easily offended, but not about the kinds of things people usually get upset about.  It usually comes out of left field, even for me.  I can go from passive to the super defensive OMGATTACKMODERIGHTNOWZLOOKOUT!11! in about .0000001 seconds.  Srsly.
• I read most of my own blogs about ten (thousand) times after I post them.  I love my own writing.  It’s kind of sick, really.  This one in particular?  I’ve probably read it more like a hundred (million) times.  And counting.
• I. Hate. Ground. Beef.  It grosses me out.  Therefor I do not eat things like lasagna or Hamburger Helper or meatloaf or meatballs or burgers.

…

Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Challenge:
December 1 Trip. What was your best trip in 2009?

Best trip this year was the first trip down to Mississippi.  I got to go to Drew’s wedding and meet his wife, I got to spend time with Walter for the first time in almost 3 years, and I wore a dress or skirt almost every day that trip.

Maven posted a blog earlier this week titled Maven and The Case of the Peeping Tom turned Homicidal Maniac, and the comment I was about to leave was entirely too good to be a comment for just Maven to read.  So I decided to blog it here instead.  It’s so good, I want everyone to read it.

Read Maven’s blog here to get where I’m coming from with this.  She is the master of awesome.

…

I am the leaper afraid of the toe monster under the bed.  You know, the one with the sharp teeth and scary claws that you’re sure is going to take a swipe for your footsies?  Once the lights go out, I’m all knees and elbows trying to get into my bed.  I’ll destroy anyone’s limbs or face if it’s in the way of my scramble for safety (because blankets are the perfect picture of safety, right?).  I blame my mother for chasing me with the vacuum on several occasions during the course of my childhood.

In fact, if I’m ever being chased by anyone or anything, I run like the hounds of Hell are on my heels and my toes are going to get swallowed forever.  For similar reasons, I also don’t like when people are walking behind me.  If I’m with a group of people, you can bet your ass I’m one of the ones in the back of the group while we walk.  At work I have a mirror positioned just right against my window so that I can see anyone walking into or by my cubicle.

I’m not sure if I have any “secret” fears, but I do have some that make me act quite… irrational I guess you could say.

It’s happened a few times that I’ve been convinced my house was being robbed and I was going to have to defend myself (most likely has nothing to do with the fact that one time I was robbed, and probably everything to do with my paranoia and active imagination and anxiety).

When I was living in my grandmother’s house I kept a dagger in my bedroom.  A real one.  Ornate and sharp.  If anyone asked me about it I could say ‘oh this old thing?’ and tell them it was just decorative.  Well, this one time in particular, probably about three years ago now (shutup), Alli and I were in our bedroom in the basement at our respective computers, where we always were (always).  We were just sitting there doing our gaming thing when we heard someone come in the house.

Everyone else was at work or school, and it wasn’t time for them to be home yet.

This someone was walking around kind of slow.  Having lived in the basement for quite some years we had each developed this really precise knack for knowing exactly who’s footsteps we were hearing.

(Come to think of it now, it’s really more of a science or an art what we’d developed over the years.  But anyway…)

This one, we knew right away, was one set of footsteps that shouldn’t be in our house.

It was a man.  It wasn’t any man that was supposed to be in the house.  Instantly we’re both in full on panic mode.  We thought we would be able to hide in our super secret basement bedroom until this stranger left, because the back door makes far too much noise for us to leave unnoticed.

Living together for more than two decades, we’d learned to communicate with our eyes.  Sort of.

Silently we each grabbed some kind of weapon, just in case, you know?  There was always a weapon handy in case of emergencies like this.  Since my dagger was all the way on the other side of my room I picked up this bow and arrow set from when I was a kid that was actually pretty dangerous (way more dangerous than any toy you can get these days) and Alli grabbed the piece of the refrigerator that was on the floor on her side of the room (don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to).  The door at the top of the stairs opened, and in a state of fierce confidence that can only come from utter terror, we waited behind our door as the footsteps came down the stairs.  We counted in our heads.  13 steps in total to reach the bottom.  Just before the footsteps reached the basement floor, we whipped open the door and prepared to assault…  my mother’s boyfriend.

