Diary of a Rockstar's Wife

A Big Party and a Piece of Paper

2011-12-19T06:02:00.000-08:00

After a quite stressful week leading up to the wedding, I finally had a bit of time to relax. My awesome aunt, who traveled down from Idaho for the wedding, pulled me aside, handed me $35 and said, "Go get a pedicure, relax a little bit." It was exactly what I needed. After finding a little hole in the wall salon and getting a pedi and mani, the inner girl in me (and the cause of all my Bridezilla outbursts) was finally given what she needed; a good foot rub.

Stress with the band/van ordeal, and general money woes, had made the week leading up to the wedding nearly unbearable. (I'll post all about that soon.) After that magical foot rub, I was able to just take a deep breath, be okay with the chips falling where they may, and focus on the fun part of my wedding.

And just to clarify (and toot my own horn a little bit) I was stressed out about the wedding. For over a year now, Husband (I love calling him that!) and I have been introducing each other as husband and wife. We've been referring to the wedding as "A Big Party and a Piece of Paper." Because that's really all it is. Marriage is a state of mind, one that has existed between Husband and I almost from the beginning of our romantic relationship. In my stressier, pre-pedicure moments, Husband would hug me and say, "We're getting married. This wedding is happening. We have a suit and a dress and the rings and a license. That's all that matters." What I was stressing out about was the wedding. Orchestrating a big party on a tiny budget and a tiny amount of time. The marriage is what was able to get me through it all.

Sunday evening I went flower shopping, found all of the flowers I wanted/needed, and headed back to the big, pretty rental house my parents had for the week. The Bestest, her Boyfriend, and my family were all hard at work, preparing the cake, the zombie figures (yes, you read that correctly), the favors, the candle holders, the food; everything. My Bridezilla melt down (which involved tears and an indulgent door slamming) after some bad van news on Saturday morning had made everyone come together to help me pull off the last details. My dad made a miniature Thanksgiving dinner, since we wouldn't be able to travel for Turkey Day, since it so nearly followed the wedding.

The bottles were candle holders for the reception. Tom Selleck up there went on the cake.

Everyone stayed up pretty late that night, but by 4am it was just Husband and I, the Bestest and her Boyfriend. That was when we decided it was time for a burrito run. Oh, how I already miss that shady but delicious Mexican fast food.

I finally passed out at 5:15am, but Husband stayed up all night, since he'd woken up permanently at 3am. I got back up at 6:30am to start my wedding day. A quick shower, a cup of coffee, and the running around began. We loaded up the car that Husband's parents loaned to us for the weekend, and took the decorations down to the reception hall to pick up the key at 9am. We quickly set up the tables and chairs, ran back to the rental house for the forgotten decorations and our wedding clothes, picked up the champagne from the liquor store, and came back. At noon the hairdresser (a girl I grew up across the street from and sister to my oldest friend) and the make up artist showed up. Husband (wisely) ran out to grab us some lunch from a little Greek joint around the corner, while my preparation for cuteness began.

Everyone else began trickling in, and after my face was properly painted, Husband took a break from decorating the reception hall and we were able to eat. After that it was a whirlwind of hair doing and decor approving for me. As the time for photos neared, I had to silently pat myself on the back for telling everyone the time for photos was 3pm, when it was really 3:30pm. Go me! Planning for tardiness.

By 4pm, though it became apparent I hadn't budgeted enough. Husband and I ran over to the venue to decorate that, too, before getting pictures started. We hid upstairs and did a few more photos while the crowd began to gather down in the courtyard. (We also snuck a little airplane sized bottle of Jim up with us, to help us get rid of the nerves.)

The time came to line up and get ready to walk down the aisle. Husband and his father started out first, and stood up front. The music changed and my bridesmaids got ready to go. My dad took my arm and I was only able to blurt out, "I have to pee."

Everyone laughed, and my father said, "Too late for that, honey!"

Then my cousin Jinx, my Oldest Friend and the Bestest were all walking down the aisle. My Oldest Friend had recorded a song for me, and I couldn't even hear it. As hard as I tried, I couldn't hear the music over my own nervousness and excitement. Then the flower girl walked down the aisle. She's nine years old now. I've known her since she was only four. And there she was, walking with straight posture, carefully scattering the artificial leaves I'd given her.

She scattered artificial autumn leaves from a plastic Jack O'Lantern trick or treat tub.

Then it was my turn. I was straining over my own nerves, trying to hear the music. It had been so important to me, and now I couldn't hear it. It felt as though everyone there at the wedding was cheering for me... cheering for me and Husband, and I couldn't hear the delicate piano arpeggios being playing over the sound system.

As my Dad and I reached the front of the aisle, Husband joined us, and he took my other arm in his. And as the officiants (my Mom and the GBF) began the ceremony, all I could think about was the tear that had run down my nose, and was now hanging on the very tip, refusing to just drip off. I was hoping that the Bestest's Boyfriend (who served as our primary photographer) wouldn't be able to see that dangling tear with his super awesome camera. (It didn't!)

My nerves took hold of me, and it took all of my energy to not cry. I was at that stage of nervousness/excitement where I can't stop smiling. Seriously. I tried, at it resulted in a strange little twitchy smirk that made me look like a crazy person. So I just smiled. I realized, halfway through the ceremony, that I had been so worried about locking my knees and passing out, that instead I had been doing an awkward, pseudo-pee pee dance. I haven't seen any video yet, but I just hope it wasn't too obvious to everyone else.

Then it was time for the vows. I was most worried about bursting into ugly cry face during this part, but strangely enough, it was the most calm I felt during the entire day. Husband held my hands, and looked me right in the eye, and recited the words we had carefully crafted together in July. We wrote our own vows;

I, Husband, take you, Lori, to be my wife, my constant friend, my partner for life. I promise to love you without reservation, and to be open and honest with you always. We will stand together in times of joy and times of sorrow, in times of plenty or times of want, in sickness and in health; to love, honor and cherish unconditionally. I will be faithful to you. I will love you alone all the days of my life.

The ceremony only took eight minutes. It felt even quicker than that. It was strange that all of that planning, fussing over all the weird little details, were over in eight minutes. I knew going into it that there were certain elements that no one would care about or remember but me (like what my bridesmaids were wearing, and our flowers, hence the $7 dress for my 'flower' girl and the grocery store flowers.) I remember that when it was over, I was thinking, "Already?"

But then it was over, we were Husband and Wife, and that was that. Time to party!

The Reception was at an old building just two small blocks away (most everyone walked). My parents and the Bestest's Boyfriend did almost all of the cooking, with help from one of my Aunts. They also made the cake. While the ceremony was mostly Autumn themed (we had tiny Jack O'Lantern lights on the arch), the reception is where we went spooky. There were fake spiders and skulls all over. Candles were sitting on top of the wine bottles I had made labels for (potions and various potion ingredients.) It ended up feeling like a slightly spooky, whimsical family meal. There was almost no dancing, as people were too busy eating and talking. The food, by the way, was Penne with Meat Sauce, and Rotini with Spinach Alfredo, a veggie tray, a meat tray, and fresh bread made my the Bestest's Boyfriend. (He seriously saved the day. The wedding wouldn't have come together like it did if it weren't for his tremendous amount of help.) There was also a desert table, with Pumpkin Cheesecakes supplied by one of Husband's fans, who became a good friend of mine, a bowl of jelly beans with Bertie Bott's mixed in, and a plate of cream puffs. Each table also had a trick or treat tub full of candy. I wanted to make sure that if people gave up their Halloween to celebrate with us, they still got their sugary goodies.

I suppose the rest of the story I can tell in pictures;

By the time the reception was drawing to a close, Husband and I had managed to eat one plate of food each (over the course of the night, which is more than a lot of bride and grooms get at their weddings), and said hello and goodbye to everyone that had come. It was hectic, and as the center of attention, we were pulled in many directions at once. But it was lovely. The Bestest caught my bouquet, and her Boyfriend caught the garter.

The best part of the night, I do have to say, is how everyone just suddenly pitched in and helped us clean up and put everything away. It wasn't even coordinated. It started with my Oldest Friend and her sister (the one who did my hair), and it just spread from there. Once all of the decorations were packed up and the tables and chairs folded and away, everyone stood around and socialized, and even got a little bit of dancing in. I was blown away by how everyone came together to help us make this little shindig happen. If it hadn't been for the generosity of my creative and talented friends and family, I don't know how we could've done this. It truly moved me to see everyone pitch in to help us out.

After the night was through, we piled back into the cars with all of our decorations, and went back to the rental house (a gorgeous 4 bedroom with a giant back yard, pool and tiki bar) to crash. We brought in what needed to be refrigerated or would melt in the sun, and everyone collapsed in bed, asleep. Except for me. I had to take off the false eyelashes and the professional make up and all of the curls. It took almost as long to undo all the pretty as it did to heap it on. By the time I finished my shower and got into bed, Husband was sound asleep. I didn't have the nerve to wake him, so just crawled into bed and fell asleep next to him.

I figured we had the rest of our lives to do 'husband and wife' things. You know, now that we'd had our big party, and signed that piece of paper.

5 Days

2011-10-26T20:24:00.000-07:00

I am a very happy Lori.

Very stressed, but very happy. Today I turn 26 (on the 26th!)... and I totally forgot about it.

But then I logged into Facebook, and saw that 68 friends of mine had written on my wall, and I was like, "Whaaa...?" And then I remembered.

And the best part is that it was people from all over the country and all over the world. (Cousins in Italy count!)

So no picture/cartoon today, because I am entirely too stressed out and busy with wedding planning (the wedding, which, if you're following, is in only 5 more days.) Instead of thinking off all of the things I haven't done, I'm thinking of the things I have.

Today, I got my wedding band (a place holder until I have the time to get the real one sized). And most importantly, we got our marriage license. Which means that as far as the actual getting married part, we can do that. The wedding just might come together the exact way I pictured. But really? Oh well. As long as we both say 'I do.' when we need to, it doesn't really matter if I finish tying the ribbons on all the favors.

So I'm enjoying a drink, working on the little photoshop bits of things that I can, and enjoying a drink while (Future) Husband makes dinner for me and my family.

And honestly, I'm kind of thinking of just enjoying a round or two of Plants vs. Zombies...

10 Days

2011-10-21T19:59:00.000-07:00

Alright, the final countdown is on.

Ten days from now, Future Husband will lose the 'Future' portion of his name, and I get to officially adopt a new alliterative moniker.

At this point in the game, I have so much stress from the planning stages over the last year (not to mention the hell of a summer we had), that I'm just ready for it to be over. Is that strange? I already feel married, I just haven't had a big party and signed a piece of paper yet.

Although, that big party is going to be pretty awesome...

I haven't really gushed about my wedding on here (my facebook friends will say otherwise), so let me give you the highlights real quick (because I still have SOOOO much to do in the next ten days.

-The wedding's in Arizona, at a coffee shop that we found out we both frequented as teenagers, before we knew each other. It's gorgeous. I can't wait to post the pictures.
-The wedding is on Halloween. We wanted November 1st, (so our anniversary would be 11-1-11), but you'd be surprised at how hard it is to find a reasonably priced wedding venue for a Tuesday.
-Everyone in the wedding party is wearing Chuck Taylor's.
-Instead of flowers, we're decorating everything with Fall Leaves and Pumpkins.
-No YMCA or Chicken Dance at the reception. Instead, it'll be Thriller and The Time Warp.

Great Googily Moogily... I am SO EXCITED to share pictures!

Heroes and Villians: The Tale of Crazy Ex #2

2011-08-24T18:47:00.000-07:00

*Warning!* - Another seriously old, seriously introspective blog! Proceed with caution!

When it comes to being a Hero or Villain, there are definitely shades of gray. With all of the 2007 turmoil, I didn't consider Future Husband a Villain. Conflicted, yes. Foolish, definitely. But I was just as much to blame for the mess. When he told me about his feelings, I could have told him that I reciprocated, but that he needed to end things with Crazy Ex#1 before we started carrying on. I initially did that, but the longer it took, the harder it was to resist him. Eventually it was a full fledged affair. And when it went sour, it hurt all three of us involved, and split our once tight social circle into two distinctive sides, even those that didn't want to be involved. Even today I say the bulk of the blame lies with Future Husband, but I'm not responsibility free. I know that.

And I'd like to think I'm smart enough to not make the same mistake twice... but I did.

Though in my defense, I didn't think I was making the same mistake. And the scenario wasn't exactly the same: It was actually worse. When Future Husband and I finally got together I lived in Oklahoma, and he lived in Seattle... with soon-to-be Crazy Ex #2. I thought that it would just be a fling, and he would finally be out of my system and out of my life. But it was the exact opposite of what ended up happening. Even when he started pushing for a relationship, I suggested we be friends while we were apart, and lovers while we were in the same city. Because, apparently, I like to make things unnecessarily complicated. Just like before, I didn't resist him for long. He promised to break up with Ex #2, just like he had with #1. I hoped that he had enough courage to do it, but was terrified he wouldn't. But something had changed in the years in between. Maybe finally being with me entirely was enough to make him realize I was worth fighting for. I was worth being a Villain for.

During the weeks between us becoming us, and him returning to Seattle from tour, he vented all of his frustrations and insecurities to me. He hated that he had to be a bad guy, but he gave himself the pep talks. I just agreed. He decided he would just blame the band for his reason for leaving Crazy Ex #2. I advised him that this was a bad idea, but if it's what he was comfortable doing, to go for it. He thought it would soften the blow. He also didn't want her to stab him or set his record collection on fire. I couldn't blame him, there. I'd heard through the web of mutual friends that she was just like Crazy Ex#1.

When he got back to Seattle, he followed through, broke up with her, and moved out. Things weren't easy, but he didn't make the same mistake he had in 2007. He chose me, this time. However, things didn't stay peachy for long. It turned out that Crazy Ex#2 had suspected me for a while, and had been facebook stalking me. A few days before Christmas, she was able to track down 'proof' in a comment I'd left on someone's page. She understandably blew her gasket.

She acted like a love torn 13 year old. It was embarrassing. Like those awkward comedies where you laugh because you feel so very bad for the person. For a woman who's almost 30, her behavior was abominable. She logged into Future Husband's social networks, sent out emails to his family and friends, and then changed his passwords so that he couldn't get back in right away to delete everything. She sent me numerous emails. She even sent one to my father on Christmas morning, preaching sisterhood, all the while sending drunken emails to Future Husband about how much she hated me and how I had ruined her life. Me. Not Future Husband for cheating on her. Me.

She harassed me for a few weeks online (she only tormented Future Husband for about a week), and even her mother and two friends got in on it. Months later, when she found out I was going on tour with the band, her nasty messages to me started back up. With only one friend getting in on the action the second time, so I guess that's an improvement. Though, she did threaten me. I'm not sure if she threatened to somehow use the internet to find me and cause me physical harm, or if she meant that she'd find my personal information and like... I don't know. Ruin my credit? Either way, the threat (thankfully) never panned out. Which is fortunate for them, too, because while I am not violence prone, I am vindictive, have a long memory, and have many beefy, violent Italian men that are wrapped around my little finger and willing to do literally anything for me. (Seriously. Back in 2007 when things imploded with FH, I argued with two of my cousins about giving them his home address.) Even now that my family (all of it) is happy with Future Husband, since the engagement I've gotten a few, "We're happy for you, but does he know that if he hurts you again, he's still dead?" It's the Italian in us., what can I say?

Although, on a side note, after months and months of Crazy Ex #2's online harassment, I finally gave in and replied. I never sent a reply to any of her emails (though I wrote a few) and never acknowledged her. I figured ignoring her would probably anger her more, and it kept my own muddled feelings from exploding and making me feel worse. After her last snarky comment (actually on this blog) I gave in to my mischievous side. I had her email address (and home address, and phone number, and work number - because she apparently assumed that I don't know how to use google) and decided to be naughty. After she stalked me and wrote me horrible nasty things for months, after she wrote to my father on Christmas in an effort to ruin our holiday, after she tried her hardest to hurt me (because she assumed I knew absolutely nothing about FH's history, flaws or dark side)... I signed her up for Midget Porn. Yep. You read that correctly. Midget Porn. After her hurtful words and hostile behavior, I threw a rubber chicken. I thought it was hilarious. I had one angry email from her even crazier friend after that, but since then she's left me alone. Never underestimate the power of miniature dominatrices.

What bothers me, to this day, about this situation, is that she considers me the Villain. Not Future Husband. Sure, I was a bad female. I was knowingly the 'other woman.' She even used the word "stole" in one of her tirades. That's always bothered me. It seems like the women who loudly proclaim that they do not want to be objectified are the first to accuse another woman of 'stealing her man.' It's not like I snuck into her backyard one night and took Future Husband because she forgot to lock him up. He's not a bicycle. He's an adult; fully capable of making his own decisions, good and bad.

We (thankfully) haven't heard from her for a few months now, so we're hoping she finally came to her senses, and has recognized that Future Husband treated her horribly. He pretty much used her as an excuse to get away from Crazy Ex #1, and then as a place to live so he wouldn't be homeless when the band moved from Arizona to Seattle. He even told me (before we became a couple) that he knew she was more in love with him, and that he felt bad about it. On the whole, he was truly villainous towards her, and yet she still seems to hold him up on a pedestal. I understand despising me (I would, too), but she's never met me. I don't know Crazy Ex #2 and hold nothing against her, aside from her atrocious behavior towards me concerning this fiasco. She should be angry at Future Husband. She should loathe him. And for some reason, I get the impression she doesn't. She still thinks I stole her bicycle.

Evil Lori will steal your man, and your Penny Farthing. All while wearing a jaunty hat!

In her story, he was Willoughby, and she just can't figure that out. Jane never lets us see Ms. Grey/Mrs. Willoughby. We only hear how Willoughby relates her to Elinor. So who knows how accurate that portrait was, given his past history of self preservation? So if you're still cyber stalking me, Crazyhead- forget Willoughby. Go find yourself your Colonel Brandon.

(On a side note, it seems I'm painting a really horrible picture of Future Husband and I. I guess I'm just trying to clear the air, and my conscience. I'm not perfect, neither is he. He's the Hero in my love story because he's perfect for me. Not because he's Clark Kent. We've both done bad things in our social lives and our love lives, but who hasn't? I'm just willing to share mine.)

Crazy Ex #2 has been intermittently on my mind since we went public with our engagement. I don't think I'll hear from her ever again, but I wouldn't be surprised, either, if there was another little flip out when she finds out that we're getting married and I'm not pregnant. Maybe the new batch of angry messages will come in November, after the wedding. Who knows? Let's hope, for everyone's sake, that she realized what a Douchey McDouchebag Future Husband was to her. That he was a villain in her story, not an anti-hero. Let's hope that she's come to the mature realization that harassing me (It's actually legal harassment - I looked it up. I could press charges if I wanted to.) isn't going to make her feel better, or help her move on.

And how do I do it, you ask? How do I sleep at night being a Villainess? After being instrumental in the heart break of two different women? Well, there are three things that keep me from feeling guilty for more than a few seconds;
1- Future Husband knew me before he know either of them, and in his own 2007 words, fell in love with me the night he met me. It's almost like they were the 'other women.' I was the original.
2- I was only an instrument. My favorite analogy; if you get stabbed by someone, you don't get angry at the knife.
3- Completely good heroes are boring. ;-)

Heroes and Villains: The Tale of Crazy Ex #1

2011-08-21T22:09:00.000-07:00

**WARNING!** Serious Lori ramblings lay ahead. In fact, you will see the darker side of Lori in the following paragraphs. Not 'Making Cartoons in MS Paint' Lori, but 'Sitting in the Dark and being Unhealthily Introspective' Lori. You have yet to see this on this blog. Proceed with Caution!

Okay, I'll soften the blow with a cartoon.

Warning #2!! - I wrote this blog months and months ago, but just never posted it. Which is a pity, because I dearly love the above cartoon. I've decided, in the interest of getting back in the habit of blogging, to post this. A pretty sizable contributing factor to my lack of posting lately has been that I feel I can't really say what I want to say. Self censoring, in a way. Mostly because I've been afraid of offending people, should they happen across my little corner of cyberspace. Recently a few things have happened that have made me stop caring whether or not I offend someone by telling everyone the Emporor's naked. So I decided, before I start venting my frustrations by showing off everyone else's dirty laundry, I would expose a little of my own.

It probably doesn't come as any surprise to you that I enjoy writing fiction, as well as over exposed diary entries. I mean... blogs. So I've been mulling over the idea of Heroes and Villains. And in the good stories, there are no differences in their motivations. Each character believes they are doing what is right. The Villain doesn't know they are the antagonist, or at least, have not set out to be the bad guy. It seems that in the best stories, the Hero and Villain don't even know they're the protagonist and antagonist, they just are.

I've had the word 'fairytale' thrown at me as an insult by both friend and foe, and I fully admit that my coping mechanism is storytelling. I put things into a linear storyline so it's easier for me to swallow. I know perfectly well that life doesn't always happen that way. People don't even behave in a linear fashion, usually. Many factors motivate people, not a sequence of events. Literature, Life and Fairytales alike begin and end in medias res. Life is told in chapters. I've been translating my written world way of thinking into real life, and I've realized that we are all both Hero and Villain. Even the people I love most - me, my family and friends, Future Husband - we have all been both.

Okay, maybe two cartoons.

The Tale of Crazy Ex #1

---

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about Crazy Ex #1 and Crazy Ex #2. It's well known among Future Husband's friends and family that he has terrible taste in women. The joke is that he's just very lucky that I have strange taste in men, and we ended up together.

(Seriously, when I met his parents for the first time at Christmas 2010 I could tell they were uneasy. Even in March when we stayed with them for two weeks, it seemed like they were a little reserved, just waiting for me to take a sudden detour into Crazytown. It took them a while to realize I wasn't going to go kookoo bananas anytime soon.)

Future Husband and I met before he'd even met Crazy Ex #1. Which is how I've been able to justify being a terrible female by allowing him to cheat on her with me, back in 2007. Things didn't turn out very well for me then, which I suppose is exactly what I deserved. In the beginning I made the mistake of trying to become friends with Crazy Ex #1, so when everything went to hell in a hand basket, she not only had to deal with her boyfriend being unfaithful, but someone she thought was a friend betraying her. That is what I feel awful about. I never should have tried to be friendly with her. After everything exploded spectacularly (I won't tell the story here, as it's the subject of an entire novel I'm writing), Future Husband had a lot of back peddling and butt kissing to do. Their relationship only lasted another year, which delighted me - he lost forever with me for one more year with a crazy girl (or so we thought). In that year, he got her name tattooed inside a heart on his arm. It's also a common man's name, so it's kinda funny. We humorously took care of that in Denver. But he also made the mistake of entering into a Domestic Partnership with her. We've been working to dissolve that, and we're almost done, but that's why she's been on my mind lately.

Thinking of Crazy Ex #1 has made me feel something I thought I never would, especially where she is concerned. She is a spectacular waste of space and, in general, a lousy human - nothing to contribute to mankind on an intellectual, creative or humanitarian basis - but that doesn't mean she deserved to be treated the way I treated her. That doesn't raise her on the human bean scale at all, but it does seem to lower me. I'm disappointed in myself for behaving so poorly towards her, and not doing myself justice. I purposely manipulated her, used her, and thoroughly despised her during the entire duration of our 'friendship.' I felt territorial over Future Husband. He knew me first, and yet she had somehow wiggled in line in front of me. She's a pretty loud, 'out there' kind of personality. While I was flirting subtly with young FH, she was bold and socially aggressive. Of course, now I know that FH was just as unsure of me returning his feelings as I was of his. So it's understandable why a 21 year old boy would go for the girl that made her feelings readily available and easy to read. I can't blame him for that. I can't blame her, either.

