Teardrops on my guitar

How do you pick the person you want to be with forever?

They say you meet that person and just know. But what happens if you meet that person and you "just know" -- but they don't like you?

I've been there. His name was Jason and I was 16 years old. I met him when my best friend at the time moved away. I went to stay with her for a few days and met up with her at play practice. She was on stage and I was sitting in darkness in the back of the room. A few other kids were at a round table next to me, talking and getting ready for their scenes. Then Jason walked in.

When he introduced himself, I recognized the name. She had told me all the names of people in her class - the cute boys, the nice girls, the ones she thought she would be friends with. I knew all of them. I had a list of the people I was most looking forward to meeting when I came to visit. I think he was number seven on my top 10 list. Not too high in a class of 22.

I didn't think much at first. He was tall and wearing a gray sweatshirt. I think he had just come from basketball practice. He sat down at my table, and we talked a bit. I don't remember what about. He opened up his bookbag and pulled out the biography of some golfer. He had to write something up for class that was due tomorrow. It looked like a big project, and I knew he also had the play. I asked if he needed help, and he said no.

We didn't talk too much, but we didn't have to. I watched the way he interacted with the other kids, the way he moved. There was a hint of shyness in his eyes and smile. Just enough hesitancy in his confidence to show you he wasn't full of himself.

It didn't take all night. By the time Leah and I got in the car to go to her house, I was bursting. "That's the Jason from your class?" I sputtered. I couldn't believe she hadn't mentioned him more than she did. He wasn't who she thought was cutest. I would meet them tomorrow, and they paled in comparison.

I spent five days there. I got to know him a little better. We said hi, shared shy smiles. We still didn't talk much, but I watched him interact with others in class, in the hallway, in the theater production. I find more truth in obversation than I do in spoken words.

When I went home that Sunday, I sobbed. I was hysterical. I wasn't sure what had happened or why I was so upset. I just knew that I was leaving. And maybe I also knew that I was driving away from something I might never find again.

I saw him occasionally on visits. I spent five more days there the next year. This time they were the two leads in the play. They had a kissing scene. I thought I was going to die.

Almost two and a half years after I fell for him, I wrote him a letter. I've always been driven in my writing. Writing allows an outlet that my shyness won't permit face-to-face. It was a sweet note. I told him how much I liked him and how much I loved getting to know him. I ended it with a quotation from a famous movie, a movie I still cringe to watch to this day, as it brings back the embarrassment of that letter! But I'm not really embarrassed -- I'm proud of myself. I would do it again.

He wrote back, telling me I was a sweetheart but that he already had a girlfriend. I knew as much. I wasn't sure what I expected. I'd already experiened more powerful feelings. This was just a gentle closing of the door that was only peeking open anyway.

I haven't felt like that again, and I can't say that I've even come close. When I try to track my feelings for different guys and potential relationships, I always see a huge dropoff after his name in my mind. No one even close.

Whenever I'm faced with the choice of a relationship, he always come back to me. "Can I see myself liking [insert name] as much as I liked Jason? Do I like [insert name] as much as I liked Jason?" Not even close.

Whenever I think that love isn't real or that it's all just a mirage, I look back on five years ago, how the sight of him would make my knees weak, and I think, maybe it's out there. Maybe it can happen again. I can't stop looking for it. I look for him, the feelings of him, in every guy I see. I won't settle. I can't settle. Not when I've already seen what it's like.

People grow up, and they change. I wonder if I would still feel the same about him if I met him for the first time today, and I'm not sure. It's been so long. But I'm still so thankful that I met him, that I have something to hold onto when I feel like the forever kind of happiness has brushed me to the side. Because I would rather be alone, every day of my life, than to pretend to love someone like I loved him.

And the earth's axis stops spinning

Just as an advance warning -- I am changing the URL of my blog. If you're still interested in my life, drop me an e-mail and I'll send you the new link.

Happy Fourth!

A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.

I just had the busiest weekend of my life! I drove up to the Quad Cities on Friday night to stay with my friend Leah. We were BFF all through high school and then drifted apart before we started college. I hadn't seen her in three years! You know you're getting old when you can say things like that. It was so great to see her and catch up as much as we could, even if we did have matching killer headaches. She packed me a snack lunch in the morning, nailing everything I like and would eat, which is a rare feat. She used to pack breakfasts of croissants and marmalade for me when we were in London and Paris in 2003, and I was running late in the morning.

