Yesterday the sky was black and the air was cold around us on the way to Scott’s wedding
We drank Sangria in our hotel room and the one misplaced ray of sunshine found it’s way to our balcony. We opened the doors and talked about important things while we awaited the trolley. We lingered in a little Spanish courtyard with the lights turned down low and the candles burning, bundled up in the fanciest coat I’ve ever worn, waiting for the ceremony to start.
And then it was dark. We sat at our table, with the manatee aquarium on our right and the lit up courtyard to our left. Our table laughed the loudest and longest and we danced in the courtyard under the brightest stars you’ve ever seen.
Dearly beloved was the hit of the after party and he made sure I didn’t fall asleep with my earrings in. Then he kissed my face and I drifted away.
Alex told me the second we stepped foot in our house for the first time that he hates naked walls. Loathes them. I hate hanging things just for the sake of hanging them. If it isn’t perfect – in all the ever changing ways I define it in my head – it doesn’t make it past the front door. I didn’t hang a single thing for 3 months. But when I did, it was this thing that everyone signed at our wedding.
That was a year ago. I’ve hung a hundred things since then and painted every wall, much to Husband’s divine satisfaction. The last thing I put on our walls was this clock. I took it apart and put it together myself. I can hear it ticking the seconds away all the way from the living room. The hands don’t move though, so it’s just always 5:00. I painted the numbers with furrowed eyebrows and Sheehan periodically peering around the corner.
It’s perfect. The grandmother clock next to it doesn’t work either. One room, two big broken clocks. I couldn’t have planned that better myself.
The next thing that graces our walls will be the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. Life size.
My heart literally ached for you several times tonight. I have this uncontrollable need to share every little thing with you that strikes my fancy. I think you would have loved this and I could have squeezed your arm and giggled with you and we both would have been happy, and sitting next to each other sparking electricity, and I could have added the image of you backlit by the lights on stage to the cache of things burned into my memory. But you were at home.
“Are people born wicked…or is the wickedness thrust upon them?”
Holy shit a m a z i n g. Julie took me to see Wicked tonight. Julie is my friend that cultures me and shows me new things…ballet…orchestra…musicals…poodles. We ate pizza and parked the clown car illegally and then we sashayed around in red lipstick and lace stockings. She laughed at me. I laughed at her. Everyone else raised their eyebrows.
The first Emerald City scene was my favorite. And then the engagement ball. I grabbed her arm both times. I couldn’t believe the set. And the lights. And the costumes. The costumes reminded me of Dr. Seuss, which means I adored them. I will never watch the Wizard of Oz the same way again and not think in the back of my head about what’s really going on.
Julie was almost on Broadway once. We traded the more often overlooked parts of our life stories on the way home.
I still think she could do Broadway. I’m going to make her sing to me.
This is my ballet costume. Julie laughed hysterically when I put it on. I will releve and tendu and plie all over the stage in this costume to Swan Lake and Mindy will be so proud.
Wednesday, 2/10: Dearly Beloved helped me pack our bags and in a flurry we rushed out the door and watched the sunrise from the car as we wound our way through traffic to the airport. We giggled a lot and told each other jokes and no one in the world could have distracted me from his face, lit up with laughter. He held my hand on the plane when I needed it…and eventually we landed in Dallas. We giggled some more and our laughter carried up into the air and exhausted, I fell asleep in my stolen window seat with Husband at my side, somewhere over Colorado. Soon enough, he shook me awake and I followed his gaze and silently watched the black and white ribbons of snow curl around the ground thousands of feet below us. We waited in the airport for our friends and I lied down in the middle of the airport on our suitcase that was bigger than I was. Eventually we found Kelly and Jerry and then Anthony made his way to us and we were off in our Jeep to race our way through the Enchanted Tunnel, to the mountains. We had dinner at Denny’s and no one contained their laughter when I leapt from the car and stood in the snow for the very first time. Our waiters were most likely high and one of them was scared of us. We ate our pancakes and laughed until we had the rapt attention of every single person in the restaurant while Alex told his Mongolian Grill story and Kelly lost her shoes. I curled up into a ball in the car and when I woke up, we were in Breckenridge, in the safety of our hotel. I snuggled with Husband and dreamt strange dreams.