A long time ago I made a joke to Future Husband about Crazy Ex #1, and he said, "Well, we know how that turned out. You won."

It ruffled my feathers a bit, because I always considered her to be the competitive one. (Towards the end of the craziness in 2007, she kept lightening her hair, and flat out told me she wanted it to be the same color as mine.) I realized something when he said that; I hadn't cared about winning where she was concerned, I'd cared about being right. I've always been one of those stubborn kids that has a hard time admitting they're wrong, and on the same note, backing off when I'm right. To me, Crazy Ex #1 and Future Husband just didn't make sense together. They were incompatible. We made sense. We fit; we were right. They weren't. That's why I was territorial. Why I was uncharacteristically competitive, manipulative and mean.

Now, with Crazy Ex #1 on my mind while Future Husband and I work on getting rid of her paper trail, I am prepared to do something I rarely do. Crazy Ex #1 is unintelligent, uncaring, spiteful, competitive and manipulative. And I lowered myself to her level.

So if you ever come across my little corner of the blogosphere, Crazyhead, on that long walk I want you to take off a short pier... know that I'm sorry for the way I treated you. I was genuinely terrible to you, and I should not have been. Your inferiority to me did not give me the right to behave badly.

I was wrong. I'm sorry.

As far as Crazy Ex #1 is concerned, when the credits roll on her life story, I'll be billed as a Villain, and justly so. I'm the Hero of my own story, and she's simply a plot point. But I was a terrible person towards her, and she has every right to feel that. If she's capable of human emotion (I have my doubts.)

Maybe it's the time and the distance between the shit storm that was 2007, and now; maybe it's just that I'm older and a little wiser, but I feel more forgiving towards Crazy Ex #1's behavior towards me. Granted, just because I was horrible, doesn't mean she was Pollyanna, she's bar fight kind of crazy. Once she realized I had feelings for Future Husband she was just as manipulative and mean. Now I can see why, though. How horrible to realize that someone you thought was your friend was actually using you just to be closer to your boyfriend. Major suckage. And honestly, I probably would have acted the same. But when the manure did hit the oscillating air dispersal device, I got mad at Future Husband. In fact, I was mad for years. Sure, I wasn't quiet about recognizing what an awful person Crazy Ex #1 was, but I didn't write blogs about how angry I was at her. Because I wasn't. I didn't turn into one of those ridiculous Springer-esque kind of girls that gets mad at the girl. I got mad at FH for using me, and treating me horribly. Like I should have.

Crazy Ex #2, however, can't say the same about her behavior....

...to be continued.

Excuses, Excuses

2011-08-19T04:20:00.000-07:00

It's been ages since I posted, I do realize this (two months and two weeks, to be a little less vague.)

I could give you a long list of excuses, but instead I will just eventually tell you the crazy stories from my crazy summer. Most of them involve working two jobs with conflicting sleep schedules, and being in a ridiculous girly funk because my other half was miles and miles away. We are eight and a half months through the year, and Future Husband and I spent four of those months apart.

We did, however, just reunite after two weeks apart, and a lot of emotionally burdensome things happened in those two weeks.

In happier news, The GBF (Gay Best Friend) is moving to Seattle in two weeks. YAY!!! This is the GBF. We love him like a brother. He's always smiling, always laughing, always making the world a more pleasant place for everyone around him. Also, he is the mutual friend that FH and I met through. Hooray!

Also, he's the first Blogger Stick Figure to have ears. Huh.

WTF?

2011-06-01T12:18:00.000-07:00

"WTF?" were Future Husband's first words when he saw me. Not abbreviated, of course.

But let's go back a little bit further.

I finished writing my blog about the San Diego snafu about 9:00am, but decided to schedule it to post four hours later, just in case something else funny happened that I needed to add to the story. So I spent the rest of the morning texting FH about how much I missed him, talking about silly things, talking about naughty things. Usual text banter for us. By 11:00am I was so nervous I was pretty sure I was going to throw up. Or die. Or both.

I'd gone over in my head exactly how I wanted the surprise to go. He was going to come through the back door, and I would be in the living room, which is situated a little behind the door, but with a clear view of it. He would see my things on the kitchen table, and I would wait until he looked to be at the apex of confusion, then walk up behind him and say something witty like, "Did you figure it out yet?" or something romantic, like, "Hello, Handsome." I pulled all of the blinds down, so he wouldn't see me when he walked through the back yard.

By 11:30am, I knew he had to be nearly to town. And ten minutes later I was told they were at a friend's house, unloading the equipment. That's when my palms started sweating. I knew I would be seeing Future Husband for the first time in two months. It felt like longer; it felt like three. The tiny week he was home between tours didn't give us nearly enough time together. The more I watched the clock, the faster my heart was racing, and the knottier my stomach was becoming. I forced myself to focus on silly things, like Mah Jong and Cracked.com. But it wasn't working too well. All I could do was run over the upcoming moment in my head. I wanted it to be perfect.

Finally, about 12:15pm, I heard voice outside. I dropped everything (literally, hours later I recovered my cell phone from under the couch) and ran to the window, careful to not be seen through cracks in the blinds. I could see the big white Ogre, and could hear a few different voices. The front door rattled, but was still bolted.

Oh, crap. I thought. He's trying to come through the front. Did she say she left the key up front?

My nerves disappeared. I no longer worried about what I was going to say to make the moment perfect. I knew the plan was out the window, so I had to improvise. I ran to the front door (seriously, I ran) and flung it open. G and D turned around and shock flashed across their faces.

"Holy shit! What are you doing here?" G said.

"Surprise!" I laughed. Future Husband was no where in sight. I looked into the van, hoping maybe he was pulling something out from under a bench, but no luck.

"He went around back," G said. Crap. My plan totally could have worked, but I got impatient. G hugged me, and I nervously explained my being in Arizona (which in hindsight, was probably barely coherent.) As I was rambling on, G looked at something over my shoulder and pointed behind me.

I turned around to see Future Husband in the doorway, his eyes wide and disbelieving. "What the f***!?" He grabbed me into a tight hug, and I giggled as my head swam with dizziness. It was finally here. After weeks of planning and scheming, and long hours spent pining after him, he was finally back in my arms. Scruffier, smellier and a lot skinnier than when I saw him last on April 5th, but back. With me. My heart stopped racing, and my palms stopped sweating, but the shaking had started. Every part of me, especially my hands, were quivering. We hugged and kissed, and tried to finish getting his things out of the van.

"I... I just can't even think right now," he said, after I asked him if he'd gotten everything. Over the next few hours he told me I was 'fantastic' and 'amazing' and 'awesome' and other wonderful adjectives to be described as. We got him showered and fed and well... I'm sure you can guess what else.

So I didn't get to say any of the clever or romantic I had rehearsed endlessly in my head. Nothing ended up going according to plan. But when all was said and done, the moment was still perfect. And now we're reunited, and it feels so good.

A Comedy of Errors: My Sister in Law Rocks

2011-05-30T13:00:00.000-07:00

Ok, remember how I said my grandmother had gotten sick and taken a turn for the worst in April? (I know, this is a pretty craptastic way to start a blog with 'comedy' in the title, hang in there...) I flew down after Future Husband left town for the second, longer leg of tour. I got to visit my Grandmother for what could have been the last time (it wasn't, thank goodness!) and while I was out there for a long weekend, had Sunday dinner with my Future In-Laws.

Let me just say that both Future Husband and I are incredibly lucky. We both have In-Laws that are easy to get along with and adore us. My parents have been crazy about FH since he beat my mother at Scrabble many, many years ago (she had been undefeated for 30 years previously) and his parents have loved me since they realized I was intelligent and sane. (Which, compared to his previous girlfriends, is a vast improvement.)

So while I was having dinner with them that first Sunday in April, I ran the idea past them of me potentially coming out to Arizona at the end of May/beginning of June to surprise Future Husband. He and I had discussed me flying out for a weekend to visit him, but then when we crunched the numbers, we realized a round trip flight, a few motel rooms and food would end up costing what me being away for a whole month of the next tour would be, and it just didn't seem logical. But it got my wheels turning. I scrimped and saved, and since April was a three pay day month, I was able to buy a one way ticket out to Arizona.

I waited until Mother's Day to bring it up again, and let the In-Laws know I had indeed purchased a ticket, and reminded them of our conversation in early April. They said that of course it would be alright for me to fly out and spend a day or two with them before Future Husband rolled into town.

The surprise is my goal. Yes, we'll be reunited two whole weeks sooner than originally planned. Which is effing fantastic. But it's the element of surprise I'm most excited about. It's so ridiculously hard for me to keep a secret from Future Husband, even with things like Christmas and Birthday presents. So the fact that I've been able to keep my mouth shut this whole time, and not accidentally give him any hints, is well... awesome. I'm very proud of myself.

So since April 19th I've been sitting on this secret visit of mine. Diligently counting down the days with FH until I got to see him again, while all the while keeping a real countdown simultaneously. I was going to fly out to Arizona on May 28th, and made sure my visit was on a need-to-know basis. The cousin that picked me up from the Airport, and the cousin that would drop me off at the In-Laws. A few friends got informed over the weekend, but told to keep it under the strictest of secrets. Mainly, to maintain Facebook and Twitter silence. (Oh, this modern world of ours!)

The day finally came. I woke up at 5:30am after a three and a half hour nap (after a 37 hour day) and caught a bus to the airport. By noon I was landing in Phoenix, and later that night I was staying with a cousin. Doing my best to not let on to Future Husband that I was in Arizona, spinning a web of little whites lies about what I was doing. "Oh, I'm talking to my cousin." Hoping he would assume on the phone or online, and not in her living room.

So Sunday evening I had this cousin drop me off at the In-Laws' house. As we were pulling up and I was giving directions I said, "My sister in law's car should be out front." But it wasn't. I had her drop me off anyway (as I'd talked to my Father in Law on Thursday and reminded him of my secret visit.) No one was home, so I just assumed that they were out at the store, or perhaps some sort of car event, and would be back soon. So I sat down on a seat on the porch, plugged in my laptop, and caught up on some Cracked.com articles.

Then I got a call from Future Husband...

Without a preceding text or two asking what I was up to, if I was available for a call, etc.. We usually check with each other to make sure batteries and surroundings are ready for what might turn into a lengthy call. He began his call with, "So I just got off the phone with my dad..."

My heart sank. I could hear the weirdness in FH's voice. I just knew his dad had let something slip about my presence in Arizona.

"...and he and mom are in San Diego." A mixture of feelings erupted in me. 'Yes! He doesn't know I'm in Arizona!' and very quickly followed by, 'Crap! I'm locked out of the house and I really have to pee!'

I composed myself quickly and said, "Oh, no! I just reminded him earlier this week that you'd be in town!"

While I was talking to Future Husband, I got a text response from his sister, since I'd asked her if she was having dinner with her parents that night. Her text told me the same as FH just had. I shot a text back quickly, "Oh no! I'm on their front porch waiting for them! Don't tell Future Husband!!"

While FH and I discussed how he could get into the house (Sister in Law has a key, and was going to come by Monday evening to take care of the animals) I got another text from her. Luckily, the first band started playing just then, so Future Husband ended his call (after we'd brainstormed that he would have to go pick up the key from her before going back out to his parents' house.) I called her right away.

I quickly explained the situation, and that it was a surprise for Future Husband. She agreed to bring the key out to me, and we schemed about the cover story we'd tell FH. Just as we settled on the idea that we'd tell him there was a key under the mat, when really there was just a future wife in the house to let him in, FH sent me a grumpy text, telling me that G didn't want to make a 40 mile detour.

For a moment I was stuck. I couldn't say anything that might give away my unique position to help him, but I had to depend on Future Sister in Law to not accidentally spill the beans. I told FH to call FSiL and see if she could work something out.

A few moments later, he replied that he'd just spoken to her, and she told him the cover story she and I had discussed earlier. With a triumphant, "Yes! She rules!" text, I was finally able to rest easy.

When FSiL and her boyfriend arrived to let me in, the first thing she said as she got out of the car was, "I called dad and told him what happened, made him feel bad. He thought it was next weekend."

As I was telling my cousin earlier that very day, I was worried about FH's parents accidentally letting him know I was in town. They're both ridiculously intelligent people. Both well read and educated, clever and witty. Their awesome children are a product of their own awesomeness. But they are a little... flighty. I already refer to them as 'Ma and Pa' when I talk to them, and already care for them a great deal. I can honestly see myself growing very close to them over the next few years. Like I said, Future Husband and I really, really lucked out in the In-Law department. But still, I recognize that his parents are not always the most... attentive. That's a nice word for it. Really, it's probably just that they got involved in their own work and social lives and lost track of the dates. Lord knows I'm no stranger to that. Regardless, it makes for a pretty humorous story.

"That's okay!" I laughed. "I hope he doesn't feel too bad. It's actually kind of funny. And it worked out alright."

With a combination of the Future In-Laws losing track of the dates and G's somewhat justifiably douchebaggery; and after a panicky (yet hilarious) twenty minute period, I've come to see the silver lining; Future Husband and I get the whole house all to ourselves for our surprise reunion. I am a very happy Lori.

And now it's just a waiting game. Future Husband is currently somewhere between Albuquerque and Flagstaff, and I'm waiting anxiously, all alone, at his parents' house. Going over how I want to surprise him, trying to think of something clever and romantic to say when he walks in and unexpectedly sees me.

I'll let you know how it goes!

I'd like to thank the Academy

2011-05-27T13:04:00.000-07:00

I am a terrible blogger.

I mean, I do pretty well with the writing part, it's the frequency with which I post, the varying subject matter (sometimes funny, sometimes introspective.) But I guess this just makes me Versatile, according to my lovely cousin Sara, who has awarded me with the Versatile Blogger award. I've gotten a few of these little awards before, but I'm horrible about actually posting these things that I'm supposed to. (An example of my bad bloggerhood.)

For these Award things, I'm supposed to post things about myself that you all may not know. Seven seems to be the most common number...

1 - I have three kidneys. You may have seen me mention this before (a la kidney stones last April). We found out when I was 14, amidst trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I started my freshman year of Highschool 5'7" and 180 lbs. Four months later in December, I was a 1/4" away from being 6' tall, and weighed 270. This was while I was running a mile every morning in PE, playing soccer after school, and eating very little because of my insane Prep School curriculum. Factor in the concern that I had a full C cup, all the normal hairy gifts puberty gives you, acne to rival a teenage boy's, but no monthly visit... Well, Mom and Dad realized something was quite wrong. We originally thought it was a thyroid thing, but after almost a year of doctor visits and blood tests and ultrasounds, they discovered it was something as simple as Poly-cystic Ovary Syndrome. 10% of the female population has it. Yet my doctors looked into cancer and leukemia first. Go figure. One of those tests they put me through was a dye treatment and x-rays of my abdomen... in which we discovered my third kidney. Fully functional, too! So while I was anxiously awaiting puberty as a child, hoping for some flashy mutant power like Jubilee, or something useful like Jean Grey, my mutation only gives me the power to pee more frequently. Oh, well.

2 - I was almost in Forest Gump. I was a pretty little kid. I had a pretty long awkward phase (about 8-20) but I was cute as a button before my eighth birthday and some unfortunate hair decisions. My parents used to take me out to acting and modeling gigs and auditions. When I was a baby, my grandmother used to ask me, "What are you going to be when you grow up?" and I would proudly proclaim, "Actisss!" Because, you know, 13 month olds aren't so good with enunciation. My mother was an actress, and later director, so nepotism awarded me my earliest acting roles. Credits like, "Crying Child" and "Baby." But when I was 6 years old, my parents took me to a Cattle Call at a hotel in Phoenix. After the initial day there, making cut after cut, reading lines, looking cute and mugging for pictures, I was told to come back at a later date. It turns out I was in consideration for the role of Young Jenny. "Run, Forest! Run!" could have been my line. I was rejected, in the end, for being too tall. But it was between me, a little girl from South Carolina, and the girl that got the role.

See, I used to be cute.

3 - I got my first tattoo when I was only 15. My parents asked me what I wanted for my fifteenth birthday. I told them I wanted to get the cartilage in my ear pierced. They told me it was too dangerous. My mother had seen horror stories about infections that resulted in hearing loss and partial amputation of the ear. I tried to reason with them, but they still refused. As a counter offer my mother said, "How about a tattoo?" I was stunned for a moment, then said, "Wait, really?" To which my mother replied, "Sure! They're much safer, and if we go with you to the parlor, it's legal." I agreed wholeheartedly, and began researching artists and parlors and thinking about what I wanted. A few months later, I had an inch high treble clef on my right shoulder blade. It's so tiny that it's blurry now (I can't believe it's ten years old!) and I've added four more to my collection.

4 - I was a virgin until I was 23. It seems like super personal information, but I don't mind sharing it. (I hope you don't mind reading it.) It's something I'm rather proud of, now. When I was younger, and all of my friends were making foolish bedroom choices, I felt a little left behind. It wasn't so much that I hadn't had an opportunity to lose the V-card, but I'd chosen not to. Nevertheless, it left me feeling conflicted. Should I? Shouldn't I? I got my first offer at 17, and in the end said, "Thanks, but no thanks." I'd fooled around a bit all through my late teenage years and early twenties, but I just wasn't ready to sleep with someone I wasn't in love with. I wasn't ready to open myself up to that sort of emotional vulnerability. Factor in being pudgy and tall, with that aforementioned acne still lingering... yeah, not so much with the confidence and self esteem. A lot of people used to ask me if I was waiting for marriage, and I would always reply that I was simply waiting for love. So by the time I finally got some hours of the mattress tango on my resume, I'd already graduated High School, earned an AA degree, gotten three tattoos and had four novels written. I don't regret waiting at all, in fact, I'm very glad I did.

5 - I am allergic to Bell Peppers. It's the weirdest food allergy, I know. I've only come across one other person that has it, and even then, it was his wife, not the actual afflicted party. Strangely, my reactions aren't always the same. I've had the puffy, throat swelling, hive-y kind of reaction, but I've also accidentally ingested small amounts, and just had terrible indigestion. It seems the green ones are a more potent poison. Go figure.

6 - I love to cook. I'm sure I've mentioned this before. In fact, my cousin Jinxie has featured some of my recipes on her blog. I have my own food blog reserved, but I haven't posted on it. Yet. Once I do, I will definitely be promoting that shamelessly. Cooking for me is like another artform. I'm constantly thinking of new things I could try, looking up and tweaking recipes. When I lived with my parents, my father and I would just watch Food Network all day, and try out things we had seen for dinner that night. Food is an adventure. A tasty, tasty adventure.

7 - I want to be famous. Like, ridiculously famous. Girls screaming and bursting into tears when I walk into the room kind of famous. Boys staring at posters of me on their ceiling, famous. Basically, I think I want to be boy band famous. I know it will never happen, though. And that's because I'm not willing to do stupid shit, or compromise my morals, or give up my creative integrity for it. So I guess it balances out. Kind of like my teenage and early twenties years. I was the horniest virgin ever. I wanted so badly to be sweaty and naughty, but I wasn't willing to be promiscuous and risk my health/sanity/reputation. I know I'm never going to be famous for writing a blog. Chances are, I'll never be famous if/when any of my books get published. But that doesn't stop me from hoping. Or practicing my autograph.

Time to pass this along. I think I was supposed to pick fifteen, but jesus. No. I'll pick the blog I'm digging the most these days.

Mrs. Biscuit rocks my socks. She's seriously -so adorable.- She lives in Arizona, but she actually wants to be there, she wasn't trapped by birth or circumstance, like the rest of us were. (She must be just a little insane.) She's always posting links to adorable things on Etsy or cute stories about her cats or her new Husband (Mr. Muffin.)

But also make sure to check out The Frisky Virgin and Sara in Le Petit Village, who have both given me awards before.

I'll get back to the funny stuff soon, I promise!

Ok, maybe we are photogenic...

2011-05-06T23:18:00.000-07:00

One blustery day towards the end of March, while I had Future Husband home for a week between tours, our new friends Josh and Ali from JayLee Photography took us out and shot us.

With their cameras.

Sometime around Birthmas I had posted an ad on Craigslist, seeing if any budding photographers wanted to build up their portfolio with an Engagement Shoot. There was one fellow we were strongly considering, a photographer that had many years experience with architecture and nature shots, but was wanting to transition into the Wedding business. And then Josh and Ali came along. Already quite seasoned in the biz, they offered to do a shoot with us, and we couldn't resist after seeing their beautiful photography.

Having dabbled in photography in college, it's hard for me to not look at someone's work and immediately start critiquing it, even if I like it. I don't mean to imply that I could do any better, it's just simply that I know the technical side of what goes into a photograph, and it's hard for me to turn off the analytical part of my brain. I'll wish they'd used a different aperture, or shutter speed, or hadn't gone crazy with the photoshopping. With Josh and Ali's work, I don't do that. I look at it, and feel something first. So much so that it takes real effort for me to critique it. Their photos are full of whimsy and romance, and seem to capture the essence of the couples they work with. Their pictures aren't posed and plasticine. They are all little views into candid, happy moments with the couples they worked with.

Needless to say, Future Husband and I were massively excited about working with them. And we were not let down. Some of these pictures even moved me to tears, they so well captured FH and I.

You can see a nice selection of our shoot here. Though I highly recommend checking out their portfolio. You won't be disappointed.

We were so happy with the shoot, even if it was wet, cold and windy (it's Seattle, what else would it be?) and thrilled with the photos that came from it. Thank you so much, Josh and Ali!!!

1,000 Different Directions

2011-04-30T17:07:00.001-07:00

I know, I know, it's been over a month since I've posted. Believe me, I would love to be keeping you all updated, in the most comical way possible, on how miserable being a Tour Widow is.

But a lot happened this April. A LOT.

I'll keep my list of excuses short, but give it to you nonetheless:
1-My grandmother took a turn for the worst. She's been in and out of facilities since January, but at the end of March she was moved to Hospice. The first weekend of April, I flew down to AZ to visit her one last time. She improved during and after my visit and was moved out of Hospice. I got a call Thursday night, that she's been moved back again.
2-I'm working two jobs. Which, while Future Husband is here, isn't so bad. But with him gone, I feel like he took half my brain with him. I'm miserable, lonely, and all I want to do is sleep. But when I crawl into bed alone, all I can think about is how much I miss him, and that keeps me awake.
3-We're moving. We've been looking for an apartment since February, but it's ridiculously difficult for many reasons. What little free time I have between work and trying to sleep has been sucked up by the fruitless search. (Oh, I have such tales to tell.) We finially found a place yesterday, right as we were starting to get desperate.
4-Our Roommate got picked up by Bounty Hunters. No joke. I wasn't able to post on my blog all about my roommate drama, because she was always online, always reading my blog, always commenting on my facebook. Now that she's in jail, I can say all the things I've been wanting to say. You, dear readers, will get quite a lot to read on this subject.

