Archive for December, 2009

There’s a scar on my right elbow.  It’s barely visible now, it’s been probably 25 years since I got it.  Roller skating.  Funny, I know.  Now I skate hard in roller derby and scrapes and bruises are badges of honor.  I was huge into roller skating when I was around 6 or 7.  Huge.  I had books on it.  I had these old, second hand rental skates that my parents bought off the local roller rink.  How could I forget this?  When I started playing roller derby I thought that part of my attraction was my background in figure skating.  I forgot how obsessively I used to roller skate.

Mom and dad would take me to the local rink.  We had a big old house with tile floors.  They let me rip shit up in the house.  Whenever.  There were no restrictions in that house.  There were also no pads or helmets…

One day dad took me to the park to skate.  The old park in town.  It had pathways and small hills.  It was a nice place to skate.  I don’t recall going there often, but that was probably just because of The Incident.

There was a hill.  We were at the top of it, looking down, and I hesitated.  I recall crying a little to my father, telling him that I didn’t think I could do it.  But he said I could.  He believed I could.  He told me to hold his hand and we’d go down it together.  So I held his hand.  And he went faster than I did.  (More mass so more momentum?  I dunno.)  And we fell.

He felt really bad about it, because I cried, and I’m sure I cried for longer than I needed to, because I liked the attention that it got me.  Attention from my father.  Can you see where this is going?   Yes, I’ve admitted it in therapy.  I crave attention from men.  I am sure this comes from my relationship with my dad.  But you see the part where he believed I could do it, and kind of forced me down the hill?

I wrote earlier this week about theCrush and how it was attractive to me that he believed that I could make it down the hill (snowboarding).  Cliche or not, I know that I look for my father in relationships.  I look for what he has taught me, by example, what makes a man a man.  I like a man who can fix his own car.  I like a man who doesn’t feel like he has to share every emotion.  I like a man who is a little mysterious, who doesn’t give away all his secrets.  My father was that way.  I never knew what he was up to.  When he surprised me and did something nice for me, I really felt loved.  I am fiercely turned off when a man shows me all his cards.  Face up.

And I don’t understand it, because really, I don’t have the best relationship with my father.  I don’t tell him stuff.  I don’t particularly enjoy listening to his stories.  But for whatever reason, I still want what he has given my mother for all these years.

• facial hair.
• too much crying.
• possessiveness.
• the inability to know when to leave me alone.
• tv/video game addiction.
• overly judgy.
• body odor (duh).
• inability to make a decision.
• mean to me (I know how to recognize that one now)
• smokes.
• not bright.
• uninteresting.
• overly allergic.  (I have cats and would like to eventually have another dog.)
• incapable of issuing a proper compliment.  I don’t need them everyday, but once in awhile is nice.
• sloppy kissing.
• keep your tongue AWAY FROM MY EARS.

My company Christmas party is tons of fun.  Tons.  The boys wear suits, the girls wear high heels, and we all show up after work, like little kids who are playing dress-up in mom and dad’s closet, magically clean and unwrinkled.  With pants that are of an appropriate length.  (I work in a field where men are notorious for wearing their pants too short.)

We dance.  And we get drunk.

Last year I took my husband.  And The Crush.  It wasn’t planned.  Crushboy asked me at work that day if we could pick him up.  I said ok.  Husband said ok.  It was all ok.  Already my husband had reservations, because I told him how much I liked Crushboy.  I was trying to be honest.  Anyhow.  I got hammered.  Crushboy got hammered.  Crushboy and I danced a whole lot.  I may have touched his arm a little too much.  Husband was not impressed and although I had a great time dancing the night away, the flirting that went on did not go unnoticed.

This year was so, so different.  I went without a husband.  Crushboy did not go.  (For no good reason, he claimed that he didn’t know if he’d be in town.  He might have been lazy to get dressed up.  He might have been afraid that I’d hit on him.  He might have been afraid that he’d want to jump me.)  However, crushboy did offer to give me and the friends that I went with, a ride home, because taxis are not always easy to find in this city around Christmastime…  We did not take him up on the offer.

I got dressed up.  I looked good.  I wore heels.  I danced in the heels.  I drank lots of alcohol.  I did not get off the dance floor.  Not once did I have to worry about my date being happy, because check it, there was no date to worry about.  I was free to dance with whomever I chose.  (Last year I had to ask the husband if he was ok with me asking other people do dance.)

