Your Parents

They're pretty badass. My parents have the love story that was never supposed to work out. My dad was the drummer for a band called Wayne Cochran and the CC Riders. To give you an idea of what kind of band they were, Wayne Cochran was known as "the white James Brown". My mom and her friends followed them (but don't call them groupies), and she and my dad started dating. They had an unplanned pregnancy (*waves*), and got married. It was very low key, my mom was in her disco dress and my dad wore his cowboy hat.

When I was four we moved from Florida to Chicago to live with my grandma. My dad stopped playing music and got into selling computers. My mom got a job, went to college, and built herself up in the company. I like to tell people that my mom raised me Feminist more than she ever raised me Catholic. Mom went for jobs that the men in her company never expected her to apply for, and she got them because she likes to work and likes being in charge.

My dad was fired from his job after 9/11. After trying to figure out what to do next, he discovered the answer was easier than he thought...music. He started teaching drums to kids, and started playing in bands again. We saw him playing recently at a beach themed bar out in the burbs, and he let a few of his students onstage to play along. His original band has reunions once every couple of years.

I'm very lucky to have incredibly supportive parents, who still look ten years younger than they are and danced to britpop at my wedding. They can drive me crazy the way that parents do sometimes, but when I hear horror stories of pushy parents from friends, I'm always relieved that I lucked out the way I did.

Your First Love

Really, must I? It's not that interesting a story. Girl meets boy. Girl and boy are into each other for a couple of years. Girl and boy grow apart and break up. Girl and boy try to be friends. Girl finds out boy "overlapped" their relationship with another girl. Girl sends scathing email and they don't talk again for years. The end.

We did attempt being friends again years later. Trench and I had been together for five years, and I discussed it with him before contacting First Love. We hung out a bunch of times, and it was fine. We had definitely gone down different paths and I knew that any romantic feelings I had for him were in the distant past. Then we (Trench and I are five days apart) had a birthday party, he showed up already drunk from a street festival and made an ass of himself, hitting on all the girls and trying to start fights with all the guys. That was the end of that.

I had a dream about him recently. It was just a snippet in the middle of a dream, but I was in a fast food place with Trench and First Love was working behind the counter. He saw me and apologized for what happened, saying how he knew he had been an ass that night and that he was sorry we stopped being friends because of it. It was nice, and I woke up feeling...not closure because the book closed on that a long time ago, but feeling like I had finally gotten an apology and could remember him well. First Love, wherever you are, I hope that life is good.

Introduce Yourself

Technically I have a small introductory post at the beginning of this blog, but it never hurts to re-introduce. I'm a Chicago girl, living in my very first home that I own with Trench, husband of three years and paramour of a whole ten years. I have two antisocial cats, and no plans to have kids. I love reading, writing, knitting, taking long walks and traveling. I like to cook, but I'm only good at one pot meals, not really anything in the oven, and I don't bake at all. I love Halloween and dressing up, and I can be convinced to put on a costume at any point in the year. I don't like to exercise, but I love yoga and am trying to make it a point to do it much more often. Trench and I like to decorate our living spaces with wild abandon, in lush colors with as much artwork as we can hang and unique touches, but our wardrobe? Mostly black. My biggest faults are that I can be lazy and I'm a big ol' procrastinator. I originally went to school to become the next great American writer, and when that didn't pan out (hey, it still could someday), I went to cosmetology school and became an esthetician (someone who does facials and waxing). I'm currently working for a makeup store that specializes in waxing. I feel like I'm nearing the end of that career path, but when my friends start having daughters, I'll be there with skincare advice and to wax unwanted hair when they hit puberty. I dabble in what some might call "flakiness"... I believe in energy and balancing chakras and feng shui and homeopathic medicine, but I have a very dry and snarky sense of humor, so I don't take anything too seriously. I will stop whatever I'm doing or talking about if someone with a cute puppy walks by. Or an ugly old and grizzled dog, it doesn't matter. Sometimes I tend to over-think and analyze everything to death, which can get me down, but in the end I always believe that everything will turn out all right.

national november blog month

Yes, it's true, I completely suck as a blogger. Well, not completely. I keep meaning to post. I even have a few entries that are fully formed in my head...I just haven't managed to type them out. To break this, I'm going to try NaNoBloMo this month (does anyone else think that sounds dirty?). For those who don't know, it means that I'm going to post something every day for the month of November. To help me along, I'm going to use some prompts that I stole from someone, who stole them from someone else.