But that will be at a later date. I have to finish packing up the crappy Roomie's stuff, find her pets new homes, finish packing up my stuff, move it all into our new home (by myself), and somehow still find the time for two jobs and sleep. And maybe flying to AZ for a funeral.

Wish me luck.

What Happened to Your Eyebrows?

2011-03-23T08:58:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I told Future Husband a funny story from my childhood about an incident with an Albino during a school play. He said it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. I immediately pictured what I would draw in MS Paint to accompany the story.

This is not that story.

It is, however, a funny (if not sad) story about my first day of Fourth Grade at a new school. My education has been a source of much frustration, as well as humor. I attended public school for three years; Kindergarten, First and Third. I skipped Second. During the spring of Third Grade I started working on my Fourth grade coursework while the kids that were a year older than me continued on their due course. My teacher (an amazing woman and educator named Mrs. Adams, whom I stayed in touch with for years) approached my parents, and recommended looking into private or charter schooling for me. We couldn't afford tuition on our own, so we went looking for scholarships and advanced charter schools. My Godmother got wind of my giant brain and offered to pay the tuition to send me to a private school, and that is how I ended up at Queen of Peace Catholic School for Fourth grade.

Now, to understand the social suicide I was about to commit, you have to go back a few months. Maybe a little further. Both of my parents are theater geeks. My mom was an actress, and later a director, and my dad is the gayest straight guy I know. Seriously, he loves musical theater. So as I child I was in plays and musical reviews quite frequently. Sometime before I became obsessed with Grease, but after my Peter Pan phase, I went through an Annie period. As a child, I had ridiculously straight, lifeless hair (oh, if I only knew then what puberty would bring) and hated it. After months of obsessively washing my hair with a 'Curly Formula' shampoo and seeing no results, I convinced my parents to let me get a perm. That was during the winter. By August, it had grown out. A lot.

Lori, circa 1994

The unfortunate result being my severe resemblance to an overfed poodle. Did I mention that I had started to gain that pre-puberty chub that girls get, right before boobs show up? Also, I'm Italian, so I've always been well fed. Having been somewhat popular at my old school, or at least, never picked on and never short of playmates, I was worried about the kids at my new school liking me, especially since you advanced every year with the same kids. So I would be with this same group of kids up until Eighth(!) grade. That also meant there were going to be kids in my class that had known each other since, *gasp* Kindergarten. That's like, half their lives. (Or so my brain told me.)

So after dinner Sunday night, my parents made me lay out my new school uniform, check my back pack against the list of required school supplies, and hop in the shower. Standing in the bathroom, staring in the mirror, I became highly concerned with what my new classmates would think of one particular feature.

The eight year old mind is a mystery.

In my infinite wisdom, I decided that the problem with my appearance was my unibrow. So I decided I would just borrow my dad's razor, and trim it down a little. Not in front of the mirror, mind you... but in the shower. Just using my fingertips to feel if they were even.

After my shower I dried off, changed into my pajamas and came back out into the living room to watch TV with my parents. For some reason, I didn't think to check my impromptu eyebrow grooming in the mirror. I sat down next to my dad, who promptly said, "Lori... what happened to your eyebrows?"

Afraid I would get in trouble for using a razor without permission (trying to shave my legs for Easter had resulted in a weekend's worth of grounding), I froze. I replied the only thing my academically super-powered but sense deprived brain could come up with. "What eyebrows?"

"Exactly," my dad said.

I caved a few moments later, and confessed that I had tried to 'trim' my unibrow in the shower, since I was starting a new school and was worried that someone might make fun of my big, Deigo eyebrow.

The next morning my mom woke me a few minutes early, so she could pencil on the rest of my eyebrows. Make up was against the school's uniform code, so to hide the drawn on brow, mom made me wear my glasses. The ones I had outgrown in Kindergarten.

Did I mention they were hot pink?

And that's how I started at my new school; 6 inches taller and one year younger than everyone, with missing eyebrows, glasses too small for my face, and a grown out perm.

Needless to say, Junior High was miserable.

Don't worry, I'll tell you the Albino story later.

A rose by any other name...

2011-03-17T18:44:00.000-07:00

Okay, the time has come, few followers of mine. (Can I call you minions yet? Please?)

I'm sure I've mentioned it too much, but I've been working on a book about Future Husband and I, and our crazy, teenage, young-and-stupid stumble towards wedded bliss. I didn't know it was leading to wedding bells, mind you, when I started working on the book. But ta da! It is.

I titled that book quite a while ago, and since I am still young enough at heart to not-so-secretly crave Rock Star status authorhood once I'm published, I've also titled the two subsequent books in the trilogy. Thanks, Jane Austen, for always writing your books in three acts. Now I do it, to.

Only a few months after we got together, I decided that I wanted to write a fourth book. Maybe not part of the 'trilogy' per se, but a book that could stand alone or be read in sequence. The title, which was amazing, ifIdosaysomyself, came to me almost instantly. So I've been sitting on it for about a year and a half, much longer than I've had this blog.

Honestly, I probably should have given the blog that title from the get go, but I didn't want anyone to come along and steal it before I can use it.

But the other day, as I was talking to Future Husband about it (because I'd mentioned it to my cousin Jinxie and she loved it) I said, "I'd love to rename my blog, but I want to use it for a book, later on down the road."

He asked (he's always so good at helping me see the things I overlook), "Why can't it be both?"

And I paused for a moment, but couldn't think of a good reason. So voila! Some time in the next few days I'll be changing the name of my blog. The address will stay the same, so no need to worry. Just keep an eye out in your 'Blogs I Follow' section.

Layout Battle, Round 2

2011-03-12T15:26:00.001-08:00

Hey guys, doing a little more layout changing.... which I'm pretty sure is why my title disappeared. Oh well!

Hang tight, I'll get it all set, I promise.

Diary of a Tour Widow

2011-03-12T09:48:00.000-08:00

Firstly, let me say that Future Husband hates the expression 'Tour Widow.' Probably because he takes it literally. Which is probably because I keep warning him to drive safe, not be too tired, or drunk, or let either G or D be incapacitated. Not to make me a widow before I can actually be one.

But, I mean, c'mon. How much would it suck to have your fiance die right before the wedding? You're losing your husband, but there are no legal benefits or responsibilities. So you're powerless in a time of personal crisis. Then add on to it the fact that there's some sort of social stigma. Like, "Oh, your boyfriend died 3 months ago? Why aren't you dating again?" compared to, "Oh, your husband died 3 months ago? I'm so sorry. How are you feeling?"

Still, though. I like the phrase 'Tour Widow' and I've seen other bloggers in my situation use it.

And my situation is this; there wasn't room for me in the van for their short Seattle to Austin migration. (Seriously, the Seattle music scene is a ghost town right now. Everyone's flying south by southwest for the Spring.) They're sharing a van and equipment with another band. It's a smart choice, both economically and for their career. This band is a little bit bigger and well connected, and was able to get them into some good SXSW shows.

So when the tour started last weekend, I followed them down to Oregon in my little Hyundai, named Francine. Future Husband and I stayed in cheap motels and did our best to enjoy the last few days of each others company. Unfortunately, with the work situation, the driving and the two shows, we got maybe 10 hours sleep between Wednesday and Sunday, total.

We parted ways in Central Oregon on Sunday morning. I did my best not to cry, and he kissed me tenderly, and called me 'Wife' with a wicked little smile. He climbed into the bigger van and started towards Lake Tahoe, and I got back into Francine and started back to Seattle.

When I finally arrived back at our house, I crashed for nearly 14 hours. It was lovely. Except that it made me wake up 5 hours before the start of my first job. So I decided that I should use this abundant energy to my advantage, before my brain realized just how far away Future Husband was.

I cleaned our room, picking up bits of trash that had accumulated over the last two weeks. Sorted the laundry, and got all of the dirties picked up off the floor. I even managed to decorate a little bit, putting up one of the good pictures from our Engagement Photo session in January. I drank half a pot of coffee, and wore real clothes and listened to music while I cleaned, like a normal person. (My usual cleaning routine is pajama pants and a Jane Austen movie on in the background.) After cleaning I ran to the bank, the thrift store and grabbed a quick lunch out before going to work. I was a whirlwind of productivity.

Day 1: The rare but productive Lorinado.

But after nannying, getting ready for my night time job, and a long, frustrating night, I was exhausted. Add to it the fact that this new night time job I have is for the same company that Future Husband works for, and that he trained me, and it's a strange emotional roller coaster. Whenever I had a question about what I should do, I couldn't just go to him and ask. I sat alone at lunch. And while I got to talk to him briefly during the break, it just wasn't quite the same. So when I got out of work at 8am, feeling tired and lonely, getting lost was the last thing I needed. I turned the wrong direction out of the parking lot in the fog, and ended up two miles away before I realized my mistake. I was able to eventually turn around and find my way back and get on the right track home, but it was insanely frustrating. And it delayed me enough that I was stuck in horrific morning rush hour traffic. What should have been a 35-40 minute drive, turned into a 90 minute one. A few minutes in, right after I had gotten on the right freeway, some silly, mopey, lovesick song started blaring out of my iPod, and it started the waterworks.

So there I sat, stuck in foggy, bumper-to-bumper traffic, thinking of the cute way Future Husband walks with his hands in his pockets and the quirky, non-sequitur things he'll say to make me laugh. Even though it wasn't the longest we had gone without seeing each other since we've lived together (which was 3.5 days in July, when I flew down to AZ for a wedding), I knew that it was going to be a lot longer. So I felt the full brunt of missing him, because I was too tired to think rationally and stave it off.

Day 2: Sad, in so many ways.

The rest of the week has alternately flown by or dragged on. Every moment he's away feels supernaturally elongated, but sitting here on Saturday, looking back at it, it's like it was over in a flash. I've had similar ups and downs emotionally, but have done my best to let my brain hold the reigns over my heart.

We'll see how the next two weeks feel.

So good I have to pass it along... "Date a Girl Who Reads"

2011-03-02T19:50:00.001-08:00

My cousin Sara reposted this blog, and I felt I had to repost it as well. I'm pretty sure every girl that reads my blog will identify with this, especially those that have ever felt romantically ignored. And I know quite a few of you will identify (probably a little too well) with the last sentence.

---

"Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilightseries.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes."

—

Rosemarie Urquico (via kblitz)

Randomly Adorable #2

2011-02-27T03:52:00.000-08:00

I know no one else will find this as amusing or adorable as I will, but I had to post it anyway.

Future Husband's throat is sore tonight, which I'm sure is just the result of being dehydrated, playing a show (and therefore, screaming) and drinking beer. So I made him drink a glass of water, and now he's got a mug of hot coffee. I'm sure he'll be fine in no time.

A few minutes ago, I was about to run into the kitchen to top off his mug, but leaned in for a kiss first. But before I got there, he said, "My throat hurts when I talk."

To which I replied, "It's okay, we don't need to talk. We can just point and grunt. We understand each other." And kissed him. Our foreheads were pressed against each others, so I gave him another quick little peck.

Then he whispered back, "No, I'll just whisper"
*kiss*
FH: "Like a dying magician on his deathbed."
*kiss*
Me: "Okay, that'll work too."
*kiss*
FH: "I can finally tell you-"
*kiss*
FH: "-where I've been hiding all of those doves and rabbits."

At this point, I had to lean my face down and try to keep myself from doing that snorty kind of laugh. I looked back up at him, smiled and said, "Oh, I love you."

To which he whispered, still sounding as serious as he possibly could, "I love you so much. My little dove, my little rabbit... meine hossenfeffer."

After that, one of the little snorty laugh escaped.

I wish you a Joyous Birthmas! (part 1)

2011-01-25T01:12:00.000-08:00

If you've been reading my blog for at least the last month or two, you know that I spent this Christmas with my Future In-Laws in Arizona, and that we earned our gas money by touring down.

So Future Husband and I didn't really get a chance to exchange gifts. Mostly because we couldn't figure out a way to fit them in the van to transport them back up. (We had a hard enough time getting the gifts we did get from the Rents in the van.)

When we got back into town, we picked the Friday after his birthday as the day we would celebrate Christmas. We jokingly started calling it 'Birthmas' (which yes, I realize is redundant.) We waited for our first paychecks to come in, and then went shopping. Not for much, mind you, we're still livin' on love.

Thursday was Future Husbands 27th birthday (god, I can't believe I met him when he was only 20!) and we celebrated primarily with food, since we both had work Mon-Thurs of that week. We started the festivities on Wednesday night, since his birthday started at midnight while he was at work. My contribution, other than cooking it, was putting on a pair of yellow kitchen gloves, a turtleneck sweater pulled up over my mouth and nose, and my glasses so that I could slice up some bell peppers for him. I'm allergic, you see. At the store I found the mom-est looking lady in the produce section, and asked her how to pick the ripe ones. I sliced them up, fried them with some onions so he could top his spaghetti and meatballs (to take with him to work) and for his fajitas (for dinner before work). When I woke him up for dinner, he said, "I thought I smelled bell peppers, but I knew it couldn't be true. But it is!"

Friday was an interesting day. When he got home from work I had a big Italian feast waiting for him - homemade Caesar dressing and croutons for the salad, Bruschetta, Shrimp and Zucchini Carbonara with extra bacon, and homemade cheesecake. We made it through everything, but decided to save the cheesecake for later, since we were so full. By the time we were done, it was almost 1 o'clock. Band practice was at 3. So we decided to stay up for it. Since we do laundry at G and D's house, we were stuck there til almost 7 o'clock waiting for the clothes to finish drying. We got home, cut ourselves a slice of cheesecake each, and then a second (seriously, we ate half the thing right there, and it was a double cheesecake in a deep pan.) We put the plate in the sink and just kept going at it with a spoon.

After violating the cheesecake, we went to our room and celebrated Birthmas. Earlier in the day, while we were waiting to do to practice, I'd cut out and taped together our little Birthmas tree, and used some thread to tape it to the ceiling. It fell down later, but we put it back up.

We put the Birthmas tree in the 'music and smoking' corner of our room.

We also used newspaper coupons from the grocery store to wrap the presents. FH's bow is made out of meat (coupons)

I got Future Husband a shiny new Wok (so he can cook me all sorts of delicious Asian-y things) and a new pair of real Chuck Taylors. Not the Payless knock-offs.

He got me... a Wii!!! I was totally shocked, and super stoked when I opened it. (He also got me a super cute card with two little cartoon spoons on the front that said something about how much he likes 'spooning' with me... and then a joke about 'forking' on the inside.) And some mysterious jolly man gave us Guinness and our favorite Mountain Dew flavor for our Call of Duty time.

After opening our Birthmas presents, we collapsed into 14 hours of much needed sleep.

The Least Photogenic Couple in the World

2011-01-04T00:39:00.000-08:00

New Year's Day was spent mostly in bed. Future Husband and I rolled out of bed about 5pm, mostly because we were painfully thirsty. Literally, in pain. My New Year's Eve got a little out of control. I was fine with what I was drinking, but Future Sister in Law brought Jell-O shots, and because you chew them, I forget that they are not food. So yes. I woke up at 5pm on January first, desperately needing a glass of water and missing an earring. I still haven't found it.

We came downstairs, and the Future Parents in Law had just finished eating all of the snacky deliciousness that was leftover from the party. Not wanting leftover Turkey and Dumpling soup (again) we decided to throw caution to the wind and use some of our Christmas money to go out to eat.

We ended up at Native New Yorker with hot wings, a meatball hoagie, a calzone, and trivia. And lots and lots of tea and water. Even though we joined the game late, we still won by 5,000+ points. Still, though... not the most exciting New Year's Day.

The second, however, was relatively eventful for us. FH had band practice, and I stayed behind to get ready for our Engagement Photo shoot. It wasn't like we hired a photographer, unless you consider paying his sister by taking her out to dinner payment. When FH got home from practice, and FSiL arrived, and I had finished straightening my ridiculously unruly hair (which only took a surprising 45 minutes), we walked over to one of the little grassy, park like areas near the FPiL's house.

(On a side note, all of these crazy abbreviations make me feel like I'm writing something of more importance than a personal anecdote.)

We got there, and were all a little confused as to what to do. We knew that most couples took happy looking pictures in pretty green places, so we had that down. We were losing light, though, and hadn't brought any sweatshirts or jackets, so it was rapidly getting colder. We even had matching out fits, intentionally, for once.

The results were pretty hilarious. Since none of us knew what we should do, we just kind of winged it. The only advice my mother had given me a few days previously was, "Don't make stupid faces. I don't know what it is about you two, but for such good looking kids, you always take horrible pictures. Don't mug and make faces. Just relax and smile."

We tried to relax and smile, we really did. But the problem with that is that we relax and start talking. And don't stop. And then laugh. So of the 55 photos FSiL took, 5 or 6 of them turned out nicely. If you don't count the one where we look good, but there is quite obviously dog poopies in the grass behind us. The other fifty or so... well. See for yourself;

My Most Adventurous Year (Yet)

2010-12-31T23:45:00.000-08:00

Looking back at where I was last New Year's time, and where I am now, is really sort of mind boggling.

This time last year, when I had to sit down and name this blog, I knew that I was about to undergo a lot of change. So I decided to call it 'Third Time's the Charm.' Not, as a certain Crazy Ex of Future Husband's alleged, because I was giving him a third chance, but because this is the third time I've had a big, life altering change.

A lot of my past blogs (and before that, diaries) have complained about feeling stagnant or lost, not really knowing where I was going or why or who with. When I was 11 years old, my family's home burnt down on New Year's Day. Since then, it's always been a strange day for me. Not so much a holiday, but more like a day of remembrance. Like when a loved one passes away. When the house burned, we lost literally everything. There were a few things we were thankfully able to save; some of my cousins dug through the rubble and found my parents' wedding rings, the contents of my mother's cedar chest (her wedding dress included), and the family photos the firemen grabbed off the wall when they realized we weren't home. We lived in a hotel for a while, then bounced around with relatives until the insurance company got us an apartment. The people at our church donated clothes and toys for us, but really, all we had left from before was what we had when the house went up in flames; each other.

Eleven years later (and funnily enough, the fire marking the middle point in my life), my family fell into financial ruin. We'd tried to keep our heads above water, but my mother and I got laid off within two weeks of each other. Me one week before Christmas, and her one week after. Only a few weeks earlier, knowing we were living paycheck to paycheck and fed up with Phoenix's price and weather, we'd had a family meeting and decided to move to Tulsa. We'd been through the city before on a family road trip, and fallen in love with the area. The cost of living was less than half of Phoenix's, and the economy and job market better. So when Mom and I were both suddenly jobless, we decided that instead of moving to Tulsa in the Summer of '09, we'd go right then. So in early January (again), we decided that it we'd start over. Again.

The two years I spent in Tulsa were some of the happiest of my life. I made friends, I made and saved money. I paid for two vacations entirely by myself, as well as helping support my family. I had a job I loved and finally lived in city I liked. I felt like I had finally found a home. But as everything started falling into place for me financially and personally, I found myself thinking more and more of Future Husband. At that point in time, he was still The One Who Got Away. Or rather, to him I was The One Who Got Away Because I Was A Stupid Git. We hadn't spoken to each other since May of 2007. As more and more of 2008 passed by, I found myself missing his conversation and company, and remembering all the fun we'd had together, rather than the heartache and sleeplessness and weepy self loathing he had caused me. Believe me, there was plenty of that, but that's not what I found myself thinking of in quiet moments. I missed him. I hated myself for it, and looked for answers in the bottoms of bottles. Because of the internet and our circle of mutual friends, I was able to keep tabs on him from afar. So when I found out in October of 2008 that his band would be playing a show in Tulsa in December, I seized my opportunity. I thought I might get some sort of closure out of it, but all it did was rip the stitches out of a wound that was not yet healed.

The rest, as they say, is history. Nine months after that, we were a couple. And I was faced with another big decision- try and tackle this incredibly significant relationship long distance (as if we hadn't been over enough speedbumps), or move to Seattle? Future Husband had said he was willing to quit his band and move to Tulsa, but I knew that he wouldn't be happy, and that he, G and D would miss out on something great. (Now that I live with them, and vicariously reap the benefits of a functioning band, I kick myself for not trying harder when I was in a band as a teenager. We could have been good, too, and we weren't, because I never took it seriously enough. One of the few regrets I carry.) I desperately tried to think of a way that things would work if I stayed in Tulsa, but there was just no way. Future Husband had mentioned marriage only five days into our romantic relationship. It surprised me, but the idea felt right. (That was even more surprising.) So I decided to leave behind everything I had worked to build up over the last two years, and move to Seattle, leaving behind the job I loved, The Bestest, my home, and most importantly, my Family. All for love.

So now I've started over for a third time. I'm hoping that this is the last time I will have to change everything about my life and begin with nothing. It probably won't be, but I sure hope it is. I like the idea of building a life with Future Husband, and slowly accumulating and accomplishing all of the milestones that couples pass.

I love lists, so I'm going to make a list of all of the crazy/awesome things that have happened to me over the last year.

-I moved to Seattle, a city I probably would have always wanted to visit, but never would have.
-I went to (or through) 18 states that I had not been to before, leaving 18 continental states that I have yet to see. (I'd already been through 12 of them.)
-I visited New Orleans twice.
-I became formally engaged.
-I lived in a van for 7 months.
-I visited three foreign countries, and got my first stamps in my first Passport.
-I was a bridesmaid for the first (and probably only) time.
-I've made new friends all over the country (and one in France!). Seriously. My facebook list is awesome.

And as I've been reflecting over this for the past few days, thinking of what would go on that list, I've realized that though I worry about things; like planning the wedding, and money, and being able to tour next year, I don't feel stagnant or lost anymore. I don't worry about not ever doing anything with my life. I thought that I felt like myself in Oklahoma, and undoubtedly without those years I wouldn't be who or where I am now. For the first time I can remember in a long time (honestly, probably since my pre-fire childhood), I finally feel like myself. I feel completely comfortable in my own skin, in my own life. I don't find myself yearning for things I don't have (except money) and comforting myself with the idea of 'someday.'

All of my somedays are happening.

Gonorrheic Backlash!

2010-12-27T03:00:00.000-08:00

Okay, after trying to post a blog comment while drunk, and being thwarted by the captcha, I removed the captcha from mine. I kept my comment moderation on, just to filter out spam. However, after reading the hilariousness of these, I'm thinking of taking it off all together, just so everyone can enjoy them.

Part of me has to wonder if what follows is just someone trying to translate their language's idioms into English and it backfired horribly, or if it's just computer generated gibberish. If the first, perhaps I should learn to speak Korean, because it's obvious that they are lacking translators and tutors. If the second, it gave me a good laugh. And a few quotables.

'Making hold down after outside gears to consolidation in expenditure elementary distribute, idiolect included, there is a long-legged high-priority as a running to studying English communication in those parts of the essence story, where English is not a most top-level language. This conclusion leads us that there is brobdingnagian asseveration in do a tons on of English-speaking tutors, who are specializing in teaching English. South Korea is actual of most incontestable countries in terms of union burgeoning, which means teaching English in Korea would be lustily profitable.'

'Lustily profitable' has just got to enter my vocabulary. I'm still trying to figure out what a 'long-legged high-priority' is, but I think we can all agree that English is a most top-level language.

