Post-Wedding Hair

I took the bobby pins out.

17 of them, 

which really doesn't seem like that many,

I decided I'd take a picture or two of the results, to share here.

This is my first ever bathroom self-portrait.  

And no, I've still not erased that little love note from the bathroom mirror.

Jimi watched me from the doorway, then said, "Watch."

He held the phone up so I could see the display through the mirror.

Like most 5th graders have mastered,

yet I probably wouldn't have figured out for a hundred years.

Jimi took the rest of these shots.

That's his hand there on the side.

He was talking to me.

He made me laugh.

And then it got fun.

He was trying to make my boobs bigger.

Didn't work.

Namaste

(I'm assuming a lot of you are familiar with this story, as Katie is HUGE in the blogging world, but if not, the links are there.)

Katie Granju filed a lawsuit yesterday against two people who gave her drug-addicted son a large amount of methadone, which caused him to overdose.  Then they refused to call for medical help, which resulted in Henry's death just over a year ago, at the age of 18.

Today is my brother's birthday.  He's 22.  He could be Henry.  Their stories, they are so much the same.  My brother, too, is an addict.  My brother has done horrible things to support his habit.  My brother had been a very bad person at times.  My brother has been really hard to like for a long time.  But he is my brother, and I love him, and if someone did something that hurt him or caused his death, I'd fight like hell, too, to see justice served. Because he is my brother, and I love him, and he's a good person when he's not high or chasing a high.

On Facebook, Katie said something about how she'd made the mistake of reading the comments responding to the news story about the lawsuit...and because I could never not go look after reading something like that, I made my way to the comment section, too.

I wish I hadn't.  Why are people so mean?

I'm not copying and pasting that bullshit because it shouldn't have been posted in the first place.  I just cannot believe the callousness and heartlessness and downright cruelty people are showing toward this woman, this mother.  And Henry?  To so many, Henry was a nobody.  Henry was scum, he was unimportant, he was worthless - not because they talked with him and determined his views and opinions to be unimportant or worthless, no; Henry was an addict, he was weak, he did bad things, so Henry was a nobody.

Now, I'm not generally one to quote from the Good Book, but there's a first time for everything:

"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.' They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?' He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least among you, you did not do for me.'" Matthew 25:41-45 
 
Even if you're not a Christian, you're a shithead if you don't abide by that passage there.  Henry was someone's (Katie's) child, grandchild, brother, nephew, cousin.  But for the grace of God, he could've been YOUR child, grandchild, brother, nephew, cousin.  He was a person, with thoughts and feelings, who loved and was loved.  These people who are being sued, they let Henry choke on his own vomit and convulse for hours in the middle of the floor of their house trailer, refusing to call an ambulance for him.  And people are attacking Katie for wanting those shitheads to be held accountable?

It's easy to want to blame the victim, to say Henry was nothing.  If he just fades into the woodwork with all the other druggies, everyone can pretend that Henry wasn't JUST LIKE their son, daughter, brother, sister, cousin, niece, nephew.  If Henry was just some messed up junkie, there's no correlation between him and Todd, who's the Captain of the football team, or Jessica who's Head Cheerleader.  If Katie was a bad mom, if she just turned a blind eye and let her kid become and addict, then there's no way that'll ever happen to the child of the Patty the PTA President, because Patty really pays attention to her children.

Wake up!  The drug problem is in your back yard!  Hell, it's probably in your bathroom medicine cabinet.  But no...better to pretend this problem belongs to the margins of society and brush it away from our sight; shame the "good" victims into keeping quiet to protect themselves - there is so much guilt by association.

I've lived with this fear in the back of my mind and heart for the last few years - a fear that one day I'm going to get a tearful, hysterical phone call from my Momma or Daddy saying my brother's dead; that he's overdosed, or he was robbed and beaten horribly, or someone's thrown him from a car, or he was shanked in jail.  Drugs are really bad - they make people do really awful things - and when you've got a loved one living in that world, your imagination runs wild.  Brother's currently on an upswing of sobriety, and he's making good steps toward the future.  We're all cautiously hopeful...while we're telling ourselves we're fools for being so optimistic.  This is the hilly tightrope we walk, those of us who love an addict.

