Bitten

Who says you notice your own flaws more than other people do? Sometimes other people seem to see them even more clearly than you can.

There is more to come on this topic.

In the meantime, here is this song I like.

http://www.mediafire.com/?fgdmezx1l3t

This just in

There is a mirror on the ceiling over the bed in my hotel room here in Las Vegas.

And then large ones on each side of the bed.



This place is weird.

(edited to add a photo...how could I not?)

Shhhhh

A BIG, but secret project at work just landed in my lap this week and it's probably going to eat me alive until Thursday. Of course it comes at a time when I have to be in San Diego for two days and then Vegas for two days so I see some sleep deprivation in my future.

I hope I can spill some details next week but until then...my attention to the blog might be spotty.

Have a great weekend!

bump

I went to dinner with some of the girls last night and Jaime brought her baby.


I'm fascinated by pregnancy. I mean, Jaime has a WHOLE PERSON INSIDE OF HER. She's making a BRAND NEW HUMAN BEING. This sounds so hokey but honestly, babies are a total miracle. It blows my mind that women get to do this.

I've been re-reading one of my favorite books, Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner, and there is a line that jumped out at me this week. The narrator comes into the room where his pregnant wife and her pregnant best friends are talking and observes:

"I see them there, and think how in those two women four hearts are beating, and it awes me."

Holy crap, me too.

BLING

I was blog hopping a few weeks ago when I came across something that really, really disturbed me. The post itself was cute, a girl had written a sweet story about the heirloom diamond wedding ring she had. She then invited her readers to post about their own wedding rings. By the time I had slogged through thirty comments like “my ring really isn’t as big as I hoped”, “my fiancé really couldn’t afford what I wanted but the fact that he bought it anyway really shows how much he loves me”, “we are definitely going to upgrade someday,” I was having trouble keeping my lunch down.

I want to be clear that I love the symbolism of wedding rings. I think it’s cool to have a way to say to the world, “I am committed.” What makes me feel sick is the weird importance we place on female engagement rings. So I’m proclaiming this right now, for any future ring buyer I run across….I don’t want one. The day we get married we can put nice bands on each other and you won’t have to worry that it’s too small or too cloudy or not exactly what I wanted. I have all kinds of feminist and political reasons for thinking that diamonds are a huge scam but those aren’t even at the forefront of my uneasiness with engagement rings. I don’t want to waste that much time and energy on something that sits on my hand. Two months salary? Let’s buy a house, let’s spend three weeks on a honeymoon instead of two, let’s celebrate our first anniversary somewhere amazing, lets buy a piece of art we will both love. Let’s not start our marriage with me making it clear that my happiness hinges on what material things you can buy me. Let’s not let an industry with a brilliant copywriter dictate what forever is going to mean to you and me.

I realize this is a controversial statement and for those of you who love your diamonds-I say “great!” My mantra as of late is that most of the life decisions we make aren’t “right” or “wrong” and if we want people to understand and respect our choices, we have to extend the same respect to them. But the older I get and the less my life goes according to some arbitrary plan, the less I feel myself bound to all kinds of traditions. Fantasizing about a gigantic rock is just not one of them anymore.

Jokes That Are Not Funny

I have several interesting and thought provoking posts rattling around my brain but it's Friday and my brain has already decided to head to the beach. I will just leave you with some hilarously unfunny jokes that some friends of mine posted on a message board awhile back. I was rereading them this morning and almost started to cry.

A king is eating lunch in his courtyard when the jester enters the room. As the king starts eating a drumstick, the jester asks, "Sir, would you that I, the king's jester, entertain you?"

"Whdu yeis, theate wouuiekl bes goddig!" replied the king.

"I am sorry your heiness, I could not make out your reply. It would seem that you were eating a heavenly drumstick whilst speaking" said the jester.

"In sodru, plseas begine" replied the king.

"One more time sir?" asked the jester.

The king swallowed and said, "I am sorry jester, that would be nice. Please begin."