Day 01 - Introduce yourself
Day 02 – Your first love
Day 03 – Your parents
Day 04 – Your music
Day 05 – Your definition of love
Day 06 – Your hobbies
Day 07 – Your oldest friend
Day 08 – A precious item
Day 09 – Your beliefs
Day 10 – An inspiration
Day 11 – Your siblings
Day 12 – What’s in your bag
Day 13 – Your mode of transportation
Day 14 – Where you live
Day 15 – Something you love about yourself
Day 16 – Your first kiss
Day 17 – Your favorite memory
Day 18 – Your favorite birthday
Day 19 – Something you regret
Day 20 – Your morning routine
Day 21 – Your job and/or schooling
Day 22 – Something that upsets you
Day 23 – Something that makes you feel better
Day 24 – Something that makes you cry
Day 25 – Your sleeping habits
Day 26 – Your fears
Day 27 – Your favorite place
Day 28 – Something that you miss
Day 29 – Your favorite foods/drinks
Day 30 – Your aspirations

"You look good wearing my future"

This week I watched a couple old favorite movies on Netflix. The first one was a very old classic...Adventures In Babysitting! Unfortunately I watched it at home with Trench instead of at a slumber party with girlfriends, where it would have been more fun. Trench only saw it once when he was a kid. My bff and I watched it about 95 times when we were in the sixth grade. We thought that Chris (the babysitter) was the coolest girl in the world, and I desperately wanted her hair. I still enjoyed it, in a nostalgic sort of way, but man did it ever not age well. Or maybe I'm just old enough to notice terrible writing, fake looking backdrops and the whitest blues song ever filmed. Though I really think that someone needs to dress like Sara, the Thor-obsessed kid who is being terribly babysat, for Halloween.



Then last night I watched Some Kind of Wonderful. In some ways, it's like a poor man's Pretty In Pink. In other ways, it's more satisfying because Mary Stuart Masterson's character, Watts, is every bit as cool as Duckie, possibly cooler because she's more tough than pathetic, and she gets the guy in the end. And the guy is Eric Stoltz, who I always had a crush on in pretty much everything he's ever been in. His character, Keith, is soooooo dumb, though. Aw, poor baby has a dad who really wants him to go to college! How terrible for him. "That was your dream, not mine!" Let's see what you say about that in ten years, sweetie. Then he blows his college money on diamond earrings for his dream girl, even though he's fairly certain she's only going on a date with him as a joke. Argh! Someone punch him in the face! He convinces his dad that he should trust him, and his dad is stunned by this logic and agrees. Oh, John Hughes, it's like you're holding up a mirror to the way reality works. And the most beautiful girl in school? Is Lea Thompson. No offense to her, she was pretty damn cute in her day, but it's obvious the director wasn't able to get Molly Ringwald for the role. The director also wasn't able to afford any type of soundtrack, except for the song "Miss Amanda Jones" by the Rolling Stones. No Psychedelic Furs in this 80's flick. But still? It is a satisfying ending, with the most beautiful girl in school turning down the love interest so that she can be alone for awhile and find out who she is, while the incredibly cool, quirky girl who drums and wears ass-kicking boots and has a star tattoo on her neck gets the boy and the diamond earrings.

NERDS!

The crowd I hang with is a Geek Crowd. There are a lot of Threadless tees and listening to the Decemberists and watching Dr. Who. Geeks are not to be confused with nerds and dorks. Yes, there have been conversations about this. Nerds are usually more techy, much more about hanging out with their computers and less likely to care about human interaction. Dorks love human interaction, but have zero social skills. They get really into things and will talk at length about them, but unlike the selective geek, they like Everything. It's probably their most charming characteristic. Geeks tend to like one thing, like sci fi or comic books or video games, and they like it to death and can tell you anything you want to know, or didn't care to know, about it. Do not confuse geeks with hipsters...though the clothing might overlap, you know you're dealing with a hipster when they don't like anything. Well, they like stuff if it's obscure enough that only they know about it, but there isn't enough love involved that they won't hate it when it gets a tiny bit popular.