Those commenters said those horrible things about Katie and Henry for one of a few reasons:  maybe they've never known unconditional love; maybe they or someone they love have/has an addition problem about which they're in denial; or maybe they're just assholes - you've got to be a special kind of low to direct a bunch of hate and vitriol toward a grieving mother who's only trying to help get a couple drug dealers off the streets before someone else's kid dies.  Mostly I think they just can't possibly understand - they can't relate to Katie's grief, they can't relate to Henry's addiction - and what they can't understand scares them, and so they attack.
I hope Katie comes to realize this before any more of those word daggers find their mark.

Try to leave the world a better place than you found it, would you please, friends?  Show some love to your fellow humans and remember that we're all fighting our own private battles.

If you want to help Katie in her quest for Justice for Henry, go here to sign the Petition, or visit Justice for Henry for more information.  

Thoughts formed over Mexican food

What kind of woman actively pursues a married man?  A married man with a child?

What sort of character must you possess to text things like "I'll leave the door unlocked, in case you're able to get away"?

What kind of woman ignores a wife's plea of "I need you to go away, like you promised you would"?



What kind of man actively pursues a woman who is not his wife?  What sort of father hurts the mother of his child in that way?  What is he teaching his daughter about how men should treat their wives?

How deeply flawed must one be to repeatedly lie and cheat?

What kind of man ignores his wife's plea of "If you love me, if you love us, please stop this"?



What kind of woman actively allows herself to be disrespected and demeaned?  What example does she set for her child?

How badly has she been hurt that she accepts that an unfaithful spouse is simply her lot in life, the way of things, nothing that can be helped?

What sort of woman is able to live in a world of instability and insecurity and fear that's been created by the man to whom she's devoted her life?



What kind of friend can listen to a tale such as this and not want to punch the lying cheating bastard in his face?  How could you not want to pull the triflin' bitch's hair from her ugly head?

How much trouble can you really get into for egging someone's car?

What sort of friend could ignore a scorned wife's plea of "Let's just go for a drive - please?"?

They call me Mello Yellow

"You know, your life is pretty awesome." 

Kimmie's words have been playing on a loop in my head all day today.  She's right - but again, hearing it from someone else, someone on the outside looking in, it shocks me every time.  And makes me smile.  

And I wonder, "Why me?  What have I done to deserve so much?  Why do I get to be so fortunate/lucky/blessed?"  

My next words were going to be "not that life's perfect, because it's not..." and then I was going to list all the ways my life isn't perfect.  But I can't, because it really is; I have more than enough of everything - there's nothing I need to make life happier.  

*******************

Seven years ago, I lived in Omaha, Nebraska.  I was married to a pilot who flew in the Dakotas every day - in the 5 months we lived there, he was home for only 10 days.  I didn't have a job - I spent my days in our 500 square foot basement apartment (that had only one window) with our 110 lbs. Labrador Retriever, our Jack Russel/Rat Terrier, and our cat.  I drank a lot of Bud Light - 9 or 10 a day.  I went to the library and read a lot.  I started to make some friends on the internet.  I swam in the apartment complex pool when no one else was out there - it was too small for laps if anyone else shared the space.  I was lonely as fuck.  (But they've got a really nice zoo in Omaha.  You should check it out if you're ever in the neighborhood.)