So, a million Polish guys walk into a bar.

And the bartender says "some of you are probably going to have to leave."

So this dude tells his coworkers some news.

"My wife and I are going to have a baby!"

The boss looks up and says: "That's ridiculous. Only women can birth."

The dude's like: "No, I didn't mean I'd actually be giving birth. I just meant that we will both have a child, even though she is the one carrying it."

The boss says: "I'm having an affair with your wife right now. And you're fired."

Have a great weekend!

Wedding Bells

My brother and his girlfriend became my brother and his FIANCE this week...

Hip hip hooray!

FNL Update

I sort of feel like it's my duty to inform all of you that the complete First Season of Friday Night Lights is available for pre-order at Amazon.com. And it's only $20!! That's not even a dollar an episode! You are paying pennies, PENNIES for every brilliantly written, shot and acted scene!

It ships August 27th so I feel some sick days coming on in early September...

to whom it may concern

Dear steepandcheap.com copywriters-

I know I said yesterday that online romance wasn't really for me but something happened last night that changed everything. One of you is my soulmate and I know it. The evidence? The random anecdote on last evening's deal reminder email:

"I have a really bad sense of direction, which is why I think I forget plans, people's birthdays, and double-book events. It's not so much a matter of direction as it is a matter of space and time. I can't remember which way I was going on the highway, but I also can't remember that Saturday is the same day as the day after tomorrow. That's why if you ask what I'm doing Friday afternoon, I'll say, "No plans," even though I have plans to go out on a boat with friends on July 20th."

Why, this could have been lifted from my own brain! Just last night I was standing in line at Chronic Taco, doing a mental check of my weekend events when I put it together that I had scheduled dinner with a friend on Friday, and RSVP'd for a party on July 20th. Never crossed my mind that those were the same day. I'm also the girl who can't really process the difference between right and left. Friends have learned that it's better to point when playing navigator because if they just say "turn left," it's anyone's guess which way I will go. This deficiency has several times resulted in frustrated folks going the opposite way when I provide directions.

So Mr. Copywriter, I'm already imagining the funny story we'll tell of how we planned our wedding for a Saturday but somehow bought plane tickets for our honeymoon that left on the Friday before because dates and times are meaningless to us. But it was OK because you let me handle the maps with the invitations and most of our guests would have ended up in Logan and missed it altogether anyway. Everyone will shake their heads and say, "it's a good thing you two found each other!"

I think this idea has legs.

-your faithful reminder reader

Treasure Hunt

A boy once told me that in the first five minutes of meeting a girl, he would file her under "yes I would date her" or "no I would not date her". I was bothered because that seemed like an awfully snap judgement to make. But when he elaborated, he made a little more sense. His "yes I would date her" file was actually pretty big. And didn't always mean he made a move right away. In fact, sometimes he'd become friends with a "yes" girl instead of asking her out. He was willing to give anyone in the "yes" file a shot at any time. But he insisted that you know pretty quickly if there is some sort of chemisty with someone. It doesn't have to knock you out or anything, but there has to be an initial connection that makes you want to spend more time with that person. I have been thinking about that conversation a little lately and lo and behold...my friend Farrah blogged about it today.

I don't have much to add to what she says and Farrah has a special way of making a point that I think many of you would enjoy so I'll point you in her direction.


Which sort of brings me to another thing I've been thinking about which is online dating. I have really mixed feelings about it and part of it is that it's really hard to gauge that "initial connection" online. I've had a few experiences with boys I met online that didn't go well and then had a delicious romance with a boy I'd interacted with online but was totally ambivalent towards. We met in person through a mutual friend and little sparks flew all over the place. Maybe online dating is just not my bag. In another twist of "wow, are we all on the same page or what" fate, my friend Chloe wrote a great post about it that .pretty much sums up my feelings on the subject.

It is a wonder anyone ever really gets together isn't it folks. But they do. And I think a lot of times we make it way more complicated than it needs to be. If I really believe all this "life plan" business, and I do, I think maybe chilling out a little might be the order of the day.

