September 3rd, 2008 / 4 Comments » / by Maigh
We’re running away from home, Gwennie and I. We’re sick of your collective crap.
OK not really. We’re both just love spending long weekends in the middle of hurricanes/tropical storms.
OK not really that either.
We’re each aching for the beach, the surf, the salty air. We’re each taking control of our pending and existing nervous breakdowns and making a choice to get away from it all together for a few days.
We’ll bring books, and spend hours on a quiet beach on the coast of Gerogia near Sapelo Island. If the weather cooperates, we’ll kayak and visit nature preserves. If it doesn’t, we’ll play Scrabble and watch movies.
Right now though? Hanna - that dirty pirate whore - appears to be headed straight for the cottage we rented, and there are talks of evacuating the area.
Hmpf.
Posted in: Daily Life
September 2nd, 2008 / 2 Comments » / by Maigh
I happened upon a writing spark that suggested “How I met my…” Hmmm. Boyfriend/love monkey/PFL? Yawn. gynecologist? TMI. Sister? Yes! Trouble is, I don’t remember how I met her; but I imagine I was probably screaming about something. Air, food, a crap filled diaper.
One of my earlier memories of her is when I was around 7 and I called my brother fat. We were standing at the bottom of our stairs in the sub-basement where our bedrooms and the “rec room” were and she retorted: “you’re ugly.” I argued with her and she introduced me to a new meaning of the word. She was always so smart, and she always knew how to shut me up.
My next memory wasn’t long after. She was going away for a week or more that summer and I was beside myself. Inconsolable. We’d shared a bedroom most of my life (once I’d graduated from the dresser drawer. Seriously.) and I couldn’t fathom being without her. Scratch that - I didn’t WANT to fathom being without her.
When she finally left, she told me I had to be good and brave, that she’d left me a present if I was. I was. And I got the present - mom pulled it from its hiding place on top of the fridge. I think it was a charm…hell it could have been a Monopoly piece. There was a note that my mother read me that day with the present that made me feel less lost. There was another prize and another note the day after, and the day after that.
I came to understand as well as I could with that tiny brain still trying to learn to count to 100 without using my fingers that even when she wasn’t with me, she was thinking about me…and in that way, she was with me.
With eight years between us, I was still rocking bifocals and a Dorthy Hamill do when she left for Northwestern to grow on her own terms.
I visited her there one summer when my mom was in the hospital and they needed the little ones (Kevin and I) to be taken care of. He went to Montana with family friends, I visited Evanston for a week during the rest of the summer I spent in Nebraska with my aunties.
That summer Jennifer educated me on the wonder that is sunscreen (errr…Coppertone), put makeup on me, and let me wear one of her fancy, hip, 80’s belts. It was green and I felt soooooo grown up. We went to a production of Don Quiote and she made chicken Kiev for dinner. She introduced me to Cinnamon Toast Crunch, she brought me to the place that served the best deep dish in town, from which I’ve never fully recovered. I thought I was in Neverland.
In 1998 when we were together at our family reunion/immigration anniversary, we showed up with the same handbag. I don’t mean that in a “omg we’ere wearing the same dress…I have to leave!” kinda way, because she and I are one handbag and one handbag only kinda girls. No swapping to match your outfit. Of all the purses in all the towns…she got hers in LA and I got mine in Atlanta.
Crap, I’m boring myself.
We have a lot of history, she and I. Memories of squabbles are buried under memories of so many other good things. She was a was a stand-in mother when my own couldn’t be, but a sister through it all. She’s a wonderful woman, a great friend, a brainiac and an inspiration.
I could have done worse.
Posted in: Daily Life
August 31st, 2008 / 20 Comments » / by Maigh
It’s been two and a half months since we lost Amber, and while we haven’t healed yet, Grayson is chomping at the bit for a new friend to run his spastic kitty azz ragged.
Two weeks ago we went and met the kitty who will be his new little brother, yesterday we went for another visit during day one of Errandpalooza ‘08 and I managed to snap him a few times. He remembered me from our previous visit, came straight to me and burrowed himself in my lap.
Isn’t he adorable?
We think so too.
Now, what do you think we should name him?