Thursday, 2/11: As soon as the sun filtered through the clouds, Dearly Beloved was pulling me out of bed and to the balcony. In the morning light I held onto him and shook my sleepy head at the endless mountains and falling snow that he so desperately wanted me to see. We ate our breakfast by the hot tub, we had lunch at the Brewery, and then we followed the reggae as we walked through the ice to the bottom of the ski lift. Husband and I bid each other farewell and I was left to wander the streets, always wondering in the back of my mind if Alex was safe. I rode the gondola up and down the mountain surrounded by perfect silence and when I grew restless I wandered up and down main street. I found a sweet little thrift shop and played with the dogs, local art galleries and ice cream shops. I slipped on an icy bridge and fell, several times, and then I found rows and rows of ice sculptures just sitting in the snow. And somehow or another I got lost. And then I realized I couldn’t breath. But by and by I found our hotel and curled up in our bed sick as could be. Then in walked Dearly Beloved and he curled up next to me and we all watched movies while the snow fell outside our window. We drank smoothies at the Oxygen Bar and Anthony and I read about our documented High Altitude Sickness. Then two spanish boys made us sushi for dinner and Kelly whispered to me the whereabouts of an Enchanted Forest. In the shuttle on the way home, I asked the driver, “Is it always decorated for Christmas here?” …and he said yes.
Friday, 2/12: Before I was even fully awake, Husband came in from the balcony holding two pairs of shorts, icy and frozen. We laughed our way to breakfast and our long haired hippy waitress swayed around in her skirt and pig tails. It was decided early on that I would spend the day at the Enchanted Forest and coaster-collecting along Main Street while they went snowboarding down the mountain again. But I didn’t have a key back to the room, so I read my worn and weathered book and drifted in and out watching the snow coming down…and then in walked my Husband, missing a glove. So we went down to the slopes hand in hand, and Jerry pushed me on his snowboard and Husband and I began our everlasting bar crawl. We collected coasters and told stories and breathlessly laughed and drank new things and went to the tattoo parlor. We walked home and Husband made me a fox hole in the snow and we kissed and played until we were numb and frozen. And we had pad thai for dinner and we went to Cecilia’s where the bartender didn’t charge me and a boy taught Alex how to pole dance. We met Smullen’s mini me and got caught in the middle of a bar fight. At 3 in the morning we tried to walk home but it took forever because Kelly kept throwing glaciers at Alex and then he dove into a rock, mistaking it for the fox hole, and Anthony hid and tried to scare us. But we made it. And right when I was ready to dream my strange dreams for the third night in a row, Alex and Kelly decided to plan a covert mission to the hot tub. We almost got kicked out of the hotel. It was all the espionage I’ll ever need.
Saturday, 2/13: On Saturday we woke up late. We decided we wanted pizza so off we went to harass the shuttle driver. But before we had even made it to the elevator, Husband handed me a single, perfect rose and he gave me that look, the one where there is nothing in his eyes but me and us. And then he whacked me in the head with it. And then he kissed the top of my nose. I carried that rose with me all day, to the pizza place, to the art gallery where I discovered my second favorite artist, to the fire pit where we took a polaroid, to main street in the furiously falling snow. And then we went sledding. We crossed an icy river and I tumbled down a hill and Anthony taught me how to make snow angels while wearing his Elmo hat. Husband was the bravest and when the sun set and we couldn’t see anymore we made our way back to the hotel, desperately trying to breath in the cold. We went to an awful burger place for dinner and added more boxes to our rapidly growing array of leftovers. Kelly asked the shuttle driver if it was always decorated for Christmas…and he said no.
Sunday, 2/14: We woke up and Husband scratched my back without putting up a fight. We heated up all of our leftovers and ate them for breakfast. We packed into the car and drove into Denver to take Kelly and Jerry to the airport. But first, we stumbled upon some dinosaurs, but the snow covered up all of the fossils and the tour guide was old and the shop was lame and snow was cold so we left, disappointed to tears. We wandered REI, the mecca of all things outdoors and eventually made our way to the airport. The boys talked business things on the way back to Breckinridge and we stopped and went shopping with Anthony, laughing at the fancy labels, ugly clothes, and expensive price tags. We celebrated the Lunar New Year at a Chinese place and then Husband and I walked through the bitter cold to the Green Fairy absinthe bar. Labyrinth and Willow played on the tvs, the bartender told me all about absinthe and made me mighty large green absinthe concoction. We sat at our little table, just drifting and talking and loving, and we made friends with the old man who owned the place and the bartender gave us sticks of wormwood. There were green lights and a hundred different coasters and couches and fairies and I couldn’t think of a happier place. Even on Valentine’s Day, I couldn’t vocalize the butterfly-inducing perfection of my Husband or the depths to which I adore him. But he looked into my eyes and I’m quite positive he could feel it, if that makes sense. But that happens a lot, so Sunday was just a normal day, and we loved each other the only way we know how, the way we do every day. No sense in making a fuss with perfume and candy and things when you have that cataclysmic-star-crossed-true-love that until now, you’ve only read about in books. It just makes those things seem trivial and mundane.