The Illustrated Weekend

Last week felt like this.

All week.
By the time Friday came around, and the extra weekend traffic doubled my commute home, I was done with this. So Saturday I blew off my list of errands for this.
And this.
With lots of people I like.
And we got to see stuff like this.
This was the winning weiner dog. I tried to take better photos but those little guys were just too quick.

I also got to see my first ever horse race. Way, way cooler than I was expecting.
Then we went to a Jewish Deli nearby that was not just delicious, but also awesome. We resolved to visit more Jewish Deli's this summer. Since this summer does not yet have a theme, it very well might become "the summer of the jewish deli." I'll keep you posted.
We might have flirted with the waiter a little which resulted in us ending up with an entire chocolate cake for Marissa's soon-to-be-birthday.

And really any evening that ends with me in a tiara is a good one right?

Yeah i know, my life is a little silly right now. I'm OK with that though.

Oh Internet

There are too many ways to have fun/waste time with you.

The List

When I was in high school I was obsessed with the Joshua Kadison CD "Painted Desert Serenade". They were all love songs and to my 17 year old heart they played into every single fantasy I had about what relationships should be like. He really seemed to get women.

I remember telling my mother that I would fall madly in love with any boy who liked the CD as much as I did. In retrospect that seems like a fairly unreasonable expectation of a high school boy but to me, if a guy could "get" that CD, he would obviously be able to "get" me. Oddly enough I did go out with a kid that year who did indeed like Joshua Kadison. It was terribly confusing to me that I had zero interest in this cute, smart, athletic boy who so clearly fit the list I had in my head of things I wanted. In fairness, I had had a huge crush on him a year earlier and he was blinded by my much flashier/blonder/thinner/more experienced friend. I wasn't thrilled when she broke his heart and he started noticing me. Getting my friend's leftovers certainly wasn't something I had ever day dreamed about no matter how lovely his blue eyes were and how sincere he seemed to be about wanting to hang out with me. But all of that aside, I was sitting in his car, listening to these songs that I had been so convinced were some secret key to who I really was and I just wanted to go home. It was so disappointing.

I got thinking about Joshua because I was out with someone on Friday and as is often the case with me and new friends, we started talking about music. He is a big Dave Matthews Band. There was a time in the recent past that I didn't go a day without listening to DMB and I'm pretty sure I said more than once that I would never never marry a boy who didn't like them. And now, although I still have fond feelings towards the Dave Matthews Band, the CD's have dust on them. I have made many, many statements like that over the years. Arbitrary and sweeping statements about what he must or absolutely CANNOT like in order to understand me. It makes perfect sense to me that if you think Arrested Development is funny, then your brain works in the same way that my brain works and thus, we will also think the same things about where to live, what furniture we like and how to parent. Right?

So imagine my surprise last night as I was looking up "Painted Deseret Serenade" to see how it stood up after 12 years and I discovered that Joshua Kadison is actually gay. The perfect guy who just really seemed to understand women. Likes guys.

Roast.

The fact of the matter is that one of the men who has been able to understand and appreciate my personality best in the last 10 years is one who shakes his head at my taste in nearly everything. And boys who are practically walking versions of my "list" haven't noticed me at all.

I should be clear that at 30 years old I actually dropped the idea of a list a long time ago. But finding out about Mr. Kadison last night was a nice reminder that things are so rarely exactly what they seem and contrary to the line from one of my favorite books, it IS what you're like, not what you like.

So just for fun, here's a live performance of my favorite Joshua Kadison song "Jessie." Turns out he wrote this song about his then girlfriend, Sarah Jessica Parker. It also turns out that gay or straight, I can totally see why high school me thought this song was so romantic...

Apology

Sometime in the last week or so, I had a disagreement with someone about the artist behind the song "Life's Been Good." I was insistent that it was a Steve Miller Band song and the other party was convinced it was not, but was unable to come up with an alternative name. As I can be fairly, ahem, confident, of my own prowess when it comes to music trivia, I ended the conversation leaving no doubt that I was in fact correct.

