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!

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.

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.


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.


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.

As any of my close friends will tell you, I have usually bestowed my favorite little nugget of advice on them at some point; "Guilt is a useless emotion."

And it really is. The only time guilt does you any good is if it motivates you to make right the situation that is causing you to feel that way. If it's something in your past, then you can only change how you act moving forward. There's no way to undo anything. You just have to learn and grow and make amends. Guilt will only weigh you down and keep your mind rooted in the past. If, however, you're feeling guilty about something you're about to do... well. Then I would usually say, "Don't do it."

That's the pickle I find myself in. I'm sad about leaving my family. I'm sad about leaving my closest friend. But I know that with the social network era we live in, I'll be fine. We'll be able to communicate every day. It won't be the same, and believe me, I will still cherish the time I get to physically spend with them, but I know that our relationships won't suffer. I'm guilty, however, about the little girl I mentor.

Right after I moved to Tulsa, I got involved in a volunteer mentoring program at the elementary school by my house. For almost two years, she and I have met once a week and just hung out. In a weird way, I do consider her a friend. Sure, she's only 10, but I've known her for two years. I've watched her grow from an imaginative 8 year old to a clever 10 year old 'tween' (I hate that expression, but it fits here.) She was enrolled in the program originally because she was anti-social. She's the youngest of three children; her brother and sister were 28 and 18, respectively, when I met her. Her mother was quite old when she had her, and her father is not in her life. She knows he's a meth addict, and that's why he's not allowed to see her. Her grades were only average, though all of her teachers agreed she was a bright girl, and they told me she rarely played with the other children at recess. So you can imagine my surprise when they told me at our annual progress meeting that she was making friends, attending sleep overs, had gotten involved in her youth group at church, and all of her grades had improved to A's and B's. When our moderator told me all of the things she had said about me in her meeting, it actually made me cry.

Now you have to understand the gravity of the situation. Sure, I cry when I watch Grey's Anatomy. Sure, I cry when someone I like dies in a movie. In real life, however, I very rarely cry. In the last year, with the exception of my Godmother's death/funeral, I've cried four times about something real. Four! And I was drunk for two of those. Until yesterday, when I cried about leaving that little girl.

When I was in Seattle for the first time, I sent her cards and postcards while I was away. I've gone to Arizona twice since I've started mentoring her. The first time I brought her back a little refrigerator magnet puzzle in the shape of a sun, and the second a pencil in the shape of a saguaro cactus. Both kitschy, cutesy souvenirs. This most recent trip to Seattle, I couldn't find postcards until halfway through my trip, and the grocery store nearest my hotel had the tiniest greeting card section I've ever seen. There were no cheesy 'Thinking of You' cards, no adorable 'I miss you' cards. Nothing. Even the blank cards were overtly Valentine'sy. Roses and chocolates and hearts... excuse me while I vomit. So since I couldn't find any touristy postcards, I decided to get her a little souvenir. While Boyfriend and I were waiting for our Chowder place to open, we popped into a shop across the way and I found her a little teddy bear with a rain slicker. Her school does a ridiculously awesome sorting, like Harry Potter. (I'll have to ask her if there's a talking, mind-reading hat involved.) Their mascot is a bear, and there are five different kinds of bears, like houses. She's a Polar Bear. The little rainy day bear I got her is not white, but it is a pale yellow, so it's close enough.

When I saw her yesterday and presented it to her, she immediately started playing with the coat (which you can remove.) As we were walking back to her classroom, she held the bear out in front of her and said, "What should I name it?"

"I don't know. Whatever you want to," I said.

She danced the bear around in front of her while she thought, then said, "I'm going to name it Lori! It's Loribear." And hugged it to her chest... while a knife went through mine.

I haven't told her yet that I'm moving. I wanted to wait until the guys have their new van, so I'm absolutely, 100% going on tour. I don't want to tell her I'm leaving and then be like, "Just kidding!" The downside of this, of course, is that we're getting closer and closer to me leaving, so she won't have much time to get used to it.

Granted, most of these mentoring relationships only last one school year, so we're ahead of the curve. And I'm planning on sending her postcards and cheesy trinkets while I'm on tour. But it's not the same, and I feel terrible. This change in my life blindsided me. I always thought Boyfriend and I would just be friends; that our boat had sailed. I never expected to have feelings for him still when we became friends again, and I definitely didn't think we'd ever get together. It was such an unexpected twist. I thought I would be in Oklahoma for the rest of my years. I thought I would either find some country boy I liked enough and have a passel of kids, or spend the rest of my days writing and tending to my passel of cats. I thought I'd be here to see her go on to middle school, to high school. I fully expected to mentor her long enough to talk about boys and whether she should take art or driver's ed. I might get to do those things if we keep in touch, but it will be a lot more difficult now. And I feel absolutely horrid about that.

I think maybe I'll give her a stack of pre-stamped envelopes with my parent's address on it. That way she can send stuff to them, and they can send it to me, wherever I may be.

Damn... I just... wow. I'm dreading telling her. I'm so scared she's going to cry, and that'll make me cry. Or worse, she'll not cry. She cried around me once and tried her hardest to hide it from me. It was heartbreaking.

I am sooo not looking forward to this.