Glow Power
And here it is. Thanks Jorge!
Sunny yeah
Just as Paulie said today is sunny and gorgeous. Montego is outside, in her own yard, soaking it up right now. We came back to our house around 6:30 last night and she practically passed out. I could almost hear her thinking, I am too old for those crazy puppies! But they had a great time together – they were hilarious and Bella is infinitely patient for being 80 pounds heavier than Teeg. And I didn’t even have to kill Biscuit, so all in all, I think it was a successful week.
After three nights in Jamaica and five nights at Sarah and Doug’s, it felt good to wake up in my own bed this morning. So good in fact that I drastically overslept, which means I missed church. When I don’t go, it throws off my whole week, which to be honest is quite an amazing discovery. The first 18 years of my life I went religiously, to use a word I hate, but the next 10 years saw me attending sporadically at best. I can barely describe what it is like now, to finally attend a church I can consider home – it’s incredible. Sundays are my favorite day of the week. (Plus, it’s nice to kick off every week having lunch with Mary Lee.) Luckily, thanks to technology and the nontraditional environment at Buckhead, I can listen to the sermons online, which I’ll do at some point today. It doesn’t make up for missing out on the community or worship, but it’s better than nothing.
I bought a ton of music on iTunes yesterday, including The Best of Lisa Loeb, which I blame entirely on E! My favorite thing about the iPod is the ability to have all the cheesy music you want, and no one has to know. I can buy old love songs by Take That, for example. Not that I would know anything about that. (Oh, please, you think I’d be ashamed of that? I still have New Kids videos, people.)
I also took a faux Myers-Briggs personality test yesterday (I’m probably the last person on the Internet to do so). I am an ESFJ – extroverted (duh), sensing, feeling, judging (DUH). This type is known as the “caregiver” or the “hostess,” which also, duh. But one paragraph in the “portrait of an ESFJ” really hit me:
ESFJs are warm and energetic. They need approval from others to feel good about themselves. They are hurt by indifference and don’t understand unkindness. They are very giving people, who get a lot of their personal satisfaction from the happiness of others. They want to be appreciated for who they are, and what they give. They’re very sensitive to others, and freely give practical care. ESFJs are such caring individuals, that they sometimes have a hard time seeing or accepting a difficult truth about someone they care about. (Emphasis mine.)
That’s pretty much what I wrote yesterday morning, in regards to my past relationships. I constantly have to remind myself to see people for who they ARE, not for who I know they CAN be. Maya Angelou says, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” I try, I try.
Tonight the Glow Girls will meet up for dinner so that we can hear all about Sarah’s honeymoon and recap our Jamaican experiences. I can’t wait to see Sarah – we spend so much time together, 40 hours a week just at work, that I miss her when it’s been more that a few days.
I feel like I’ve been going nonstop since before Christmas that finally the year is beginning to slow down and I can start enjoying and living this life of mine. Not that the next six months aren’t already booking up quickly. I have trips to Florida, Vegas, Ohio, Hilton Head and again to Ohio already in the planner and who knows what else will pop up. My dad is coming to Atlanta at some point to help me stain my deck and do some yard work, and I’m hoping to take a minibreak to Chicago or New Orleans as well. I’m also thinking of going to Europe in September – fly into Amsterdam and spend a few days with Teri’s parents and then take a train to France or Germany or England. Who wants to come?
Rainy blah
It’s raining and gross outside and that’s about how I feel. I should be at the gym right this second, but it’s hard to go sometimes when you know none of your friends are going to be there either. Every Saturday we go to this Body Works class, which is free weights and strength training in a classroom setting, and the instructor is this fantastic Cuban guy named Jorge. He used to be a dancer in NYC and always makes us do these silly moves in between sets, and his classic move, posing. After we work our shoulders and arms he makes us shake it out and then pose like bodybuilders. So at the wedding last week we had Hollis take some pictures of us in our Body Works poses, and when Sarah gets back we’ll take them in to show Jorge. I’m not sure he really wants us to be his poster girls, but he seemed excited about the prospect of us posing in our wedding attire!
Sarah and Doug get home tonight, and I’m sure the dogs are ready to see them! I am ready to see them! It’s been a week of 12 paws on the hardwood floors and deep sighs and barking. Good lord, the barking. (Mostly Montego, to be fair.)
I’m coming up on one year of homeownership and everyone says that after the first year, it gets easier. I really, really hope so. I would be lying if I didn’t admit that one of the suckiest things about breaking up with J0shua was that I lost my handyman! He has plans to come down and help me out with a few things, but now that we’re not together anymore, I can’t really expect him to do that. Sure, it’ll be great if he does, but if not, I guess I’ll have to woman up and either break out the Yellow Pages or my toolbox.
