On Making Friends

So I've talked about my awkwardness with the younger generations. Lets talk about my awkward with people my age.

There's a reason that I have so many experiences with creeps, geeks, and the deranged. I'm a little bit of all of the above.

Since moving three years ago to a new town and a new job I've made exactly zero friends. The friends I tried to make (all two of them) were either grumpy and old or fired from work. There's a light at the end of this tunnel though. A couple of weeks ago I met a new girl at work. We started talking, she was funny, smart and had a lower lip piercing - my kind of chick, in a totally hetero way (oh who am I kidding, we're all a little bit gay, just like we're all a little bit racist).

Anyway, stepping away from the potentially offensive (told you I was awkward), this girl and I were talking, lets call her Aubry, and I was getting super excited at the prospect of a new friend. At one point I actually blurted out, "ohmigosh! We could totally be besties!"

Yeah, I then had to work on recovery. I went on to say that I'm not as creepy and weird as I seem and I get better with time.

Hopefully she'll take me up on my offer to hang out once she gets moved up here. Although on thinking about it, I probably said something like, "once you move up here let me know where you live so I can sit outside your house and watch you through binoculars" instead of "we should catch a movie sometime."

Oh well, I've still got CG. I've managed to somehow hypnotize him into staying with me. Sometimes I wonder why he's managed to stick around, then I remember he's a little bit creepy, geeky, and deranged too. We're meant for each other in a totally creepy way.

I knew you were crazy, just not THAT crazy.

You know those families where everyone's out of their mind but they're your family so you love them? Mine's not like that. - The Wedding Date

Okay, so I do still love my family. I think they're totally great and couldn't adore each and every one of them more if I tried. But (and there's always a but, isn't there?), about 50% of them are THAT kind of crazy.

A history of mental illness that, if written out, would be taller than I am floods both sides of my family. Ranging from alcoholism and drug addiction to schizophrenia and dementia back down to just plain white-trash, beating the crap out of your significant other while wearing a tight white t-shirt a la Street Car and drinking Natural Light.

Yeah, I'm abusive, but look how cute I am!

CG finally got a real peak inside the honest to God crazy in the family this weekend. I'm sure it was eye opening. I kept warning him, trying to tell stories, to lessen the blow that was sure to come, but I don't think he really believed until this weekend.

I won't go fully into it because, well, yet again these aren't really my stories to tell but it involved an AK-47, a video camera, a hoarder, an abusive spouse, a serial cheater, and a control freak. No one was harmed or had the potential to be harmed but uncomfortable silence was had by all.

This is what I would call a good weekend, a fun weekend. I had an absolute blast. It was, after all, my 25th birthday and I got an extra $20 out of participating in the crazy with a positive attitude.

If you pay me enough I'll pretend your shit don't stink, your kind of crazy is perfectly normal, and that I am totally okay with whatever screwed up thing you're participating in. I'm basically an emotional whore, I'll react however you want, for a price. It's a system that works well in my family.

Honestly, money isn't the currency I'm usually paid in to go along with familial delusion. What I get out of it is peace and a relatively detached emotional state that keeps my mental health in good standing.

Crazy is much more fun when viewed from the outside.

Now to add a disclaimer: While everything said here is absolutely true, it's all said with a smile and love. For all of the crazy in my family it's also filled with more than it's fair share of love, understanding, good will and most importantly growth. They are (with one or two exceptions) good people with amazing life stories, harrowing experiences, and hope for the future and themselves.

My grandmother is a perfect example of this. My mother's mother is an absolutely amazing woman. She used to race stock cars and motorcycles, drives a Mustang and just a year ago had a stroke while riding bitch on the back of a Harley. She tapped her husband around the middle, got him to pull over, laid on the grass, had the stroke, got back on the bike and had him drive to the hospital. She's a total bad ass and while things in her life are far from perfect she handles herself with grace and humor and never takes anything too seriously, even death.

She told me on Saturday that while she was lying on the side of the highway during the stroke, sure that she was facing death she thought to herself, "Jeanie, calm down, you were doing something you loved, something that you enjoyed, it's a beautiful day and you're going on a day that was good." "Then, of course, I didn't die, I was ready and nothing happened!"

So even though I'm sure to descend into crazy as I get older I'll have fun doing it.

Then

CG and my two year anniversary is this Sunday, well technically it's February 29th, but since that day won't come around for another two years we just get as close to it as we can.

It's pretty impressive I think. Two years is a long-ass time, like, really long. Supposedly the "spark" (or whatever kids are calling it these days *takes off old lady cap*) starts to fade after the first year.

It still feels like our second date to me, except I'm not nearly so uncomfortable about the cleanliness of my house or worried about the last time I combed my hair.

