pretty crabby

The other side

Somedays are harder than others and I wonder what the hell I am doing, pretending to be a grownup in a relationship. Who is this person I suddenly am going to a job every day and coming home to this guy (a guy I really like, mind you) every night?

Today I walked and thought and listened to music and wondered about needs.

I'm a girl who grew up going back and forth between my parents. Often times I made these journeys alone because I don't have siblings, it has always been "just me". We moved first when I was 8 years old and I know my childhood fractured then. I went from being some girl who goes to the same school and knows the same people and has the same friends to the girl who sat alone at lunch every day. And I know, woe is me, get over it, it's not so bad. But it was really hard, and it still makes me sad to think about how lonely I was then.

What I learned was that I needed to rely on myself and take care of myself because other people were out to get you. To make fun of your glasses or tease you because you were poor, according to them, and you were different. Only because you were NEW.

The next year we moved again, I changed schools again, and then we did it all once more a year after that. Every time I went deeper into myself and built up more walls, to keep myself safe. I did make friends and some of them are people I still know today, but I wasn't the same. I became the girl who read in her room and stayed home every night, so far away from whoever that other girl was. The girl I left behind when we moved the first time.

I like who I am now but some things have not gotten any easier. In the quietest moments when it is just him and me I can feel myself trying. Trying to open up and trying to let him in and I just don't know how. I feel this block between where I am and where I want to be and I don't know how to break through it. I keep saying "I have to be able to talk to you" but I know I AM able, no one else is making me keep anything in, except me.

I don't know how to do it. I want to so much. I want it to be easy. I want to be open and honest and clear.

But it all just feels so far away.

Sex booze bacon

Internet, I don't want to lie to you.

I am having a pretty fabulous summer. Really. It's true. And I am knocking wood while I am writing this because you just never know when the sky might fall, Chicken Little.

I don't have too much to write about because blah blah blah, happiness and that is fairly boring. Just like I don't want to wear you out with complaints, I wouldn't want to wear you out with joy and excitement either. Its a balancing act, all to keep you entertained. I know. You're welcome.

On Saturday I went to a barbecue and thought about how if you have been in a relationship for awhile you kind of have this weird moment when you realize "okay, worlds are melded!" and you know all the same people and people start saying things to you like "so, you've been around for awhile" or "we knew it was serious when..."

It's so funny how people see your relationship from the outside and lately all I hear is how we seem to get along so well and everything seems great and AGAIN, blah blah blah happiness! Then I kind of have to turn it around inside myself and think about how even though there are issues (everyone always has issues right?) that, yes, things are pretty good. Life is good. And here we are a year later and how did that happen?

Anyway.

At the party there was a discussion about what are the things in life that you just can't live without? What are your deadly important three? The person bringing it all up said he and his wife had decided it was "sex, booze, and bacon" so what were your three? I looked around at the other people there and in unison we all just kind of nodded and were all "um, I think it's sex booze and bacon?!" Then there talk about other things like the Internet, and books, and you know, CHEESE. I am still mulling it over but right now, sex booze and bacon sounds pretty damn delicious.

Damn, summer is just so much fun.

Brass in pocket

I had such a good birthday and now it is over and I am feeling a little sad. I always count down to it's arrival (because I am just that kind of girl) and then it is over so quickly, it doesn't seem fair.

On Saturday morning I walked on the beach with that boy of mine and felt very happy for everything that has happened to me thus far and where I am and how full my life feels right now. Aside from the whole job/career/money/life thing, things are pretty damn good. Please don't let any lightning bolts fall on my head now that I said that, thanks.

On my birthday I woke up to presents and put my feet in the ocean and everything was good with the world, aside from the fact that it was a little foggy. Moody weather is okay by me, I am a moody girl. We drove back towards home playing music and drinking coffee and when I got back to my house my neighbors made us cocktails and sang Happy Birthday to me on my patio while Elroy meowed in the background.

The party at my dad's was fun (although so hot, 2nd floor, no AC, everyone sweating together like one giant mass) and lots of people I love where there, blah blah blah happiness.