Posted in: Family, Pets
August 31st, 2008 / 14 Comments » / by Maigh
I started keeping a notebook for scribbling random juvenile thoughts when I was in 6th grade. I had a crush on one of my brothers friends and I’d pour my little immature heart out on the pages of a spiral notebook with a light blue cover, hoping against hope that my brothers friend would find it, read my professions and have an emotional epiphany. We’d be boyfriend and girlfriend, go away to college together, get married and live happily ever after.
It didn’t happen, but I kept writing anyway. I kept dozens of yellow legal pads with lists, dreams, hopes, fears and ruminations from my tween years until I was 22.
That year, after my mom passed but before my father did, I got involved with the kind of boy/man I never thought I would. The kind who hit, who dragged me around the apartment (including up and down a flight of stairs) by my hair, who slammed my head into a bathroom wall and closed it in a door. Those are the highlights of the year plus I spent with him.
The worst thing he ever did to me though - wasn’t physical. It was taking my journals, reading them, and in a fit of jealousy - tearing them up and filling my car with shreds of yellow and white line confetti - my words and heart were shredded.
I stopped writing.
In the end, he came at me after I’d worked all day, gone to my second job, then come home to find him in a mood. He was angry that I needed to do laundry at 11pm and came after me. That was the night of the bathroom wall. That was the night he threw me down on the ground and when he came after me I lifted my foot to block his attack, a foot still in a work boot. That was the night I cracked his sternum, left, and came back the next day with my sister and a police officer to pack my things.
It took some time (ten years?) for me to put a pen to paper again without fear of retribution, without fear of having whatever I’d write used against me, but I have. One letter in front of the other, one notebook at a time, I’ve recovered…found my voice and my self esteem.
Now, I go further than I had before and just dump it all out there to begin with. Maybe this is why - when you all come and read but remain silent - I cringe. Part of me cares, part of me doesn’t…but in the end? It’s for me and about me. Anything and everything I write here is what it is: my evolution, my continued healing and my willingness to forgive, let go, move on.
So I write.
I’m doing it now on a keyboard with the help of pixels, a series of 1’s and 0’s, while sitting for a moment in a favorite haunt. There’s a tablet on the table next to me that contains a list of things I need to do, things I want to write about, thank you notes I need to write, places I want to visit, and adventures I have yet to embark on.
I’m whole, and I’m thankful for you - reading and joining me on the journey - silent or not.
Posted in: More About Me
August 22nd, 2008 / 9 Comments » / by Maigh
I’m old.
No. Srsly. I’m gettin’ up there. 18 years of fresh air in Alaska has been compromised by 14 years of harsh southern sun (with a few west coast years thrown in with a dash of smoochies for good measure) and a lack of love for sunscreen.
Look! It’s the sun! And in Atlanta, it’ll actually change my skin color and make me glow!
Ugh. The sun, she has left her mark. Specifically, marks in the form of sunspots on my cheeks as pointed out by the otherwise lovely anestitician at Pura Vida last month.
So what am I doing about it? Besides wearing sunscreen as of a few years ago?
I went to Ulta, of all places, and I bought make-up.
Ladies, work with me here. You’ve either seen the commercials for Bare Minerals or you know someone (with seemingly flawless skin) who uses the product. I’ve succumbed. I want skin like that! And apparently, I’m delusional enough to think that $60 worth of crap in a pretty box will give it to me.
Instead of feeling confident and as though I’m about to reinvent myself into a magical, mythical creature with creamy perfect skin, I’m like a thirteen year old, bringing home a box of make-up I’m totally not allowed to wear yet. I open it up and there are all these devices and packages inside I can’t begin to comprehend. Did I even get the right color? Who knows. Oh look! A DVD!
Guys, I spent part of my Saturday last weekend watching a DVD that tells me how to put make-up on.
What is WRONG with me?
I’m still clueless and completely terrified of the contents of that box.
Posted in: Daily Life
August 20th, 2008 / 10 Comments » / by Maigh
We’ve come around, The Mc and I. (flashback link)
From laughter covered fighting over paper towel holders to converting his hangers to TP placement to - just two months ago - my giving him a ring.
We’d picked non-matching rings out for ourselves months before I presented him with his. As a couple of adorable but still in it to win it technology dorks, the selection process was via an IM session while bouncing around on etsy.