Anyway, two years is a huge deal for me. I've never been any good at maintaining any type of relationship, whether it be boyfriend, friend, job contacts, etc. It just seems to take more effort than I'm willing to devote to it.

To put it another way, I have officially devoted two years of my life to the upkeep and health of a relationship without regret AND without screwing it up beyond repair.

So yay me! And thank you CG for your unending amounts of quiet understanding, doofy humor, strength, sweetness, and for just sitting quietly with me when I'm sure you'd rather be actually doing something.

I try not to end my posts on too sweet or depressing a note so in closing I guess I'll provide one of my most favorite de-motivators.

Things I've Forgotten

My brain is a funny thing, a scary, funny thing. Sometimes thoughts fly through it so fast that even I have no idea what I'm thinking. I catch the tail end of a thought only to wonder moments later when my brain has slowed, "why would a fuzzy elephant dance the cha cha slide in 7 inch heels made to look like Frank Sinatra's spats from Guys and Dolls?"

I don't know.

I'm not sure where this entry is going.

I'm rarely sure of anything. So lets just get started.

I forget things a lot, to the point where I almost feel the need to talk a doctor about it. Everyone has those days where they get home from work and don't remember 90% of their drive home. But whole chunks of memory tend to fall right out of my head.

I can't remember what I ate for dinner last night, the events of my day tend to get jumbled in my head and I can't remember the correct order for most of the things I've done or said. If someone asks how my day was I'll smile, say just fine and go on. Please don't ask for specifics though, I don't remember them.

I'm terrible with names, I'm terrible with faces, I'm terrible with voices. In fact, the more I like someone, the harder it is for me to picture their face. It took a good two months of actively concentrating on CG's face for me to commit it to any kind of memory and even now, the only reason I know that his eyes are brown is because I've forced myself to pay attention to them a couple of weeks ago.

I just don't see things. I may stare at something for hours and have no idea what I'm looking at.

There are a few things lately that have brought this into harsh reality. I was going through my jewelry tub (yes, a jewelry tub and yes pretty much everything is tangled and tarnished) and found my Han Solo illegally modified blaster pistol necklace and a tiny silver owl pendant necklace. How could I have forgotten about either of these finds!? I mean, the first is a fucking Star Wars necklace and the second, how could I forget that tiny adorable owl? I absolutely love owls. They're my favorite animals, in fact, I used to collect the cotton filled toys at any and all wildlife parks I went to.

I had forgotten my favorite animal. How is that possible, especially with all the Harry Potter hype, Hedwig - hello.

The next was even more frustrating and upsetting, although not as unusual as forgetting about your favorite animal. I lost a ring, lots of people lose jewelry, especially rings, it's easy to do. I, however, almost never lose jewelry, it's one of the few things I can manage to keep hold of in my life. My tendancy is to lose the pieces that are the most important to me. My great-grandmother's ring and pendant set with the birthstones of her 5 children disappeard from my car 6 years ago. The ring this weekend was from CG, totally beautiful and wonderfully large and sparkly, I wear it everywhere and don't give a tiny dead baby rat's ass if it doesn't match what I'm wearing. Sometime during the day it completely disappeared. I don't remember taking it off, I don't remember snagging it on anything, I don't remember seeing it or not seeing it for most of the day. Just gone. Very frustrating.

The last was Sunday night as I was trying to sleep. I finally calm my thoughts around 10 at night only to pop back up wide awake at 10:05 anxiously worrying about the little girl that my parents were babysitting over the weekend. I went back over the day and couldn't remember seeing her after church let out that morning. She was no where in my head. I knew that she had to have been with my parents and that she was perfectly fine. But I could not calm down or stop worrying about her until I could remember. I finally broke down and called my mother at 10:30 at night to ask her where the little girl had been after we got home from church. She was asleep on the couch the entire time. As soon as she said it I remembered and was able to sleep.

It's scary and weird. I'm also very sure that it's a sign that I'm going to lose my mind in my early thirties. Something to look forward to I suppose.

Happy New Year (2 Weeks Late)

So we leave Nashville and begin another 7 hour trip to our final destination, a cabin on the Smokey Mountains. CG continues to drive, I feel a little bad, but not bad enough to volunteer for the position. Meg plays more college rock, Myme and I play more Pokemon (I forgot how addictive that game is and I'm only a little ashamed of how much I enjoy it).

We get there and it's really just beautiful, the cabin is big and everything that could be made of wood was. There's a hot tub and a Foosball table, a lake and a gorgeous view. Honestly, I spend half of trip sick in bed, getting up occasionally to play pinochle or rummy or cuddle next to CG feeling sorry for myself. The other half was spent reading, playing more pinochle and rummy, and then going to a cave our last day there.

