And watch as your heart speeds up endlessly
And look for the stars as the sun goes down
Each breath that you take has a thunderous sound
Everything, everything’s magic
Just sit back and hold on, but hold on tight
Prepare for the best and the fastest ride
And reach out your hand, and I’ll make you mine
Everything, everything’s magic
In the last two weeks we’ve kissed the old ranger goodbye and replaced it with a super shiny brand-spankin-new civic for the husband so that I’ll stop having anxiety attacks about him driving for extended periods of time, in the dark, in the rain, or by himself. Stella is erring on being intelligent to the point of being creepy. I swear her and Corona are reincarnated people that would have been my best friends had they actually been people during this life time. I timed how long it took me to read four 800 page novels…18 hours…room for improvement. I finally got my Sorrento back, with a brand new drivers side door…I really hated it being gone for a week. I spent the night snuggled up on the couch with Skyler and Stella and every time I opened my eyes, Alex had contorted himself into a new shape on the floor with a heart breaking little smile on his face. We stumbled across a gypsy sign that should be making it’s way to my front door, if a certain someone knows what’s good for them. Alex surprised me by telling me about my Christmas present…I teared up at how thoughtful it was…then bombarded him with kisses. Other than that, we’ve been slowly hacking away at my many projects and just kind of sitting back and absorbing these slow days for all they’re worth…I’m trying to focus all of my available energy on Alex and unconditional happiness…the two go hand in hand.
Tomorrow we’re going to jet off to the keys before the crack of dawn and race the sunrise.
Maybe we’ll let the sunrise win.
Hopelessly I’ll love you endlessly
Hopelessly I’ll give you everything
But I won’t give you up
I won’t let you down
And I won’t leave you falling
If the moment ever comes
It’s plain to see it’s trying to speak
Cherished dreams forever asleep
Hopelessly I’ll love you endlessly
Hopelessly I’ll give you everything
But I won’t give you up
I won’t let you down
And I won’t leave you falling
If the moment ever comes
Written in that book of love
Does it say your name above
The name by which they call me
And is it written in liquid red
‘Cause nothing else will do instead for reassuring eternity
My mind’s such a sweet thing
I wanna do everything
What a beautiful feeling
Crimson and clover
The last several weeks have involved, in no particular order, a volcano cake, a free new bed frame, making an art project out of an old yellowing Dali print, starting my job as office manager/marketing guru at Julestarz, making floppy bunny masks with 5 year old ballerinas, making plenty of questionable decisions in Orlando (but everyone was a fan of the apple cup), Alex and I having casual conversations with each other while sleep talking, stella hiding Corona’s food bowl at night and hiding it very well, dollar margaritas every wednesday with the trio, one minor car accident, and a rapidly growing pineapple plant.
And I tracked down a 1970′s record player in St.Pete, so Sheehan went with me (and my gun) to pick it up and low and behold…there was a liquor cabinet too! So we loaded it up in the rain and dragged them back to the casa for painting , just in case my to do list wasn’t already big enough. We’ve already started inheriting old LPs…The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Cheech & Chong, Cheap Trick, REO Speedwagon…we just need a new needle to make the magic happen.
I’ve been spending massive amounts of time mulling over the instinctive way Alex and I love each other…how we were always so close, right there…just out of arm’s reach, waiting but not realizing. The night he walked through that door was deafeningly significant and we unabashedly tried to fight it…but it was out of our hands by then. Every decision afterwards was fluid, second nature. Everything was right and made sense, even if at times our future may have seemed convoluted, irrational even. When true love makes its grandiose entrance, it’s overpowering, immobilizing, making sense of chaos, burning a warpath through tears and raw gripping emotion. And the revelation sets in that this person, the most perfect in a never-ending parade of faces, is the very bane of your existence, the culmination of every tear, of every laugh, of every second of happiness, every breath.
It just doesn’t seem fair that some people may live one hundred years and never feel that all consuming ache in their heart.
Dream if you can a courtyard
An ocean of violets in bloom
Animals strike curious poses…
They feel the heat
The heat between me and you
-when doves cry
Our weekends are always the epitome of awesome. Always.
Friday night we went out to a fancy schmancy dinner and I sported my gypsy necklace so everyone within miles would hear us coming. I concocted a new drink, now and forever known as “bad ass sherbet”, out of the remains of Madre and I’s leftover frozen drinks. Then we hooped and hollered our way to Sweetbay where Alex and I chased each other around the store in cheap old straw floppy hats and I found a $1 cup that looked like an apple. Brought said apple cup to the free concert at Park Square where Julie and I reunited and danced to 70′s songs and harassed our favorite war vet.
This would be my view of Park Square…and exactly why I love our neighborhood.
We spent Saturday 40 miles off shore fishing for all kinds of monsters and beasts to drag out of the deep.
A Beautiful sunrise and a handsome husband made waking up at 4 am well worth it
Husband made my new sardine friends talk to me, since I was clearly not going to stop talking to them.
No one ever believes that I can bait my own hooks and catch my own fish and that guts, blood, and scales don’t get to me. Lord have mercy on the soul who tries to step in and take my fishing pole to ‘help’ me reel in a fish. I GOT THIS.
I got more fish than the boy, but his were bigger. And he rocked the floppy hat until it went sailing away on an adventure all its own.