And now I am 30. Which seems so stange but you know, so far, so good. Everyone I know and love is basically older than me so now I am finally catching up. When I turned 20 years old standing in my dad's kitchen, I had no idea what would happen or who I would meet. 10 years later I was standing in his kitchen again with a bunch of people I have met,  bonded with, and fallen in love with and I think I did pretty fucking well by my twenties.

Now, I'm just so excited for whatever happens next.

There it goes.

I am getting very very excited for my birthday weekend. Here is my agenda so far. Thursday night, go downtown and maybe pick up a few things at my very favorite store and maybe get a new phone. Ooo, exciting. I have had the same phone for over two years! I am bored of it!

Friday AM I will sleep in, walk to my favorite coffee place to get my iced coffee and maybe talk a walk around my lovely neighborhood. THEN this boy I like will pick me up and we will drive two hours to our fabulous hotel on the ocean. Yes, it is OURS. That is right. Friday night will be lounging by the pool and seeing a movie in the hotel movie theater. With free popcorn! Saturday we'll go to the ocean (maybe the National Sea Shore) and into town where I am determined to buy myself some new jewelry and maybe get a new tattoo! Crazy!

Sunday I will get to wake up by the ocean and I will be THIRTY YEARS OLD. I have already started saying things about "when I was in my twenties". Like, "back in my twenties I used to smoke sometimes" or "back in my twenties I was thinner!" and "back in my twenties I killed a man in Reno, just to watch him die". You get the idea.

On Sunday night my nice dad will host a birthday dinner for me at his house with some of my favorite people and also pizza and beer, other favorites. Oh, and margaritas of course. What are you doing? Do you want to come?

Needless to say I am excited and I hope it doesn't go by too fast. I am trying to think about all that happened when I was 29 and what I will remember it for. I met some very cool people and learned more and more about Being In A Relationship and what that means to me. I think I grew up some more. I hope I was a good friend and that everyone I love knows I love them. I am pretty sure they do, since that is the most important thing to me. I want to believe that people care as much as I do about other people, but I know sometimes they don't. You can't always get the best of someone or even expect them to be kind, but I still hope they will be. I try not to be get my feelings hurt when they aren't. I hope we are all just doing things the best we know how, and to sound totally and completely twee - treating others the way we would like to be treated.

I don't think I have learned ONE GREAT LESSON during my 29th year but more likely solidified the things I already believed. I am a blessed girl, I know, and I am happy to be where I am. I can't really ask for more than that.

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Unrelated to anything, I seem to have a bunch of standard Vox invites now. It's so fun over there. So, if you want one, let me know. And add me as a friend!

Mmm mmm good.

I regularly tell people that I like that I am going to eat them up. Or squeeze them a lot. Or maybe smoosh them and put them in my pocket. You know, I'm flexible!

I also have been known to bite and sometimes I have to RESTRAIN MYSELF from biting hard and HURTING SOMEONE. I just like them and think they are so yummy and delicious, I WANT TO INJEST THEM. It's weird, it's twisted. I know. Trust me, I know. I also do it with my cat, and usually I just knaw on his ear a little and he gets me later by waking me up subtley nibbling on my arm. One of the first things I am known to say in the morning is, "please don't lick me. It feels weird." And so then he bites me, you know, just a little bit. He has learned. Licking, I don't like. Biting? Biting a little is okay.

Lucie (age 6) is awesome about all this because as I have said before, when I tell her I am going to eat her up she says "do it." This has become a running joke as well. DO IT. Eat us up! Right this minute. DO IT. GO. I'm ready.

Anyway, the other morning I may have crossed some sort of serial killer/stalker/weirdo line when I said something like "oooooooo, I am going to squeeze you and smoosh you until your head pops off and then I will keep it in my desk drawer! And then when I open it during the day you'll be there and you'll say 'HELLO!' and it will be great!" Um. Yay? I guess?

Apparently I am like two steps away from having severed forearms and shoulders in my fridge. Consider yourself warned.

"You know I'm tied to you like the buttons on your blouse..."