I know, I know, I was in the mountains I should have hiked, explored, seen the sites. You're right of course, but two things prevented that - 1. There were snow storms in the surrounding areas that closed pretty much everything and 2. I'm lazy and like to lay around doing nothing on my vacation. Don't judge me.

On the 30th some of Mom's friends from Alabama came over with REALLY good Mexican beer and nachos. I like Mom's friends a lot.

New Years Eve a few of us went out to dig up fireworks since FES is from Germany and they always do fireworks for the new year. They managed to find some and came home. That night Dad and Meg set them off, but they were nothing in comparison to our next door neighbors. These guys were drunk and had explosives the size that a small town would buy for the 4th of July. They were nicely drunk and still managed to get a few aimed right and when that happened the display was beautiful. However, I'd say at least 40% ended up hitting their deck, our deck, our house, other houses, or a person. The next day we found our vacation agreement with the people we rented the house from, it explicitly said no fireworks - woops.

So that last full day at the cabin CG, Dad, Grandpa, Meg, and I squeeze into a car, and head down the mountain to a cavern, one of the few things that remained open and snow free. I adore caves, seriously, I'll drive hours to walk around in one. First glance this thing looked shady and we weren't sure it would be worth it. We went anyway, and it was totally worth it.

The caverns were beautiful and our tour guide was epic. He was the most useless human being I've ever met in my life, he ruined the endings to 3 movies, talked about his girlfriend's 25 pound 16 month baby, showed us parts of the cave that looked like sexual organs (Grandpa was RIGHT THERE), and was just generally the negative southern stereo type that I know to be false for the bulk of the population. He provided wonderful conversation for the ride home until Dad was pulled over and given a speeding ticket by a county mounty. Then we talked about that.

Our trip home was much the same, CG driving, Meg and her music, Myme and I reading Dean Koontz and Laurel Hamilton respectively (don't judge us, it's vacation we can read trash if we want).

After Christmas Special

So the day after Christmas we left for our big trip to Tennesse and the beautiful Smokey Mountains. We took two cars down, with 8 people, we kind of had to. My parents, grandpa, FES, CG, and my sisters and I fill up a car pretty fast, and that's without suitcases.

CG managed to get stuck with driving my car. Since the man is 6'6 on a short day and shaped like a capital T, it was really an act of mercy, he would have been very unhappy in the back with his chin on his knees and his shoulders shoved into the person next to him. Meg got the passenger seat as she's a very vomit-y type of girl. Me and Myme took the back. That left Dad to drive the other car, with FES riding shotgun since she gets sick on car trips as well, and Mom and Granddad in the back.

We definitely had the cool car, our 7 hour trip consisted mostly of Meg playing angry college music and Myme and I playing Pokemon on my Gameboy Color (with Pikachu emblazoned on the front screen) and SP respectively - shout out to the old school homies.

We headed to Nashville first to stay at the Opry Hotel, which is super-duper fabulous. It's an indoor botanical garden of awesome. We had good pizza, got a little grumpy, and went back to our rooms where I watched a show about some very cute beavers (get your mind out of the gutter, these were for-real beavers) and wanted to watch a show about an exploding wale in Japan but couldn't because my sisters wanted to sleep (jerks).

Thanksgiving Thoughts

Thanksgiving is upon us woot, yay, huzzah and all that. While I desperately love any holiday that allows me to have two pieces of pie without a dirty look, I'm not super excited about it. What I am SUPER excited about is after Thanksgiving. CG and his family are coming down on Friday and will be spending the weekend with us. FES's (I think I've talked about FES on here before, maybe, anyway our Foreign Exchange Student from Germany) uncle and brother will be coming in as well. Our house will be absolutely packed, which means that my sisters and I get to stay at Grandpa's house.

I haven't spent the night at Grandpa's house since Memaw died, at first because it was too painful to even go inside the house where I spent most of my childhood, then later because it was too painful watching Grandpa making the house into a shrine to her. Over the last year things have gotten better for him, which we are all very grateful for. The house, while still featuring an alter of sorts on the kitchen island devoted to Memaw, has changed, it's easier to go inside and spend time there, finally.

So all of us girls will be spending our nights at Grandpa's again, on that big white feather comforter, in the middle of the floor of the living room, in front of the old console tv, maybe we'll even watch old cartoons, just like we used to when Memaw was around. I think we're all looking forward to it, things like this bring back so many good memories and when we can create new memories from the old, knowing that Grandpa is sleeping alone in his bed doesn't feel so terrible.