So after I got my snack and hand-drawn, three-page directions, I headed off to central Iowa for a BabyNames meet-up. There were 15 members there, plus probably 30 kids and "DHs". I was the youngest member there and the only one without kids, but everyone was so nice! It was so fun to put names with faces. I've been a member of the site for seven years now -- scary! I also got to meet one of the founders of the site, who is super nice. She brought me a BN moose. :) I especially bonded with Anna and Lydia, who are six and four, respectively. Their mother is a doll, and so are they. I sat with them as they filled their pockets with the prettiest rocks they could find, and then they held my hands, one on each side, for the group picture. I wanted to take them home with me.

Early Sunday evening, Amy and I drove down to St. Louis to see The Fray in concert. They were SOOO good. By far my favorite band. My favorite part was when the four of them did a rendition of Shakira, and one of them deadpanned, "Hey girl, I can see your body moving" as another guy danced around in a gypsy outfit. Priceless.

I got a phone call today from my comm law professor from last semester, whom I was obsessed with. I actually told her I was obsessed with her, only in more acceptable terms. Anyway, she was calling to inform me that our paper had been subpoenaed for information on two articles that I wrote! It was a long time ago - March and April 2006, I believe - about a principal accused of, essentially, molesting children. I misunderstood her at first and thought we were being sued, but thankfully the attorneys are just looking to gather all the information they can get on the case and they wanted my notes, which I don't have anymore. The former principal is filing a defamation lawsuit against the school district, which I knew was coming. It was really nice timing, as I'm sick of everyone and their chihauhua asking me what I'm doing after I graduate. A sign, God? Okay, a phone call from my favorite, empowered woman professor and attorney is pretty good. Thanks.

I've never been so excited for Independence Day before. I've also never had a real job during the summer. NO WORK, hooray!

I was super ticked last week, and fortunately I found therapy in bike rides through the winding countryside. I must have ridden 30 miles last week. My legs look amazing. I saw my hot neighbor three times. Good week!

Inspired

The story of the Virgin birth naturally did not astonish her, but she was greatly puzzled by the Sacrifice, and still more by the Devil, and the theory of Damnation.
"'Why, you blessed child,' she said, 'you've got the wrong idea altogether. You do not have to think that there ever was such a God - for there wasn't. Or such a happening - for there wasn't. Not even that this hideous false idea was believed by anybody. But only this - that people who are utterly ignorant will believe anything - which you certainly knew before.'"

"What is eternity?" asked Ellador.
What indeed? I tried, for the first time in my life, to get a real hold on the idea.
"It is - never stopping."
"Never stopping?" She looked puzzled.
"Yes, life, going on forever."
"Oh - we see that, of course. Life does go on forever, all about us."
"But eternal life goes on without dying.
"The same person?"
"Yes, the same person, unending, immortal." I was pleased to think that I had something to teach from our religion, which theirs had never promulgated.
"Here?" asked Ellador. "Never to die - here?" I could see her practical mind heaping up the people, and hurriedly reassured her.
"Oh no, indeed, not here - hereafter. We must die here, of course, but then we 'enter into eternal life.' The soul lives forever."
"How do you know?" she inquired.
"I won't attempt to prove it to you," I hastily continued. "Let us assume it to be so. How does this idea strike you?"
Again, she smiled at me, that adorable, dimpling, tender, mischievous, motherly smile of hers. "Shall I be quite, quite honest?"
"You couldn't be anything else," I said.
"It seems to me a singularly foolish idea," she said calmly. "And if true, most disagreeable."
"What do you want it for?" she asked.
"How can you not want it!" I protested. "Do you want to go out like a candle? Don't you want to go on and on - growing and - and - being happy, forever?"
"Why, no," she said. "I don't in the least. I want my child - and my child's child - to go on - and they will. Why should I want to?"
"But it means Heaven!" I insisted. "Peace and Beauty and Comfort and Love - with God." I had never been so eloquent on the subject of religion. She could be horrified at Damnation, and question the justice of Salvation, but Immortality - that was surely a noble faith.
"Why, Van," she said, holding out her hands to me. "Why Van - darling! How splendid of you to feel it so keenly. That's what we all want, of course - Peace and Beauty, and Comfort and Love - with God! And Progress, too, remember; Growth, always and always. That is what our religion teaches us to want and to work for, and we do!"
"But that is here," I said, "only for this life on earth."
"Well? And do not you in your country, with your beautiful religion of love and service have it here, too - for this life - on earth?"

-- Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1915.

The day I escaped from work

So I bailed out of work this afternoon.

It was a beautiful sunny day with little breeze - or, at least, a change from the hurricane-style swirls we experienced yesterday. I was sitting at my desk with an assignment - the assignment I finished yesterday. You can only frequent BabyNames, People.com and every shopping site on the web so many times. World news wasn't happening that fast, and I don't count Paris Hilton going back to jail.

Don't you think that's a little ridiculous? I'm not getting paid by the hour. In fact, I'm not getting paid at all. My time is precious! I could be sleeping, for God's sake.

My boss left for somewhere, cheerfully as always. My two co-workers headed out the door for lunch, without saying anything to me. That was enough. I scrawled a note and dropped it on my boss's laptop. The note said, in part, that "I have an appointment this afternoon." Yes, I thought, wryly, as I escaped into sunshine, an appointment with SOMETHING BETTER TO DO.

She tells me a lot that she wishes I had graduated so that she could hire me. Maybe, I silently think to myself, you could start by paying me. That might put us on better terms.

I'm really frustrated. I'm frustrated with the 8:30 to 5 schedule, the 25-minute commute. I'm frustrated with cement and I'm frustrated with finishing supposedly 2-day projects in 2 hours. Mostly, of course, I'm frustrated with myself for being so passive. What I SHOULD say is that I'm too overqualified to be an unpaid intern, and that unpaid internships are perhaps the cruelest job ever. Do you know that I lose money by just getting in my car every day and driving to work? Oh, you're inviting me to grab lunch with you? That's nice. Well, let me just spend $10 today to do all your stupid work and stare with glazed eyes out the window to freedom.

As my boss walked out the door today, on one of her many trips into the sprinkles of sunlight, she motioned to the handful of teenage boys wearing neon yellow shirts and carrying dust pails, and said, "Hey! You could be doing that this summer instead." And I smiled, just like I should, but inside I was thinking, "I'm 21 years old and I can write better than you - no, I wouldn't be picking up discarded trash in front of the Capitol. BUT EVEN IF I DID, I would be getting paid for it. Beast.

So hopefully I can work up enough courage to tell someone to jump off a cliff. Or just do it myself.

I made the most of my afternoon. I stopped by the library and mingled with the elderly as I continued through my summer reading list. Charles Dickens was painful. I had forgotten since high school. After that, I came home and enjoyed my free lunch, compliments of our kitchen. Then I went out to mow, almost severing Midnight with the lawnmower. I had hopped on and started the mower, and Piper jumped out from underneath. I was like, Holy crap! That was a close one. I paused for a couple of seconds and then turned on the blade, which sounds like the apocolypse in an iMax theater. And then MIDNIGHT jumped out. What cat doesn't move when a LAWNMOWER starts?! He only decided to get out of my way when he realized the blades were about to make him our latest cat fatality.

Sigh. And then Julie drove her new car into a ditch tonight. Not quite the surprise that it should be.

I have a longterm plan for my life. Well, two plans actually. The first plan, which I'm sure I've discussed before, is to buy a beachhouse in North Carolina and live there with my sister Amy and our two dogs. We will be life partners. NOT SEXUALLY, obviously. I'm sick of how people's futures center around their sexual partners. 'You are cordially invited to our wedding,' aka, I Would Like to Announce that We Will Be Having Sex Together for the Rest of our Lives.

Anyway, if that falls through (with Amy bailing on me), or if by some chance I become more enchanted with the idea of marriage, I have picked my wedding party. My MOH will be my sister Amy, and my bridesmaids will be my sisters Julie, Lyndsey and Lexie and my niece, Whitney. My nephew Holden will be the ringbearer, and my best friend Carly will be the 30-year-old flower girl.

