Posts from — August 2010

So twice in the past three weeks I’ve engaged in the most unlikely of all pastimes.  Given my previously expressed interest in finding a new hobby – I can at least say that I’m proud of myself for getting out of the house and, well, trying something new.  But golf?  Really?  Okay, it’s not like I took a lesson with Tiger, or even shot a full round (mind you, I didn’t even shoot one hole), but still – I did something, the same thing, twice in three weeks!  That sounds like a.. new hobby.

Let’s back up -

So a few weekends ago I was at home keeping company with some old friends from college and my dear best friend Linds, and we, out of boredom, decided to make an action packed afternoon.  We went furniture shopping, ran errands, went to the driving range, ate dinner at the country club, attended a minor league baseball game, went to a comedy show at the Comedy Connection and then finally, made a night of it out on the town.  I said it was action packed, right?

So yes, up there somewhere in my fun filled day was: a trip to the driving range.
I must say, I somewhat surprised myself with how easy the golf swing came to me.  Being a lifer in the game of softball, I was worried I’d be swinging for the fences.  I didn’t.  I got the hang of it quickly.  Surely Gramp’s golf lessons in Florida as a small child helped.  No?  Okay, well maybe.  Anyways it was fun.  My balls rarely cleared 100 yards, and my swing is far from perfect, but it was fun.

So this past weekend when forever boyfriend turned ex boyfriend turned maybe kind of back together boyfriend and I were thinking up activities for a nice Saturday outing, what came to mind?  The driving range.  We did a bit of Googling to find ranges near the city and took a chance with a McSomething’s in Dedham, MA.   It was great.  Cheap, available, and well.. yanno it was a driving range.  So we hit and hit and hit, and TJ taught and taught and taught until…

I broke his F’ing golf club.  What is this baseball?  Are we using wooden bats like the pros?  Or is this hockey?  Yea, I’ve had my fair share of broken sticks.  But until Saturday, I was not even aware that you could break a golf club.  After nearly a full bucket of balls I took one swing at the poor sucker and whooosh.  Off flew the head of the club.  I’m pretty sure the head (don’t know what you’re supposed to call it) went further than the ball on that drive.
Fortunately it (and the ball) went straight, and the head of the small 3 year old driving next to me (I kid you not, 3) was spaired.

After that drive we finished with minigolf.

Where I proceeded to beat TJ!  I think.. at least that’s what he told me on the walk back to the car.  He must really love me, well at least when I’m not taking a thousand annoying pictures.

“At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.”
- Chuck Palahniuk

“Is there any place on Earth that smells better than a Laundromat? It’s like a rainy Sunday when you don’t have to get out from under your covers, or like lying back on the grass your father’s just mowed—comfort food for your nose.”

- My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult

This quote says it all.  I’m in love with these smells, and the emotional response that they solicit.  It’s these types of moments that are so filled with memories and emotions and warm fuzzing feelings, the moments that literally make me want to live forever.  To spill around in circles in a wide open field with my head tilt back and my arms stretched wide.  Spinning, spinning, laughing.  Gah, comfort.

Heather recently shared a similar post (okay, I totally snagged the idea from her), but hey, a good idea is good idea and maybe it’s meant to be spread!  So here goes,  without real life pictures to share – a few reasons why the new job (referenced with some sense of excitement here) rocks:

1. Regardless of the fact that I’m logging 10-12 hours more a week than in the old gig, I am… making more money.  And for that reason, I can’t complain.
2. On more than one occasion, I’ve walked into a conference room to find the development team playing video games on the biggest plasma I’ve ever seen.
3. Our office is equipped with xbox, allowing the development team to play for extended periods of time in said conference room, on said TV.
4. On other occasions, the dev team doesn’t even bother secluding themselves from the rest of us – they play right in the open space we like to call cube land / the bullpen / the corral.
5. They play in said bullpen, or in the aforementioned conference room, with little to no threat of being reprimanded for such actions.  Video games are encouraged.  They’re ‘learning’ and ‘researching’ and ‘studying.’ (Oh, the perks of working in a software development group).

Aside from money and video games, my new job rocks for more reasons – reasons more appreciated by a 24 year old lady like myself.

1. We celebrate every, single birthday.  We have a card, we sing happy birthday, and we have anywhere from 30-60 minutes of cake time.  We tend to stick with delicious chocolate mouse or chocolate & rasberry.  New co-workers love chocolate, and cake, and taking time away from our laptops and massive plasma screens to enjoy chocolate cake.
2. New co-workers like to have fun.  They laugh, a lot, during the day.  They joke out loud about completely inappropriate things and execs join in on the mayhem.
3. New co-workers also like to have fun after hours, over beer.

Wouldn’t you agree that beer, and giggles and chocolate cake and money make any new job better than the last?  

“The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are.”
- John Pierpont

You won’t buy 6 of these bad boys, but I just did.  Actually, I bought 6 of these last week, and they have since arrived and my itty bitty eyelashes are in heaven.  Maybelline’s XXL Curl Power mascara is by and large the best damn product that I’ve ever let myself get attached to.