Trench is a geek. Since getting together with him I can hold my own in a conversation about Batman. His Halloween costumes are usually intense homemade mythological creatures. I have to harangue him about putting on pants that aren't falling apart before leaving the house, or getting a haircut twice a year (if I'm lucky). We go to low budget musicals about David Bowie hosting Xmas themed variety shows, and the only sport we follow is roller derby (though Trench did have a brief fascination with curling during the Olympics).

Sometimes I feel like a geek imposter. I love Dr. Who, but can't remember every detail of every episode like Trench can. When we hang out with really hardcore geek friends, I find myself tuning out when the conversation turns to D&D or fantasy authors I haven't read. And I couldn't get into Battlestar Galactica at all. So maybe I'm just a dork in geeks clothing.

Let's figure this out...I'm geeky enough to love watching the Guild, but I don't get any of the World of Warcraft references because I don't play video games, unless you count the wii, which gamers don't. I am geeky enough that I recognized Wil Wheaton's cameo in the Guild, but I know him better from Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead rather than Star Trek. I am geeky enough that I can talk about Buffy and Harry Potter for hours on end, but not geeky enough that I've read any of the immense amount of fanfic that surrounds both those series. You get the point. So I'm probably just geeky enough. And Trench is a very lucky man.

wireless connections

It started out very innocently. I was poking around the links of a website when I found a different site geared toward "quasi-adults" with articles about decorating, cooking and crafts for someone who was living on their own for the first time. I was in my mid-20s, and fit the demographic. I poked around and saw that they had a message board. I checked out a thread on cats and one on holiday crafting, and was impressed by all the great ideas I found, and how funny the posters were. Slowly I was lured in until I started posting myself.

It wasn't the first time I'd made net-friends...I'd posted in other chat rooms before. Something about this was special. I got to "know" the other women posting, and we became an anonymous support system for each other. Smart and funny, with a slew of inside jokes, I would often go to the board instead of google for any question I had, whether it was about world politics or what I should cook that night. I met some of the local girls and they were just as charming in real life, and although we didn't meet up that often, when we did there was a lot of laughing. These days when I travel to a different state, or even a different country, I have a couch to crash on.

It's been six years since I discovered the boards, and activity has slowed down. The site's creator hasn't updated in a couple years since having kids. Most of us have grown out of the "quasi-adult" demographic, and the threads on pregnancy and child-rearing get the most action these days. A lot of us have splintered off into blogs and keep in touch that way, or through facebook. Yet when some of us got the idea to have a meet up in Chicago, it was like a silent cry was sounded throughout the world, and people who hadn't posted on the boards in years came out of nowhere asking, "Meet? There's a meet? When should I book tickets and whose house do I crash at?" Two of us local gals hosted. One visitor came from Ireland, two from Canada, more from the east coast and a caravan drove up from Missouri. I took off work for a long weekend, and we were on.

Holy crap. There was dancing till 5AM, lounging at the beach all day, sightseeing, and just plain hanging out and cracking each other up. We were long lost girlfriends meeting for the first time, yet having known each other for years. You have to love being greeted with a big hug and a, "You exist in real life!" We all worked just as well in three dimensions as we did in two.

It felt like such a unique experience, but I know it wasn't really. Trench met his online community at a wedding a year before we got together, and we've crashed on some of their couches as well. I've seen some marriages spring from online friendships-turned-romances. Hell, there was even that scene from "Julie and Julia" where Julia Child visits her best friend and it's revealed that the best friend is a pen pal and this is the first time they're meeting.

We kept discussing future mini-meets and a possible big meet in 2012 because the sooner we could all hang out again, the better. Eventually everyone went home to their spouses, their kids and their own beds. We turned on our computers for the first time in a week...we hadn't needed to log in because our online friends were right there. And we waved a virtual hello to each other because it wasn't really goodbye...the connection was still there.