Wedding dresses

Trying to find a dress for my ex-boyfriend's wedding:

First attempt--dress ordered off and returned to internet: $52 - $48 = $7

Second attempt--casual wrap dress still hanging in my closet waiting for a more casual summer outing: $42

Last dress--finally found it!: $148

Hearing his new wife tell me, "You look beautiful!": Priceless

I feel rain

The rainy weather recently reminds me of our last morning together.

I woke up almost cold on the unfamiliar side of my bed with you as far from me as we could get in one bed. The mood between us never warmed up because I couldn't speak that day.

--------------

Do you remember that night? You called me and called me. I was sick and for the first time wouldn't pick up the phone when I knew you were on the other end. I heard your voice from the answering machine in the next room and just buried my head in my pillow. "I'm sick," I said to myself. "It's okay not to answer the phone because I'm sick. I have to take care of myself."

I finally listened to the messages you left a couple days later. You ended the last one with, "I love you, Angie." The only time I would ever you hear say those words was through a tinny answering machine speaker.

I didn't know how to reply to that message. Maybe you knew. Is that why you called me at the office? I couldn't have been more surprised than when you told me you were coming out to visit. You said we'd talk about that message when you saw me.

-------------------

I should have told you why I couldn't speak that day, but I couldn't squeeze any words past the lump in my throat. I was waiting for you to tell me if you loved me. I didn't ask. I guess I could have started the conversation, but I was waiting for you.

Our drive to the airport through the rain capped off that long, cold, silent day. That's why the recent rainy weather reminds me of you.

Individual responsibility

When I was in college, sometimes before we went to parties, I would approach one of my best friends. "Don't let me flirt with T," I would say. But inevitably, once the lights were dimmed and the drinks were poured, I would be standing close to T sharing my best smiles and giggling flirtatiously. Sometimes one of those friends would pull me aside. "You told me not to let you flirt with T tonight," they would remind me. I always insisted that I was an adult and knew what I was doing, pulling my arm away from hers and striding back to T's side until I got the attention I was looking for.

Those nights it wasn't alcohol that removed my inhibitions--I had already shed my responsibility, leaving it puddled at my friends' feet.

As I face T's wedding this weekend, I am sorely tempted to lay my mixed feelings at the feet of those same friends. But then I picture the faces of my boyfriend and T's bride and I swallow my words, silently packing my responsibility in my luggage with the dress for Saturday's wedding.

Features

I got a pretty new flip phone today, but I'm not quite ready to brag yet. This cute black model is missing one feature I want...

Your fingers seemingly flew over the keypad of my phone as I drove you north towards the airport. I was on edge because you were leaving and I still regret the way I snapped at you.

"What are you doing?!"

"Nothing," you sulked.

I didn't notice the change for a few days and by then it was too late to thank you for the surprise and for the sentiment. Until I changed phones today I smiled every time I turned my phone on and saw:

Hello Hot Stuff!

Terabithia

I can't remember the first time that I met T, but I know neither of us has forgotten the night we first forged the connection that still links us.

Bored after a few quarters, we left our first Homecoming game and wandered off into the warm night. Humidity always feels like a caress to me, sometimes holding me oppressively close, but that night it was friendly and comfortable as we walked. T led our exploration of our new campus, wanting to share a new discovery with me.

His discovery turned out to be a tree close to the far end of campus. While it was far taller than I am, its branches spread around it to the ground. T held a branch aside for me and I discovered that where I anticipated more branches lay, there was large open space--large enough for a class, more than enough for a young man and the young lady he was impressing.

We stood for hours under that tree just talking. At least once we leaned toward one another and as my heart pounded I wondered if our first kiss was imminent. I didn't know that our first kiss was still months away when I shivered from nerves in the tree-shadowed yellow sodium glow of the streetlight.

Somehow the image of T that I carried with me during college never managed to capture the romantic side he showed me that night. Despite his long memory for me, the CDs he's made me and the guitar solos that he once left on my voicemail, I always forgot that he is a true romantic at heart. I guess that explains why I was surprised when the most special gift he brought when he visited was a pressed leaf from that tree. How appropriate that he shared a momento of our beginning just as our romantic relationship was ending.