So a year later, I’m having more fun.  Feeling prettier.  Living better.

You tire of people.  I know this because you’ve told me.  You’ve complained about hanging out with people for too long a period of time.  You get bored of things.  So I was nervous, because an entire day with me?  With just me?  Recipe for almost-sure disaster.

We made plans.  For the first time ever, we made plans together.  Alone plans.  And I know it wasn’t a date, but still, it was a date.  The kind of date you have with friends you hope to never be without.  Outside of all my crazy thoughts where I imagine that you want to kiss me as much as I want to kiss you, I treasure the fact that you’re in my life.

2.5 hours one-way.  Which means we had to meet up early.  Earlier than I like to be anywhere.  Earlier than you like to be anywhere.  But we did it, we were both on time, and you were sweet enough to buy me coffee.

Funny, unrelated, coffee story:  I had a meeting with the ex a few weeks ago.  We stopped for coffee and I ran in to get it because the drive-through was clogged.  I returned with coffee and sugar.  Except he doesn’t take sugar, and he knows you do.  He said he’d keep it in the car for the next time you’re there, having coffee with him.  I’m sure he was annoyed.

Back to my story.  You took me up on that mountain.  You forced me to do runs I never would have tried.  You let me rest.  You never made me feel shitty for all the falling.  You pushed me harder when I was ready to give up.  You don’t know what it means to me, you can’t know, because you didn’t mean it at all in the way that I felt it, but to know that you believed that I could take those runs, with the trees and the steepness, and the face full of snow, I’ve never had a man believe in me that way.  Not just say he believes, because we both know you’d never say it, but show me.  That’s seriously hot.

You’d be so embarrassed if you know about this.  That these words, this love letter, is floating out there on the internet.  The gushing.  I’m not one of those people, except apparently I am.

Basically the day was perfect.  We had fun.  We laughed.  Root beer may have come out my nose at one point.  I never once thought about the fact that it’s Christmas and I’m 33 and how did my life end up here, single, mom, alone.  Because I wasn’t alone.  You took care of me, in ways you will probably never know.  I’ve never stayed on the hill for that long, gone on so many ski lifts, boarded through so many trees, had my pants so full of ice.  I’ve never had so much fun working so hard.

And at the end of the day we went home.  And I don’t think you were sick of me, after twelve hours together, because really, if you were, you wouldn’t have texted, called, IM’d.  Not in a creepy, possessive way.  Not in a “hey what are you doing?” way, but just everyday stuff, because that’s what we do.  Even after an entire day together, we still have everyday stuff to talk about.

I drive myself mad thinking about you and your intentions, but when I really think about it, I’m happy with this.  I like this.  This is really all I am rationally able to give.

I’m thankful.  This Christmas, I am blessed and thankful.

I am not sober enough to write about this properly but I have to put it out there.

I spent the entire day with him.  snowboarding.  driving.  talking.

yet it appears he is not yet sick of me because there he is, texting after we each went home.  and now IM.

I’ve been working out with Shaun T’s Insanity workouts for a week now and tonight I took measurements because I’m curious.  The scale hasn’t moved the way I thought it would, but holy eff, the inches have, so I’m not as discouraged as I originally was.

Nothing like a few inches off to keep my motivation up.

1 lb down, 6 inches total.  Granted the six inches are from a combination of seven different body parts, but still.  The ones that matter:  2.25″ off my hips, 2″ off my waist.  1″ off my chest.

In the past I kept the weight loss and non weight loss parts of my journal separate, but I think this is such a big part of why I am the way I am, why I second guess myself, why I don’t think I’m attractive, why I doubt that a man will want me, that it really does belong here in the regular journal.  My weight fuels all of my negative self-talk.  If it’s gone how will I function?  I don’t know, but I really want to find out.

Often I have these thoughts that roll around in my head, and I make plans to turn then into journal entries, where the words fit together neatly and they make me feel like I know not only how to express my feelings, but exactly which feelings I want to express.

Most of the time those entries never make it to the computer.  I used to never leave the house without a notebook.  And I guess I’m still in that habit.  But originally it was so that I would never lose a thought.  It’s like never leaving the house without a camera.  Sometimes I have those fits too.  But now I just keep a notebook in my purse because I might have to make a shopping list, or remember to look something up later.  Nevermind that my phone can do that thinking for me.