This is the spot where I made a cave out of polka dotted towels to hide from the sun. The waves rocked me to sleep and when I woke up we were under siege from a torrential down pour…with no land in sight and thunder in the distance. We ran from the storm and kept on fishing and on the way back in I was assaulted by fishing hooks, weights, rods, and a bag full of salt, which that husband of mine found hilarious.
Sunday was lazy and perfect and Alex rescued Julie from being attacked my an overly intoxicated step-mother-to-be in at the pool and Madre & Padre gave us their old 4 poster bed frame to add to my list of summer projects…I’ve got big plans for that sweet little bed. Then we packed up a cooler and the trio cooked out at Matt & Cori’s and we watched movies and played games and the babies slept.
and I swear I saw a hundred rainbows.
I don’t think I’ll ever stop being amazed by my husband and how smart and funny and adorable he is. Everything he does makes me giggle like a little girl. Even the most mundane things are exciting and wondrous since we’ve been together. Falling in love with him was kind of like an awakening, a great life epiphany, where everything was suddenly beautiful and made sense and realizations about life started going off like firecrackers. All our days are golden…in some way or another.
I aced my final yesterday and when I turned it in my professor raved about how much she loved my marketing project. She went on and on and on in front of the whole class until it got pretty embarrassing. The business I did the marketing plan for is also the business where I’ll be gainfully employed during the week as an office manager starting in August. And it’s my friend Julie’s performing arts academy in Fishhawk so not only do I get to hang with my bff and her poodle all day, but it’s literally 2.5 minutes from home. And the hours are amazing…12ish to 6ish or 7ish. That means productive mornings and all my nights and weekends with that gloriously handsome husband of mine, exploring, adventuring, laughing, cooking, and loving.
Corona’s cold is officially gone and now I get to scrub snot off the lower 1/3 of our walls today. Never am I ever taking those two to the vet at the same time again. They both freaked out when they got separated and Corona is entirely too protective of Stella and I when other dogs get close in an unfamiliar place.
Stella’s first bath. She loved it…after she stopped being really confused.
While Sheehan was here for the weekend he made fun of my 70′s amber rooster candy dish…”you like that thing…?” So he gifted with me with a 70′s green bunny candy dish that all the girls made fun of him for having.
I love it. He made my day when he called me to tell me he had it waiting in the car for me.
He even threw in a bonus bunny magnetic notepad. SCORE.
We booked our hotel in Key West a couple weeks ago…literally right off duval street. So the first night we’re going straight to duval to do the bar crawl…one picture, one drink, and a souvenir from each. Then we’re going to romp about Mallory Square where i’m going to make my boy dance with me while the sun goes down. Then we’re going to see Kit at Angelina’s pizza place and I’m going to show him some wedding pictures and do a lot of catching up. In the 80′s my mom and dad’s band used to be huge in Key West…so we’re going to their old stomping grounds to carve our name next to theirs in Rick’s. All through high school I swore I was going to move there as soon as I graduated…but our little trips are more than enough. Then the next day we’ll spend stopping at all the roadside beaches and weird little hangouts on the way to Long Key to spend a few days with grandma and grandpa. I made grandpa give me his word that we will spend one day deep sea fishing in the go-fast boat and one entire day snorkeling in all the little coves we scouted out when I was little and have a sunset dinner on the boat under the bridge. And he’s already started picking up ‘weird’ wine bottles for me, so it’s going to be interesting. It’s kind of hard for grandpa and I to stay out of trouble with grandma as it is. And I’ve been mentally preparing for my inevitable battle with the devil cat. I will come out victorious.
When I was little my dad found this song and played it for me in the Taco Bell drive thru. He said “this is your song…listen to the lyrics.” And then he broke down every last word and lyrical meaning on the way home.
A couple years later I went into a desperate little frenzy to hear it and literally tore apart our living room trying to find the cd…I went through thousands of them but never found it.
So dad burned me a copy when he was done gallivanting around Europe.
And this is my song.
“32 Flavors” Ani Difranco
squint your eyes and look closer
I’m not between you and your ambition
I am a poster girl with no poster
I am thirty-two flavors and then some
and I’m beyond your peripheral vision
so you might want to turn your head
cause someday you’re going to get hungry
and eat most of the words you just said
both my parents taught me about good will
and I have done well by their names
just the kindness I’ve lavished on strangers
is more than I can explain
still there’s many who’ve turned out their porch lights
just so I would think they were not home
and hid in the dark of their windows
til I’d passed and left them alone
and god help you if you are an ugly girl
course too pretty is also your doom
cause everyone harbors a secret hatred
for the prettiest girl in the room
and god help you if you are a pheonix
and you dare to rise up from the ash
a thousand eyes will smolder with jealousy
while you are just flying back
I’m not trying to give my life meaning
by demeaning you
and I would like to state for the record
I did everything that I could do
I’m not saying that I’m a saint
I just don’t want to live that way
no, I will never be a saint
but I will always say
squint your eyes and look closer
I’m not between you and your ambition
I am a poster girl with no poster
I am thirty-two flavors and then some
And I’m beyond your peripheral vision
So you might want to turn your head
Cause someday you might find you’re starving
and eating all of the words you said