I was e-mailing with someone the other day and he said something about how younger women (24ish) are sometimes easier to date than women closer to/past 30 because younger girls are often more carefree, have fewer expectations and less baggage. It’s not the first time I’ve heard something like that – I even remember 30-year-old+ guys saying it to me when I was 24, and it struck me as incredibly unfair even back then. I put up with a lot of bad behavior when I was in my 20s – I was so worried about someone rejecting the real me that I kept my mouth shut and made nice. What is so crazy about that is that’s not who I am at all. My friends call me their boss for a reason – I’m a natural leader with strong opinions on just about everything! But on dates or in the beginnings of a new relationship I have a tendancy to ask a lot about him and only mention things that I like that I know he likes too etc. And that’s unfair to him, but it’s also so unfair to me. Why would I sabotage myself like that?
When J0shua and I made the move from friends to more, I was so petrified that he would change his mind that I felt almost paralyzed. I didn’t know how to act and he was left wondering where that fun, engaging, independent girl went who was his friend. Stupid, stupid.
If your 20s are when you figure out who you are and what you stand for, then at least I’m on track with something!
Official Photo
Hollis, the wedding photographer, sent me a few shots yesterday, and this one was among them.
After the ceremony the wedding party traipsed down the beach a little ways to a spot Hollis had picked out earlier in the week, where the light was just right. Mary and I ran into the water and shouted for him to take our picture as we skipped along the shore line. (It will not come as a surprise to anyone who knows me (or has read me for awhile), that I’m not exactly camera shy.) How can you have a beach wedding and not get a few shots of people in the water? We were doing our bridesmaid duty.
It’s been a long year leading up to the wedding, with a lot of planning and shopping and preparing, and that was just for me! I’m so happy for Sarah and Doug that everything went so beautifully and that the weekend was so fantastic. It’s sort of sad that it’s all over, but I feel like now I can get back to the business of living.
Jamaica is a fascinating place where they put hot dogs on pizza and Island Time means you might get a beach towel tomorrow. Maybe. But it’s also a place where it’s easy to fall in love or feel loved and where every night, when the sun hits the water and turns it from blue to gold, you know that God is good and you are blessed.
Kingdom Come
“Kingdom Come”
Coldplay, X&Y
one.. two.
steal my heart, and hold my tongue
i feel my time, my time has come
let me in, unlock the door
i never felt this way before
and the wheels just keep on turning
the drummer begins to drum
i don’t know which way i’m going
i don’t know which way i’ve come.
hold my head, inside your hands
i need someone who understands
i need someone, someone who hears
for you i’ve waited all these years
for you i’d wait, till kingdom come
until my day, my day is done
and say you’ll come, and set me free
just you’ll wait, you’ll wait for me.
in your tears, and in your blood
in your fire, and in your flood
i hear you laugh, i heard you sing
i wouldn’t change a single thing
and the wheels just keep on turning
the drummers begin to drum
i don’t know which way I’m going
i don’t know what i’ll become
for you’d i’d wait, till kingdom come
until my days, my days are done
say you’ll come, and set me free
just say you’ll wait, you’ll wait for me
just say you’ll wait, you’ll wait for me
just say you’ll wait, you’ll wait for me.
Last December my dad had an angiogram and subsequent angioplasty where he had two stents put into his heart. The night he called to tell me he was going in for the procedure was one of the worst nights of my life; to be so many miles away, unsure of what was going to happen, of being faced with my father’s mortality in a way I’d never fully considered. After we hung up, and he’d told me not to worry and that he’d be fine, I dug around in my little jewelry box for a small white gold band. I found it surrounded by James Avery dangle rings that I will never again wear and plenty of chandelier earrings. It was my mother’s original wedding band – the ring that my father slid onto her finger nearly 40 years earlier. Judy gave me the ring when I was in college, and at the time I didn’t think much of it. I wore it sometimes because that’s when I was into wearing a lot of silver rings and it went with my style. Until that night, however, I hadn’t worn it for years, because it’s clearly a wedding band, and it seemed sad, to wear a symbol of something that had been dead and broken for a long time. But that night, when I slid it onto my right hand ring finger, it made me feel closer to my father and I told myself I would wear it until I knew that he was okay. It’s been about 15 months since that night, and I haven’t taken it off.
The other night, over dinner, someone asked me about it, and I told him why I first put it on, but then explained that over the past year, the ring has turned into a symbol for something else. On March 20, 1965, when my parents vowed for better or for worse – when they vowed to forsake all others and cling only to each other – they meant those words. They loved each other once; of that I have no doubt. So I wear this ring to honor those vows because they are my legacy, my lifeblood.
But more than that I wear it as a promise to myself – a promise to wait for someone who has been waiting for me all these years. A promise to wait for the kind of love that could outlast a gold band, a fight, hurt feelings, toothpaste in the sink. A love, a lover, who would wait for me, till his days are done, till kingdom come.
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Compassion