But the point of this entry is simply this:  I want to remember this feeling I had tonight.  Wednesday is always drop off night.  Every other Wedsnesday, the drop off is just for two days, and I get him back on Friday for the weekend.  Tonight was  the alternating one, where I don’t see him again until Monday.  I enjoy my quiet weekends.  I get stuff done, and I have time to be alone; to re-center myself.  Parenting with my husband was a constant thing.  It was semi-on all the time.  We could all be at home and everyone would be involved.  There was little downtime, and when the downtime was with the ex, it still wasn’t true downtime.

Parenting alone is a different thing. There’s on and off. We meet at daycare and transfer the carseat and his stuff from my car to his van.  And since we were both there around the same time, we went inside together.  Because of the way things worked out, I left them in the daycare.

I kissed my son goodbye and walked out of daycare, a place where you only leave alone in the morning, alone.  And I felt it.  Not the expected “hm what will I do with this glorious time alone?” feeling, but the Lonely Single Mom who might feel shitty, and even though I am glad I don’t live anywhere near my family, I sure could use the company right now, and doesn’t the fact that it’s Christmastime make it a million times worse(?), feeling.

So I stumbled upon this last week.  Basically 6 improv actors go to a Knicks game.  One of the actors goes for snacks and gets lost trying to find his way back.  His friends see him looking at the stands and start calling to him, trying to get his attention.  Slowly the entire section gets in on it, as he cluelessly walks around, with that desperate searching look on his face.   The people who commented on the entry seem to have thought it was entertaining and sweet.  That it brought out the best in people.

I do not agree.  I think the fact that we look at each other and jump on the bandwagon is embarrassing.  This mob mentality is exactly what happens every four years when we vote in new presidents.  Too few of us take the time to do the research and come to an independent decision.  When we raise our kids we try to talk to them about evaluating situations fairly and coming to our own conclusions. And then we jump up and down and participate in the wave at sporting events.  Because everyone else was doing it.  (Sure, the wave is harmless, but still.)

And do you not think that the entire section, after all the hugging and cheering at the end of that video, feels just a little duped by the “hoax” that they participated in?  Y’all remember the public’s response to James Frey and his Million Little Pieces, right?

Whether its jumping up and down trying to get someone’s attention or jumping into the act in a violent gang rape, the mentality is the same:  when in the middle of an enthusiastic crowd, humans are less likely to go against the grain.

Or things I’m really good at doing.

I have a friend who insists that every man you are interested in gets a pro list and a con list. This way when you hate him and want to sock him in the stomach, you can remember the reasons you love him. And when he rejects you or makes you feel shitty, you can refer to the con list and remind yourself of how awful he might have been.

Here is a list that men can use to remember how grandly I am able to fuck things up.

1. Coffee at 5PM.  It’s Sunday.  You know how I am.  I need to have coffee at some point on Sunday, and if it doesn’t happen until 5PM, so be it.  It’s now 1AM and I am not in bed.
2. Working out at 10PM.  Again with the late start on Sunday.
3. Sleeping in on Monday.  Bad idea.  Monday is the ONE day of the week that I need to show up by 8.  Refer to 1 and 2 if you’ve forgotten why I am so very bad with this one.
4. Obsessing.  I have had a crush on a boy for nearly two years now.  Your math is right.  It started while I was married.  Clearly I am not in control of my crazy.
5. Obsessing over a coworker.  I left that part out, didn’t I?
6. Obsessing over a coworker who is probably not that into me.  If he wanted me he would kiss me.  Sometimes he looks into my eyes and I imagine that he wants to kiss me, but it’s my imagination and sometimes I am nuts.  This week’s focus will be on being less “available” to him.  This needs to stop.
7. Knitting for a boy.  I have a week or two to finish these mittens.  If he doesn’t wear them I will be pissed.

So basically this was an entry about a stupid stupid boy.  And about becoming unobsessed with him.

Except you see the irony, right?

Now.

I forgot that many of you don’t actually know me so two posts ago, you had no context.  Here’s a picture I took the other night, so it’s pretty current.

I’m motivated to do the workouts right now.  And to stop agonizing over the boy.