'All in all interminable signal to consolidation in well-grounded all things, vocabulary
included, there is a consequential of the utmost status on studying English blather in those parts of the compulsory set in motion story, where English is not a most eye-catching language. This conclusion leads us that there is brobdingnagian miss in search English-speaking tutors, who are specializing in teaching English. South Korea is fifty-fifty of most encouraging countries in terms of gonorrheic backlash all here the traces, which means teaching English in Korea would be incomparably profitable.'

Honestly, looking through some of my facebook friends list, I sometimes feel like I am studying English blather. I've often thought about becoming an English teacher, and since these spam comments apparently want me to become a tutor in South Korea... wait a minute, South Korea is 'most encouraging country in terms of gonorrheic backlash'!? WTF? Forget that, I'm staying in my cozy, gonorrhea free corner of America. Thanks. I don't care if it is lustily profitable.

Christmas Eve with the (Almost) In-Laws

2010-12-24T22:27:00.000-08:00

Towards the end of the fall tour, G asked us if we would be down to do a small tour down to Arizona, just so he could be with his family for Christmas. We agreed, of course. And so here we are on Christmas Eve, at Future Husband's parents' house. It works out well, since we ended up spending Thanksgiving with my folks.

Today started off a little rocky. I'd gone to bed last night with a ridiculously sore throat for the first time in a week. I gargled salt water, took an Advil, and went to bed early. (And by early, I mean 4:30am instead of 6.) When my (almost) Mother-In-Law knocked on the door a few hours later to have Future Husband and I help with the Turkey and the various side dishes, I was surprised (but happy) to find that my sore throat had vanished. Hooray warm salt water!

So after giving the turkey a butter massage, and making sure it was thoroughly stuffed with oyster dressing, I settled onto the couch with a cup of coffee and a book. It didn't last long, though, before sleepiness set in, and Future Husband and I went back upstairs for a nap. There was another knock on our door four hours later from my (almost) Sister-In-Law told us a family friend was visiting. We got up and dressed, and went downstairs to visit for a while before it was time for our Christmas Eve dinner.

Once (almost) Father-In-Law got home from work, we started finishing up the last bit of dinner (gravy, mashing potatoes, adding the onions to the green bean casserole.) FH, FSiL and I ran to the only open grocery store for some last minute dinner rolls and a bottle of wine. Then we sat down for the big spread. It reminded me a lot of what I would have had at home with my folks; Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, corn and tomato casserole (something FH is always raving about), and of course... cranberry sauce. If you don't know me in real life, or haven't been reading my blog for a while, you should know that I freaking love cranberry sauce. You can read all about it here. (I only got made fun of once tonight for my cranberry sauce consumption.)

After dinner we all sat down and watched a movie together (Gentleman Broncos, "You stole my gnads, Dennis!") before getting on with the annual tradition of decorating gingerbread cookies. I made the cookies a few days earlier (in a mad baking marathon) and accidentally burned them. Resulting in darker than usual gingerbread men, and Future Husband making a racially insensitive gingerbread man.

I however, took the half man that was the leftover dough, and the cookie that got his head popped off. And made this;

It's all right, GingerZombie bit him twice before he tore his head off. He wouldn't have remained a normal Gingerbread Man for much longer.

Behold, a GingerZombie Cookie Attack. Merry Christmas!

He Liked It, So He Put A Ring On It

2010-12-22T00:42:00.000-08:00

Here's the best picture I was able to get myself. It's kinda blurry, but it was the clearest I took. We're supposed to have some pictures taken with a friend later this week, so hopefully there'll be some better, non-self-portrait pics later.

And yes, I know I should clean that hair brush.

My Blingtastic Lunar Eclipse

2010-12-21T02:07:00.000-08:00

For those of you that don't keep up with the news, or are not astronomical nerds like me, tonight was a ridiculously rare event. Tonight is Winter Solstice, a full moon, AND a total lunar eclipse. The last time this happened was in 1638, 372 years ago.

Here in Arizona, there's an Italian restaurant that Future Husband's been wanting to take me to, called Baci. It's kind of out in the middle of nowhere, but seems to be doing well, which tells me they probably have a seriously loyal customer base. For dinner tonight, FH took me out for dinner to celebrate the Solstice. We started the night with an amazing Antipasto Salad. It was like Caprese Salad, but on delicious, meaty steroids. We chose soup over salad; I had Meatball and Orzo, he had Tortellini. For dinner, he had Shrimp and Scallops Florentine, and I had Chicken and Artichoke Limone. And desert? We split a Cannoli, of course. It was an amazing (and painfully filling) meal. And even though I've lived in a van with him for seven of the last ten months (and we literally cannot escape each others company), I still enjoy alone time with Future Husband. Especially date nights. It's one of the traits of my secretly girly side.

We drove home for a little pit stop until it was time to go out to see the eclpise. We chose to go to one of the county parks far away from everything, even the suburbs, so it was nice and dark. After getting a little turned around, we found the park and pulled Future Mother-in-Law's truck onto a little dirt road. We spread out sleeping bags in the back of the truck, and got to moon watching. Or trying to, anyway. Thick cloud cover had rolled in a few hours earlier, though. So we cuddled up under the sleeping bags (on the chilly, 55 degree Arizona night), and eavesdropped on the two other groups out in the park with us. We heard what sounded like a group of four teenagers talking about the Zombie Apocalypse. It was sooo tempting to sneak over to try and scare them, but we didn't. With my luck, I would've stumbled across a snake or scorpion, anyway.

As the time for the total eclipse neared, we realized we weren't going to be able to see anything because of the cloud cover. (Honestly, we spent a good deal of the time kissing anyway, so we wouldn't have seen much.) During one of our snuggly moments, Future Husband turned his face towards mine, and did that uber romantic, so-hard-to-not-get-fluttery-feelings thing where he puts his palm on my cheek and his fingers in my hair. You know, that super cinematic, really whimsical move to pull my lips to his. He kissed me eagerly, and when he pulled away, told me he loved me. He dug his hand into his pocket, and pulled out a ring.

So even though we're 'Facebook Official', and we're already knee deep in wedding plans, we didn't have a ring yet. We'd meant to get one earlier, but we hadn't run across one we liked, and practical things like not being in the country or not having a paycheck had postponed its purchase.

I smiled, and slipped it on, and Future Husband kissed me again. I held my hand up to look at my ring and saw this;

So I'll post a picture of it soon, once I have some light and Future Husband isn't kissing my neck, wanting to drag me away from my laptop. ;-D

The 12 Days of Tour: Day 12

2010-12-15T11:31:00.000-08:00

I woke twice during the night with bad coughing fits. It woke Future Husband, but thankfully, not D or G. The real silver lining, I’ve discovered, is that being sick and coughing so much has made me drop all the weight I gained on the Cruise. (I’ll blog about that later. No really, I will this time.) It was definitely the worst of the nights since I’ve been sick, coughing wise. Luckily, I’ve stopped waking up with a snot encrusted face.

Our wake up call came at 11 (checkout was at noon), and we picked it up, and just held it to the room so everyone could hear it. We all laughed at the hokey recording, and then promptly fell back asleep. G woke the other three of us 55 minutes later. We all frantically gathered up our things and packed the van back up.

And then we went to Waffle House. Glorious, delightfully trashy Waffle House. The boys all got their hashbrowns with various toppings, and I got my precious Apple Butter. My love of Vitamin AB is an ongoing joke for friends and relatives of mine. Seriously, I put it on or in everything; waffles, pancakes, oatmeal, toast... sometimes I just eat a spoonful from the jar. I freakin' love Apple Butter.

After stuffing our stomachs with far too much grease and sodium for a balanced diet (cause we normally eat so well on tour), we hopped on the freeway and started for Albuquerque. I read for a while, and drew a cartoon of myself, or rather, the nickname Future Husband has given me.

Count Bronchula

After having worked in the food service industry for a few years, (and my history with the dreaded Upper Respiratory Infections,) I’ve developed a habit of coughing into my elbow, instead of into my hand, which is far more unsanitary. FH has teased me that whenever I do this, with my black hoodie on, it makes me look like Dracula. Thus, Count Bronchula was born.

My laptop’s battery was exhausted, and I knew I would be doing the Albuquerque-to-Phoenix drive, so I climbed into the very back bench and took a little cat nap. We put in a quick stop at a McDonald's to kill some time and grab a snack, but after the people watching became monotonous (which happens pretty quickly in New Mexico), we hit the road again. I was on the phone with my parents when we rolled into town, so I stayed in the van on the phone, while the boys unloaded and shot some pool to kill time.

I went in for the show, which was pretty fun for a Monday night. They didn’t make a lot of money, or sell a ton of merch, mostly because it was loyal fans in the area showing up. But I did reconnect with someone I met ten months ago on the first tour, and her husband offered the guys a show and a place to stay next time they came through town, with a very interesting payment method (free hours of tattoo work if they played a show at his shop.)

The bar closed early, since everyone was there to see them and it was a free show. The boys waited around for their bar payout, and then we hit the road. Well, first we hit Del Taco (oh, Inferno sauce) and then we hit the road.

I lasted for about 150 miles before I realized that I had severely overestimated my recovery. I started feeling feverish, and going into coughing fits. I asked Future Husband to take over for about a hundred miles or so, while I rested my eyes for a bit. I woke up briefly when he stopped for gas (about a hundred miles later) and then again at 7:00. AM. I asked him to drive for an hour and a half and he ended up doing the bulk of the drive. What a keeper! I switched at the first opportunity we got, and finished the 70 miles to his parents’ house, where G and D dropped us off.

Within about 20 minutes, we were upstairs and asleep. Sweet, precious sleep.

The 12 Days of Tour: Day 11

2010-12-14T09:10:00.000-08:00

So the silver lining to my cough seems to have disappeared. I woke up Sunday morning by coughing myself awake. We camped out with my Denver GBF until absolutely time to go. We watched silly movies and drank Bloody Marys. (Well, the boys did. I drank my orange juice and shot zombies for a while.) Future Husband ordered my ring online (Yay!), so now we can fulfill the bling requirement of our engagement.

When we did finally take off in the afternoon, we dropped the DGBF off at work, and hopped on the freeway til Colorado Springs. It’s a pretty short drive, and we managed to miss both rush hours. We arrived at our friend’s new art gallery, and found brownies (the safe kind) and a keg waiting for us, and pizza on the way. Future Husband and I ran down to the Starbucks on the corner and got some hot tea for me, as I’m not quite beer savvy again.

The guy that opened was amazing. Probably one of my favorite musicians that we’ve played with on tour. He’s a 19 year old wunderkind with a steel guitar and a hollow box he stomps on while he plays. I liked him so much I spent the $10 my grandmother sent me for my birthday on a shirt of his. (I had been saving it for burritos in Arizona.)

I always like the art gallery shows in Colorado Springs, because it’s always just a couple of friends, bringing other friends, for an intimate, fun show. We hung out for a while afterwards, before our friend handed us money for a cheap hotel room. He had told us we could stay with him on Sunday night, but then his mother came into town, and he hosted her instead (obviously.) So he strong-armed us into getting a motel room so we wouldn’t have to sleep in the van. But he also gave us enough money for cheap beer for Future Husband and D, and pizza and wings.

We headed to the nearest Motel 6 and grabbed a room for the night. I ran FH and D out to a liquor store to pick up a few brewskies, and ordered from Domino’s when we got back to the room. Then it was just a leisurely night of Adult Swim and hot showers. Sweet, wonderful, much anticipated hot showers.

And of course, a pre-sleep 10 minute coughing fit that made me sure an internal organ or two would spring forth any moment.

The 12 Days of Tour: Day 10

2010-12-12T11:44:00.000-08:00

I woke up first, before any of the guys, in a coughing fit. After expelling what seemed like a metric ton of mucus, I wrote a little bit and then started shooting zombies and drinking orange juice. After about an hour of that, everyone woke up all at once, and we went about starting our day. Which, of course, including drinking lots and lots of coffee.

We watched the beginning of 'Galaxy Quest' while waiting to hear back from my Denver GBF, then started the short drive to Denver. At his house, we were treated to a mexican feast; chips and salsa, queso, shrimp cocktail and homemade enchiladas. It was amazing.

And then we just hung out. It was great! The guys were sipping Coronas and smoking hookah, and Denver GBF and I were laughing at old stories. After a while, though, we did have to go to the show.

The guys were playing at a new venue that they hadn't played at before, at a show set up by a new Friend Band. It was a great place, and even though there were five bands, the show went smoothly. None of the other bands painfully sucked, and everyone in them was nice. The guys played very well, and were the only band that the crowd cheered for an encore. It was another Hallmark Movie Montage sort of night. The crowd at least doubled in size while they played. We sold a lot of merch, and at the end of the night, the other bands gave my guys either some or all of their cut of the door money. So it was our most lucrative show yet.

After a celebratory round of jager shots with the bartender, I loaded my drunk little guys into the van, and we went to pick up Denver GBF from his night out. With a quick stop at a 24 hour Burger King, we made it home and hung out for another two hours before everyone crashed.

I had so much fun, it was easy to overlook the fact that a city pipe burst and Denver GBF had no running water. So no showering (and therefore no naked time for Future Husband and I.) But I had too much fun for that or my gross mucus situation to keep me down.

The 12 Days of Tour: Days 6, 7, 8, & 9

2010-12-11T17:25:00.000-08:00

The terrible combination of being ridiculously sick and away from internet access has kept me away from my blog. Sorry! (Believe me, I’m sure I enjoyed it far less than you did.)

Day 6
Tuesday morning came, and I woke feeling worse than I did Monday. This was not boding well for me. We hung out at our friend’s house with her and all three kids (everyone but dad had stayed home) until it was absolutely time to leave for Reno. Future Husband took the first half of the drive, and as we were about the leave Lassen Forest, I took over.

We made good time, considering how often us sickies stopped for coffee, and therefore, bathrooms. We pulled into the club in Reno and unloaded pretty soon after. The good friend we usually stay with in Reno is between housing situations (which I’ve found can be a problem with the type of people who take home an entire band from a bar), so we couldn’t stay with him. He was trying to find a friend that would let us crash, but we decided to just load up on coffee and start the 16 hour drive to Colorado.

The guys played pretty well, and we sold some merch. Which is good, considering there were only six people besides the people that worked there and me. In fact, a pair of guys who barely spoke English drove up from Carson City to see them. The show ended prematurely, however, when D broke the head on his snare drum.

We hung out with our friend for only a little while, and hit the road at midnight-ish. We stopped at a creepy little truck stop about 30 miles east of Reno for sandwiches, chips and soda. D started the night drive, while the rest of us climbed in the back to try and sleep.

Day 7, or The No Good, Terrible, Very Bad Day
Neither Future Husband nor I slept much on the drive, as both of our colds were keeping us up. Mine turned into a terrible sounding cough and a tremendously sore throat, and his was sinus pressure so bad, driving through the mountains and changing altitude was pushing it around and giving him a awful headache.

When we rolled into a gas station outside Salt Lake City (D was a coffee drinking and driving machine), we both had maybe three disjointed hours of sleep. I climbed out to use the bathroom and discovered that I had done something I’d managed to avoid not doing in the last eleven years. I ruined my favorite pair of jeans. Did I mention that in addition to being sick, it was my special Lady Time? Add to that the sleeplessness and the throat so sore and swollen that I could barely talk or swallow my own saliva, and you have a very grumpy Lori. So I climbed into the very back bench, put on my favorite comfy pants, got under a sleeping bag, and read about Ted Bundy. Strange, I know, but that’s what made me happy right then. After a little while, I was able to grab a few more hours of sleep. I woke up in Cheyenne, where Future Husband bought me a Frosty at the truck stop Wendy’s and I took over the 60 mile drive into Fort Collins.

We got to this friend’s house about 5 o’clock, and proceeded to sit like sick little lumps on her couch until we fell asleep about midnight. With the exception of a Walmart run to buy a gallon of orange juice.

Day 8
We had all day to kill before we had to drive to the venue, which was about five minutes from the house. The guys decided they wanted Pho (which if you don’t know, is a delicious Vietnamese beef and noodle soup and you should totally seek some out) and I figured a big bowl of hot broth could only benefit me. We loaded up the five of us in the van, and took off on our soupy adventure. Everyone had a runny nose by the time we left, either because the hot broth loosened everything, or because there was so much added Sriracha. Or both.

After our Pho adventure, we went back to the house and watched a lot of Logo before we went to the show. Like, a lot. That channel is fabulous.

By the time we got to the show, the little bit of good the pho had done me was wearing off. I felt miserable the entire time, and my ears had been aching since the afternoon. My throat was swelling up again, and the only available table to do merch at was right by the door, so I was shivering for a good portion of the night. Future Husband lent me his hoodie for a while, and I draped it over my legs.

The guys sounded great, and it was a good show, even though it was peppered with tiny mistakes. They were all sick, so it was to be expected, but they had fun, so the crowd had fun. Everyone won. We sold a lot of merch, and made a lot off the door, so we have a nice little gas fund now. The guys were feeling well enough to enjoy their three free pitchers of beer. I was not, but did partake in the free pizza. After eating, I felt better. A terrible predicament for someone with a sore throat; eat, and you’ll feel better, but eating is a torturous experience you have to force yourself to do.

After the show and the free pizza and beer, I loaded up the tipsies and the drunkies and drove them all back to the friend’s house. I was hoping since everyone was sick, and since she had dealt with a terrible stomach bug only a few days previously, everyone would want to crash. I was wrong.

More friends trickled in after we got back, and they all complained (very loudly and drunkenly) that there was no beer or liquor in the house. Until one of the roommates came out and reminded everyone that he had work at 8:30. Luckily for me, the party moved to the back room and the hot tub outside, so I stayed in the living room, right by the quiet roommate’s door. At 4 o’clock, I decided I couldn’t put it off anymore, and made up the sleeping bags on the floor, just as Future Husband came in from the hot tub. He dried off and changed into his comfy pants, and climbed into bag next to me with his book. I fell asleep after only two coughing fits. It was quite an improvement.

Day 9
I woke up feeling much better. I still had a snot encrusted face, but my throat felt so improved that it brightened my mood. After a trip to the bathroom to chip away the flaky sick on my face, I helped myself to a big glass of orange juice, and started shooting zombies on my computer. It was, after all, part of my prescription from Future Husband only a few days before.

We all took our time getting ready, lazily watching TV, taking long, hot showers, and running off to nearby establishments for food. G took D on a ‘mandate’ (and only complained once that he didn’t put out). FH and I ran over to grab a new headlight for the Ogre so he wouldn’t be a Cyclops anymore. (This is the second time we’ve done this.

We hit the road about 5 o’clock, so as to avoid as much rush hour as possible. It didn’t work that well in Fort Collins, but we missed almost all of Denver’s, so it was worth it. When we got to Colorado Springs, G and D headed into the club, while Future Husband and I walked next door to Dutch Brothers. MUCH preferred to Starbucks, but we probably can’t lounge around in a Dutch Bros. all day getting free refills and wi-fi. Oh, well.

The show was a pretty good one, though not as packed as it usually is. One of the friend bands (Friend Band- n. - a band made up of or including a friend or friends, that the guys usually play the show with.) was playing at the opening of a new art gallery in town, so a lot of the crowd that is usually at our show, was over there. The boys still got more free pitchers that are supposed to be allotted, we sold some merch, and were paid well off the bar. So it was still pretty good for a Friday night.

The show’s promoter offered to let us crash on his floor, saving us a drive up to Denver to stay with my other GBF. And to top the night off, we pulled through the only burrito joint not within 100 miles of the border that’s decent. Oh, carne asada, how I’ve missed you.

When we got to the Promoter’s apartment we made up our sleeping bags and watched ‘Bad Taste’, a completely ridiculous movie. Future Husband loves it because it’s so bad it’s good, and G was disturbed by how funny we found the campy, schlocky gore.

In spite of feeling better for most of the day (and my sore throat ever fading) I had a pretty nasty coughing fit during the movie, and right before I fell asleep. Thankfully, it doesn’t feel like it’s migrated south to my chest (which would fulfill my annual upper respiratory infection requirement), but has stayed pretty much in my throat. Silver lining, right?

The 12 Days of Tour: Day 5

2010-12-07T13:06:00.000-08:00

After the long relaxing day we had Sunday, Monday was a nice way to ease back into the tour routine. Kinda. We have a big drive on Tuesday, so that may be a bit of a downer.

When I woke up I made the guys breakfast burritos, even though I was feeling ten shades of terrible. Future Husband and D are sick as well, but they both felt better Sunday night, after a long day of eating, drinking coffee and playing video games, so FH demanded that I sit down and get to gaming. I complied of course, and spent the next few hours watching Nightmare Before Christmas, and then a Law & Order marathon, all while peacefully shooting zombies on my computer.

When it was time for the show, we crammed into the van (and our friends into theirs, since he was opening for the guys) and caravaned over to the bar. When we first got there, it seemed like it would be like their shows usually are there; under attended. That didn't stop us from having fun, though. And there were a handful of people there, including some friends who drove from out of town to see the guys play. She always bakes us delicious muffins with crazy names. This time they're "Cherry Bomb Bounce" and "Mucho Mango Madness."

Our friend opened, and we all sat and enjoyed him while the guys enjoyed their 40's of PBR that our muffin making friend bought them. I kept turning down shots, since I was feeling under the weather and had to drive. After our friend finished though, I accepted a shot of Jagermeister from him. Future Husband told me that in Germany, they use it like cough syrup, so why not? I felt better for about two minutes, went into a nasty coughing fit and coughed up what looked like key lime pie, and then felt better again. For a little while.

The guys played well, and again, people wandered in from outside. There are a few other bars right next to that one in downtown Medford, and it's literally right across the street from a college campus. By the end of the set there were about twice as many people as when they started, including a big group of girls that were just absolutely fawning over G. They ended up buying CDs, though, so fawn away little girls. Fawn away. It ended up being the most lucrative show the guys have had at this bar, even though it was a Monday.

One of our friend's co-workers completely flipped over the guys' music, and was so anxious to hang out with the guys after the show, that he offered to fill up the van's gas tank if we would give them a ride home and hang out with them. Even though D, FH and I were feeling so awful, we realized that we were basically getting paid a tank of gas for hanging out. So we all piled into the Ogre (through the front door, because the sliding side door is broken) and drove around Medford until we found an open gas station (because Oregon is one of two crazy states where you can't pump your own gas.) After that we made it to the guys house, where we snacked on an industrial sized tank of salted almonds (yum!) and mixed a few drinks. This time, I gave in and had a Captain and Pepsi. (Which I regretted about half an hour later, as it made my fever unbearable.)

After about an hour of hanging out, we made our goodbyes, thanked him profusely for the gas, and promised to let him know whenever there was a show in town. We made our way back to the house and tore into some crockpot beef stew. Everyone else tuckered out, and as usual, Future Husband and I were the last ones up. We read for a while in bed, before enjoying a feverish cuddle for a few minutes. It ended in both of us randomly going into coughing fits.

I can't wait to feel better. I hate being sick, especially on tour.

The 12 Days of Tour: Day 4

2010-12-06T02:37:00.000-08:00

Today we had a day off. Great is an understatement.

The friends we're staying with in Medford have some football thingy with Direct TV, so G and D were super excited, as was the entire family. Future Husband and I really couldn't give two hoots. So FH busted out his PS3 and the new game my brothers surprised him with at Thanksgiving, and I did what I do; I cooked.