Six years ago, I lived in El Paso, Texas.  I was married to a pilot who flew in Arizona Monday night through Saturday morning - he was home from Saturday afternoon until Monday morning each week.  I worked in a law office downtown - my work history was in Human Resources, but it turns out no one will give you an HR job in El Paso, TX if you don't speak Spanish - and I liked my job (my boss was a young and brilliant and beautiful man named Ken), but it didn't offer me an opportunity to make friends.  (Well, my boss and I were friends, I guess, and he even let me go out to a club with him and another attorney one night.)  My weeknights were spent drinking beer, making friends on the internet, and talking on the phone.  I was desperately lonely, but I pretended so hard to be happy, thinking if I faked it long enough, I could maybe eventually WILL it into existence.  I cried myself to sleep a lot, especially on nights when I got too drunk and tried to masturbate and couldn't get off.  (Did I mention my husband didn't like sex and wouldn't have sex with me?  Yeah, life was awesome.)  I remember thinking "is this really all there is?  Is this all I'll ever have?  Oh, please don't let this be all of it.", and not just once or twice - those thoughts would haunt me as I stared through bleary eyes at the Sunday morning sunrises that turned the browns of the Franklin Mountains into a colorfully painted landscape, and as I watched the nighttime stars through my drunken haze and wished I could be somewhere, anywhere, where people loved me.  

Five years ago, I lived in my childhood bedroom in my parents' home in Louisville, Kentucky.  I was waiting for my soon-to-be-ex-husband to send Ken $300 to cover the filing fee for the Petition of Divorce that I'd drafted on my next-to-last day of work.  I worked for a company that hired me to do AP and Payroll and had yet to assign me any actual finance work - they had me calling customers to introduce myself.  I was miserable, and only got paid once a month, so by the middle of the month I was broke.  I had a million new friends, though, and I was going out almost every night to party with them.  I felt popular for the first time in my life.  I felt pretty on a semi-regular basis.  I went out on dates with men who weren't 6'6" tall pilots with blond hair, blue eyes and chiseled features.  I found a "friend" - a monogamous friend with benefits who was helping relieve the tension that had built up during 4 years of sexless marriage.  (One of these days, I'm going to tell you ALL about that - it was fucking brilliant.)  I started thinking life was pretty awesome, and that things could only get better.  

Four years ago, I lived in Kimmie's upstairs.  I'd found Jimi, and our love was new and exciting in an old and comfortable sort of way - we were on the verge of signing a lease together.  I worked for a company that sold "Rudy Giuliani for President 2008!" merchandise.  (No shit.  I had to talk to pregnant women who were going to name their babies Rudy.)  (They fired me after 2 months.)  It was my 3rd job since I'd moved back to Kentucky, and I was perpetually poor.  There were weeks when I wouldn't have been able to afford to eat - but Kimmie and Jimi always seemed to know without asking when I needed some help.  I had debt collectors all over my ass.  Life was good most of the time, but there was a constant knot in my stomach - fear of unresolved obligations haunted me day and night.  

Three years ago, I lived in the ghetto with my sweet Jimi.  We were in love and happy.  I'd been with my current company for ten months and had just received a promotion and an eleven thousand dollar pay raise.  My half of the rent was $262.50.  Life was getting better every day.  

Two years ago, we still lived in the ghetto, but we were house-hunting.  Still happy and in love, and with a new addition - Finnegan the Wonder Pup.  Work was stressful and challenging and rewarding and fun.  Life was fan-fucking-tastic.  

One year ago, we'd been here, in this house, for six months.  Happy and in love.  Work was the same.  Life was awesome as always.

Today, my friend said, "Your life is pretty awesome."  And she's so fucking right.  I live here, in this house, with him, that man I love and who loves me.  I have a dog and a cat who usually don't shit on the floor and are pretty well-behaved most of the time.  I have a stable, secure job that compensates me adequately.  I have health insurance.  My car is paid off.  There is food in my pantry, my refrigerator, and my deep freezer.  I have a deep freezer.  I have a big-ass yard and a driveway that can park six cars.  I have a basement.  I can do laundry in my basement while I run naked on my treadmill listening to a webcast of a Broadway musical.  My family is awesome and right down the road and they love me and I love them.  I have friends - real friends who know me and love me despite my flaws; friends who may tease me, but do it in a way that's never intended to hurt or make me cry; friends who keep inviting me to things even though I haven't really left my house to be social more than a handful of times in the last year; friends who celebrate my accomplishments and help pick me up when I falter.  

*****************

My life is pretty awesome.  

I'm not sure what I've done to get here, but I'm so glad I've arrived.  