The poor guy.  And we thought we were scared!  Imagine you’re doing a simple favor for your girlfriend only to find yourself an inch away from getting assaulted with a deadly missile weapon and part of an old refrigerator.  By these two weirdos…

This is a story I’ll be telling my grandchildren.  It’ll be one of those ‘beware or you’ll end up like granny’ stories.  I just know it!

I woke up wicked early yesterday morning, and all was quiet in the house.  I was feeling anxious after the stressful dream I’d had and I couldn’t get back to sleep.  I tried, I tossed and turned, and finally decided that I’d sleep better if I peed.  So I did.  And the clock said 6:45, so I then decided to check to see if Sarah was awake yet because if I went back to bed I would just wonder and that would keep me up.  She was awake.  And John was sitting in the chair by the living room window.

He was just sitting there, looking out.  So I sat next to him, said good morning, and he leaned against me, resting his head on my neck.  I whispered “you my best friend” and he snuggled even closer.  I thought it was so sweet how he was quiet and tired, that post-dreaming awakeness, just watching the morning world go by.  And then I realized, before he spoke, that he was watching the lights.

Stupid me, I should have known.

“Auntie Jammy, yoooouuu-yoooouuuu sit here with me, and watch the lights turn off with me?” he asked me.  He was grinning, droopy eyes grinning and content.

How could I say no to that?  So I settled in and let him rest against me as he pointed out which ones would go off first.  “Over that one” he pointed.  Sure enough, when they started to go off, that one was first.  I didn’t stay to watch the rest of them.  He had to eat breakfast and get ready for school, and I wanted to try and get some more, better sleep before I had to get up for work.

But it felt good.  It felt peaceful and good.  That’s my happy thought for today.

For a great, informative read, check out Walter’s latest blog:  The heart matters in the matters of the heart.

You know how sometimes you can just be going about your business, daily routine or what have you, and you breathe, and in an instant you catch scent of something that takes you back?  It could be months ago that you’re remembering, or it could be years ago.  Something you’d forgotten ever happened to you, because life keeps moving forward and giving you new things to think about.

That’s exactly what happened to me as I was getting ready for work this morning.  I smelled it, that something to take me back.  It was citrus and clean smelling, like soap and fragrance, but a mixture I hadn’t smelled in probably 12 years.  Immediately I was in the 8th grade again, racing up to dinner from Lindsey Greene’s basement after watching Star Wars, our hair all done up Princess Leia style, and jumping from pillow to pillow to sleeping bag as if the basement floor was lava.  In that instant I remembered the fun, I remembered her and her family.

It felt… magical.  Magical and kind of sad.

She was my new best friend, and every time we slept at each others houses we watched Star Wars.  Our love of all things Star Wars is what brought us together.  We shared books, magazines, pretended we were characters from the movies.  I was always begging my mom to let me sleep at her house, or to let her sleep over mine.

Not long after 9th grade started, in the confusion of our first year in high school, her family made the decision to move.  To Virginia.

You know how, when someone you care about is upset, even if you’re upset you’ll say and do things to make them feel better?  That’s been my secondary mode all my life.

The day she told me she was moving I was devastated, but I thought it must be harder on her so I didn’t let it show.  I found out about it through my other friend, who knew before I did (which in itself kind of hurt).  I couldn’t tell her I knew when she told me outside in the parking lot, on my way to or from the bus or chorus class or whatever, because I didn’t want to tattle on the friend who had already warned me when she was only looking out for me.  But looking back on it, I think Lindsey waited to tell me she was moving until the last possible minute because she didn’t know how I’d react.  And within a week she was gone.