It sounds so Betty Crocker/Happy Homemaker of me, but I really do enjoy cooking. So last night I told our friends to not worry about cooking for us, to just sit back and relax and enjoy all of their football games. After sleeping in for quite a while this morning and afternoon, I dragged myself out of bed (a bed, not a couch!) and went to the nearby grocery store. I had a forty dollar budget, so loaded up on delicious things, and then went back to the house and made them into even more delicious things.

I first made finger foods; Barbecue and Pastrami Stuffed Mushrooms (I tweaked my mom's recipe by adding bacon, of course) and a Ham, Cheese and Broccoli Croissant Ring. It seems like there are far too many adjectives there to describe finger food. I would have taken pictures, but all the food disappeared pretty quickly, and I was prepping dinner. Which, no surprise here, was Carbonara. Over the last few months it's become my signature dish. Anytime someone wants me to cook for them for some occasion, they choose Carbonara. Future Husband and I have even decided to have Chicken and Spinach Carbonara as one of the dishes at our wedding. (We're going to save money and cater it ourselves.) Maybe someday I'll finally get my food blog up and running.

While I let everyone digest the h'ors doeuvres, I curled up with my book and killed a chapter. Then I went right back to the kitchen to start the Chicken and Shrimp Carbonara. Soooo yummy. Everyone (even the kids with their picky appetites) ate it. The teenage boys loved it especially. Then all of us (me and my guys, and our friends and their three kids) gathered in the living room and watched Anchorman together. After the movie we stuffed our faces with more food. This time Strawberry Shortcake.

The family headed to bed first, since Monday morning was approaching at an alarming rate, and left us nocturnal musician sorts to our own devices... which was more video games and late night comedy central. After FH and I watched the season finale of The Walking Dead (a bit of a disappointment, really) and a few more episodes of Modern Family before hitting the hay.

Days like today are one of my favorite things about tour; getting to spend time with various friends all over the country that I wouldn't have met otherwise.

The 12 Days of Tour: Day 3

2010-12-05T20:24:00.000-08:00

Ashland, Oregon, is on the opposite side of the state from Portland. So we had a long drive ahead of us. After we left the cool bartender's house at 2:00pm, we hit the I-5 and stayed on it. Future Husband, still suffering through his nasty head cold, fell back asleep almost immediately. I read one of the books I brought along until the light outside ran out. (Even then, I finished the chapter by the light of my cell phone.) After a few rounds of Tetris on my phone, I gave in and took a nap.

We rolled into Medford (about 15 miles north of Ashland), and stopped at our friends' house. There, they had a crockpot full of ham and navy beans waiting for us, with cheesy garlic bread and cold soda and beer. Heaven. Especially since all I'd had thus far to eat was a Nutrigrain bar and an Emergen-C packet.

After loading up on delicious beans (which I would regret for about 24 hours) we piled into the van and hit the highway again. The venue the guys played was a semi-underground, small bar/restaurant. Twenty home brewed beers on tap, though. (Amazing!) Apparently, the day had been devoted to the 'Civil War Game', in which both Oregon state colleges played against each other. The bartender apologized before hand for the small crowd, as it seemed everyone was drinking at home or tailgating because of the game. The guys refer to it as their curse, as they so often hear, 'This place was packed last night!'

We could tell they were going to be loud. It was a small room, with plaster walls and a concrete floor. The bartender even mentioned that as they were setting up. After a snafu with the cords for the PA (i.e. - there weren't any) they were able to get set up and play. The boys weren't in a very good mood, as they were all sick, and could tell they were going to catch hell for the noise level. They almost didn't play. As the first song started, the bartender came up to me and told me they needed to turn down.

A few moments later, during the same song, an older guy that had been sitting at the bar walked up to the guys, and started yelling at them to turn down in the middle of their song. The bartender came up to me again, and I told her that they would turn down at the end of the song. When G finished, the bartender was up by the stage, and he tried to explain that they were turned as low as they could and still be heard over the drums. G, tired, sick and grumpy, said, "Thank you, goodnight!" into the mic, and unplugged. The bartender and the small group of people on the couches in the back half of the room all made a ruckus. They wanted them to keep playing, and shouted that they wanted the vocals louder. The bartender, after getting the small crowd to cheer and get them to convince the boys to keep playing, told me it was only one guy that had complained. I went to the bar, and offered him a pair of ear plugs (I usually sell them for $1.)

Then the jackass had the nerve to be rude. As he was taking free earplugs from me, he complained, "They are way too loud." (In a whiny tone that was completely unbecoming of a man his age.)

Always trying to be persuasive and point out the flaw in someone's logic (and therefore make myself feel superior), I calmly replied, "The room is practically designed to be loud. I mean, no carpet, low ceilings-"

He interrupted and snapped back, "Well, then they need to learn some adaptive management and be better at playing in the room they're in."

He said it with such a condescending snap to his voice that I filled with anger almost immediately. I usually don't care enough to get into an argument with a stranger, but this guy pissed me off. I mean, he didn't even say thank you for the ear plugs. It was the fact that he patronized me. I hate when people assume something based on my appearance, which is what obvious this guy did. What, because I have messy hair and black eyeliner and I'm with the band means I'm some sort of idiot groupie barfly? 'Adaptive Management?' He thinks he can bust out some three syllable nonsense and belittle me? That I'll be so confused and lowered that I'll turn the dials on the amps down myself?

I tried to not let any of my anger show in my voice as I responded, "Well, there's no way to control the volume on the drum set. And with the acoustics of this room, it would be hard to play at any level that you'd find acceptable."

I turned and walked away, back to my seat and my free beer by the merch. The guys (finally plugged back in and turned on again) started their second song. After only a few seconds, the old fart at the bar scooped up his paperwork and left. The group of people that had come to see the guys cheered as he walked out.

Seriously. Who goes to a bar on a Saturday night to do paperwork?

After he left, the boys played very well, and the tiny crowd loved them. They danced at the front of the room, by the stage. People wandered in from the streets and called their friends to join them. Writing it down makes it sound like some sort of Hallmark movie of the week montage. But that really does happen when they play. I love it. There was even a blind kid that showed up half way through the set, and was rocking out. It was amazing.

After they finished, the bartender explained that the cranky coot at the bar was an acquaintance of the owner's, and that's why she was trying to appease him by asking the boys to turn down. Once he left though, everything turned out great. We hung out at the bar until it closed, with the various people that had attended. We had to turn down invites to go out to other bars and to house parties, since everyone was sick and we were staying a few miles up the freeway.

A lot of time on tour, (it seems) what looks like a terrible show approaching will magically transform into a great show. Last night was one of those, and was pretty welcome after the first two Oregon shows.

The 12 Days of Tour: Day 2

2010-12-04T19:04:00.000-08:00

Nothing much to report today. After we tracked down a Starbucks with our GPS (we were successful on our third attempt) we loaded up on coffee before heading up to Portland. The guys played at a bar they’d never played at before. It was a pretty cool set up, though it was not written in the paper with the other live music shows for that night. There were more than just the other bands and they’re girlfriends there, so that was good. Still, not a very lucrative show, at the door or the merch table.

The guys got their three free drinks, but as is typical, the bartender loved them, and spotted them a few beers before agreeing to let us all crash at her place. G has an old friend from Arizona that now lives up here in Portland, but his girlfriend had to get up super early for work, so we would’ve had to have been super quiet. Under most circumstances we can… okay, no, we can’t. We’re always loud and dorky and laughing at our own inside jokes. So even with Crazy Poodle Lady from the night before, we agreed to go home with the bartender. She seemed a lot more sane, at least.

She wasn’t closing, and wanted to stop at another bar before going home. There, she bought the boys a couple of rounds, and would have included me, if I hadn’t declined. We hit Taco Bell on the way back to her house, where G and D took the couches, and Future Husband and I made up our sleeping bags on the floor. We watched a little bit of Air Force One before passing out.

This morning we took our time brushing our teeth and packing up our various bedding. Bartender girl turned out to be entirely hospitable, and most importantly, in sound mental health. We left through the sliding glass door in the back again, but this time because of a poorly parked vehicle. Thank goodness.

The 12 Days of Tour: Day 1

2010-12-03T16:28:00.001-08:00

Both of the previous tours I've been on, I took a spiral notebook with me and every day would jot down a summary of the day's events. Of course, of the few things we forgot to pack, this notebook was one of them. But since I need to get back in the habit of blogging more often, I figured I'd just use my blog as that tour journal. That'll definitely be more interesting for the various cousins and few friends that read this.

We pulled out of town a little after 1:00pm and hit the road yesterday. Future Husband climbed into the back bench right away and fell asleep. I don't think if you added together the amount of time we slept the night before, you'd have five hours. FH had work the night before we left, and so the little bit of sleep which each got was separate. It sounds silly, but we both sleep better when we sleep next to each other. I was a little too excited by the start of tour, but after about twenty minutes of playing Tetris on my phone, I was ready to sleep, too. I woke up in Portland, when we hit rush hour on the I-5.

Eugene is about an hour and a half south of Portland on the I-5. It's a small college town, and just like all of them, is full of High School students racking up debt and DUIs as they rush between the bar and Pita Pit.

The show was more like a practice session for the guys, but that's how every tour I've been on starts out. The first show is usually like practice, but with a bartender watching them. There were a few of the regulars in the bar, and a few people trickled in and watched them play. They all left right after, however, and no one bought merch. The Bartender really enjoyed them, and comped them a few pitchers. Towards the end of the night we were starting to realize that it was looking like a Walmart parking lot kind of night. Then, at the last minute, the crazy looking middle aged lady with a poodle started talking to D.

After a few minutes, he was able to shove her off on G, since he's the singer. A little bit after that, G announced that Crazy Poodle Lady was going to let us stay with her. Crazy, yes. But she was offering us somewhere warm to sleep indoors. Even then, this didn't seem like Indiacrapolis Guy kind of crazy. Yet.

Her apartment was a bit cluttered, but nothing compared to some of the friends we stay with in other cities, which are actually dirty dirty. Her jittery, nervous looking miniture poodle (with it's little red service dog jacket) never barked at us, but never warmed up to us either. There was a mostly empty bedroom upstairs, where FH and I put our sleeping bags down after we moved the black trash bags full of blankets and old toys out of the way. It was pretty creepy, even for us, but we were so tired we ignored the dead plants on the window sill and the 'this kid left abruptly' vibe we got from the room. G and D slept downstairs in the living room.

We have a friend in Reno that when we first met at the bar, thought was a little nuts. He turned out to be one of the funniest, smartest guys we hang out with on tour. I kept reminding myself of that while we navigated Crazy Poodle Lady's apartment. It doesn't sound so bad, except that everything smelled like my late Grandpa's apartment; dust, medicinal creams, and maple sausage. Then there were the dolls. Cloudy eyed, dusty dolls on most flat surfaces. And the stories she would briefly tell about her family (that didn't live there) as she fluttered from topic to topic. Like the Bi-Polar husband she was divorcing after 21 years. Or the son that pounds on the front door in the middle of the night, shouting expletives.

Future Husband and I were pretty tired, so we hit the hay within fifteen minutes of arriving. Not before I checked out the labels on the numerous prescription bottles in the bathroom. There were things like sleeping pills, asthma medication, muscle relaxers. Nothing too out of the ordinary for a baby boomer. Except for the Antipsychotic. That one was a little jarring. But it's also used to treat depression, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt, considering the divorce story and the Chicken Soup for the Soul type books all over the apartment.

When we woke many, many hours later, FH and I rolled up our sleeping bags and started to take them out to the van. Crazy Poodle Lady followed us out to the van, and explained that her husband was on the way, and she didn't want him to see us. She also told FH that if anyone asked, he was her stepbrother 'Steve' and said, "I don't want them to watch me any more."

Back inside, G and D were visibly agitated and tired still. They had just started to gather their bags and pillows, when there was a knock on the door. The husband, of course. Poodle Lady promised to make us Eggs and Bacon, since that's what the husband was dropping off. But we had to hide. First we stood off to the side, in the living room, but away from the kitchen window. After the first brief argument with the husband, in which she called me over to prove that she had 'a friend' over, and that was why he couldn't come in, she had us hide upstairs in the empty kid's room. After a few minutes of waiting (and G and D looking more and more unsettled) they decided they wanted to just get out of there. Now, a group of musicians declining free bacon and eggs? You know it's serious when musicians turn down free food.

We ran downstairs. I checked the peephole to see that Poodle Lady and her husband were out front talking, and we snuck out the back sliding door. The four of us made a mad dash for the van, and peeled out of the parking lot.

In the van, G and D related the stories of the night they had. Crazy Poodle Lady stayed up all night doing dishes, muttering to herself, calling people 'assholes' and 'bitches' as she talked to herself, repeatedly telephoning a bar that had kicked her out for bringing her Miniture Service Poodle in, and singing along with CMT. D said he kept expecting to wake up and see her standing over him with a cleaver.

On a happier, funnier note, as Future Husband and I were falling asleep, we briefly discussed the wedding planning. I told him I didn't want to exclude him from any of the plans, but he should tell me if I was over-including him. I just want him to be comfortable and have fun at his own wedding. Still a little drunk from the free pitchers at the bar, he said;

"There are three things that I care about, about the wedding. Number one- I'm marrying you. That's the important part. As long as that gets done I don't care about anything else. Number two- No religion stuff. And Number three- Cheesecake."

On Tour: The Christmas Edition

2010-12-02T21:15:00.000-08:00

Towards the end of the Fall Tour, G asked if we would mind going on tour down to Arizona for Christmas, so he could spend it with his family. It had been a few years since he'd been there since they moved up to Seattle. Even though Future Husband and I had been talking about how much we were looking forward to our first Christmas together (last year was thwarted by a freak Christmas Eve Blizzard in Oklahoma) and the possibilities - i.e. A Charlie Brown Tree, a pajamas optional Christmas Eve, etc., we agreed to go on tour down to AZ. So though we won't get our little sad tree and a Christmas all to ourselves, we will get to spend it with FH's family (Future In-Laws! Yay!). It fits nicely, since we spent this Thanksgiving with my family in Oklahoma. (Blog to follow... someday. I promise.)

Today we packed up and set out on our Winter Tour. Twelve days from now we'll be rolling into AZ, enjoying the frigid 70 degree weather, delicious burritos, and Christmas with my Future In-Laws and the few blood cousins that will still talk to me after my last blog.

A Death in the 'Family'

2010-11-27T02:06:00.000-08:00

*Sorry guys, a serious blog today, even though I have a fabulous Caribbean cruise to blog about. I didn't change all of the name's in this blog because, well, you change names to protect the innocent, right?*

So my 'Uncle' Michael has died.

I don't mourn his loss at all. Honestly, today felt no different from the day before, or a Friday a few weeks ago. I doubt it will be any different from next Friday.

The only sad or mournful feelings I have over this are for my Grandmother. No one deserves to lose a child. And as my cousin said, "he's proof that bad people can be born of good people." I have no children of my own yet, but I know what it's like to love a child as my own. And imagining something bad happening to them makes my stomach turn. For my grandmother, I feel sorrow, I feel pain. But for no one else.

You have to understand, in my Big Fat Italian Family, I have a lot of different 'Uncles'. I have my California Uncle, who is an amazing writer, has a killer sense of humor, asks me about school, and movies, and boys, and life, over crab nachos at the end of Santa Monica pier. He performs cheesy magic tricks for us whenever he visits. I have early childhood memories of his deep, rumbley voice, and hearing his laugh, and feeling his beard tickle me as he kissed me good night on Christmas Eve. I remember that sort of tangible childhood excitement I would feel when my parents told me he was visiting from California. He's not actually genetically related to me at all. He's just a good friend of my parents'. Yesterday he congratulated me on my recent engagement, and assured me that he'd try his hardest to be at my wedding next Fall.

Then I have an Uncle that now lives in Santa Fe, who is a good friend of my Aunt's, and again, not biologically related to me at all. I remember watching TV with him as a child. I remember him taking me on outings to bookstores and cafes as a child. He loved Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman as much as I did, and he taught me how to use a whip. I remember laughing with him over the way Microsoft Word's spellcheck tried to correct Arnold Schwarzenegger, as well as our own very Italian last names. He used to give me candy coated fennel seeds to sooth my stomach. One of his houses had kumquats growing outside near the front stoop. To this day, the smell of eucalyptus oil makes me miss him.

That being said, I have two memories of my 'Uncle' Michael. Neither of them actually contain him, they just happen to take place around him. When I was about ten, I remember going over to his house with Cousinface. We played HORSE on his basketball court in the backyard, and later we played around on his pool table, though none of us kids were good enough to actually play billiards. I seem to remember one of my cousins (I think it was the rapper) showing me how to beat Super Mario Bros. 3 in only ten minutes. On the way home in the back of Cousinface's dad's red Nissan truck, her older sister Jen kept picking her nose and flicking the boogers into the wind. They always hit me in the face.

The only other memory I have is of his Anniversary party. I don't remember what the numerical value was, I just remember that I was a young teenager, and his third wife (the evil, malicious Judy) was so drunk that she forgot Cousinface's name. Cousinface's family visited Michael (her grandfather) every holiday, and sometimes for dinner on weekends in between. Judy remembered me (whom she'd met maybe two or three times before) but forgot Cousinface. I remember the crushed, hurt look on her face more than anything. And the fact that the bartender at the country club (or where ever it was) didn't know what a Shirley Temple was.

So my point is, this 'Uncle' of mine, was not an uncle at all. I would feel more over the loss of an elementary school teacher that I was close to. I have no memories of magic tricks, or snowmen, or bookstores, or Christmas Eve with this man. In fact, all I have are the stories of those he hurt so deeply.

Like how he left my cousin Jinx and her mother (his second wife, whom I consider my Aunt) by telling them he was going to the convenience store for a pack of cigarettes and never coming back. Jinx was six. Her brother was younger. He turned up at one of his mistresses house's a few days later. He never paid child support to their mother. Later, when Jinx sued him for backed child support as an adult, Michael took issue with my father. I remember him telling my dad that Jinx "wasn't smart enough" to do it on her own. Jinx is one of the smartest people I know, and one of my closest friends.

A few years ago, when some family drama broke out, and my little branch ended up sawing off the horribly trashy, obnoxious branch that contained some of his offspring, his horrible third wife sent me a letter telling me to take down my blog and 'never write again.' I hadn't spoken to or interacted with them in years, and the first contact I get in almost a decade is some holier-than-thou attempt at censorship. Based on what? The fact that he was the oldest person with our last name? It takes a lot more to make a patriarch than age.

But the most damning thing told to me was the abuse he put my Aunt Awesome through. (My father's sister.) It's not my story to tell, so I won't elaborate much. Aunt Awesome is my favorite aunt. We have a lot in common, including tastes and temperaments. So when I found out how horribly Michael treated her as a child (when he was a teenager), it spoiled him in my mind forever. It turned whatever traces of familial affection I might have had for him into burning hatred. Aunt Awesome is quite possibly the nicest person I have the privilege of knowing. So to wound her so grievously, and then try to play it off as 'something children do'... no. Unacceptable. He never denied the abuse he was responsible for, he just made a point of not apologizing for it. There are no words for how much I loathed that man.

As far as I'm concerned, a Deadbeat Dad, Philanderer and Child Molester died yesterday. He may have had my last name and some of the same genetic material, but for all intents and purposes, I might as well have been watching the evening news and an announcement of a prisoner's execution. There was no sentimental connection for me, just a sense of relief, because someone horrible is gone from this world. So if you are sad that your loved one is facing his final judgment, fine. Go be sad. Somewhere in your corner of cyberspace. I'm not invading it and telling you how I feel, I'm just voicing my opinion from my own little corner. I am entirely entitled to have my own opinion and state it however, where ever and whenever I want to. You are the one that decides to read it.

Tonight I raised a glass, and clinked it among friends and loved ones. Yes, I celebrated someone's death. And if you have a problem with that, I have a problem with you. Feel free to ask me why, and I will explain it, in the simplest terms necessary for your feeble mind.

A Monster died yesterday, and I am happy.

Bear Wrestling

2010-11-12T01:01:00.000-08:00

I have this habit of taking notes in my phone. Funny things that are said (these notes are particularly funny after a night of drinking), to-do lists, my AAA member number, ideas for stories or song lyrics. Recently, when I tried to jot down (and by jot I mean type in) some wedding invitation ideas, my phone told me that the memory card was full. I know this to be perfectly erroneous, as I still have plenty of room for pictures. So the allotted space for notes is full.

So I need to get rid of them.

The Friday before Halloween, Future Husband and I (he was still technically Boyfriend) had an impromptu date night. We went out to run a few errands, and ended up having dinner and going to a movie. We wandered around the mall near our house (neither of us had been there before) and people watched and window shopped, some of our favorite activities. After we stopped at the Halloween Express and Hot Topic for last minute costume supplies, we headed across the parking lot to Olive Garden for a garlicky, seafoody feast. Since there was a movie theater in the mall, we decided to throw financial responsibility to the wind and go see 'Easy A.' (Really good! Totally recommended!)

As we were heading up the first set of escalators to get to the third floor Theater, Future Husband said, "It looks like we could go left or right."

"I think right is shorter." I was observing the food court, and going around to the right was definitely the quicker way to get to the second set of escalators.

FH, in a completely serious, deadpan voice, said, "Probably. But we could go left. If there was a bear, or something. We have that option."

I burst out laughing. I couldn't stop thinking about turning the corner in the super shiny, Ikea furnished food court, and just seeing a giant bear there.

No, the bear is not flashing us.

If there had been some sort of terrible, bear-escapes=from-the-zoo-and-takes-a-bus-to-the-mall scenario, I would hope that FH had his Concealed Carry permit by then. Because then I would be safe, for sure.

I got lazy with the bear.

Ok, well, maybe not. Because as FH explained to me only a few days ago, (while he was explaining why he is terrified of bears) that bears have ridiculously thick skulls that most bullets won't puncture.

Which means that we would have to resort to something one of my recurring dreams has been preparing me for, for decades; hand to hand combat with a giant predator.

My recurring dreams are not like the ones in movies. I don't know how they stack up to everyone else's, but mine are more like recurring themes. They always take place in different locations, with different people, but have the same predicament. There are the natural disaster dreams, where I'm trying to get various loved ones, friends and/or family to safety and they won't heed my warnings. Then the flood/tornado/tsunami strikes and I have to try and save everyone as they're scattered. Then there are my weird high school dreams, where I go back to Xavier to have 'traditional' high school years. I always end up slacking and staying home, and then worry that I'll get kicked out, but I don't really care. The last time I had this dream, one of my teachers asked me how many times I was going to come back and drop out. Or the driving across an insanely high and poorly built bridge, usually in a large vehicle like a van or my old Buick, and usually over water. That one always wakes me with a jolt.

And then... there are the giant predator dreams. Usually it's a lion or a bear. Once or twice it's been a tiger. Once it was an alligator. I haven't had one of these in a while, but what always happens is I end up somehow trapped by some giant, bitey monster that wants to eat/destroy me. I always manage to land a couple of punches, and then I realize that claws and teeth will definitely win out over my weak little arms and clawless hands. Inevitably, I have to trick the beast into losing sight of me, so I can sneak up behind it and strangle it.