In a completely unrelated funny story, I was in the kitchen with Scott the other day, when he said, randomly, "You know, Amy eats whatever you eat. If you told her to eat cat food, she would." I considered this. I will admit that I had noticed a pattern - that Amy would casually ask me what I had for lunch, or what I wanted for dinner, and then when I told her, she would fix it for herself. So I brought it up with her a few days later and mentioned what Scott had said. She laughed at herself, in good Amy fashion, and then paused, as if she were thinking hard about it. "You know," she said, slowly. "I think I would eat cat food if you told me it was good for me."

THE POWER.

36 hours in the life of ...

Here is a rundown of my last 36 hours --

Friday
6:00 a.m. -- awaken, morning routine
8:00 a.m. -- leave for work, get stopped by random train downtown
8:38 a.m. -- arrive to work (late). get ushered into my new "office" upstairs.
8:45 a.m. - 4:36 p.m. -- proofread cement prices, finish cement press release, proofread principal website, write copy for principal leadership website main page
4:36 p.m. -- Boss is shocked that I finished last project in less than 20 minutes. She tells me to leave. I do, gladly.
5:00 - 7 p.m. -- Home. Family leaves for three days in Arkansas after a two-hour goodbye ceremony (involving multiple reentrances for bathroom breaks, pillows, medicine and chocolate cake (Lexie)).
7:20 p.m. -- shower.
7:40 p.m. -- Carly picks me up. We drive to Barnes and Noble, where we meet with a friend who I haven't spoken with in two years. This wasn't a case of busy schedules not matching up. This was a case of purposeful avoidance on both of our parts.
8:10 p.m. - 10:52 p.m. -- Perry arrives. Meetup goes swimmingly. Girl stands up to leave. We hug. The olive branch has passed.
10:55 p.m. -- Sonic, to stave off Perry's hunger.
11:20 p.m. - 1 a.m. -- Carly's house. Try to get 1970s VCR to work. Fail. Go upstairs and watch 11-year-old Carly and her friend in a Six Flags' music video. Carly has her shorts hiked up to her chest. Oh, 1997. By popular vote, we choose Jumanji as our movie du jour.
1:04 a.m. -- Hug Perry goodbye. I won't see him till Christmas, as he leaves for Kenya tomorrow, and I'll be back at school when he returns for a few days before school starts up for him in London. Carly drives me home. Get out of car, dragging a garbage bag of clothes she wants me to try on. Walk in garage. See chicken roosting on four-wheeler gear shift. Curse loudly and throw garbage bag in house. Go back outside and look around for deadly weapon. Decide on Dad's driver, located in golf bag. Swat chicken off four-wheeler and out of garage (nicely). Comment on fact that my life resembles Sanford and Son. Collapse in bed.

Saturday
12:30 p.m. -- Good morning! Crawl out of bed. Have missed five phone calls at this point. Shower.
2:15 p.m. -- Come downstairs to eat lunch. Girl whose mom boards horses at our house is sitting at our kitchen table, drawing a picture with crayons. This is not unusual. She says it's for me. I ask her to hang it on the refrigerator. Girl asks to go play downstairs. I say, whatever. Doorbell rings. Girl's brothers. Each wants glass of water. Sigh.
2:45 p.m. -- Finally ready. Put on shoes to go. Amy and I are heading out back door. Doorbell rings. Girl asks if she can answer it. I say yes, since it's probably for her anyway. I talk her through the deadbolt. Door swings open. Boys run in yelling - CALL 911! Our mom fell off a horse! I am the practical one. I open my mouth to ask further questions, and Scott grabs the phone and dials 911. Then he hands it to me and settles back into his Lifetime movie. Dispatcher asks what happened. I tell her that a woman fell off a horse. Then she starts asking specifics. I have no idea, obviously, as I haven't seen her yet. Somehow her sons, who are about 12 and 15, are unsure as to whether she's conscious. That was frustrating.

Hang up phone. Scott says, "At least pretend like you care." I glare at him. Contemplate running down to the barn to check on her or attacking him with the blender. I choose to go down to the barn, leaving Concerned Brother to his TV movie.