Snipped

When I was a senior in college, my roommates and I had this big party. In order to distinguish ourselves as hostesses we all wore candy necklaces. Before the party we made a pact that we were each going to have at least one guy snack on our edible jewelry that night. At the end of the night I was the only one who had lived up to our bargain and it was only T's goatee that had tickled my neck that night.

When T came to visit me during our last failed relationship attempt, he brought me more than 10 small gifts--including gifts that represented moments we'd spent together. One of the gifts he produced out of his suitcase was a candy necklace. Little did he know that I had two candy necklaces in my pantry waiting for his visit. For that one moment we were on the same page, but my inability to share my emotions left the pantry door closed and he never knew.

I opened the pantry door last night looking for sprinkles and instead came out with two old candy necklaces. I snipped the strings and used the candy to decorate today's cupcakes.

Closing the diary

Freshmen year we kissed in our darkened hallway, but when we tried to talk about it, I misunderstood him and we went back to being friends only.

Sophomore year I got scared when a friend told me he'd said I was "the kind of girl he pictured himself marrying" and I avoided him--for a year. He gave me very loving and thoughtful Christmas gifts and I wrote him a thank you note for being my friend.

Junior year he was my rebound from PJ and after he left romantic songs on my voicemail and brought me flowers, I pushed him away.

Senior year we finally started dating until he thought I told him I didn't want to be his girlfriend.

Post-college we were best friends--best friends who spent half an hour a day on the phone, shared lots of sexual innuedo, and traveled to visit each other. But after he visited me, he went back to dating other women--meeting Kathy not long after.

T is giving her the ring on Sunday.

Suprisingly my congratulations were heartfelt. The question of "what might've been" will always remain, but it seems clear that he has made the right choice in the end.

Distance

I didn't remember her voice being so whiny, I thought as she tried to pick up his conversation.

"What were you saying about the cabana boy?" she asked.

"He says you want a cabana boy and I told him it was only fair if you get a cabana boy that he gets a Hooters girl."

Our conversation continued fitfully, remarks tumbling over each other with uncomfortable silences in between, covering conversational bases from why men like lesbians to holiday decorations.

Finally she handed the phone back to T. I wished him safe travels on their upcoming trip, fully believing that when he comes back, I'll have lost him forever.

Fade away

I was curled up on my bed laughing with my friends T and P when my phone rang. Although we were all clustered there, far be it from a 20-year-old girl to ignore a ringing phone, so I grabbed the handset and answered it. It was my ex-boyfriend D. After humoring him for a couple minutes, I started to end the long-distance call and he countered by revealing the purpose for his call. My stomach was suddenly a knot, my hand clenched around the phone and I started to imperceptibly tremble. My smile faded and the laughter died in my chest. I shooed my friends out of my room and focused on the man in Nebraska who wanted to say goodbye to the world forever.

After spending an hour trying to highlight the positive aspects of his life, my tension eased somewhat when I heard one of my roommates come home. While my two guy friends had hung around in my common room, now there was a girl I could trust to calmly help me. Without breaking our phone connection I sketched out the situation for her and gave her his parents phone number.

I can't imagine what it was like for his mother to get a call from a girl she'd never met informing her that her son, one state from both her and I, was threatening to end his life. Aside from an affirmative report from my roommate, I didn't know whether my effort had succeeded until I heard a knock on his door on the other end of the line. I took my first deep breath in hours after he broke our connection to talk with the friend at his door.

After his follow-up phone call, letting me know that his friend had calmed him down and he would be seeing his doctor the next day, I was finally able to emerge from my bedroom. Sweaty and shaken, I got hugs from my roommate and a couple friends and joined the crowd watching TV. Being a silent member of that group, I could feel the tension drain out of me slowly and as the group broke up I followed T and couple others across the hall to have a drink and relax a little longer before I could sleep.

I dropped in at our campus mental health services office the next day and spoke with a counselor who had some time free. I related my story to him and we discussed my feelings and how I was coping with the aftermath of that phone call; I took pride in his compliment that I was very self-aware and coping well. Once I knew it was a problem with his medication, my ex-boyfriend withdrew from me for a while and I let this memory fade away... until today when I had a coworker call and ask me how to handle finding her boyfriend's suicide notes last night and going to rescue him in the dark of night. Expressing my support for her in two phone calls today, I discovered this memory was still lurking in the recesses of my mind, like D, unwilling to fade away.