Yep - strangle it. In all of my dreams I either hold my own, or defeat the beast by putting it in a choke hold. And since I'm on its back, the damage they're able to inflict with their sharp bits is minimal.

So had there been a bear in the food court, impeding our journey to the movie theater, I totally could have taken it down.

You know, since Future Husband is terrified of bears.

Boyfriend has officially been Upgraded

2010-11-03T22:05:00.000-07:00

Within a week of Boyfriend and I becoming 'Boyfriend and I' last September 9th, we knew we were altar bound. Just a day after we finally got our act together, he happily told me, "We have a lifetime of Scrabble ahead of us."

On September 14th of last year, he asked me to tour with his band. Turned out it wasn't even his idea. G and D suggested it, and of course, Boyfriend (and then I) enthusiastically agreed with it. That night Boyfriend told me he loved me for the first time. Within a week of that, he was telling me about the Domestic Partnership he had with Crazy Ex #1 from a few years ago. He said, "I have to get rid of that so I'm free to marry you."

Ever the self doubter and over thinker, I couldn't quite believe I'd heard him right, so I didn't ask him to clarify. That's what girls are supposed to do, right? Not talk about commitment, cause boys are afraid of that? But a few days later I jokingly referenced what our children might look like, and he called them, 'inevitable.'

It blew me away. I've been in love with Boyfriend since I was 19 years old. I never thought we'd actually be together, and the few times I allowed myself to actually think/fantasize about that, I never thought we'd make it for the long haul. I always thought we'd have a few happy years together, have a lot of fun, and then decide we wanted different things. I thought I'd go start a family, and he'd continue to live his rock 'n roll lifestyle. We would've stayed friends, of course, but it would have just been a fun relationship. I never thought I'd fall as hard as I did (or rather, didn't realize how hard I'd already fallen). But as soon as Boyfriend mentioned babies and marriage (and he brought them up first) I finally accepted how deeply I loved him.

On my birthday last year (which was epically awesome) after a couple rounds of Jell-O shots, I pulled my mother away from her palm reading station at the party and said, "I want to tell Boyfriend I want to spend the rest of my life with him. Should I?" Mom just laughed at me.

Later, in the bouncy castle (yes - there was a bouncy castle), Boyfriend and I were snuggling. The aforementioned Jell-O shots gave me enough courage to pull him close and say, "I want to spend every day with you. For the rest of my life."

His response? "I thought that was the plan."

Told you there was a bouncy castle.

Since that night last October we've occasionally mentioned forever. At some point over the last year we somehow arrived at a conclusion for the date. I thought it was awesome that we got together on 9-9-09, and jokingly said, "We should get married on 11-1-11. Then our rehearsal dinner could be a costume party."

"And that would be a super easy anniversary to remember!" Boyfriend said. (Even then, when he told his mother last month, he told her it was the 11th we wanted. Silly boy.)

Our second night out on my first tour, as we were walking to a party after parking the van a few blocks away, Boyfriend lamented, "I don't know how to introduce you to people. You're not my fiance yet, because I haven't gotten a ring, but you're so much more than just my girlfriend." He then changed the subject to what kind of ring I wanted. Smooth, that one.

The only hold up so far has been telling his folks. My parents have known since I knew. I'm extremely close to my parents, and tell them everything. Boyfriend, however, while he loves his parents and is close to them, he's not as friendly with his parents as I am with mine. And my parents have known him for six years. Boyfriend's parents met me last Christmas. His original plan was to tell his father he wanted to ask me to marry him, but things kept coming up, or getting in the way. It's adorable, really, how much he admires his parents. Even at 26, he's still worried about making them proud and not disappointing them. When we were in Arizona last month on the way back from tour, Boyfriend finally worked up the nerve to tell his mom. When Boyfriend told me the story, he said he was trying to lead her to the subject, and she brought it up. When she told me the story they next day (while we were getting our toes done), she said she told him he had to marry me. It's a disagreement I'm happy to let them have.

I jokingly told my future sister in law that even though we knew we were going to get married, and had picked out the date, we weren't 'engaged' because Boyfriend hadn't asked and there wasn't a ring. The GBF said that I couldn't call myself 'engaged' until Boyfriend made it 'facebook official.' Either way, though we've been discussing our wedding party, the menu for the reception, and where we want to honeymoon, we weren't referring to ourselves as engaged.

Until now.

A few days ago, while we were shopping for Halloween Costume accessories, a cheapy ring in the thrift store case caught my eye. (When we discussed rings, I told him he wasn't allowed to spend more than $20 on my ring. They're just symbolic anyway, I'm clumsy and bad with jewelry, and we can use the extra money to have a longer honeymoon.) Boyfriend said, "Hey, we're getting married a year from Monday, huh?" I answered positively, and he said, "We should change our facebook status."

Sunday night, a few minutes after midnight, Boyfriend left the couch, grabbed my laptop, and pulled up facebook. He went immediately to the 'Relationships' page, changed his status to 'Engaged to,' nudged me and pointed to it. I looked over and he asked, "Eh?"

I smiled at him, said, "Sure!" and he clicked save.

So 363 days from now, I'll be in a white dress in Arizona, celebrating with my closest friends and family, and calling my dearest friend 'Husband.'

Quarter Life

2010-10-26T16:44:00.000-07:00

25 years ago today, Marty McFly went to a parking lot to meet with Doc Brown. The rest, as they say is history.

Also, in a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona, my mom squeezed me out.

I know I haven't been blogging much lately. Tour puts a damper on my productivity (malnutrition, tiredness, lack of reliable internet connection), and now that I'm home I've been distracted with things like looking for work, working, and household chores. And Breaking Bad. Seriously, Boyfriend and I have put away almost three seasons since October 8th. That's a lot of sitting in front of a boob tube.

I don't think I'll draw any cute cartoons today, as I just want to put a blog up so you all know I haven't mysteriously disappeared. Also, it's my birthday. My 25th freaking birthday. It seems like a blog worthy day.

Birthdays have never made me feel any different. As a child, I always expected some sort of magical transformation over night, or at the very least, for the day to feel unusual. Like Christmas. There's this sort of stillness in the air on Christmas. I always expect my birthday to feel that way, but it doesn't.

This birthday makes me want to better myself, though. Like it's a chance for New Years-esque resolutions. Like I'm really starting my adult life now, with a nice, round, halfway to 50 age.

But here are my Quarter Life resolutions:
-Write EVERY day. 1,000 words on a novel would be nice, but that's not realistic. A paragraph or two, or a blog, or even just jotting down ideas of stories and novels... hell, even fan fiction, is better than not writing at all.
-Eat better. I've been doing a good job of it since tour, but I've had entirely too much fast food and too many restaurant outings this year. I don't feel good. Good food makes you feel good.
-Be smarter with money. Just because I have money sitting in my bank account, doesn't mean I have to spend it.
-Practice music more. I miss playing and writing and singing. It's an amazing way to express myself, and I miss getting lost in it.

I can't really think of anything else. I mean, I've got a great guy by my side, a wonderful family, and friends that actually care about me. The outlook from here is pretty swell. Honestly, I couldn't ask for more. Well, maybe a book deal or to win the lottery, but as far as practicality goes... this is Happily Ever After, and I'm lucky enough to have found it this young.

Tour has stolen my soul.

2010-10-08T19:14:00.000-07:00

Ok, not really. But definitely most of my time and energy. I have a lot of stories, though, and I'll be home Wednesday.

This means I'll be awake sometime Thursday afternoon. I'll post then.

I'm so tired, I pirated my own cartoon.

Statistics!

2010-09-06T12:00:00.000-07:00

Okay, so maybe I'm a little behind in my blogger know how... but I just discovered my 'Stats' tabs. I know, I know. Not the brightest bulb. Better late than never, right?

So I was totally thrilled to see that I get way more traffic than I thought! That's a really pleasant surprise, right? And I'm able to see where people are referred from, or what they search for to get here. That's how I found this;

WTF?

I'm sure it's from the 'Day blog about my grandmother's phallic shaped pool. But still. Who the hell searches for 'hairy grandmothers at pool'? I hope it was the result of boredom and a twisted sense of humor (I can get behind that) and not some weird sexual fetish. Cause that's just icky.

Craigslist Shennanigans

2010-09-04T19:38:00.000-07:00

I know I haven't been the greatest blogger this last month (thanks, tour), but I have had time to do a few productive things. Mostly band or novel related, which is good.

The guys have a show next week in Chicago, and a management company is sending someone out to watch them. We're trying to get a lot of people out there to see them, so it looks better to the scout. (So if you live in, or know someone who lives in, Chicago - come to the show!)

In an effort to get people to the show, I decided to post a Craigslist ad. It worked so well finding Boyfriend and I a place to live, I hoped it would work again.

Ch-ch-check it out!

http://chicago.craigslist.org/chc/muc/1935044996.html

Loitering at Starbucks

2010-08-18T11:46:00.001-07:00

One of the pitfalls of tour is the long, extended period of time we spend in Starbucks. Days where our drive between cities is not terribly a long time (like today, only 62 miles), we end up spending 6-8 hours, sometimes longer. We got here today at 10:30am. We've been here for 3 1/2 hours and I'm already starting to go stir crazy. I'm seriously turning stupid. I don't know if it's the lack of food, or the blinding New Mexico sunlight pouring through the window... but it's taking me a surprisingly long time to form coherent sentences.

The next drive, however, is 13 hours of drive time and 783 miles... so I suppose I should appreciate the down time, inside air conditioning, with cold coffee and internet access. Grass is always greener, I suppose.

Either way, I can't really think clearly right now. And Boyfriend wants food (I suspect we'll end up at Carl's Jr.) No cartoon, sorry.

Tour - Take 2

2010-08-05T21:22:00.001-07:00

Today I embark on my second tour with Boyfriend and his band. It's their seventh.

And I'm sick.

That summer cold Boyfriend had last week? Yeah, share and share alike. He dutifully took care of me, though. Made me tea and red curry (yuuummmm) and was all snuggly and concerned. So with green things oozing out of my nose, we hurriedly (i.e. - frantically) packed for a 2 1/2 month tour. We'll be back in Seattle in Mid-October.

Right now we're in Portland, and a pretty badass bar. It's the kind of place I would have out at if I lived here. I wish more Portland people liked this place as much as I do. I mean, they have RC as their soda, instead of Coke. How awesome is that? I mean, I'd take Coke over Pepsi, but RC is just tops in my book. And this place feeds the guys. (And therefore, me.)

Oh, and they have free wi-fi.

Don't worry, our heads don't actually mysteriously float outside the van while we're driving. I'm just feeling lazy today.

Oh, What a Beautiful Morning

2010-07-31T03:20:00.000-07:00

Boyfriend and I are day sleepers. I've always tended to be night owl, but with Boyfriend going to work at 9pm and returning between 4am-7am, I've switched over to being fully nocturnal.

With a long weekend (made longer by Boyfriend being sick) our hours got really strange. I woke up at 10pm, and Boyfriend slept until 4am. After breakfast, we decided we wanted to take advantage of the beautiful weather (sweater temperatures with super thick fog) and wanted to go for a walk. Our roommate suggested we take her dogs to a dog park. So off we went to Magnuson Park.

In an effort to shorten my blogs (they've been massive lately) I'll let the pictures do most of the talking.

Boyfriend taught me how to skip rocks.

We wandered along the shore of Lake Washington.

We found this cool little nook with this awesome looking tree.

And ate wild blackberries.

And picked wild flowers.

All said and done, it was a great day. I felt like a kid again. And when we got back home, we explored the downtown area (2 blocks from our house), found a great little place to have lunch, and wandered around a cool pawn shop. Paired with the brownies and cookies that came in the mail from home, this is looking like it's going to be a swell weekend. And tomorrow? Tomorrow we go visit (and for me, meet) some of Boyfriend's relatives.

Boyfriend is Sick

2010-07-27T23:46:00.000-07:00

Boyfriend's gone and contracted a summer cold. It would be cute if it weren't so crappy. He's got a fever and an itchy throat. And the poor guy is having trouble sleeping because of his fever. So I've been playing nursemaid, making him tea and juice. When we gave in and got out of bed today, I got him some Chinese take out, and stopped at the grocery store for juice and soup and the ingredients for grilled cheese sandwiches. All the yummy sick food.

As much as I like having him home from work, and getting to spend extra time with him, I wish he was feeling better. I wish I could do more than bring him juice and food. Still, I feel like I'm helping more than if he had the stomach flu.

Oh, Boyfriend. Hurry and get better!

How I Accidentally Set Myself On Fire

2010-07-16T07:45:00.000-07:00

In order to understand how a relatively intelligent girl (like myself) could be so ridiculously stupid, there are two things you need to know before proceeding.

1-I love to cook.
2-I hate spicy things.

Dangerously delicious? Or deliciously dangerous?

So when I set about making 30 jalapeno poppers for a BBQ at our new place, I had no idea what I was doing. I bought fresh jalapenos, washed them, set the cream cheese out on the counter to soften, and got to deseeding the peppers. I cut out the middle seedy parts, and sliced them in half. About a third of the way through stuffing the halves with my cream cheese mixture, I felt a burning on my ring finger. I thought maybe I'd just had a paper cut I didn't know about. A la lemon juice paper cut detection.

Pictured: Not the preferred method for discovering wounds

About ten more poppers down the road, my thumb started to burn as well. I finished putting the cream cheese in the peppers, but paused before wrapping them in bacon to wash my hands. I figured I should get the oil out of the invisible little cuts I had by washing my hands. In hindsight, this was my first mistake.

Within twenty minutes, the heat was spreading to my fingertips and intensifying. I realized something was very wrong. I assumed my allergy to bell peppers might be a factor in my sensitivity to the jalapenos. I googled 'jalapeno burns' and found only other people asking if it was possible to get burned from the oil in the peppers. I tried washing my hands a few more times, finding temporary relief in the cool water.

After another twenty minutes, I realized that it was only going to get worse as time passed. Now all five fingers on my left hand hurt, as well as most of my palm, and the fingertips on my right hand had just started to warm unpleasantly. I grabbed a cold beer from the fridge, and held it in my left hand while I googled again with my right hand. This time 'home remedy jalapeno burn', and came back with pages and pages of results.

It seemed that most people recommended baking soda paste, while some recommended soaking your afflicted areas in vinegar or milk or yogurt. I tried vinegar first, with no relief. I washed my hands again, then tried the baking soda paste. It relieved the burning a little while it was in the paste, but taking it out of the bowl only brought the pain right back. I didn't let it dry into a thicker paste, as it felt like it only trapped the heat in my skin and intensified it.

The catch-22 of this situation is that in order to try some new remedy, I had to wash my hands, which only made the burning worse ten minutes later. I unfortunately lost my appetite (which was terrible, because everything Boyfriend and the new Roomie were cooking smelled amazing), but still forced myself to have a brat, so I could take some pain medication. I've got a ridiculously high pain tolerance. Doctors have even commented on it being unusually high. So the fact that I intentionally took three Advil liqui-gels with two beers, tells you how much I was hurting. Two hours in, it felt like I had put my hands on the stove.

This is what I felt like.

There were other things I began to try. Dawn soap: nope. Sugar scrub: nope. Oil absorbing clay facial mask: nope. Soaking in milk: nope. Thicker baking soda paste: nope. I found a bit of relief from hand sanitizer, just enough to finish reading the home remedy search results. I read stories of people that had accidentally touched their eyes or nose, and all I could think was how grateful I was that I hadn't done these things. I would have lost the last little bit of composure that remained and been a whimpering lump on the floor. I would have looked like this;

Finally I stumbled across someone who said the nurse at the hospital she went to for her burns rubbed her hands in hydrogen peroxide, and followed it up with hydro-cortisone cream. A few other people swore by rubbing alcohol. Unfortunately, of the three, I only had hydrogen peroxide. By this point I was so nauseous from the pain (the Advil wasn't touching it) that Boyfriend was starting to notice that this was actually a problem. (That high pain tolerance has always made it difficult for loved ones to realize how badly I'm injured. Like the time I cut off the tip of my thumb, but mom didn't realize she needed to take me to the ER for twenty minutes.) He'd seen me trying different solutions, but I'd been so quiet about it all, and he'd been so preoccupied with manning the grill, that he didn't realize it was causing me actual pain. He took one look at my face, and asked if there was anything he could do. It'd been almost four hours at this point, and I'd already looked up hundreds of comments, and tried most of them. I decided right then I was going to walk to the Walgreen's on the corner and buy myself a damn bottle of rubbing alcohol. Before I left, I gave in and took one more Advil, and one of the Darvocets I had left over from the Kidney Stone incident in April.

On a side note; Poor Boyfriend! Both times I've been 'ill' since we got together, he's been unable to do anything to make me feel better. All he can really offer is comfort, which I appreciate, but I know he wishes he could do more. He got a stomach bug on tour, and it drove me crazy that all I could do was rub his back or hold his hair or offer him Gatorade. Eventually I'll get the Flu (or, knowing me, Bronchitis or Pneumonia) and then he can make me soup and cover me in blankets and bring me hot tea with lemon. You know you've got it bad for someone when getting sick is romanticized. Jeez...

But back to the story... Before I took off for the pharmacy, I grabbed my bottle of hydrogen peroxide, poured a little bit into my cupped palm, and rubbed it all over both hands. Instantly, I felt better. With my hands still damp (and doing that annoying, half itchy, half painful peroxide fizz thing) I held them in front of the fan in the front room. Sweet, sweet relief. I waited, sure it would be just as momentary as the other solutions had been. This one, however, gave me about ten minutes of relief. Just enough time for me to get down to Walgreen's, find the rubbing alcohol and purchase it. The burning was just beginning to return when I tore open the bottle outside the automatic door. I poured a little into my palm, and rubbed it around. Amazing.

I made it all the way home without having to use it again. After five minutes, however, it was coming back. It was greatly lessened, however. So begun the 90 minutes of alternating between peroxide and alcohol, all the while blowing on them or holding them in front of a fan. By this point, Boyfriend and I had been up for almost 24 hours. All that was keeping me awake was the pain, because god knows the chemical cocktail I concocted for myself was designed to take down a barn animal. After the peroxide had made my skin stingy and patchy and white (still preferable to being engulfed by invisible flames) I switched to simply soaking my poor hands in rubbing alcohol.

Finally, after six hours, my hands were cool enough that I could sleep. I had to have Boyfriend help me undress and get into pj's, because my poor little hands were bright pink, with little red sores on the fingers of my left hand. They were completely useless.

I woke about six hours later, when I rolled over in my sleep and put my hand on Boyfriend's bare chest. It felt like he was on fire. While my hands felt fine while they were held useless in front of me, if I touched anything, especially warm things like Boyfriend or my own body, it burned. Still! I was starving, since all I'd had to eat the day before was one damn brat, I decided I deserved a treat. After all I'd been through the day before, it only seemed fitting to reward myself for coming out sane and sans Urgent Care trip.

So I had ice cream for breakfast. Even then, it was a small consolation.

The weirdest part of the aftermath? My fingernails. The beds of my fingernails were all tender. Each one felt as though I'd smashed the tip with a poorly aimed hammer or a slammed car door. I didn't realize how often I reach over and scratch Boyfriend's back, or how often your fingernails are of use (buttons, zippers, opening anything), until I couldn't do anything with them. The skin on my hands (particularly the left) looked thin and shiny. They also felt ridiculously soft. I don't really want to repeat the chemical peel I gave myself for it, though. My skin looked and felt better after a two days. My fingernails, however, took four. And the moral of the story? Gloves. Gloves, gloves, gloves.

Moving to Seattle: Part Two

2010-07-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

When we awoke from our well deserved nap, we joined my family upstairs (my Mom works swing shift and gets off at 11:30pm) for spaghetti and softball sized meatballs. Those made amazing meatball subs the next day, lemme tell ya. We were still pretty tired, even after a six hour nap, so crashed in the wee hours, along with the rest of the household.

The family cat had kittens in late April, so we enjoyed those for a bit before bed. My hairy, rock star of a Boyfriend playing with kittens is a precious sight. When we woke after another ten hours of sleep (so, so nice) we went upstairs into the main house for breakfast, thankfully spared from a ginormous feast. Instead, we had cereal and toast. My father is Italian, and my mother is Irish. So feeding house guests is one of their hobbies. Seriously. Every friend I've ever had, even if they're only friendly acquaintances, knows that Lori's parents will always feed you, insist on a second helping, and send you home with leftovers. I warned my parents a week before we flew out there (when they called and asked me to email a list of the meals we wanted during the visit) that we'd need to slowly stretch our stomachs back out, especially so soon after tour. When we stopped there for two nights (right after Easter) I was sure our stomachs were going to burst. A la pigeons and alka seltzer. Luckily, the 'rents took it easy on us for this most recent Tulsa trip.

Sunday we spent as nerds. We sat in my parents' basement, drank a 12 pack of Mountain Dew White Out, and played video games (Boyfriend breaking in his brand new PS3, and I reunited with my beloved Sims 3).

Monday we went down to the tattoo parlor and got corresponding/matching tattoos. Neither of us are newcomers to the ink world; this was his fourth and my fifth. When I got my most recent tattoo (about two weeks after we became a couple) we both lamented that we wanted more tattoos. I suggested that we go down and get tattooed together, on the same day. All but one of my tattoos were group outings. The idea sounds a bit trivial, but I think it's a fun way to bond with people. The idea stuck. A few weeks later, as we were discussing what we wanted for our next tattoos, I suggested corresponding tattoos. Personally, I think it's bad luck to get a lover's name or likeness inked. It's a jinx. In fact, Boyfriend has Crazy Ex #1's name on his upper arm inside a heart. GAG. My suggestion was to get art we already wanted individually in the same session. I've been wanting a black bird or an owl for quite a while now, and Boyfriend's always been a huge fan of the coelacanth. (He's a weird one. That's why I love him.) And I've always loved that old saying, 'If a bird and a fish fell in love, where would they make their home?' It rang especially true as our unrequited love become requited after five long years, when we lived 2,000 miles apart. When I posed this idea to Boyfriend, he said, "Who knew the answer would be, 'In a van'?"

So in April when we passed through Tulsa briefly, we decided we go down and make an appointment with an artist. Two days before we were set to do so, Boyfriend and I were discussing it and he said, "You know, I've been thinking about getting a dime tattooed someday."

The few of you that know us both really well and/or had to suffer through the aforementioned five years of unrequited love/torture, know the significance of the dime. My parents said at our wedding they're not going to throw rice or confetti, they're going to throw dimes. I told them that would really hurt and be a waste of $100. Long story short (and perhaps I'll blog about this later on), dimes have been a running joke between Boyfriend and I since the Great Dime Diving Night in December of 2004.

Boyfriend's been reading The Golden Bough for a while now (he's almost done!), and oak trees have taken on significance for him. So he decided that he wanted the tails side of the dime. I, of course, immediately thought, 'We haven't decided on what kind of design we want for our bird/fish tattoos, so I'll just get heads.'

And that is how we came to have 4" dimes on our sides.

The rest of our time in Tulsa was spent with The Bestest and my family, going on outings, having great family dinners, playing board games until the wee hours of the morning, watching movies, smoking hookah (No pot ever! Ew! Gross! Ick!), visiting my favorite bars and restaurants and putting off packing. Oh, and video games. Did I mention that Boyfriend and I killed five 12 packs of Mountain Dew White Out while he played Grand Theft Auto IV and I played The Sims 3? Yeah. We're a match made in nerd heaven.

