Author: Amy

Fireworks vs. Cannonballs – Part 1

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Back in October, I was having what seems to be an annual late-night chat with my dear friend Stephanie from The Lovers, the Dreamers, and Me, during what seems to be her annual visit to Not the City, New York. During that chat I opened up about how my dreams just seem so out of reach and how I don’t even know if I am still dreaming the dream anymore.

In the morning, I woke up to this on my fridge:

An encouraging poem that is still on my fridge.

I read the poem and had a good cry. And I sort of resolved to do something, because one of my friends managed to write me a meaningful message using Magnetic Poetry for couples (which, by the way, contained the word DIVORCE! I threw it away immediately.). And if she could do that, I could at least muster some effort to resemble the person I long to be.

One of the first things I did was decide to get back into writing. Coincidentally, NaBloPoMo was coming up. I decided that I would update my blog every single day in November. I did write a few good posts, but mostly I am thankful for the writing practice and the “practice” practice – the mindset shift of digging into something every single day.

I wasn’t intending to make this a multi-part post, but, well – here we go again.

Let it snow.

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I knew this no-snow winter* couldn’t last. 1-2 inches in the forecast, which I know is positively paltry compared to forecasts in other places.

Commence piano music and tea and curling up in a ball on the couch.

Note that I did not say “curling up in the fetal position,” which is what I will be doing emotionally.

See you in the spring, happiness!

*Yes, I know it’s not technically even winter yet. Mr. Thor loves to remind me, and I love to tell him to stop it, please.

The things that bother my brain…

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So, there is this THING going around facebook, and no I will not link to it here – it’s stupid! In an honest attempt to not steal stupid content, I will tell you is that it’s on http://www.buzzfeed.com and the title is: “12 Extremely Disappointing Facts About Popular Music”and it lists out random facts like, “Led Zeppelin, REM, and Depeche Mode have never had a number one single, Rihanna has 10” and “Ke$ha’s “Tik-Tok” sold more copies than ANY Beatles single.”

And the list is full of little factoids like that.

Think!

When music was hard copy only, how many singles did you buy? I bought exactly two, in my entire life, and I’m not too proud to admit it. The first one was a record of Miami Sound Machine’s “Conga.” The second was Chely Wright’s “Shut up and Drive.”

Now. Now that music is digital, how many single songs have I purchased?

I can’t even count. When a song is a dollar, and an album is at least ten times that, I am way more likely to just choose the songs I like the best and buy them.

When I was younger, the cost of an album was enough that I had no problem sitting in my room for hours listening to the radio to tape good songs as they came on. I rarely ever bought albums – I bought every New Kids on the Block, Madonna, and Debbie Gibson album, a Beatles greatest hits album, a handful of Indigo Girls albums, and a few more – and they were all ON TAPE. Not to mention, in high school, I mostly bought musicals on tape. Yeah, yeah, I know. Les Miserables, Jekyll and Hyde, Phantom of the Opera, even A Chorus Line.

Do you think that even the dorky kids in school have such a weird music collection? No.

Technology is so pervasive that the great majority of kids expect to own iPods. Do you understand that I had to save up my allowance for a knock-off walkman… that played cassettes? I never owned a discman until after high school. I got my very first CD player when I was 18.

So. Music used to be WAY less accessible. WAY.

And there were also fewer people on the planet.

And there was no internet for most of the earlier artists that they are referencing.

It’s not even like comparing apples to oranges. It’s like comparing apples to… broccoli.

But, really, reading things like that gets my brain whirring, wondering if anyone out there is trying to make a reasonable comparison, and how I can get my hands on that information.

I just roasted a chicken.

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Almost every day, I eat the same thing for lunch: deli turkey and provolone on whole wheat bread.

I was going to buy a rotisserie chicken at the grocery store with the intention of eating it for the week – sandwiches and salads and even burritos.

But the only rotisserie chickens I found were labeled “barbeque” (shudder).

At that point, I thought I would just buy a package of boneless/skinless chicken breast and roast it in the oven.

When we got there, though, I thought – hey! whole chickens! I just roasted a turkey recently and it went pretty well. Maybe a chicken would also go pretty well!

And then I thought, no, chicken breasts are easier.

And then I looked at the price. The whole chicken was $0.88 per pound. The chicken breasts were over $3 per pound.