Months after said selection upon arrival to Isle of Palms, SC for vacation we fell out of the car and went for our scheduled mani-pedi appointments at the resort spa to decompress from the road trip. After the appointment, as we were walking out of the spa across the palm tree and flowerriffic courtyard and to our room, I reached for his hand. We hold hands a lot. We’re cuddly and affectionate. Or needy. Either way, I had his ring in the palm of my hand and as we laced fingers, I slipped it on.
This weekend, he responded in kind and gave me mine.
The story is semi-delicious and a pinch of pitiful.
We’d gone by the condo Friday after work to check on the progress of the hardwoods that had been installed and stained last week, since our ENTIRE FUTURE hinged on them being just right. Kinda. As we were walking back to the car, he issued an order for my hand. Literally. Walk walk walk “HAND.” walk walk. I reached out and with some struggle he managed to put a ring on my finger, over my speed bump knuckles and sticky Atlanta-in-August skin.
It was pretty, and I was surprised and happy happy happy… but it wasn’t the one I’d picked. It had a pretty iridescent stone I didn’t recognize and I could tell within minutes it was going to hurt my neighboring fingers.
Let’s pause: have I mentioned I suck at receiving gifts? No? Are you sure? Because it should be right there in the “about me” and in the fun facts on the bottom of my resume.
I think it started when my brothers convinced my father to give me downhill skis (+ boots, bindings and poles) for my 15th birthday. They were the skiers in the family, not me. I was ruthlessly and quite vocally disappointed.
So we talked about it Saturday when we got home from a night out with friends (who I am not allowed to write about under penalty of I-don’t-know-what) where we determined the stone was an opal and the truth was he’d originally bought me a different ring that never arrived.
That night, home on the couch, I said something like this (as discussed ad nauseum in therapy): “I want feel like you to love me so much you can’t stand it. And I want you to ignore [sometimes] stupid stuff I’ve said about likes and not likes.”
In addition to being a crappy gift receiver, I’m also a brat. I don’t mean to be. There’s a part in me that’s broken, the one that acts as a governor and translator between when you want to say and what you should say as well as the part that pretends it doesn’t need to be fed but in reality could spend a month at an emotional Chinese buffet and never get full.
So Sunday afternoon when all I wanted to do was sleep, he forced me out of bed and to one of my favorite places for a walk: Sweetwater Creek State Park. I assumed it was in the interest of my muffin top and went grudgingly, falling half asleep in the car on the way there. He should have opened the door and shoved me out, but he is terminally kind and encouraged me gently.
I love that place. We walked, we chatted, we got sweaty, we adventured down on the creek bank. I picked up the discarded home of a wee water critter that looked like a blue baby clam shell. I longed to have my camera with me, because the water had risen since I’d been last winter and the ebbs and churn were too painfully beautiful not to capture. We paused at the top of a hill after seeing a doe who had stopped for a snack on the trail then bounded through the wood at the sight/smell of us, and we plopped down on a bench and listened to the wind in the leaves. He cuddled up and with his cheek to mine said “this is how much I love you”, and pulled a box into view. A little black box from a place I mentioned in passing three years ago with a perfect silver bow.
He’s still a prince among men with a heart too big and good for the likes of me. I’m still a turd with a broken brain who adores him for so many things…not just that he gets me as evidenced in this tale.
Together? We’re as close to official as we’ll probably ever get…with a couple of full circles on each of our hands. The journey is hardly over and yet it seems - somehow - complete.
Posted in: Mushy, The Mc
August 14th, 2008 / 3 Comments » / by Maigh
Blog? Have a uterus? Live in or near ATL? C’mon out and play…
BlogHer ATLANTA will be taking place on Tuesday, October 21, at the Georgia Tech Hotel & Conference Center.
BlogHer ATLANTA is the fifth stop on the six-city Reach Out Tour, and we’re looking forward to spending time with the many and varied “hotlanta” bloggers. We’re still finalizing the details, but you can expect the day to begin with breakfast at 8:30 and conclude with a cocktail reception from about 6 to 8 p.m.
Full Conference Pass: $100.00
Includes admission to the full-day conference and cocktail reception immediately following.
Cocktail Reception Only: $25.00
Pass includes admission to the post-conference cocktail reception only. Perfect for a partner/spouse/friend who wants to join you for the evening festivities. (Does not grant access to any conference programming.)
Posted in: Daily Life