Monday, 2/15: On Monday we started at the Brewery. And then Anthony went off to Copper Mountain and Husband took me ice skating. He held my hand and steadied me and he tied up my skates, just tight enough so that I wouldn’t fall. Everything he does, he does perfectly. I hobbled around the edges watching him gracefully flying across the ice, stopping only to help me. But despite his best efforts, showing me how to skate frontwards and backwards and spin and turn and stop, I fell. And I fell hard. And kids laughed. And I cried, as much as I didn’t want to. And my knees turned black and blue and Husband helped me off the ice and rubbed my knee and wiped my tears. He even humored me when I got back up and tried to keep skating. But you only kid yourself so much, so we walked back to the Brewery. Husband took a hundred pictures of me as we walked along and I slipped and fell everywhere I tried to stand. We had ice cream at the Brewery and met the nicest old hippie couple and we told each stories for hours and hours. Back at the hotel we snuggled and watched movies.
Tuesday, 2/16: Tuesday was lazy. We went to a museum inside a house from the early 1800′s, full of furniture and art and clothes and dishes. We saw pictures of the family that lived there. I imagined them in the house, sitting on the couch, playing the piano, decorating their Christmas tree, imagined where they wore the clothes hanging in the closet. And then, I heard just above a whisper, the old woman at the door telling some new guests that not a single thing was original to the house. Just a bunch of collected antiques from the 1800′s. I was so irritated I left. And then we found some little shops and we picked up some French wine and cheese and some chocolate with a love poem inside. We lounged around for a while, all classy with our wine, and the only thing that could have dragged us out of our warm room was the Mardi Gras parade. But we missed it so went to the Liquid Lounge instead and I held a tiny puppy named Banjo until his parents whisked him away. We played bar games and I found a whiskey poster and for the last time, we walked home in the falling snow.
Wednesday, 2/17: We woke up at 3 a.m. to drive to Denver and catch our planes. The snow glittered in the headlights and the Enchanted Tunnel was still enchanted. We had ice cream for breakfast and laughed a little harder, a little louder, a little longer than usual, soaring on our sugar high. Husband still held my hand on the plane and I counted the football fields when we flew over Texas. I danced outside the airport while we waited for Sheehan to pick us up, pleasantly embarrassing Husband. We marveled at how nice our warm, humid air is and how nice it is to breathe.
And the we went home.
All of the pictures will be on our flickr account very very soon.
I have a million things to say and not enough time to say them. Soon, though…soon I’ll get them appropriately written down and I’ll show you all the hundreds of things that have been cluttering my mind.
Yesterday was PukeFest 2010. Miserably sick all day long. Worst day of my life. There was one other time I threw up broccoli out of my nose – Alex and I had been dating for maybe a week and it happened in the Best Buy parking lot. He still held my hand. True Love.
I convinced the bartender at Wet Willie’s to serve up every frozen drink they had on a platter…for $8. Because I’m cute. And it was Sarah’s birthday. And I’ve been dying to do that for years.
We’ve been watching 3 shows lately: Lost, Dexter, and Weeds. My biggest concern: How can you be stuck on an island for 69 days and not run into any snakes? Where the hell are all the snakes??
I had a glorious shopping trip at IKEA. Stella ripped a huge hole in our white leather chaise. So I covered with a pretty blanket and gave her a kiss.
Corona ripped a huge hole in my leg. I punched her in the leg and did not kiss her.
Mom and Frank and Grandpa came over for dinner. I made them chilli. We ate at the dining room table.
I attended a super awkward baby shower. But I looked super cute in my goodwill dress, pink rose earrings, and fancy shoes. I made baby Wesley a onesie that says “I <3 Jamie”, except the <3 is a real heart.
Daddyo and Becka resurrected the Jamie Shrine and told me I deserve a rainbow maker. So for now, my rainbow maker is patiently waiting on their dining room table, but soon it will hang in our living room and fill our house with rainbows.
Roomba vacuums are dumb.
I am going to buy dark red curtains.
The dumpster fairy struck again.
Popsicle jokes are my favorite.
We had a homemade chinese food extravaganza with Madre and Padre on a whim one night.
I’m going to Orlando this weekend for Michelle’s birthday. We will be silly.
The boys are doing boy things this weekend for Smullen’s fake birthday. Because Smullen is our friend that has fake birthdays.
I’m teaching Caden how to high five.
We’re leaving for Colorado in one week. I will make snowmen and snow angels while husband skis and does other such manly things.
I may or may not have the most glorious Valentine’s Day gift for Husband of all time.