Well other party, I learned this evening that "Life's Been Good" is in fact, a Joe Walsh song. The trouble is that I cannot for the life of me remember the circumstances of the conversation, nor who I was arguing with. So I'm just sending this confession that I was wrong out to the universe, in the hopes that next time I insist that I am right, karma doesn't bite me back.

Harry and Sally

I was driving home tonight, doing my daily "am I going to make something or just stop and have someone ELSE make something for dinner?" ponderings and suddenly I just really wanted to meet up with someone. Oddly enough though, the first three people who came into my brain were boys who are either geographically or circumstantially unavailable.

I haven't ever been much of a dater and don't have a string of old boyfriends. But I do have strings and strings of old friendboys. When I was younger I used to be bothered that I had so many more guy friends than romantic leads. Until graduation when I was sitting between two of the most amazing boys on the planet, who had been there for every last up and down of college, and the trail of women they'd left along the way was nowhere to be found. It started sinking in then that being the girl someone wants to talk to and laugh with is sometimes much better than being the girl he just wants to make out with.

Over the years I have had every kind of friendboy imaginable; short term, long term, cross country, IM, totally platonic, slightly flirtatious, the kind you can make out with now and then and it doesn't ruin anything, married ones, single ones. I've been there through nasty breakups, new jobs, and big moves. I've helped pick out wedding rings and kept proposals a secret.

I've never really bought the idea that men and women can't truly be friends because there are always romantic feelings on at least one side. But I do think that male-female friendships do have to have a certain chemistry. Making a new friend boy can feel a lot like a crush, even if you know you aren't ever going to kiss him. No matter how many times your girlfriends tell you that guy was dumb for not loving you, when an actual male reassures you that you are indeed hot and smart and rad, you tend to believe it more. Although I definitely have a feminist streak in me, I like it that men and women aren't the same. My friendships with men and women fulfill me in different ways. Sometimes you just really need a Y chromosome and it's got nothing to do with sex. I've been pretty spoiled over the years, I seem to pick up good boys wherever I go and even as they've become husbands and fathers, we've stayed in contact. The closeness changes of course, as it should. But I feel lucky that I have gotten to hang onto so many of them. I have learned alot about the male brain from these quality friendships and I'm pretty convinced that's going to pay off one of these days. (Someone recently told me that on the female scale of maintenance I was about a 3 out of 10. He did say however that a 3 on the female scale was still OFF THE CHARTS when compared to the male scale so...maybe I'm fooling myself). Even with all their frustrating qualities and the amount of havoc they wreak in my single life, I really, really like men.

And I hope my little 14 year old self doesn't get too mad at me when I say that I'd choose 30 years of great friends over 30 years of romances any day. (We'll just let her find out herself that there will be enough quality romance mixed in to satisfy her little dreaming heart as well). Cheers to the friendboy, I love you guys!

At least

Whenever I'm feeling sad that I haven't met a boy who really understands me, I console myself that at least I have a hair stylist who really understands my bangs.

ID4

Don't tell my landlord but she could double my rent for this month and it would still be worth it just for the Fourth of July.

One thing I like about Huntington is that even though it's part of sprawling Orange County, it still has what feels like small town pride. There are street fairs in the Spring and almost every holiday is an excuse to shut down Main Street and throw a big party. But the Fourth feels like a giant block party through the whole city. Everyone is out on bikes, playing in the yard, being friendly. It just seems like exactly the way we should celebrate our country.

On Tuesday Corey was saying everything had that feeling you have right before you have an event at your house...that calm before the storm but the air of something great about to happen. I had told her that she HAD to get a beach cruiser for Wednesday or she would be sad so she picked up this beauty.