My only desire now, my only wish, is that I can continue to rejoice and be glad in the small miracles and happy moments life brings every day.   

And if you want to punch me in the face, I completely understand.  

Gag me with a spoon.

That'll probably be your reaction to this post.  I apologize in advance, and I hope you didn't pay a lot for your last meal.  


On with the show...

"Together, they're an exceptional couple."

That's what Kimmie said about me and Jimi today, trying to explain the particular nuances of our (mine and Jimi's) relationship.  It gives me butterflies when I hear people say things like that about us.  I think our relationship is exceptional; it's cool that our friends can see it too.  Cause, you know, love is blind and all.

Kim says it's not that Jimi's exceptional, necessarily, but that together we make a great team.  I really believe that Jimi's exceptional and that our success is in thanks largely to the fact that he's the most patient, tolerant, understanding, and kindest man in the whole wide world.

The whole conversation got started because the married ladies in the office were having a "my husband sucks" session.  It happens, you know?  C peeked her head into my office and said, "I know why you're being so quiet in there, because you have a Jimi."

"It's funny you say that, actually," I replied.  I was glad she'd brought it up. "We had this very conversation last week.  I asked Jimi, 'Do you complain about me at work?'  He said 'No, why would I do that?'  So I said 'the women at work complain about what jackasses their husbands are sometimes, and I can't say anything, because in our house, I'm the one who does the jackass things their husbands are doing.  I can commiserate with the husbands.'"

"Exactly," says C.  "Jimi's just a hell of a guy and an exception to the rule."

"I agree," I agreed.  I really do agree.  It's the truth.

And that's when Kim gave me butterflies.

I said something not too long ago about how relationships have highs and lows; we climb pretty steady in this house.  If we were a line graph of business profits, our investors would be happy to see us.  If we were blog stats, you'd want to be the author of that blog.

Four and a half years after that night I made out with him for three and a half hours in the front seats of his truck in that nightclub parking garage - (how's that for a "how I met your mom" story?!) - four and a half years into this thing, this love, this life - oh, I'm just so happy.  I'm so thankful.  I feel so blessed, smiled upon, touched.  Once upon a time, I was a woman who cried her drunk ass to sleep every night thinking "Is this all there is?  Is this all I'll ever have?  Please say this isn't all of it."  Now I'm a woman who gets two birthday cakes and makes the same wish - "Please let this be my life forever.  Please let me have this much happiness every day for the rest of my life."  And it's not just Jimi that makes me feel that way, of course - I've got happiness in spades in just about every way.  But do you remember that movie Pleasantville?  The one that was black and white but then slowly things start to turn to color?  Jimi brought my world from black and white and gray to vibrant and full of life and beautiful.

And I don't know why I've got this urge to gush so much about that man o' mine.  I feel like I love him more every single day and that to not talk about it is doing him and myself a disservice.  It's like that pregnancy/TTC thing - you know how once it's in your head, it's all you can think about night and day, day and night?  That's how I've felt for the last few weeks about how much I love him.  I can't get enough.

And I promise I won't do this regularly.  But every now and then, you've got to expect it.  :)

Oh, and enter my giveaway.  Because, you know, well, just because.

I'm taking so many pictures.

That's what cameras and vacations are for, right? 

Images from the Upstairs

The room is small, and in desperate need of things to go on the walls (especially to cover the attic access - where the raccoon lives.)  But it's cozy and perfect for our needs.  We probably could use some proper window coverings.  Finn destroyed the blinds the first time we left him home alone with access to this room - he NEEDED to see outside, you see.  NEEDED.  Blinds be damned.  I use that old blue sheet to cover the windows at night - to keep the peepers out.  We don't own curtains, other than the sheers that cover the windows on the front of the house (sheers that were here when we moved in); well, Jimi "made" some light-cancelling drapes for the living room. (By "made", I mean he found some burgundy corduroy and cut it to length and hung it on a curtain rod via those rings that have clips on the bottom.)  Basically, we suck at decorating.  We live in a world of hodgepodge and I love it.