When the big day came and it was finally time for us to load up my car, I quickly packed the piles of belongings into boxes (we'd take breaks from video games to stretch and sort a few things) while Boyfriend used his developed car packing talent (from years of loading and unloading musical equipment into cars of various sizes) to expertly put all of my things in my little baby SUV. We said goodbye to my mom and The Bestest (the brothers and Dad were out buying my youngest brother's first car.) I congratulated myself on not crying as we drove away.

It really was the best way for me to move out. Two week visits punctuated the six months we were forced to have a long distance relationship. Then we had tour, so I was on a BO scented musical adventure. Even with tour, I got to visit my family. So it was like weaning myself off of my very close knit family. It helped both me and the parental unit, I think.

We got a much later start than we had originally intended, partly because I put off serious packing until my last day (still though, it only took twenty minutes), and partly because I was dreading the moment I said my final goodbyes to the Fam, but mostly because Boyfriend and I decided we wanted to get a good night's sleep before we drove 2,000 miles in 3 days.

We stopped at Spangles (one of the regional highlights of tour) for dinner, even though we had originally intended it to be breakfast. After an uneventful, mostly dark drive, we arrived in Denver a little after 2:00am, and met up with one of my oldest friends to stay at his place. (On a side note, isn't it crazy how friends and family are scattered as we grow older?) We slept on his floor for four hours, then woke up to share a French Press worth of coffee and giant muffin with him before he had to leave for rugby practice and we had to hit the road again.

(This is me using my blog to abuse parenthesis.)

We planned to stop in Cheyenne for lunch, but the interstate only had fast food to offer, and we were craving Chinese something fierce.So we continued on through the bottom of Wyoming (a truly, painfully boring drive) until we hit Laramie. We saw a billboard advertising a Thai place, and decided to stop there. Unfortunately, we both neglected to remember the exit number. And Laramie has like, two exits, five miles apart. That's only a tiny exaggeration. We decided to pull off the highway for gas, and let the google search on my phone find enough of signal to function. As luck would have it, there was a Chinese Buffet across the street from the gas station. Unfortunately for me, there was absolutely nothing green on the buffet line that wasn't battered and deep friend. I'd had my heart set on some beef and broccoli... but alas. At least their wrapped chicken was so tasty it made up for the lack of vegetables.

Later we stopped at some of the weirdest little gas stations and truck stops we've ever been to. (And we've been to a lot.) One was in a tiny place called Point of Rocks where we got or giant sodas for free. I don't know if it's because we were probably the only tattooed and long haired people she'd ever seen, or if it was because she knew how horribly mixed their soda fountain was. We weren't able to drink the soda (almost entirely syrup and flat), but threw them out at another little truck stop that used propaganda type ads as advertising. A weird little place called Little America. It was like a tiny, manufactured city of a truck stop. They did, however, have the cleanest, nicest bathroom I've ever seen on the side of an interstate. Leather sofas in the waiting area of the womens restroom, floor to ceiling walls and doors on every (very spacious) toilet stall. It was a little oasis of cleanliness, which was much appreciated, even as Stepford-creepy as it was.

We drove on again, pushing ourselves to make it to Salt Lake City before nightfall, wanting to hit a Golden Corral (Boyfriend had never been, and it's one of those hokey things I simply adore) before we turned in for the night. Make up for our deep fried Chinese lunch with a salad and plate of vegetables.

Just as we thought we were going to go crazy from the boring, beige scenery that is Wyoming (Seriously, it's worse than Kansas and both Dakotas.), we crossed the state line. Almost instantly, there were trees, and green things, and real mountains. It was like Utah had given the corner of the land it didn't want to Wyoming. We were weaving through gorgeous mountain valleys that looked like something from a model train layout.

The hotel we splurged on that night was not anything to write home about. In fact, it's long hallways and single painting made it a bit creepy. There was a frame every ten or so feet, but they each had the exact same print in them. A lonely looking pink and gold chair sitting in a sea of white negative space. We decided (after a shower) that we'd hit a Golden Corral in Idaho on the way back home, and we'd just eat in the restaurant in the lobby. The thing that really stood out about this hotel, and made it a super enjoyable stay for us, was the bed. For once, I'm not being pervy. It was honestly the most comfortable bed I've ever slept in. It was a California King, which at 5'11" and 6'3" we appreciate more than short people will ever understand. We fell asleep after watching a movie. I woke four hours later, certain I'd slept through our alarm because I was so rested. I've never been happier to fall back asleep.

The drive from Salt Lake City to Seattle is 14 hours. We stopped at a Golden Corral in Boise, and stuffed ourselves. Boyfriend mostly on barbecue, and I mostly on Caesar salad and macaroni and cheese. We tried not to fall asleep as we drove through beautiful parts of Oregon. They were so picturesque it made me long for my camera, which was securely tucked away in the back. Unfortunately.

We stopped in Washington at the first open gas station. Oregon is one of two states that does not have self service gas stations. You are not allowed to pump your own gas. You have to stay in the car, while some junkie or redneck collects your payment and does it for you. The problem with this is not so much the inconvenience of not being self sufficient, but being nocturnal, or being stuck in Oregon at night when no gas stations are open. Grateful to finally be in our home state, we happily gassed up the car, got ourselves the biggest cups of coffee they had, and those little 5 Hour Energy shots. (Which are essentially vitamin B overdoses.)

It was a long trek, and by the time we got to the prettiest parts of Washington (the mountain passes between the eastern side of the state and the sound) it was pitch black, and raining. I was wired on energy drinks, desperately needed to pee, and became convinced that one of the truckers that kept speeding past me or riding up on my tail was actually trying to kill me. Seriously. Why else would someone who drives professionally be going 90mph on a winding mountain pass at 3:00am in the rain? Homicide seemed logical at the time.

We finally rolled back into our own driveway about 3:30am (unmurdered by crazy truckers), went promptly to our room, and collapsed into sleep.

The Dreaded Layout Battle

2010-07-12T05:41:00.000-07:00

As I'm sure you've noticed, I've decided to mess with my layout. I'm struggling to build a new (i.e. custom) layout, but my CSS is a bit rusty.

If any of my fellow bloggers have any tips/pointers they'd be willing to offer, pleeease let me know. This is driving me crazy.

Sorry for the construction. =/

Moving to Seattle: Part One

2010-07-09T03:30:00.000-07:00

Boyfriend and I moved into our awesome new place on the 12th of May, and on the 15th, caught a plane back to Tulsa. We were going to visit for two weeks, all the while packing the rest of my transportable things. The trek back to Seattle would be a three day drive. 2,000 miles in three days. We're professionals by now.

Friday night (May 14th) we went out to the guys' show, and had a jolly good time. The guys got to play with one of their buddy bands, so we knew it was going to be a good show. Right before the guys went up on stage, Boyfriend and D gave me their drink tickets, so that I could get them a shot of Fireball Whiskey. It's a cinnamon flavored whiskey. It's amazing. Every time I drink it, I think of Ogden's Old Firewhiskey from Harry Potter, and it makes me smile.

A big, happy, dorky smile.

Later on during their set, I approached the bar only to see a sizable line. I asked an older man in an Hawaiian shirt if it was 'the line for beer.' He looked at my face briefly, but his eyes quickly fell a few inches lower, where most mens usually do, and he said, "I'll buy you that beer."

It was pretty obvious from his slurred speech that he was already three thousand sheets to the wind. I smiled and said, "Thanks, but I'm getting beer for my boyfriend and his band mates."

Still staring at my chest, he said, "I'll buy them beer, too."

And he did. He bought us a pitcher of Guinness, put a cigarette in his mouth and said, "I'm gonna go outside and smoke. Bring me a pint, will you?" I thanked him, got our pitcher and cups, and poured four out before I poured his. Shitty of me, I know, but he was old enough to be my father and he was staring down my shirt pretty steadily for a full minute. So yeah, I made sure me and my guys got beer first.

He'd also thrown down $30 for one pitcher of Guinness. The bartender made change, handed it to me, and I tipped him $3. He seemed confused, as well. When I brought Drunky McOldman his beer, I tried to give him his change. He told me (in the aforementioned slurred speech) that he'd left the extra $18 as a tip for the bartender, since they were taking care of his car keys for him. I told him I'd tipped the bartenders, but I could go back and give them the rest if he wanted me to. He told me to buy us all more beer.

So halfway through the show my guys not only got the cinnamon whiskey they were expecting, but two pitchers of beer they weren't. It was a very happy surprise. I even splurged later and treated Boyfriend and myself to a whiskey and coke while we were waiting for the buddy band to play (my guys played first, they played last.) It was during this time that Boyfriend and I spotted a time traveler. He was quite obviously someone from the 1880's, coming into the future, just to play pinball.

Obviously.

We watched him for the better part of half an hour, and all he ever did was play pinball. No drinking, no smoking, no socializing. Just pinball. Now, the reason he was so fascinating (and why I'm so disappointed in the poor quality of the cell phone picture), is how he was dressed. His hair was combed and slicked to the side, and his mustache was impressive. Not quite Sam Elliot impressive, but still. He was wearing a white shirt with billowing sleeves, suspenders, a form fitting vest (complete with pocket watch chain), and a belt with an empty holster. He had loose fitting cotton pants tucked into black boots. Even his posture seemed out of place. The only conclusion Boyfriend and I could come to was that he must have been a time traveler. After a defeat that had visibly angered him, he checked his pocket watch, and walked outside. Back to his Tardis, I guess.

The buddy band played later and the guys watched with great enthusiasm. The thrashing around in the mosh pit kind. Okay, that was all Boyfriend. I stood in the back of the room by the sound booth, watching the crowd carefully to make sure none of my guys took an elbow to the face. Even with my careful eye on them, Boyfriend took a bad gouge to the eye, which resulted in a pretty wicked red mark that lasted throughout our entire Tulsa visit.

He was so proud.

After the show we went back to G's house, and quickly packed the rest of our things. We borrowed the Ogre for the first trip, and took Boyfriend's car on the second. I had packed our suitcase (we shared one again, just like tour) before the show, so we didn't have to worry about that. We unloaded the perishable food from the car, grabbed the suitcase, and started for the bus station (which is delightfully nearby.) Our plane was scheduled to leave at 9:35, and the bus would drop us at the airport at 8:17, according to the schedule. We stopped at the grocery store to get cash back for the bus fare, and still made it to the station with time to spare. The bus arrived on time, we climbed aboard, and the driver looked at our suitcase and asked, "Airport?"

We took a seat behind the driver, and the bus lurched into motion. We drove through a little bit of downtown Burien, then through a residential area. Within a few minutes, we were driving past the back side of the airport (employee parking, hangers with dismembered planes, etc.) I was looking for the bus stop, but didn't see any of the public side of the airport. Soon we were passing hotels and restaurants. I thought, 'All right, any minute now it'll be our stop.'

Then suddenly, we were back in a residential area. Boyfriend and I were ridiculously tired (we'd been awake for about 20 hours, which included a show for him, and lots of moving of our/his possessions.) So it was understandable that we weren't on our A-game. I checked my phone for the time, and saw that it was 8:26; nine minutes past our scheduled stop time at the airport. I walked up to the driver to ask him, and he stopped his conversation with the pretty jogger that was sitting in the front most seat.

"Oh, no. Oh, Lord, oh, Lord, oh, Lord," he said. He pulled over to the side of the road just then (no bus stop in sight) and handed me two transfers. He told us to cross the street, which bus number we needed to look for, and told us which exit to take once we were on it. Boyfriend and I were spacey and tired (and enjoying people watching too much), and the bus driver was too busy getting his flirt on. Neither party acknowledged our mutual errors. Instead, we simply thanked him, and crossed the street.

I called my dad, explained what happened, and asked him to look up the bus schedule for us. Before he could navigate the site, the bus had arrived. Exactly twenty minutes later, Boyfriend and I got off at the hotel and restaurant saturated bus stop. The airport itself was across the street, behind a train station and airport parking. With less than half an hour to go, we began to run. I know for a fact that some of my habitual readers are 'endowed' with the same 'gifts' that I have. You will sympathize when I tell you that Santiago y Diego were not 'strapped in' for running. I had to jog carefully to keep myself from becoming indecent.

When we finally got into the airport itself, we saw the baggage check line for Southwest wrapping back and forth within it's elastic maze. We'd planned on checking our bag, but luckily it was the smaller of our two suitcases, designed to be carried on. With fifteen minutes to go, we bypassed the baggage check and headed straight for security. Boyfriend wasn't even out of breath. I, however, was frantically removing my shoes, and putting my laptop, bag and purse into their own bins, all while trying to figure out how I could rearrange the bald Cubans in my shirt in a discreet manner to relieve myself of my severe case of quadraboob.

I tried to draw what was going on, but MS Paint crashed, like, three bazillionty times from the abundance of unruly boobies.

Discretion was impossible, since airport security is pretty much paid to look at you. As we were putting everything back in place (except my chest), one of the security guys informed us that our bag needed to be searched.

I knew instantly it was because of some of our toiletries. Sure enough, it was explained to us that we could check our bag, or they could throw away our toiletries, or we could fill out paperwork to have it mailed to us or picked up from the airport at a later date. Considering it was a $3 bottle of hair detangler (Boyfriend and I go through about a gallon a week) and a $5 tub of old lady cold cream, and our plane was going to take off in less than 15 minutes, I tried to hurry the meek little security guy along. He verified twice that we were okay with our toiletries being thrown away before giving us our bag and sending us on our way.

Strangely enough, they let me carry on a super sharp pair of scissors....

Shoes tied, bags slung over shoulders, we started jogging again towards our gate. Which of course, was the very last gate in the terminal. Surprisingly, we weren't the last people on the plane. An old couple we ran past boarded after us, and then a family of five. Still, Boyfriend and I didn't get to sit next to each other on our first flight together. (Grrr!) People didn't even move for the family of five, whose three boys all looked younger than school age. The flight crew even offered free alcohol to people if they would move for the family, but no one did.

Boyfriend was sitting across the aisle from me, doing his best to distract me from how terrified I am of flying. Once the flight attendants had us all strapped in and explained how to survive a crash and taken their seats again for take off, Boyfriend turned in his seat and held my hand.

Luckily, it was a very smooth take off and landing. The flying part doesn't bother me. It's actually pretty cool. But leaving the ground and finding it again scare the shit out of me. We had a short layover in St. Louis, and Boyfriend treated me to ludicrously expensive airport Burger King.

We got to sit next to each other on our very short jaunt from St. Louis to Tulsa, thankfully. Our only legitimate complaint with this flight was the fact that no snacks were served, due to a passenger having a severe peanut allergy. So severe I don't even get my Chips Ahoy 100 calorie snack? You jerk. I'd be angrier, but I'm pretty sure that passenger was the two year old sitting in front of me that I was flirting with/making faces at/playing peek-a-boo with during taxiing.

We landed in Tulsa, and my Brother greeted us at the airport. We didn't have to wait at baggage claim, so headed straight back to my parents' house for a well earned nap before my Mom got off work, and my parents began their ritualistic stuffing of Boyfriend and I with awesome food.

Randomly Adorable

2010-07-05T08:00:00.000-07:00

Sometimes my relationship with Boyfriend feels really weird. I've known him for almost six years, so most of the time it feels like we've been together that long. In reality, we've been together romantically for ten months, and only living together for four months. Granted, we lived in a van together for two of those months, so it kinda got fast tracked. Every once and a while, something will happen that reminds me how young the openly romantic aspect of our relationship still is.

Like when he does something ridiculously cute and I giggle more than I should, or find it much more adorable than it actually is. Like when he plays video games and laughs like a ten year old when things blow up. Or when he randomly tackles me in a hug and tickles me.

I got on my computer the other day and found this:

When I asked him what it was, he said, "Oh... that's me doing a handstand."

I laughed appreciatively and said, "I'm saving this."

He protested, "You don't have to, it's just a doodle."

"Nope. It's awesome." And so it's now on the front of my virtual refrigerator.

Apartment Hunting: My Evil Craigslist Ad

2010-07-01T15:06:00.000-07:00

Started this one in May, just now getting it posted. I know, I know. Welcome to the procrastination packed world of Loriology. Things have been crazy. Anyway, here it is, finally.

Boyfriend and I got lost in downtown Seattle during rush hour.

That is how we found our new place. Not directly, mind you, but that's what started the sequence of events. Chinatown is on the southern side of downtown Seattle, so we got lost in a tangle of one way streets as we tried to leave it that Thursday afternoon. It was about 5:00 when we left. We got home a little past 6:00. Personally, I didn't mind it. Getting lost is one of the best ways for me to learn my way around. And the weather was surprisingly pleasant. All but one day since we've returned from tour has been ridiculously sunny and beautiful. We ended up driving down a street full of historical apartment buildings. Most of them had posh names and sleek, modernized logos and names. Which I've learned in my apartment hunt means they think it's okay to charge $1600 for a mediocre one bedroom apartment.

One, however, looked pretty cool. It was called The Embassy. (Another red brick building with molded plaster trim. I have a type.) Their sign said 'Now Renting Studio Apartments' with a number underneath. So while we were sitting at the red light adjacent, I gave it a call. Since it was after 5:00, the office was closed, but I left a message for Bruce, the Office Manager. "Hi Bruce, my name is Lori, and I drove past your building today and saw the sign about your Studio apartments for lease. I have a few questions about price and parking, utilities and whatnot. If you could give me a call at ###-###-####, it would be much appreciated. Thank you, and have a great evening."

(Seriously, that's what I sound like on the phone. I'm a dork. Thanks, resume full of reception jobs.)

Now, very few of you know what my voicemail message says. It's crucial to the story, so I'll post it here. I swear to god, this is my real outgoing message. I've had unrecognized numbers call me and the only message left is a second or two of laughter. It came about one night a few years ago right after I moved to Oklahoma. I had terrible insomnia, and was in a goofy mood. Anyway, this is it;

"You have reached the voicemail inbox for Lori, Evil Overlord and Aspiring Ruler of the Universe. To receive information on how to apply for Henchmanship, please press 2. For jetpack maintenance, please press 3. For all other inquiries, leave a message including your name, date and time of inquiry, and interesting subject matter. Due to high call volume and time consuming nefarious activities, only entertaining inquiries will receive a return call. Thank you."

Now, Boyfriend and I are practically nocturnal anyway, but we've become day sleepers since we got back from tour because of work. He leaves for work between 9:00 and 9:30, and returns about sunrise, usually. So my schedule is pretty much the same. Being nocturnal can be a right pain in the ass when it comes to dealing with the rest of the world (banks, governments, coffee shops, etc) but there are a few perks, other than saving on sunscreen. One of the many is that I miss pesky collection and telemarketer calls during the day.

So when we woke up Friday afternoon, about 4:30, I had a message waiting for me from Bruce, the property manager; "Hi this is Bruce from the Embassy Apartments, and maybe your new lair... Alright, (chuckle) sorry, doing my best after hearing your message. If you'd like to check out the apartments.... " Then gives me all the contact/website info.

I'd listened to it in 'bed' (a couple of sleeping bags and blankets on the floor in D's room, in G's house) so Boyfriend heard it, too. We both chuckled along with Bruce. I meant to give him a call back, or at the very least, check out the website, but I was still quite sleepy, and at the lay-in-bed-and-do-nothing-but-maybe-grope-my-significant-other stage of waking up. After three days full of being ignored or rejected by housing inquiries, I was considering posting a housing wanted ad, instead of just sifting through them all. I jokingly said, "That's what I should post as our Craigslist ad; Aspiring Super Villain and Sidekick seek new Lair."

To which Boyfriend responded, "Sidekick!?"

I said, "I know, but 'sidekick' sounds catchier than 'Two Aspiring Villains of Equal Importance and Evildoingness."

Boyfriend mumbled into his pillow, "Yeah, you're right." We snuggled up in bags together, but my brain was quite awake. I was doing my writing thing; turning phrases over in my head, crafting and reshaping them for maximum hilarity. After twenty minutes, I knew I had to do it.

I sat up and grabbed my laptop, and went to work. After the first paragraph or so, Boyfriend had woken fully and was looking over my shoulder, suggesting sentences, amendments and additions. After about an hour of typing, giggling maniacally, and having D remind us what dorks/nerds we are every five minutes or so, I had my lovely ad and an accompanying MS Paint drawing.

Aspiring Super Villain and Sidekick Seek New Lair
An aspiring Super Villain and her magnificent Sidekick are seeking a new Lair, preferably in the Northern neighborhoods of Seattle. However, for the right lair, we'll be willing to go as far south as White Center, or as far north as Lynnwood. We're looking for just one room in an established lair, and would prefer our own bathroom, although that is not a necessity (villains on a budget must accept a few inconveniences.) As far as budget goes, we'd like something around $400 if utilities are not included, and something around $500 if they are. We are, however, a little flexible. We recognize the value of a good lair.

We have no pets, do not smoke, are drug free and the alter ego has a steady day job to save up money for a hypno-ray (which let me tell you, does not come cheap these days.) We would need parking for at least one vehicle, but if you can accommodate our hovertank it would be much appreciated. We also recognize that in the world of Super Villainy, flexibility is key. We would be willing to do month to month, or a 6, 9 or 12 month lease for the right lair.

Potential Roommates/Henchmen must have a sense of humor and be almost as awesome as we are. Those are the only requirements, really. Should you meet our qualifications for henchmenship, we will issue you your uniform and jetpack.

We would gladly wring our hands and laugh maniacally if we found a studio apt, a room in your house, abandoned amusement park, haunted castle, or volcano. If you have any of these available, be a good little minion, and contact us immediately.

Yes, that's the real ad. Unfortunately, it's down now, but it was really on Craigslist for the weekend.

And it worked. This was the second email we received in response;
[Title of the e-mail was: The Lair (No really, that is what I call it)]
Little further south than you are looking for as it is in Burien…. BUT…

Ideal parking, brightly lit room and the wifi SSID is “The Lair”. Could work into longer term than the 2 months currently shown in the ad:

(link)

Breathlessly awaiting the monologue before the ax falls!

Boyfriend came over and read over my shoulder when I started making exciting squeally noises. Her ad is down now, too, but the first line of it read, "One bus to rule them all!" and proceeded to use the nearby bus station as a selling point. We chuckled in unison (Boyfriend and I do and say a lot of things in unison. It freaks people out. We delight in those moments.) and Boyfriend said, "She referenced Lord of the Rings in her opening sentence. My kind of nerd."

The ad also said that the room was presently available, and would be available at least through July 31st (which works out perfectly for us, as the next tour starts at the beginning of August.) It also mentioned that if needed, it could be furnished. Also perfect, because we're not moving any of my furniture from Tulsa to Seattle, and Boyfriend doesn't have any. Our potential roommate's ad stated that she was ok with liquor, but absolutely not 420 friendly. Also perfect for us, as Boyfriend and I loathe pot, but love booze (a really strange combination in our creative fields, lemme tell ya.) It only had one bathroom to share, and she had pets, but oh well. (Boyfriend wasn't too keen on the animals, but personally I was excited at the prospect of having pets without actually being their owner. Like the Cool Pet Aunt.)

I was thrilled. I wrote back:
Dear Potential Henchperson,
It seems a further exchange of information is needed. As I am about to retire to my chambers I will wait to hear back from you before contacting you via cell phone, either with a voice or text message.