Then a bunch of us headed down to Taco Tuesday at Sharkeez where we ate delicious food and then went to see a really dumb movie. So dumb I won't tell you what it was but the company was good.
I took advantage of the street fair going on that day as well and indulged in a little temporary body art. Still glad I never got a real one but it's fun now and then to get a fake one.
The next day we rode our little bikes over to our friend Logan's house. He lives right on the parade route so he invited an obscene amount of people over for pancakes on the lawn.
Everyone was definitely in the mood to play.
The Girl Scouts helped get us all patriotic.
I think our block made the most noise on the whole route.
And here was the highlight of the whole parade. This guy managed to make every single girl we were sitting with swoon just a little bit.
Mariellen and I went home to get stuff on the BBQ for the small group we invited over. But then Quiet Riot's "Come on Feel the Noise" came on and we had to take a quick dance break.
We ate kabobs and goofed around a bit.
And then it was time to hit the beach. Sometimes the single mormon tendency to travel in herds makes me nuts. But when it means almost everyone you know and like is in one place it's actually pretty fun.
And Heather and Brad provided us with a slightly scandalous Spiderman moment.
And I thought long and hard about getting in the water. I finally opted to make a break for it and made a mental note that I really ought to do that every weekend for the rest of the summer. The waves were pretty brutal but it felt amazing.
We went home and showered and then hit the street fair again for snow-cones the size of our heads.
Then we stopped by a BBQ that was pretty fun but pretty packed. Corey and I had both hit capacity on crazy social scenes so we headed to a smaller gathering on the other side of town.
Go toward the light Core.
We took advantage of PCH being closed and rode our bikes right on the street.
And then ended up down on the sand for fireworks and giggling.
I love you HB. So much.

Warm Summer Nights

The answer is yes, riding bikes past bedtime in the middle of the road IS in fact, awesome.

Phone Booth

You know how there are some points in your life where everything is so perfect you can't imagine how you could ever be sad again?

I was remember a phone call I made to my mom twelve years ago at the end of my freshman year of college. These were the dark days before everyone had a cell phone and I would usually call home from the booth outside the student center. Things really couldn't have been better, I had landed one of the appointed positions in Student Government that everyone wanted, I had an invitation to join the sorority all my friends were in, I had committed to an apartment with girls I was really excited about and the boy I had been pining for all quarter was taking me to the Spring Formal. I distinctly remember feeling like nothing could possibly make me sad ever again because right now I had everything I could possibly want. The contrast between that phone call and one nine months earlier, where I told my mom between racking sobs that if she left right then she could be picking me up before dinner was almost laughable. I was so unhappy at school for the first quarter that I didn't even come back for the first week after Winter Break. I was convinced that going to SUU had been a big mistake and I just wanted to go home. All these years later it's frightening to think what my life would be like if I had indeed gone home. So much of where I am and who I am now hinged on staying in Cedar City.

I guess I've been thinking about that phone call quite a bit lately because I have several friends going through tough endings right now. I always wish I had brilliant things to say to people who are going through hell. I settle for just being a willing listener and in the end, I suppose that's what people probably need more. But tonight I was talking to a recently engaged friend about a nasty breakup in her past. She was saying how glad she is now that relationship didn't work out and how exponentially happier she is now. Patience is not a virtue I have ever had in abundance and I have a tendency to wallow a bit when things get rough. So I like imagining the sad little freshman begging her mother to come save her coming face to face with a slightly older and braver version of herself celebrating all manner of personal victories. I firmly believe that holding out in the face of fear and hurt and disappointment will always, always end up being worth it. That God can do things in our lives that are completely unimaginable when we are in the depths of despair. But I think we have to be willing to do some of the work. We can't just climb into bed and hope that when we wake up it will all have blown over. Anne Lindbergh once said, "I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and a willingness to remain vulnerable." Breakups, divorces, illness, job loss, death-these things are all really good excuses to get stuck in your own pain. I just believe that focusing on what you can use from the experience to move forward and letting the rest drop away is a real gift. I am grateful to the low points for making the high points so much sweeter.

That was sort of rambling...just trying to get some things out of my brain...