I kid not. Being blonde and blue eyed, a day sans mascara is a pretty scary one.  I am kind of a mascara freak, and I’ve bought, tested, tried and hated close to two dozen other mascaras.  This one for a day, and I was hooked.  Obsessed.  And then devastated when they took it off the shelves.  Most drugstores now just carry another purple / black packaged kind.. but seriously, if it’s not the XXL Curl Power, it’s not the same.  This combines curl, length, volume and hold.  Four incredible parts to the whole look that no other mascara dares to take on.  Most of Maybelline’s take on two: length and volume, curl and length.  No, no, no silly folks.  We need it all, and I encourage you to go out and buy enough of this product to last you a life time!

But like I said, it’s off the shelves, so after about 2 months of being so bummed and just hating every other kind that I tried, I just bought a crap ton off of amazon.  Shipping costs stink, but it was well worth it.  I promise.

Since I’m all about reading now, I just added two new books to my: Must Read list, and will pick them up today after work!

I stumbled upon the books this afternoon as I busied myself with procrastination techniques (don’t judge, it was my 30 minute ‘free time’ reward after a killer meeting with the Exec Team). A to-die for quote popped up in my Google Reader and naturally, I could not resist Googling the author.

“I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud. And I don’t want to get to the end, or to tomorrow, even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes. I want to eat cold tangerines, and sing out loud in the car with the windows open, and wear pink shoes, and stay up all night laughing, and paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now. I want to sleep hard on clean white sheets, and throw parties, and eat ripe tomatoes, and read books so good they make me jump up and down.”

The author: Shauna Niequist

The books: Bittersweet & Cold Tangerines

I’m pretty sure that by the time I’ve finished these two books, Shauna will be my new favorite person.

Despite the fact that this past weekend turned out to be pretty devastating, it didn’t always feel so sad.  In fact, I had a rather fabulous weekend in Maine. What else is new?  I love home.

Friday: Sleep, snooze, zzzzz.  Boyfriend and I left Boston fairly late due to his 8PM men’s baseball league..

Just past midnight I dropped him off at his house, and made my way through the dark back to Portland.  The night was chilly, such a hint of fall it was unmistakable.  Perhaps ‘hint’ is then the wrong word to use.  But the goosebumps on my arms and the smell of leaves (you know the smell), made me so, incredibly nostalgic for fall in New England.  Back to reality, it’s Friday night in late August.  I get home, crash.  It feels so good to sleep in my own bed.  With the windows cracked open I can literally hear the wind, feel the breeze, and I wrap myself in my down comforter.  I’m in love.

Saturday: 6:45AM.  The dog barks.  My mum is yelling down the stairs to my dad, asking for a cup of coffee.  The early show is on my mum’s TV and I’m awake.  I mozy on down the hallway and crawl into bed with her.  When I was little I used to always watch the morning news in her bed.  The blinds are already up, and I can tell it’s going to be a beautiful day.  Weatherman tells me it will be cool – in the 70′s – and I’m in love, again.  I cannot wait for the fall, when every day will promise a cool breeze, and Friday night lights will mean football games.

8:15AM.  Mum and dad have to leave town by 10AM to head north for the day/night.  So we leave the house at just past 8 and make our way to our favorite breakfast spot on the foreside, Bernie’s.  Yogurt parfait and iced coffee. Mmm.  We drive home and my new neighbor has texted me back.  By new neighbor I mean a dear friend from college who has recently been picked up by the professional baseball league in our town.  He’s living with my real neighbors for the summer, because their family also attending Boston College, and well, we’re all friends.  So I have a professional baseball player / college friend living next door.  Summer Catch anyone?  So yes, it’s early, 9:30AM and he texted me back.  I had asked him at 8AM if he wanted to get breakfast with the family.  He was still asleep.  At 9:35AM he makes his way through the arbor way that connects our two backyards and he joins my family around the kitchen bar.  I love this neighborhood.  I love that we don’t knock on our neighbors doors; we let ourselves in.  And more often than not, we are greeted with coffee on the deck and homemade blueberry muffins.  I really love Portland.  New neighbor and I chat for a good while in the kitchen.  Mom and dad have left town by now, and my best friend Lindsey stops by to say hi.  She meets the new neighbor and I’m pretty sure she falls in love, instantly.  She’s brutally hungover, maybe it will pass.

Best friend leaves, new neighbor leaves, I go about my day.  I run errands with Lindsey, I head out around town with my new camera and take loads of pictures, and then reunite with the girls at Lauren’s condo to meet her new puppy Jackson.  I’m in love.

We go our separate ways and I take the most incredible nap for a solid hour.  The girls will be over soon – when Mum and Dad go away, yes, I will play.  I’ve invited everyone over for a bbq dinner and drinks.  We play music through the speakers and light the Tiki torches.  I love summer.

We drink, and drink, and drink and have so much fun.  Boyfriend even stops by to say hi. Soon it’s late and we head down town for a night out.