So this Thanksgiving I'm grateful for the ability to move on. Terrible, tragic things happen, things that we're sure we'll never be able to move on from, to get over. But we do, that's what's so amazing about the human race: our ability to hope, grow, learn, get better.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone, safe travels, and be well.

Bachelorette Adventures Pt. 3

The final installment.

So we get back from the work out, eat some pizza, the bride-to-be opens her severely risque gifts, we drink some more and decide to go to a bar.

We start looking for a bar that is near the club we're going to later. We park and start walking down the street. At this point a scary old man comes out of a smoke filled bar and starts following us shouting, "You're whores, you're whores." At first we though he was saying, "You're home, you're home." But after he followed us into the bar still yelling "whores" at us we figured it out. He continued to hang around as we did shots, picked out music on the jukebox and generally ignored him.

At one point he cornered the bride-to-be and started talking to her about romantic songs and how soon she was getting married. I went over and not so subtly turned my back on him, cutting off his view of her and the conversation.

We hung out there for a while, played some pool, took some dares which involved me doing a short version of our lap dance in the middle of the bar, my sister asking for a random guys number, the future SIL asking a guy for change for the condom machine and another guys sock. We also danced around to a Hairspray song. I'm sure the regulars at the bar just loved us. *insert eyeroll here*

From there we went to the club, most of the party got lost on the way there so SIL and I headed in and hung out until they showed up. It was another hour until the guys joined us and we all proceeded to drink, dance, sing along, and have a generally awesome time.

Towards the end of the night the DJ put on Birthday Sex and SIL and the bride-to-be did a lap dance for some random guy and the groom. I took lots of pictures and was very grateful that CG was around as a convenient excuse for me to not shake my ass and hump a chair in front of about 200 people.

My youngest sister, a fresh faced 18 year old came very close to accidentally dirty dancing with a drunk 40 year old. How can you accidentally dirty dance you ask? I'll tell you how, some creepy as hell, drunk ass comes up behind you gyrating and taking his shirt off. I have to admit here that I was more than a little tipsy. I got up of the bar stool crossed the dance floor gave the creep my most hateful look and drug my sister up to the front and away from Creepy McPedophile.

We left soon after. It was totally awesome and on the way home there was much slurred singing and chest thrusting.

Sometimes (most times) being female is the greatest thing ever.

Real World Dating: Uncle Randy

There is really nothing bad that I have to say about Randy. He was quirky and fun, we could talk for hours on any subject, had the same taste in movies, games, books, and hobbies.

I met "Uncle" Randy on a dating website (I told you I used it more than once). Everyone called him Uncle Randy because of how he looked. You know that uncle that never quite seemed to grow up? Who was built like a grizzly bear? Who wore his hair long, grew a full beard - who you were sometimes embarrassed to introduce to your significant other? Who also had a heart so big that he'd cry at a good film. Who would punch through a man's face for you but hold a kitten so tenderly that you couldn't believe it was the same guy?

Maybe people only have uncles like this where I live.

Anyway, that was Randy. He was wonderful, on our second date he gave me a limited edition World of Warcraft playing card designed by Gabe from Penny Arcade (that's all geek speak so just play along). He remembered my birthday after only a month of casually seeing each other and brought me a card and flowers.

He was/is a great guy but I couldn't manage to muster up more than a mild interest in him. He really was everything that I should have been looking for and I was lucky to be dating him.

But as happens in life things don't always work out the way they should and when my current guy (CG for the sake of brevity) asked me to go steady (yes I said go steady, don't judge me!) I ended it with Randy.


If you're doing the time line you'll realize that I was dating Randy, Carl, and CG at about the same time. Well I was, and I'm not even a little ashamed. If I hadn't dated all of them I would never have these fabulous memories and embarrassing moments.

Who's a what now?

Have you ever been dreading something. I mean really dreading something, enough so that you screen your calls, avoid everything to do with whatever your issue is, get angry, really angry, pout, stomp your foot, justify your avoidance to everyone, even yourself?

Well, I was/did. The funny thing about situations like that, they are never as bad as you know that they will be. In fact, for me they usually turn out better than I could have imagined.

I've always been a pretty lucky person. I'm not saying bad things never happen to me; they do quite often. However, I cannot even think of a time when that bad thing didn't lead to something better.

My sisters had a terrible car accident - we've all grown so much closer and more appreciative of each other.

I'm stuck in a terrible job, while working that job someone comes in and offers me a better one.

My car self-destructs on a 4 lane highway during rush hour - I get myself a brand-spanking new car (with the associated car payments of course. You can't have EVERYTHING)

I become terrified that my SO is getting freaked out about our future, he brings up where we will live when we get married in a few years.

It's a funny kind of life. It's also pretty full of win.