This is Squiggs.  He was Jimi's before we knew each other and he's one of my favorite pieces of art that we own.  He's had a rough go of it (note the flaked paint around his neck, where he's been folded for moving and storage), but I think the marks add character.  

Everybody needs a little Buddha.

 Hobart belonged to my Granny, and I've loved him since I was a small child.  I'm amazed that his ears haven't been destroyed over the years, but Granny was sure to let us know what was and was not appropriate when handling her breakable things.

 Hobart became mine after Granny died - but I wasn't able to take him home to El Paso with me.  For one, I'd flown to Kentucky, and while these were the days when you could still check most bags for free, trying to check a two-foot tall ceramic owl seemed a little intimidating.

And my husband (ex-husband) - he said the owl was ugly, and he didn't want it in his house.  This was all happening, I later learned, about 6 months after he'd decided he didn't want to be married anymore - just over a year before he would tell me his decision.  Looking back on much of the way he was to me during this time period, I can only conclude that he was trying to be as big a dick as possible, in hopes that I'd ask for divorce and save him the trouble.  That's the only reason I can imagine he would've used such mean words with me the day after we'd buried my beloved Granny, in regards to something that would always be cherished and remind me of her.

Jimi, though - Jimi was helping me get the last of my things that were stored at my Momma's house, shortly after we'd signed the lease on our first place together.  I'd shown him the owl sheepishly, apologizing for its appearance, but shyly explaining that it was my Granny's, and that it'd been one of my favorite of her possessions when I was a child.  Could we maybe find a place for it in our new home?  Somewhere out of the way, but a place where I could see it every now and then?

Our rental was a shotgun in the ghetto between Old Louisville and Germantown, and our master bedroom was the living room and held the entryway once-upon-a-time.  As a result, there had originally been no closet in the room, but somewhere along the way, someone built one out into the room - a 6' x 6' x 3' box that took up a corner, with plenty of space on top for storage due to the fact that the house had 12' ceilings.  We'd already piled up there disassembled chairs and boxes of crystal and such that had no place in the small confines of this new abode.

"We'll call him Hobart," Jimi declared.  "Hobart the Hoot Owl.  And he can live on top of the closet in our bedroom, and watch over us while we sleep to keep the bad things away."

This man makes me swoon.

Love, and things like it.

Do most people have fights with their partners that involve yelling, name-calling, screaming, throwing things, breaking things, scratching, choking, hitting, punching, biting?

Is that how most of you handle disagreements in your home?  Is that how you deal with someone not giving up the remote control or refusing to stop drinking or not emptying the dishwasher or lying about a secret fling on the side or spending too much money or not having enough money?

I was in a relationship like that once.  It's soul-crushing.  I blame my willingness to tolerate such horror on my young age and ignorance.  The ignorance plea doesn't fly, though - I was raised in a home with two parents who love and adore each other, and I can count on one hand the number of times I've heard them raise their voices to one another.  Physical abuse?  Forgetaboutit.  My father would rather cut off his own arms, and my mother has far too much class to resort to raising her hands.

But it's everywhere.  It's all around us and we don't even see it.  People are hurt every day by the people they love most in the world.  The one who is supposed to love them unconditionally cuts them down with hateful words and mean glares and cruel actions.  That's not love.

Love is a building up of one another.  Love is support and safety and security.  Love is a mutual give and take that comes from two people being kind, keeping confidences, helping, giving.  Love is rolling your eyes and swallowing the smartass remark when the sink is full of dishes and the dishwasher hasn't been run.  Love is negotiating control of the remote in exchange for use of the laptop.  Love is being so angry you want to scream and yell and throw things and push and hit and say hateful words...but you swallow all of that because you love that person more than anything else in the world and you've promised you'll never do anything to hurt them and so you stomp down the hall and slam a door and when you cool off you say "Okay, let's talk about this".  Love is respect; basic human respect.  Love is never saying anything in anger to your partner that you wouldn't say to your boss or your employee or your best friend.  Love is rising above emotions and remembering the greater, sacred emotion that connects your heart to theirs.

Love is so much more.