Survey says...

When my aunt went to college in the 70s, she conducted a survey: were men with mustaches better kissers than those without?

While I was in college at the beginning of this new millennium, I decided I wanted to conduct a survey of my own. The factor I wanted to test--tongue rings. At the time, I didn't know anyone with that particular piercing.

I met a few potential test subjects--a singer in a visiting vocal group and a friendly computer geek with a penchant for passing out on my bed--but my theory remained untested until T and I began another flirtation. At the time, he didn't have a tongue ring, but shortly after I shared my curiosity with him, I dropped into a friend's place to see him and discovered he had changed his piercing status. While this postponed our first kiss of that cycle, it did introduce a new element and allowed me to indulge my curiosity. I think I'll keep my conclusions to myself. /wink/

Recently I dreamt that I was getting my tongue pierced. I liked the look and feel of it actually. Driving by a piercing salon on my way home from work the next afternoon, I remembered the dream and actually felt the pain. Ouch. It reminded me that piercings might look fun, but aren't for me. It also reminded me of a time when curiosity made this cat pretty happy.

Binary humor

T: Yeah, we went visited our end product today too. There were lots of people dressed as zeros and ones and we thanked them for being electrons. Actually, there wasn't anyone dressed as zeros--there was just blank space that we assumed...
Me: You're too cute for your own good.
T: Well there are 10 types of people in the world...
Me: Those that understand binary and those that don't.

A rose by any other name

When PJ began dating Lara, his first girlfriend after our breakup, I was upset. In order to deny her existence, I refused to use her name. I only met her once face-to-face, so that wasn't a problem, but writing about her in my old paper-bound journal required creativity. Contrast that my recent entries about T's current girlfriend Kathy. Her identity is not masked through use of a nickname or initial. Previously when trying to disrespect a woman's role, I refused to call her by name and now I use that name as that sign of disrespect.

Until day breaks

Every night I pull you into bed with me.
I curl into your warm arms and
Rest the weight of my head on your shoulder,
Rest the weight of my day on your shoulders.
Your presence lulls me to sleep and allows me peace
Until I wake alone,
Until day breaks.

Personal foul

I called T on Monday night.

The transition to treating him like a friend has been successful. I only pick up his calls when they are convenient and don't talk to him more than once every couple weeks. In fact, 23 days elapsed between phone calls this time. No, I'm not keeping track--it is just easy to remember when the last call was his drunk dial after midnight on new year's. Especially since his girlfriend Kathy was in the background elaborating on all his statements. (Picture me grinding my teeth in annoyance with a polite smile on my face.)

The transition to thinking about him like just a friend has been less successful. I was telling him about the lights in my new bedroom during our conversation. He says, with a flirty tone, "Well, I'll have to come out so I can see your new place."

Pause while I think. This is where the referee should call the foul--he's been with Kathy for, like, 5 months now. He isn't allowed to flirt with me and I know I'm not supposed to flirt with him, but I don't know how else to respond to his flirty comment. In a neutral voice, I respond, "Well, now I have another bedroom, so you could try out the guest room." (Notice the term "could".)

"Yeah, I should sleep on the couch. No, I know I should sleep on the couch, in fact, I shouldn't come out at all."

"Why? Is she jealous of me?" Sadly, this perked me up. I would like the legitimacy of having the girlfriend be jealous of me.

"Not of you--of (some girl I've never heard of)." My ego deflates. Why isn't she jealous of me?

Conversation moves on. He says, "Well, I'm tired. I think I'll go."

"Yeah, it is late there."

"Actually, I was in bed with the lights off when you called but Kathy's been sick and I thought she might need me."

Ouch. I don't need to know that you picked up my call because it might've been from your girlfriend. Where is the referee to call the overshare?

Click

My phone rang about a half-hour after I got to work this morning.