So I grabbed a six-pounder and threw it into the cart.

I came home and rinsed and dried it. I chopped up a few large slices of onion, mixed with sage, rosemary, and a bit of garlic and lemon juice and stuffed it loosely. I put it in a baking dish and left it in for just over 2 hours.

It was AMAZING. I tasted the breast and I let Mr. Thor taste some, too. We are both in agreement that this beats lunch meat any day.

It was much like roasting a turkey, only smaller, easier to handle, and easier to carve. Maybe if I keep roasting the chickens, by next Thanksgiving my turkey game will be greatly improved.

My Christmas List

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So, every year, I inevitably get asked, by at least one person, what I want for Christmas. I usually think, “too much to say.”

My husband asked me what I wanted for Christmas this year, and I honestly want nothing at all.

I can look around my life and see that it is absolutely rich and fun, I am loved, I feel balanced and happy. This is all I have ever wanted.

I said, “maybe a Kindle fire” because they are SO fun. But I’m not even sure I want that. I like that I can only get on the internet from a real computer and not from something little I can take anywhere with me.

I want to follow my heart, make money with my passions and talents, and spend time with those I love.

I want my friends and family to be happy and healthy and fulfilled.

Should be pretty easy, right?

OK, honestly, I wouldn't mind a tree full of these.

The Story of Us: What I didn’t mention

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What I didn’t mention was my state of affairs when I stumbled upon Mr. Thor, and how hard I tried to NOT fall for him.

How I literally cried and prayed to God to remove this man from my life.

Imagine it: I had just moved to New York (NOT the city. Not even close.) from Nashville, TN. In Nashville, I had a decent, if uninspiring, office job. I had enough extra money to go to several concerts and go out to dinner often. I lived in a great apartment in the city. With my own bathroom.

In NewYork, I had nothing. I was staying out in the true boonies with an old friend who already had a house established, so all I brought in was my bed and a teeny desk.

I had a job making barely over minimum wage. Which meant I had no money. In fact, I had rapidly growing credit card debt due to my underemployment. My bank account was negative, often.

In Nashville, there was a lot of talk about getting yourself “prepared” for your spouse. Men need to get better jobs, get their style together, and buy homes and nicer cars. Women need to lose weight and get their finances in order, as well as work on honing their feminine traits. At least, that’s how interpreted the messages I was seeing around me.

Taking all of this into account as I was slinging coffee and dirty magazines with a -$67.00 bank account balance and living largely off candy bars and muffins and free coffee, I came to one conclusion: I was NOT ready. I was my heaviest in several years. My clothes had holes and stains. My debt was skyrocketing.

I considered my great-aunt Ellen. She never married and lived a wonderful and inspiring life. She has a school named after her. I set my sights on lifelong spinsterhood. I declared my singlehood and decided that I was not going to take on one more crush.

And, besides. The guy liked death metal. Automatic out!

But, almost the moment I decided this, Mr. Thor and I got much closer. I cried, I prayed, I thought about other things, I begged and begged God to remove this man from my line of sight so that I could stop thinking about him. “If you get me a better job, I will move on and prepare for my husband” sounds like some bargaining I might have tried at the time.

But the rejection letters just kept coming, and Mr. Thor never went away.

As a matter of fact, without Mr. Thor I probably wouldn’t be out of credit card debt. I wouldn’t be 50 pounds down in my weight loss journey.

The thing about me not being ready? Neither was he. We met each other during rough, tough times. We grew together. We held hands and talked. We held each other up and took turns encouraging each other. We have become the very best of friends, and I don’t know if that could have happened if things didn’t pan out exactly the way they did.

My mom likes to say something to me, because I always worry about what I’m doing, what decisions I’m making, how successful I am:

“Trust the plan.” 

Although I will probably never stop obsessing over my choices, I know she’s right. Things always work out, even when they dont (that’s my saying.). It’s part of the plan. It makes us who and how we are.

The Story of Us: Part 6

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Well, I found out through the Mrs. Thor facebook page that my cute little play on suspense wasn’t sitting too well with at least one person. For that reason, I am hammering out Part 6 without delay.

Having just sent the man of my dreams a somewhat confessatory e-mail, and not really knowing for sure what I would hear back in reply, I did what any mature, self-possessed 30-year-old woman would do: I hid under the covers. I went back to bed to keep myself from hitting the refresh button on my gmail for three hours.