1-How furnished is furnished? I am hoping this means mattress, because that is much better than loads of comforters and sleeping bags piled on top of each other. It's fun when you're ten years old, but it's just not practical to make a blanket fort every night when you're in your mid-twenties. And I don't know about you, but this Super Villain to be needs some beauty rest every once and a while. If this doesn't mean mattress, I hope you won't mind the aforementioned blanket fort being erected every few nights.

2-We would be looking to occupy our new Lair on June 1st, but may be able to negotiate an earlier occupation... say May 15th? Petty details to be determined at a later date.

3-We survive mostly on a diet of bacon and coffee. Like 'The Oregon Trail', but with less dysentery and fewer snakebites. On the occasion we are not making the kitchen smell like a breakfast oriented greasy spoon, we'll likely be cooking an elaborate family meal. You see, minion, we like to cook. And when we go all out, we go all out. So hopefully you like to eat. It's not every day, but about once a week I fall back on my plan to take over the world by feeding everyone in the vicinity entirely too much delicious food. This plan always backfires, because I too fall prey to the food coma. But I never stop trying. Persistance is the key to World Domination. (Don't worry though, my food coma always drains the villainy out of me long enough to do the dishes.)

4-Google Maps shows us that there is a German deli next door. How is the food?

I will contact you tomorrow evening (later today... did I mention that like all good Villains, we're primarily nocturnal?) to discuss a viewing of the property and perhaps the fitting for your uniform and jetpack.

-Lori
loriology.blogspot.com

When we awoke the next morning (and by that I mean afternoon) I checked my email first thing, and discovered a response that had arrived only four hours later.
Dear Super Villain in Training,

First let me say that I am truly sorry the little toe callus has taken over your existence. It seems that you may not have been nearly as evil previous to its appearance. And interesting to note that any number of small Thai or Vietnamese women could be your kryptonite!

Now on to your pertinent inquiries.
Bed… check
Early check in… check
Bacon & coffee… check and check
Others cooking… check
Me eating…. Check
German Deli…status unknown due to shortness of time at current location

Here is the not so skinny.I moved into this place on the first… furniture, over all, has yet to join me. (Although it may by the 15th) What is here is your bed and a small coffee table in the room.

This having been an office between its last time as a residence and this… closet space is, well nonexistent. To that end there are wardrobes in our futures. Sadly, Ikea does not sell the ones with Narnia inside, despite my continued protests to customer service and the UN.

Feel free to call at any hour, if I answer I am awake, if not my vm is always up for a chat.

I am the founder of Ellipsis Anonymous, by the way… We meet every Tuesday and Thursday in my imagination.

As far as my henchmanship goes, I find that I do better at crafting my own hijinx. I think it best we consider a Super Villain alliance rather than a minion hierarchy. I’m not built for tights and jetpacks inevitably scorch my ass.

Last note as far as drawbacks of the place.. the one thing closet sized in the building is the shower. No tub and a shower that may have come from one of those Japanese coffin hotels. The ones where the bed becomes a shower, becomes a storage unit? Yeah… well... it is upright though so that is a bonus.

I don’t have much in the way of recent blogs to let you know about me, but as you are a writer this may help instead, being a bit more personal than a blog. (Not a bad review site either, btw)
[Then she gave me a link to an uber cool review site called Urbis]

It’s my birthday.. yay me! Rent my place so I can celebrate! LOL

I called immediately, even before I got a cup of coffee, and made an appointment to go see it that night. She and I ended up chatting for ten minutes after we set up our meet time.

We arrived about ten minutes past the time we'd discussed (Lori and Boyfriend standard, unfortunately) and called to let her know we were near. She guided us to the little side street behind that leads to the parking, and we met the dogs. There was a nice sized, fenced in porch, and a massive garage. A little bit of a yard for the dogs to play in. The back of the house holds a decent sized kitchen with a ton of counter space. There are two large living rooms, and the room for rent was the back corner of the house. About 8'x13', which was a massive improvement over the Chinatown closet we looked at. A business is run out of the front of the house, and the living quarters are in the back. Within two blocks there are multiple grocery stores, 24-hour pharmacies, bars, amazing smelling Italian places, the library, the post office, and a police station. Factor in the fact that it was all bills included, (cable and wifi part of that) we got along with the roommate, and there were pets that I got to play with... well. I tried to do the 'let us think about it' thing, but after about fifteen minutes it was obvious that this was the fit for us.

We hung out with our soon to be new roommate for another twenty minutes, then ran to one of the nearby grocery stores to pull out cash from an ATM to make a deposit.

When we left the band house, we told D we'd be back in half an hour or so to make dinner, so told him not to give in to the frozen pizzas calling his name. (All of the guys love when I cook big meals for them. They're musicians. Food is one of the primary ways to earn their affection.) Needless to say, D was happy to see us when we arrived two and a half hours later. I made a greek meatloaf that night, humming to myself, happy with the security of a deposit down and a lease signed, five days before we had to leave town for Tulsa. SUCCESS!!

MIA

2010-06-22T21:44:00.000-07:00

I haven't forgotten about you my lovelys. I've just been super busy with this whole 'moving halfway across the country' thing.

I've got posts coming soon, I promise. =)

-Lori

Captcha!

2010-05-22T02:24:00.000-07:00

It's Friday.

I'm on vacation.

I've been drinking.

I'm not fall down drunk. I'm not even time warp drunk. I'm "comment on obscure friend's and relatives' facebook pages" drunk. And apparently, that includes blogging drunk.

So I just commented on a friend's blog. I really like this blog. She was one of the first people to follow me that wasn't related by blood or marriage, and she's doing almost exactly what I'm doing, though hers is a few countries away instead of a few states. I completely admire her bravery, and the fact that she's willing to risk everything, and trade all familiarity, for love. Good for her! What I'm doing is far easier (I don't have to learn a new language), but sometimes when I miss my family, or my friends, or completely feel like a drunken little fish out of water, I check my blogger dashboard to see if she's posted something. She posts nearly every day, which simultaneously makes me feel like an inferior blogger, and makes me ridiculously happy. I love getting little insights on her life by reading her blog. I literally stood up and danced around in a circle when I found out her Boyfriend had become her Husband; I was so happy for her. I feel like if I met her dog, he would jump up on me and smother me in gooey doggy kisses. Such is the world of blogging, I suppose. Making friends around the world that you will never meet.

I'm off on a tangent, however. The point of this blog is not how much I love Sara in Le Petit Village, but how difficult it is to comment on her blog after a couple of beers.

Boyfriend and I are going through the same thing, right now. The reason we are both having so much difficulty/fun doing these things, is because there is simulated inebriation to go with the actual deed. He is trying to play Grand Theft Auto 4 while drunk, while I am trying to be social, via Blogger. It's much the same. Simulated, computer generated drunkeness... processed through actual human drunkeness. Because it's Friday, so why not?

He has taken his character out to socialize with an Irishman (so he took him to a bar), and I have commented on a favorite blog of mine. Why is my activity the same as fictionalized drinking with an Irishman? His is straight forward. Mine is subtly malicious.

I bet you can't do it. I bet you were going about your business, reading your Lori-blog, when you were side-swiped by this strange and unexpected challenge to your theoretical manhood. So go ahead, I'll give you time to look over the materials and chug a few drinks, and then be thwarted by the difficulty. I know I was. I was like, "La-dee-da... I'm, catching up on blogs and commenting on funny things" and then, POW! My friend's blog side-swiped me with a Captcha.

I don't know if you know what a Captcha is, but it's from the Devil. Straight from his horny little red desk. Imagine taking this:

And turning it into this:

It may not seem so daunting sober, but... Holy shit. When you've had three or four beers on a Friday night... yikes. It's undulating and wavey. You're trying to focus on it and, BAM! it's moving. Not only is it hard to read sober, but give it a try with a few in you. I dare you.

It's a normal, every day word (or pair of every day words) distorted far past every terrible imagining. It's some simple vocabulary word skewed until it is no longer recognizable. Sober! Imagine taking a comfortable High School vocabulary word like "intermittent" or "perfunctory" and letting the Devil twist it around until it looks like it's being sucked into a wormhole.

And then imagine trying to make drunk people do it. Take a normal looking word, and put it through your Photoshop's Drunk Filter. I was staring at Sara's captcha, trying to make the words hold still long enough to type them. I remember a 'p', and an 'h' afterwards... but for some inexplicable reason I became hungry for pizza right after that, and everything's been a blur.

Captchas are supposed to stop bots from trolling through the internet universe and dropping ads and stealing precious personal information. Since Blogger has Captchas, all it tells me is that robots are roaming wild throughout our blogs, and that captchas are their only kryptonite. These little word traps, these curvy, tripsy little traps are preventing bots from flooding our blog comments with Viagra selling sites.

Cause, you know, that's the worst the internet has to offer.

Apartment Hunting: Chinatown

2010-05-10T15:52:00.000-07:00

I know I said I'd post the kidney infection/stone episode next... and I'm sure I'll get to it. But I figured I should also post the apartment search.

We got back to Seattle late Monday night, which I guess is actually Tuesday morning. It was about 4am, and I was driving while Boyfriend manned the iPod and G and D slept in the back. (Boyfriend and I had slept all day in the van.)

Once we woke up Tuesday afternoon, I began my hunt. We originally wanted to find a room in someone's house. We figured we'd have to share a bathroom, but we'd also have use of a real kitchen and living room. We're also terribly shy, so we figured if we could find some cool housemates, it would be built in friends, and then we wouldn't feel like such anti-social losers.

But the recent turmoil with G and his wife made me want something a little more secure. I crunched the numbers between what I have in savings, and what Boyfriend usually makes in a month, and decided that if we could find a studio apartment under $500 a month, we could afford to keep it while we were away on tour. That way, the few possessions we have (as well as G and D's) could be kept somewhere safe, and be there when we returned from the next tour (which is slotted for August-October.)

I kept looking for both rooms and studio apartments, because I also figured if we had cool housemates, we could afford to keep the room over tour, as well. By Wednesday evening every inquiry I'd sent out about renting a room to a couple had come back negative. Of the dozen or so I'd sent out, every one said single occupancy only. Most of the ads flat out state as much (I didn't email those.) I stumbled across an ad on Craigslist for a studio apartment for $401 a month, with free parking in their garage if you signed a twelve month lease.

I was IMing my dad on Facebook at the time, and told him about it. Within a minute or two he had done the dad thing and looked up reviews and whatnot. It wasn't the greatest neighborhood, not surprisingly, since it was smack dab in the middle of Chinatown. Ok, well, fine. It's $401 a month, and the 'shady people' that live in or around the building (as it criticized in the review) may very well be what a lot of people think of Boyfriend and I at first glance. Long shaggy hair, mostly black wardrobe, not used to sunlight... I could see how people would interpret us as threatening (as very many people in MidWestern WalMarts did.)

And one of the reviews of the building said that the former owner (an ex-Nun) was murdered by one of her own employees. That sounds so Days of Our Lives-ish that it made me want to see the place even more.

Honestly, I wouldn't mind living in a bad neighborhood, as long as I wasn't living next door to a methlab that might blow me up at any given moment. I'm not stupid enough to go out alone late at night, or pull wads of cash out of my purse in plain view. I realize that we're poor, and 9 times out of 10, Poor = Bad Neighborhood.

I called and made an appointment for us to go look at the apartment for Thursday afternoon, before Boyfriend had to go to work. We arrived in Chinatown, found a parking space about a block away, and arrived just in time for our 4:00 appointment. The air was drenched with delicious smells, and my stomach took no time in reminding me how terribly hungry I was. My craving for Lo Mien was almost debilitating.

The building itself was a little over 100 years old, but didn't look to be in poor condition. The red brick exterior was obviously aged, but looked awesome. I have a soft spot for historical buildings, though, so I'm probably a little biased. All of the windows in the front were whole, none broken or boarded. There was an electronic key pad by the door that you had to use to open it. The neighborhood may not have been the best, but at least the building knew it. We were let in by who I assume was one of the managers, and asked to wait for the woman we had our appointment with. No big deal.

Boyfriend and I did notice, however, that the residents coming and going did look a bit shabbier than we usually do. But hey, who are we to judge? Maybe they're awesome people, just down on their luck. Maybe they're starving artists, living on as little as possible to do what they love. You never know. The idea of spending our first lease together in a shabby, historic apartment building in Chinatown was starting to become a little romanticized.

The woman we had our appointment with finished showing around the people she was with, and took us up the tiny, rickety elevator to the third floor. The halls were a creamy colored plaster, with dark wooden doors and frames. The floor was the same dark wood, but had obviously lightened from decades of foot traffic. A long stretch of carpet ran through the middle of the halls. She opened the door to the first apartment and the first thing I saw was what looked like a spacious bathroom. I thought it might not be so bad after all. Then I saw the rest of the studio 'apartment'. It was about the same size as the spacious bathroom. The toilet and shower were on the immediate right, but with no separation from the rest of the room at all. There was a bit of open space between the door and the 'bathroom', but it seemed gargantuan and out of place when compared to the tiny bit of actual living area. I would have guessed it to be about 8' x 8', but my brain may be shrinking the dimensions retrospectively. It might have been as large as 10' x 10'. Regardless of the dimensions my memory gives it, it was still a very tiny room with a full sized refrigerator, cabinets, a sink, and a hot plate crammed into it. Probably the same square footage of the van we were just living in, sans benches and two other musicians. And it was tile. All tiny, varying shades of brown tile throughout the entire 'apartment.'

As Apartment Lady was pointing out the amenities, she mentioned the price as $425 for that unit. We made small talk about the small apartment, but she was perceptive enough to realize that we weren't really digging this unit. Maybe she looked at the size of the room, and at the size of Boyfriend and I (6'3" and 5'11", respectively) and guided us to a second unit down the hall.

No, our hair is not tangled together.

This one was visibly larger, but still far too small. The 'bathroom' area at least didn't waste space, but there was what looked like a big water heater on a shelf over the toilet. If we did live there, I would be constantly imagining the apparatus crashing down on me and smooshing the life out of me while I did my business. Not cool.

This is what toilets look like in Chinatown. Shut up.

Then, while Apartment Lady was talking about this one, pointing out the view from the window (which made the rest of the room look smaller by comparison), mentioned that this unit was $525 a month. Boyfriend and I made nice, but got out of there as quickly as possible. Obviously, the ad on Craigslist was referring to the broom closet on the fifth floor, not any of the studio apartments left for rent.

We decided not to waste the 45 minutes we had left on the parking meter, so went to Uwajimaya, which is apparently a world famous Asian Supermarket I'd never heard of. (Thanks, homeschooling.) We got the ingredients for dinner, poked the funny looking fish in the seafood section, and splurged on some Red Curry in the food court area.

The first looksie at an apartment might have been a dud, but at least the afternoon wasn't.

Cranberry Sauce

2010-05-05T14:08:00.000-07:00

Last night I dreamt about Cranberry Sauce.

I was searching frantically through this big high school, where all the children looked to be about ten years old. I ducked into one room, and it was the kitchen of the home I grew up in, post-house fire. I resumed my frenzied quest for cranberry sauce, but either the cupboards were empty, or all I could find were cans of whole berry, which as everyone knows, are totally disgusting.

So I woke up uncomfortable (my back is still a bit achy from the Kidney episode I have yet to blog about), and slightly dream-mad/frustrated, to the sound of a toddler screaming. Boyfriend, however, was a champ. G's step son had made us both stir. Boyfriend kissed the side of my forehead and asked, "How are you feeling?" (He's doing really well with the whole Lori-is-sick thing.)

To which I replied, "My back's a little achy. And I dreamt of cranberry sauce."

And Boyfriend sleepily mumbled, "There's some in the pantry," and snuggled closer.

So now I have a snuggly Boyfriend next to me as I blog, and a can of Ocean Spray Jellied Cranberry Sauce chilling in the fridge. Life is perfect.

Sunny Day!

2010-05-03T22:05:00.000-07:00

Okay, today is not so sunny as this is our second day in Oregon. So it's lovely and rainy and gray. Exactly the way I like it.

But it's a happy day for me. I got to sleep in a bed last night, got pancakes and orange juice for breakfast, and got to take a shower before we hit the road. Best of all, my back didn't hurt this morning when I woke up. (The blog about the kidney stones I suddenly got in AZ will follow sometime this week.)

It's also the first day since we left AZ on the 30th that we haven't spent all day driving, so I was able to get online. I know we survived as a species for millions of years without the internet, but I can't manage without it now. I feel better now that I've had some connectivity.

And what should I see when I log on but that I have two new followers! The loverly Sara Louise in Le Petit Village has awarded me the Sunshine Award. I was also given this award by Jinxie back in February, right before the start of tour, so I never got around to doing my awardy duties.

According to Jinxie, I'm supposed to pass this on to twelve people. Twelve seems super daunting and I'm supposed to be running the merch table right now. But I'm blogging. It's what I do. Sara, however, didn't list any rules. So since I'm pinched for time I will pass the two awards I've won on to only two other bloggers. But bloggers who always make my days sunnier.

The first will go to my other blogging cousin, Sara, for her blog Succisive Thoughts. She's one hell of a writer, and her blogs weave humor into her social observations.

The other recipient is going to The Bestest, Abbi for A Plethora of Lessons I've Almost Learned. Her writing is witty and poignant, showcasing her never ending quest of self discovery. On a list of people I'm privileged to know, Abbi's right at the top.

Murphy's Law

2010-04-19T11:26:00.000-07:00

Of course, the day after I post a blog bragging about how nice my skin looks now, I wake up with the biggest zit I've had this decade.

And since this is 2010, that means I have the biggest zit of the millinium.

I had one about a year ago that was so bad I started carrying concealer in my purse (I'm basically a dude with boobs, so this is a big thing.)

This one is worse.

Basically, I woke up with this on my chin;

Iowa: Good for my self-esteem and not much else.

2010-04-18T21:48:00.000-07:00

I promise I will eventually write a blog about how much fun tour is. It actually is a blast living in a van with three guys. A stinky, flatulent, perpetually hungry and thirsty, stupidity laced blast.

This blog is not about how much fun it is.

Sorry.

We left South Dakota and headed for Northwood, Iowa. A tiny little town on the Minnesota/Iowa border. Boyfriend and I were trying to nap in the back, since we had to leave right after the show and do a good portion of the driving to Missouri. Of course, being in close proximity and generally lacking privacy, we did more High School necking and less sleeping than we should have.

The guys all agreed that it was the tiniest town they'd ever played. It was white picket fences and a downtown that seemed to have been built between 1910 and 1950. And then everything had stayed that way. The police station was on the corner, and the plaque on the side of the building proudly proclaimed that it was an historical building, built in 1909.

The bar they were about to play in had a similar plaque, this one displaying the year 1912. The year before my parents' house was built. Needless to say, it wasn't as well taken care of. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Perhaps I should let the pictures do the talking.

Northtinywood, Iowa. It looked like a model train layout. (That hairy fellow, by the way, is my special friend.)

When we parked behind the club/bar, the boys headed in while I stayed outside in the Ogre and put on my shoes. I was also secretly trimming my toenails while they weren't looking. Every few cities I sneak away or let them go in somewhere without me, and I stay in the van and do something girly, just to remind myself that it's not all about poop jokes and making fun of inferior musicians. Sometimes I'll tweeze my eyebrows, or put on makeup. Just as I was exiting the van from my personal girly time, the guys were coming out the back door.

G was the first to address me, "Ready for the scariest load in ever?"

This flimsy, rickety, visibly crooked beast was how the club wanted the guys to load their equipment in.

This scary ass staircase was metal, but not anchored to the adjacent brick wall, except at the foot and top of it. So as you were walking up, it swayed away from the wall. There were two posts underneath the upper landing, each with places for four bolts. Each support only had two. The entire thing was also slatted.

So not only did you feel the space between the slats under your shoes, you could see exactly how far you were about to fall.

Looking back on these pictures, it seems that the photos didn't quite capture the sheer terror of being on this red monster. Not only did it wobble left and right while you were walking up it, some of the steps were squishy. I don't know what physics regulated the universe that this Scarecase was built in, but in my universe, metal is not fucking squishy.

I know this is just holding the padding, but at first it totally looks like part of the staircase from hell is being held together with duct tape.

I took this video for two reasons 1.)When/If the Scarecase collapsed, the guys would want to laugh at it later on youtube and 2.)I would want proof for the lawsuit so we could win money. Pizza and hotel rooms every night on tour. Definitely worth the broken bones, right?

As you can see, no such unfortunate event transpired. Nevertheless, the night was still full of building quirks that made me and Boyfriend raise our eyebrows. I think it's best to let the pictures do the talking, here.

Did I forget to mention that the Stairway of Doom had electric wires hanging over the landing?

Yes, that is a board nailed to the floor. It's covering the hole that goes down into the first story.

I'm pretty sure the women's upstairs restroom doubled as a storage closet. Also of note; urine on the floor. How does a girl miss the toilet by that much?

Is that the baby changing table?

The greasy, dirty kitchen towels that cover the window in the "ladie's" room. The door knob was also not attached, just kind of sitting in the hole...

The "locking" door on the downstairs bathroom.

The building felt like it was going to collapse around us at any moment, but then there were the people...

I'd like to take a moment and say to my readers (however few your numbers) that I mean no offense if you're from Iowa. Maybe not all of Iowa is like this. In fact, later that night we stopped at a Village Inn and had one of the coolest waitresses ever. But this tiny little town seemed perfectly worthy of my ridicule.

The men varied from redneck to mediocre looking frat-boy wannabe. The women, however, are what made my night. I was easily taller than most everyone, but I towered over the women. I'm 5'11", which is kinda tall, but I was in flats, and I'm pretty sure I was slouching at the beginning of the evening. I stood up straighter, however, when I realized that I was also the prettiest and the thinnest woman in the bar.

Those of you that know me in person know why this is a triumphant, happy moment, and not a pretentious or mean spirited one. I've recently become a size 14 after spending most of the last ten years as an 18 or 20 (thanks, living in a van!), and my skin's relatively cleaned up (even though I live in a van), and my hair's been looking rather awesome since I got it done right before I left Tulsa. In summary, I feel pretty. But looking at the short, round women in Iowa with their non-descript or pug faces made me feel like a supermodel. Granted, there were only four other women in there at the time. There were about twenty guys, though, and when I walked downstairs they all turned and looked at me. It was glorious. Like a scene out of a romantic comedy. Three of the women looked me over, but then decided quickly to ignore me. The one that looked like a middle aged poodle with wire rimmed glasses was the only one that had the nerve to shoot me the stink eye for a while. I think they realized faster than the local men that I was there with one of the long haired musicians, and therefore off the market.

But I was floating for the rest of the evening.

The band, however, was not so lucky. The sound guy had no idea what he was doing, and the crowd stayed mostly downstairs. Not much merch was sold, and some drunken idiot tripped and spilled their rum and coke (at least that's what it smelled like) in the merch box and soaked most of the CDs. The club paid them less than a hundred dollars, which wasn't terrible for a small town, but it didn't help the mood. Needless to say, we split as quickly as possible and started the seven hour trek to Jefferson City, MO, stopping along the way to pick up a 30-pack for the boys and for some pancakes after the beer worked its magic.

It was a waste of a night for the band, but it sure did make me feel better.