Horse Lady is laying in the pasture, sitting with her head in her hands. I'll be honest - my first thought was, She's sitting up and I just called 911?! She couldn't stand up, she said, because she was too dizzy. EMT arrives in a pickup truck, wearing a black wifebeater. Two ambulances arrive minutes later. Neighbors appear from their houses. I meet the new neighbors next door. Horse lady is placed on a board. She is not happy, and keeps wanting to stand up. She tries and then starts to fall. She then throws up, multiple times. Her 6-year-old daughter, the one who drew me the picture, stands by making helpful comments like, "Mom, that saddle needs a seatbelt!" and "I think that horse needs a timeout." Her brothers tell her to shut up. An EMT asks the oldest son what he thought happened to the horse. "He spooked!" he replied. "It could have been the chickens -- or the sheep!" Sheep? Is this really my life?

I wander over to the fence, where my sister Amy is talking to the two neighbor kids. We watch respectfully as the EMTs work to tear my dad's fence apart. I shudder. "Ashley, what are we supposed to do?" Amy whispers. "I don't know," I whisper back. "Mom only left us instructions on how to do the laundry."

EMTs convince Horse Lady to go to the hospital. Another EMT drives Horse Lady's van with her four kids. They leave. The neighbors leave. Tranquility is restored.

Amy and I walk back up the house. I begrugdingly whine, "All I wanted was to go to the library today." That seemed to sum up our afternoon.

4:10 p.m. -- Arrive at library, armed with summer reading list I made during work the previous day. Check out The Alchemist, A Tale of Two Cities, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. Soooo excited to start reading them! Amy and I walked out to the car. We were about to pull away when I looked to my right and saw a familiar-looking woman in the car next to me. "Hey," I said, "Isn't that the lady who always walked around undressed in the women's changing room at the pool?" The lady straightened up in her chair so we got the full-on profile look. Confirmed. She looks a lot different with clothes on.
4:30-5:30 p.m. -- church.
6:00 p.m. -- Amy and I made dinner - pasta with broccoli, yum!
7:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. -- video store

Annnd... Horse Lady just called and her tests came back OK. Yay!

Cemented in my brain

Nothing's better than wisdom imparted to you by your dad in front of the kitchen sink.

"Washing dishes by hand is like changing a baby's diaper," says the father of eight, swiftly scrubbing a discarded bowl of cheesy tuna casserole. "Pretty soon you'll be able to change a diaper with one hand and eat a sandwich in the other."

I think that stopped me from wanting children in the future. Or wanting sandwiches, for that matter.

I started one of my jobs yesterday. My boss told me to come in at 10 a.m. so we could figure out my work schedule. Okay. I come in and my boss is on the phone, so another coworker ushers me into the conference room. "So I hear you're working all day Thursdays and Fridays!" she says. Really? I'm glad I had a say in that. The three of us sit in the conference room for a bit, tying bows for a display project. After we're done, my boss shows me my desk and assigns me to write 10 press releases. Then the other coworker adds two more projects. REALLY?! Because I thought I just came in to discuss my work schedule!

So what I expected to be a 30-minute meeting turned into a seven-hour affair. You want to know what I did all day? I wrote press releases on cement. CEMENT. I think I do okay with frilly, descriptive writing, but testing me with cement is cruel and unusual. I thought my brain was going to implode. Each press release was to be three descriptive paragraphs about the product. What do you write - that cement product C is a little bit harder than cement product B? Oh, my Lord.

Today was a bit better. I got moved upstairs to the loft, which I like because it's my own funky little space. My boss told me to make myself at home, so I took off my heels, laid down in this extremely comfy chair, placed my head on one armrest and my knees on the other, steadied my red marking pen in one hand and a stack of cement list prices in the other and promptly almost fell asleep. I decided that maybe the ginormous chair wasn't such a good idea after all, so I moved closer to my caffeine-laden Coke Zero instead.

Maybe I'm not cut out for ... work. Or maybe - what I suspect is closer to the truth - I just really, REALLY want a paid position. And maybe I also want to stretch my brain to depths further than punchy adjectives describing freaking cement.