When I woke up, it was after 11 pm. Sure enough, there was an e-mail from Mr. Thor.

I was nervous, but only a little bit. I trusted him enough that I knew this: even a letdown would be fine. He would not let me fall, he would not insult me, and he would not be mean about anything in the least if he didn’t feel the same way about me.

In the e-mail, he said that he was surprised that people at work had noticed something between us. He said that it had been most of his life since a girl came along that he felt a connection with. He said that, if he made a list of all the characteristics he was looking for in a woman – he would get me. He said that he never had so much fun being around a girl, and that he could write a list of 100 things that he loved about me. He then proceeded to send me a mini-list that included “She is smart in a megazabillion ways” and “She is one of the most compassionate people I have ever known” – And then he estimated that it would probably take him 1000 years to find someone like me on eHarmony.

If you know me, you know how much this all meant. He liked me back. Actually, it seemed that he loved me back! I loved him before I knew what had hit me, and here it was, all coming out. He loved me, and I knew it.

Also, if you know me, you know that I need structure, and rules, and I need things categorized.

So, I sent my own mini list back… And then I asked, “What do we do? Are we supposed to be boyfriend and girlfriend?”

And he replied: “You can call it whatever you want – “going out” or “boyfriend and girlfriend” etc. but I have been wishing for something like this for years and years, all the while being extremely doubtful I would find it…Now that I know what I want it just seems like it’s so rare to find, like where would I find it if not for you?”

That e-mail was sent at 2:04 AM on February 5, 2008.

I had a boyfriend. A real boyfriend, who really appreciated key things about me. Someone who thought I was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Someone with a heart of gold, who shared his feelings and appreciated me for exactly who I was.

I didn’t really sleep that night.

The Story of Us: Part 5

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So, by the end of Part 4, I was pretty, kinda, mostly sure that Mr. Thor liked me at least a little bit. This was the middle of January. When we both worked at The Dirty Store, I usually worked until 4. He usually worked until 9.

Did I mention the part where I had never had a boyfriend before? Because I had never had a boyfriend before Mr. Thor (other than the handful in 6th grade, but, c’mon.) and I had no idea how we were going to get from where we were to where we should be.

So, I loitered. I stayed after work and kept Mr. Thor company while he wiped up coffee spills and lottery ticket shavings and sold dirty magazines and cigarettes. We talked, and talked, and talked some more. And when we got home, we e-mailed. We were in communication, a lot. We e-mailed on our days off, on our days on. We talked about our families, about our coworkers, about our interests and fears.

In our e-mails, we talked about how lucky we felt to know each other. I called him my favorite.

And then, something happened to me one Saturday. February 2, 2008. A realization hit me: if things didn’t move forward, they would move nowhere. And Mr. Thor would fade off the end of the page into the pile of other guys I have liked too much to be just friends.

Except… wait. Panic! I felt total panic at the thought of losing him. That afternoon, I took his picture. That night, I stayed overnight with my friend Jax – we were planning to watch the Giants play the Patriots in the Superbowl. Tom Petty was playing the halftime show. Mr. Thor and I were both rooting for the Giants, because the Patriots had, up til the Superbowl, had a perfect season and we were going to be rooting for the underdogs, who also happened to be “his” team.

(shut up, I know, I know! I got into football for a guy and I actually love it!)

The Giants upset the Patriots in that game, and Mr. Thor and I sent a flurry of e-mails back and forth throughout the game.

The next day, we kept the string going. I had a job interview and he sent me an encouraging e-mail.

Then, we got into a conversation about work, and how he thought our manager had busted us for having so much fun, because we hardly seemed to work together anymore.

And then, I wrote:

“i think you’re right, PJ has busted us.

well, that, and it might have something to do with the fact that she thinks you have a crush on me. she informed me of her conclusion last week sometime by saying: “Mr. Thor has a crush on you.”

i said, “he does?”

she said, “you didn’t notice?”

(i have no clue about these kind of things.)

she is actually the second person at work to bring this to my attention.

what say you to these allegations? do you have a crush on me?

i hope so,
amelia
xoxo”

I totally put it all out there!

The only problem with my timing was that Mr. Thor was at work when I sent that e-mail.

…for another 2 hours.