Thursday was three years since my grandmother died and I have been thinking about her a lot. Her death was very sad (as most are, I suppose) and I haven't really written about it before because it is still sad. But I guess it will always be sad. And I realize that I don't need to write about her death, I could write about her life, but now when I think of her I think about the last few weeks she was here and that is what I remember. That is what is the closest to me now. Maybe it won't always be that way because I know memory shifts and things that were farther away can move towards you and the bad things can drift and so on.

I think we did good things for her in those last few weeks though, and it wasn't all sad. When I came in to her little apartment, she was there in the middle of the room and everyone was moving around her. She made me stand on a chair so she could see my WHOLE dress from her place on the bed.

She asked me about boys and I told her there was one but I didn't know what would happen. That it was all so complicated. And now it is better and I wonder if she knows.

One day she woke up talking about "fluffy white cake" and my aunt and I went out and found some. My aunt told me, "I think she should be able to have what she wants now, don't you?" and fluffy white cake was something we could find, easily. My gramma had a bite and deemed it "wonderful". It was the last thing she ate.

My gramma had four kids, seven grandkids, and so many friends. She had style. She always wore a hat and shoes that matched and had a million purses, so much jewelry and way too many clothes. My mom says I get all of that from her. She worried about people she loved and she thought about things, a lot. I know I get that from her too.

I wonder where she is. And I miss her.

Not really anything of substance here.

I am actually in a coffee shop WRITING ON MY BLOG. Good lord, I am a person I hate. But my stupid wireless connection doesn't want to work from home and how can I express myself if not in words on a computer screen to total strangers? Oh, that's right, I CAN'T.

So, have you mentally prepared yourself?? Tomorrow is ONE WEEK TO THIRTY! Again, I am a Person I Hate, counting down to their own birthday. But you know what one week means? Well, it means tomorrow is also the very start of My Birthday Week! I love The Birthday Week. This was last years, and it was pretty great. I only have the very best hopes for this years. On Friday I will hit the road and on my actual birthday I will wake up next to the ocean with someone I like the best, so obviously it is already a pretty good time.

And it has to be better than the week that just passed when I was so busy I almost died and on top of that I got a terrible cold and WANTED to die. Who gets a cold in JULY?? Apparently, I do. Yuck. I had all kinds of drugs and all kinds of sleep (going to bed at 8:30 every night like I was 7 years old) and barely talked to or saw anyone. I was in my own personal END OF 29 Exile!

On the last day that I was 19, I got my first tattoo and now I haven't gotten a tattoo since 2000, which is A LONG TIME. I think I will be getting something very soon. I will keep you in suspense though because I am evil! And also because I am not entirely sure what I am going to get!

I am A Woman Of Mystery. Yeah, that's right.

Because summer has the most sun.

Last night I had dinner at one of my coworkers houses and it was great fun. She is one of the few I actually like and we mused on many things including favorites such as drinking and romance.

And also people at work who we hate like this one couple of bitchy ass women who are so fakely nice, it makes me want to turn my skin inside out. Sarah (yes, Sarah. I clearly have to know many Sarah's at once and I am going to write a Kids in the Hall style song called "These are the Sarahs I know") regaled me with a story about how she heard one of the women fighting with the other on the phone and she literally said "I don't have time for this, CANDICE. Save it for your journal!" and then she HUNG UP ON HER. They are really the most pleasant people you will never meet. Lucky you.

We also mused over the fact that our respective dates bonded in about five minutes of meeting, apparently over Omaha steaks and Bob Dylan. Aw, boys.

Sarah is great because she is warm while also being sarcastic and that is just my favorite combination. Also because she is 8 months pregnant and every time the baby moves she lets me feel her belly and get weirded out. At one point I had a key in my hand and thought we could pop that baby out so we could meet him/her and see what they were about. She was all for it but no one had any boiling water, so oh well, maybe another time.

We left somewhat drunkenly around midnight and came home and I wasn't asleep until after 2:30 (use your imaginations, or if you are my mom, maybe don't) and this morning I was awake at 8 wondering where the time had gone.

Tonight there is a party and I can't decide if I want to go but then I just realized that I will be 30 in two weeks and so maybe I should be as drunk as possible for the next 14 days. I think my twenties should go out with a bang, don't you?

Even if it kills me.