"Hello, this is Angie."
"Hello, this is T."
"Hey."
"I didn't want you to think that I wasn't returning your call. I just got back from Mexico."
"I forgot about your trip. How was it?"
"Good."
"So you're not going to work today?" (He was obviously not calling from work and it was 10am his time.)
"Looks that way."
"When'd you get in?"
"Last night. I flew through Charlotte and I ended up sitting next to a guy I work with on the plane."
"Wow--what a small world. I had a small world experience recently myself." I briefly explained to him the recently drama about C moving near me and also about finding out that PJ was invited to her most recent wedding.
"Weird. I've got to go."
"Oh, okay--"
He interrupts me, "Bye."
Click.

Ways to charm me

Call and leave riddles on my voicemail to entice me to return your call.

Or sing a song from my favorite artist.

I was mad

Last night I was mad.

Actually I was upset about some stuff that went on this weekend so I decided to rechannel it as anger.

First I decided to be mad at the staff member (DB) who oversee the VOLUNTEER Girl Scout trainers for the Council I live in. In this Council, it is a "requirement" to train in uniform. Previously I was an apprentice trainer and DB asked me about it periodically but didn't press me. However, now that I'm an experienced trainer she hounds me about buying a uniform every time she talks to me.

So in my head I say, "DB, I am a young professional. The limited wardrobe budget I have is better spent on pieces I can wear to work all the time rather than pieces I will only wear about six evenings a year. And I can tell you those uniform pieces were not designed with the taste of 25-year-olds in mind. I work in a male-dominated field where wearing a GS uniform to work will not further my career. Besides, I've heard trainers in this Council tell leaders that the pins are the uniform--and I train while dressed professionally and wearing my pins. The leaders respect me because I have knowledge to share with them, not because of how I dress. So until the Council begins issuing uniforms as part of our training supplies, I'm not buying one. You don't like that--fine, I quit. My life is busy enough without this that I don't need to make time for a volunteer position where my needs and desires are not taken into consideration."

Then I decided to be mad at T. "Maybe it is my fault for never telling you straight out that I wanted to be more than friends with you and being afraid that I never meant as much to you as LEX did. But I don't want to hear about your new girlfriend. In fact, I don't want to hear from you at all for a while. Enjoy the game on Thursday. Bye."

This is where the anger began to fade a little and the upset started creeping back in. So I turned on a tape--loud enough to disrupt my quiet thoughts--and struggled to sleep.

A diamond is forever

I did have more weird dreams last night, but this actually happened...

T: So, say we'd been dating for three years and I was going to do the whole "getting down on one knee, asking you to marry me" thing. How would you feel if I'd gotten the diamond from a friend of mine who used it to propose to his girlfriend?
A: I'm trying to be rational. The consumer part of me knows that it shouldn't matter but the sentimental part of me is not okay with that. Don't do it.
T: Even if it is just the diamond and not the ring.
A: Nope--don't do it.
T: So girls just want us to spend more money on them.
A: No, we just want our ring to representative of our unique relationship and it doesn't feel like it is unique if the diamond was already given to another girl.
T: But the diamond has already been around a long time. They take a long time to be formed.
A: Still.
T: But what if a jeweler sold you a ring that had been given to someone else.
A: If I didn't know it would be okay.
T: So a third party "sanitizes" it?
A: No, it is just okay if I don't know.
T: Would it be okay if I bought it off eBay and you didn't know whose ring it had been?
A: No. Besides, girls have specific preferences about what they want. You know--what style, white gold, yellow gold, platinum. Personally I want yellow gold.
T: Yeah, but it's a diamond.
A: But girls are going to want a specific cut--marquis, princess, pear-shaped, emerald.
(Silence)
A: A pear-shaped diamond is rounded at one end and tapers to a point at the other--they make your fingers look long and slender. Emerald cut is rectangular...
T: I'm a guy--I don't care about diamonds. I think the whole "buy a girl something expensive that has the potential to cut things" is dumb.

Like a virgin

In the post I wrote yesterday, I quoted a passage which included this line, "suddenly our virgin is forty and has never been kissed." I think that is very rare these days--despite advertising in a cute movie with Drew Barrymore and the hot Michael Vartan. Judging from my own anecdotal evidence, I think most virgins don't restrict themselves from all sexual contact--they draw their own lines for what behavior is appropriate and use that to guide their conduct. Using my own personal definition for virginity, there is still a lot of room for fun without violating that standard.