New neighbor and his brother meet us out.  We all have a blast.  End of the night comes around and I get in a fight with the boyfriend without even knowing it.  Not surprisingly this fails to phase me at 3AM on a Saturday.

Sunday: By 8AM Sunday when boyfriend calls I figure out this is not good.  No, not good at all.  But we’re still in love, so we’ll have to find a way to fix this, I think.  We fight, and we start to talk about a break up.  A break.  Some time apart.  Maybe not?  Maybe it’s necessary?  Maybe we’re too hungover to have a serious talk.  We hang up and all of a sudden a months worth of indifference and 24 months of love come pouring out.  I cried for the majority of Sunday morning.  At least until he came over in person, and we talked more.  We talked and I cried and he drove off.  Is this where we take a break?

I couldn’t tell you, because I had a full day of wedding planning ahead of me.  Mum, dad, sister and I go to lunch at our favorite outdoor taco bar and afterwards Mum, sis and I go mother-of-the-bride dress shopping.  Boyfriend and I keep calling, and texting and the last thing I care about is my mother’s dress.  Sorry Mum.

I try not to think about everything that’s going on, but it’s pretty much impossible.  I tell my mum and sister that I’m going to hyperventilate or throw up or cry if we sit in this stupid boutique any longer.  They drive me home and I crash on the couch until Lindsey and Lindsay pick me up.  They’re driving me back to Boston because when you share a car with a now ex-boyfriend, it’s weird.  He drove the car back to Boston.  I sleep in the backseat of Lindsey’s car for 2 hours.  I arrive home in Boston, and ex-boyfriend comes over.  We talk, he yells, I cry.  We don’t break up yet.  But he leaves and I sleep.

No matter how bad I should think this weekend went, I cry and fall asleep thinking I had a lot of fun with my friends.   I don’t know yet that tomorrow this break up will be official, and by Tuesday I’ll be ‘single’ on Facebook.

I wonder when my thoughts will catch up with my tears, and when I’ll actually realize the magnitude of what’s happening.

Before I even start to process the changes that my life is dealing with, I’ve decided there are some things that I must do.  Immediately.    Some healthy, some indulgent, some I should have been doing anyways.  Hopefully this short list with serve as my quick fix, keeping me busy enough to not break down and cry every 15 minutes (something that’s rather important when you have to work in an office), while actually boosting my mood and keeping me happ(ier).

1. Get a Boston Public Library card.  It’s free and will probably take me no more than 5 minutes.  As a result I’ll finally (I’ve been saying I was going to do this for like, 3 years) have access to thousands of books, for free.  Reading is good.  Reading is a great way to keep busy and forget that you may actually be feeling rather lonely.
2. Exercise.  God I’ve been trying to get in the swing of this whole exercise crap.  I even signed up for a 10K (September 19!) as a hopeful means to motivate me.  In my defense, I have actually gone for more runs in the past month than I have in the past 2 years, but that is not good enough.  I must develop a plan, and stick to it.
3. Eat healthy.
4. Drink water.
5. Get ample sleep.
6. Do not listen to sad, depressing music.
7. Rinse, and repeat.

I think I’ll start tonight.  I work a block from the public library so I literally have no excuse.  And when I get home?  I will go for a run.  To the tanning booth (see?  I told you some of this was indulgent, and unhealthy).  Whatever folks.  A girl can’t be single, sad and pale as a ghost.

No, I’m not naming a zine, although that title sure sounds like it.  Instead, I’m stating in the most clear and simplest way possible what I’m feeling right now.  I do not think that I have ever felt so scared, and confused, and physically anxious in my life.  It’s times like this that I really wish being in an awesome, long term relationship didn’t wipe clean all memory of previous relationships.  Because right now I think I could really benefit from memories of being in high school and heartbroken, or from a time or two in college that I was down in the dumps, lower than the dumps.  I wish I remembered what it felt like when I was 16 and swore I would never love again – only to be corrected a few months later.  Or eff that, I don’t want to be reminded that I’ll find a new love.  Because I don’t want a new love.

Right now, I wish my older sis was sitting next to me, rubbing my back and telling me to breath.  I wish she was here telling me that it’s going to be okay.  I don’t want to rush ahead and find a new boyfriend.  Not even in the slightest.  I just want to be told that one day in the near future, I’ll understand the decisions that I’ve made, and that I’ll believe in them.  I want to know that some day in the near future I won’t feel like a royal bleeping bleep.  I want to hear that my thoughts and feelings and decisions are valid, and I want to know that one day he’ll forgive me.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt so confused by my own mixed up mind.  How can I be feeling two totally different things?  Wanting to be single, but wanting to be spooning with him tonight.  Wanting him to love me, but wanting him to let me go…

“Her best days are some of my worst,
She’ll find a man and a man who’s gonna put her first
While I’m wide awake she’s no trouble sleeping
’cause when a heart breaks no it don’t break even, even
What am I supposed to do when the best part of me was always you, and
What am I supposed to say when I’m all choked up and you’re okay.”

- The Script, Falling to Pieces