We wrote letters.  For a couple years we wrote back and forth about Star Wars, about school, and boys, and slowly the letters just stopped.  Isn’t that the way with things?  Life happens and you just… move on.  I think about her every now and then, but this morning it hit me like a wave of remembering, and I’ve been thinking about what I miss.  I don’t know where she is, or even who she is anymore, but I hope she’s happy.  I hope her family is healthy and happy, and that she’s got everything she ever wanted out of life.

I just want to play this video for you, because if Walter and I had had a big ceremony with family and food and a DJ and dancing and all that, this probably would have been our wedding song.

Now, after having watched that lovely video (plz, that movie is so awesome!) I’ll tell you a little bit more about my wedding day.

‘Cause I know if I don’t, I’ll probably get beat up.

Walter has so kindly shared what he experienced (sort of) in his blog this morning, I think like a Jellyfish.  Please.  Go read it if you haven’t already.

*****

So people have been asking me what happened, as if my getting married was a surprise to them.  I didn’t see it as a surprise because, to me, it’s been a long time coming.

Walter has been my best friend since some point in 2005.  I can’t pinpoint the day, but for a long time not a day went by where we didn’t talk on the phone for hours.

• Falling asleep on the phone?  Check
• Webcam chat induced giggles?  Check
• Paying literally hundreds of dollars to Sprint twice a month because I went over my minutes?  Check
• Not getting enough sleep at night because I was on the phone long after I should have been asleep?  Check

I’m pretty sure that everyone in the online community we were a part (yay Illarion!) of was either convinced we were dating, or that we would be eventually.

When I told Kenneth that Walter and I were getting married, he said “I always wondered why you dated other people with him around“.  I replied with “Yeah… I always wondered that myself.“.

So anyway, I met Walter online.  Not through some dating site, but through playing an MMORPG in 2004.  I’m sure I’ve told people that before, that I met my best friend online.

YES.  Dork that I am, I met my husband in the nerdiest way possible.  And I’m proud.

In 2005 he came to RI to visit Alli and I on his Memorial Day 3 day weekend from AIT in Oklahoma.

In 2006 I went to MS to visit him.  I met his family, his friends, fell in love, and denied it.  I wanted more than anything in the world to stay right where I was, in Mississippi, with my best friend.  I’m not going to go through all the details of that visit, because three of us (Walter, Ben, and I) were utterly brokenhearted when I left and I’d rather not relive that.

For the last five years, since I met Walter, I’ve been dating and dating other guys.  I liked them, even loved a couple of them, but they never worked out.  He says I’ve dated half the state of Rhode Island (what does he know?).  I’ve unintentionally had boyfriends jealous and suspicious of Walter for years.  And all that time, in this little part of the back of my brain, I imagined what it would be like to really marry him, instead of just joke about it.

And that brings us to about where we are.  He was leaving for Iraq and I couldn’t let him go without telling him how I really felt because… what if?  I’d just broken up with Sean and I wasn’t ready to be in a new relationship, but Walter wasn’t a new relationship.  He’s always been there.  It’s like we’ve been together forever, emotionally, and now we’ve just made it official.  It’s like this is where we were headed all along.

So we got married.  Neither of us wanted to wait until next year and he was already here.  So he called his mom, booked her a flight up here, took care of her hotel and flight costs since it was so spur of the moment, and we got married.  In my grandmother’s living room.  And then we went to dinner with our family, and went on our pre-honeymoon honeymoon to Boston.  And then he left to go back to Iraq.

People keep asking me, “How does it feel to be a married woman?”  I don’t know how it feels.  I mean… I know how I’ve always felt, and it feels just the same.  It’s hard to FEEL married when the only thing in our situation that has changed is that I get rings on my fingers.  He’s still thousands of miles away.  But he won’t be forever.

Ask me next year how it feels to be a married woman.  I’ll be able to answer you better.

In the mean time, watch this video Sarah took of the ceremony.  Plz don’t comment on how fat I look.  It’s just the dress.  It wasn’t very form fitting, but we were going for casual.

You’ll have to turn the volume up, it’s rather quiet.