The thing I find most interesting about this phenomenon is that individuals have different definitions of virginity. I'm a pretty traditional girl and I think my definition of virginity reflects that. I can think of a couple of other women who seem to share that view with me. My friend T disagrees. While I've never pressed him to tell me his definition of s*x, his is more liberal than mine, which surprised me. Partially it surprised me because I thought my definition of s*x was universal, but also because I wouldn't have expected him to have a more liberal definition. My expectation is a product of my expectation that men are all about s*x and don't want anything less. (To be fair, I should reveal that I've never had a boyfriend give me an ultimatum or put me in a situation where I was uncomfortable.) Despite the fact that I know my definition of s*x is correct, I see T's point. Some of the moments I've shared with men have been quite intimate--perhaps even more intimate than s*x in some situations. I also realize that my definition is heterosexist. Sorry, but it reflects my personal experience and perspective. Realizing that this definition is more fluid than I once imagined makes me pause and reconsider some of my opinions and decisions. Not enough to change them, but something to make me think.

being jennifer garrett: Too much yet not enough

"Normally, I listen to a CD while I drive to work. This morning, I listened to How@rd Stern because I couldn't help myself. I want to make this perfectly clear: It wasn't my fault. The first thing I heard when I started my car was How@rd asking some woman what she would do with her boyfriend before they got married, as she didn't believe in sex before marriage (this is how people end up married at 18). How could I turn that off? It's dirty and funny at the same time, in the way that only How@rd can be. So I keep listening, and it turns out the woman in question is Erica Durance, soon to be Lois Lane on Smallville. It's a little freaky knowing what Lois Lane did sexually, what was and wasn't okay, and what did and did not count as 'sex.' It also gave me one of those great 'huh?' moments -- you know, when you really just can't comprehend why anyone would do such a thing. Not that I'm not saving myself for marriage, too, but I just don't understand why all of these activities are okay, but this one in particular is not. I'm baffled. As usual." (Find this entry, dated 9/21, here.)

Another story

When I was on the phone with T last night, he told me a story that I don't remember ever hearing before--about a girl he was dating and how she waited until the LAST POSSIBLE (his emphasis) second to tell him that she was a virgin. He was using this anecdote as an example of how this girlfriend was not very straight-forward and how communication was poor between them, but that isn't what has stuck with me.

I took the girl's side in this conversation. I don't agree with waiting that long to tell someone, but I can certainly understand her reluctance to tell him. T made a good point that if you are going to have s*x with someone, that you should be able to tell them anything, and I completely agree. But I think that the older a woman gets, the more noteworthy a prospective partner would find her virginity and the more pressure he would feel. If you've waited long past the average these days, your partner may make assumptions about you--your beliefs or how you feel about him--when he finds out that he is to be your first. Perhaps those assumptions are correct or you don't mind having them made about you, but if you've chosen this man and this moment simply because it is the right time for you, maybe you don't want those assumptions made. So is it okay to wait to share that information or not to share it at all? I don't know.

Another perspective: (Check out the link--the show sounds like fun!)

Em & Lo's Sex Ed for Grown Ups: "you should note that a self-imposed bout of celibacy, especially one initiated for your particular reasons, can have its own downsides. Like virgins who are postponing sex until they find the perfect partner with whom to 'share their gift,' you run the risk of overbilling the big event. With every passing year that said virgin waits to have sex, the stakes are raised and thus the more perfect that perfect partner needs to be. In fact, no one can be that perfect, and suddenly our virgin is forty and has never been kissed. While we applaud your decision to take sex a little more seriously, we would hate to see you build it up to be this monolithic, mythical thing. Even if you think you've eventually found someone to connect with on all fundamental levels, you won't be able to connect with him on all levels. Also, knighting him as The Worthy One puts a lot of pressure on him and on the relationship to meet your hyper-high expectations. With any relationship, there are bound to be at least a few disappointments. Waiting to have sex until you feel totally comfortable may help decrease the potential disappointments, but it will never get rid of them completely. And don't forget that sex is just another 'fundamental level' you need to connect on. "