Life Under Construction

Archive for the ‘Experiences & Stories’ Category

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.

When I was working at Cumberland Farms, I had this girl working for me.  We’ll call her DB for Dumb Bitch, since I’ve already humiliated her enough that I don’t need to call her out on my blog.

Not that she can read or knows how to use the internet or anything.

Anyway one day I was doing my assistant manager duties counting money and all that while she was ringing up customers next to me.  Some guy came in and wanted to get $30 in gas, and he had all ones.  I watched as he tossed each one dollar bill on top of the last, counting as he went and making a mountain of messy bills.  I stopped DB’s hand as she was reaching for them and smiled at the guy kind of condescendingly.  Not that I was sticking up for DB in particular, I was letting this guy know that he didn’t come into my store and treat anyone like that.  We don’t clean up your mess, we take your money.  Your money should be in some kind of order when we take it.  This pile was unacceptable.  The exchange went like this:

Me: You’re going to pick those up and hand them to her neatly, right?
Guy: But… but they’re all strategically placed.
Me: But it’s rude.
DB: What’s ’strategically’ mean?
Guy: Are you for real?  You don’t know what strategy is?
DB: Um no?
Me: It means he purposefully placed each bill just so, with the intent to make it a mess.  He wanted it to look like that.
DB: What do you do, read the dictionary or something?
Me: No.  I went to high school.
DB: *silence*
Guy: *snickers and picks up his bills*

Score:  Jaime: 469812 / DB: 0

Yeah, I was happy to see her get fired.

This week’s writing prompt is Tattoo.

*****

I have four tattoos.

I know.

Most people tell me they never would have expected me to have tattoos, that I don’t seem like ‘that type of person’ (whatever that is).

I’m proud of all of my tattoos, but this one is my favorite.

It’s not the best picture, I know this, but it was taken last year and it’s the only picture I have on my computer of my tattoo.

I don’t remember what year it was, somewhere between 2002 and 2005 (but not 2003), my cousin Jonathon and I and a buddy of ours at the time Roland went to Sacred Ink II to get some tattoos.  I was paying.  Jonathon and Roland got the same tattoo… a pot leaf design.  Jonathon got his on the side of his neck and Roland got his on his chest.  I wasn’t into that kind of thing, so I picked the Chinese symbol for ‘eternity’.

So there are two reasons why this tattoo is my favorite:

1. It’s the most delicate and feminine looking
2. It makes me think of Jonathon

He died in 2007.