September 2015

I’m sitting in a Starbucks not far from home but a little too far to be on foot after sundown.  This caffeine buzz should keep me moving though.  I’m just not sure which direction to move but I know I don’t want to go home. 

Every Starbucks is exactly the same no matter where are go.  I abhor the coffee here but tonight this has become a safe place.  It’s Philly.  It’s New York.  It’s College Park, MD.  It’s everywhere except North Carolina.  Oh yeah, and I feel like I’m 24 years old again. 

But I am 39 and I am in North Carolina.

Twenty-four "the first time" was near the end of Nashville, TN.  Those few years were truly some of the greatest adventures of my lifetime.  I moved there fresh out of college because I just didn’t want to go home.  I found a great little apartment in a nice gated complex and a great shitty job just up the street at a motel not far from the airport.  The only vehicle we could find that we could afford was a 3 year old Ford F150 with a manual transmission that I learned to drive on the fly when dropping off my boyfriend at work and having to get back home again.  We made nice with the neighbors and had weekly cook-outs and played pool at a local dive bar. 

Then I jumped out of a moving car to get away.  I didn’t want to go home so I packed a bag and flew north for 6 months.  In early September I headed back to Nashville with an ex-boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend.  We found an even better apartment on the other side of town with 2 bathrooms, 2 parking spots, a balcony, and a piano.  There was also lots of wine, lots of vodka, and way too much whiskey.

I got my job at the motel back and enjoyed the monthly visits from the TN Air National Guardsmen.  They brought me dinner, peach cobbler with ice cream, and all sorts of other wonderful treats.  One was particularly taken with me.  A very handsome nurse 16 years my senior with the most charming smile.  He would call the front desk and see what I wanted for dinner and place the delivery order.  He would have it delivered to the front desk, paid for, and would show up with a 6 pack in time to eat and chat with me. 

The rest of my time working there was very quiet.  I would sit at the table behind the front desk listening to the Top 40 radio station and watching people go in and out of the Waffle House next door.  I spent so much time alone there.  I treasured it. 

When I wasn’t behind that turquoise formica desk, my ex-boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend and I would cause whatever trouble we could.  We frequented  the local tattoo/piercing shop, we drank until we couldn’t stand up, and we partied until we passed out.

Eventually, I grew tired of all that and decided to go home. 

That’s when I landed the dream job I hated to love.  The job that I loved so much that I didn’t care how poor I was, I was just happy to wake up everyday and do it.  I parted ways with the ex-boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend and moved in with a new boyfriend.  He was, and continues to be, a vile human being but I pretended for a year and a half that he was ok.  The last six months I was afraid to go home and timed my arrivals to coincide with his departures and my departures with his arrivals.  My strength reared it’s head one day and I got out of there.  I found a new home in a fabulous dump of an apartment above a butcher shop. 

That was a home I never wanted to be away from.  Well, with the exception of the bug issues and heat problems early on.  Once they were remedied, we had a wonderful 3 bed, 1 bath shit hole with a party rooftop and a piano that looked and played as if it had been rolled down Oxford Ave and hit by a Septa bus.

Oh the parties we had there!  Friends were plentiful, coffee was always hot and ready, and the washing machine in the kitchen made for a great beer cooler!  The oven never quite worked there and my sister flooded the kitchen thanks to that washer more than a few times but things were always positive.  And when they weren’t, there was always good people to be with.

When it was time to move on I found a friend also in need of a place to live and a roommate, and a wonderful house in Philly.  It had a marble mantel, a big private backyard, a claw foot tub, a finished basement with a washer and dryer, and all the old character of a great Philadelphia row home.  I have never loved a house more than I did this one. 

Our mutual friend warned me to not move in together.  But I loved the house.  I’m not sure how long things were good for or how long they were bad but eventually, I was locked out of the house and there was an attempt to run me over with a car.  And again I got to the point of avoiding going home.  That’s about when I moved to NYC.

My road has been littered with not wanting to go home.  Tonight is the first time in a long time I’ve felt it.  If my car was properly working, I’d likely still be out and about instead of back on the comfort of my couch.  The air is stale in here.  No matter how much we keep the windows open, it doesn’t help.  I think we are both ready to pack up and find a change of scenery.  

The wrong side of the sunrise

Its common knowledge at this point, mornings and I don't get along.  My usual self is replaced with a clumsy, dim-witted, cranky imposter.  I put my clothes on backwards or inside out.  I spill coffee on myself and everything around me.  I misplace my keys that are in my hand.  I forget my lunch that I packed minutes earlier.  Sometimes it takes hours before I can function.  Sometimes the whole day goes by and the sun begins setting before the morning fog subsides and I feel human again.

To all the people who said I would get used to it and it would get easier, its been over a year, you were wrong, and here's a big "fuck you" to chew on:

FFFFFFFFFFF        UU                 UU              CCCCCC            KK                 KK
FF                            UU                 UU          CC                           KK              KK
FF                            UU                 UU         CC                            KK            KK
FFFFFFFFF             UU                UU       CC                               KKKKKKK
FFFFFFFFF             UU               UU        CC                               KKKKKKK
FF                             UU              UU         CC                              KK            KK
FF                               UU          UU           CC                              KK              KK
FF                                  UU      UU             CC                             KK                KK
FF                                     UUUU                  CCCCCCC             KK                   KK



                                                         UU                     UU
                                                         UU                     UU
                                                         UU                     UU
                                                         UU                     UU
                                                         UU                     UU
                                                           UU                 UU
                                                            UU               UU
                                                             UU              UU
                                                                UUUUUUU




There, I feel a little better.  :)

Early last week I got into my apartment complex's fitness room.  It's nothing fancy.... a few treadmills, a few ellipticals, and some random weight training equipment.  But its free and quiet.  I grabbed my 15 yr old iPod that was given to me by a best friend I used to have and that was filled with music by a business lady in a Florham Park, NJ hotel room nearly 8 years ago.  The iPod had been sitting silently in a box for about two years but I gave it a full charge and thought nothing of it.  I stepped onto a treadmill and pressed play and smiled as the first few notes started playing. 

The dusty memories started coming back slowly and stayed ghostly in the distance.  I suppose over the years the music files corrupted.  The vocals in the verses were no longer audible.  In some songs the vocals came back fully in the choruses and then slid out again during the verses.  In other songs only background vocals were there.  All of the songs were familiar but some of them took a while before I could remember them clearly.  This was my traveling on trains soundtrack.  This was my subways at 3 am heading back to Queens from Philadelphia music.  This was my "I have no idea what the hell I am doing with my life but I'm having the best time doing it" soundtrack.  It was the beautiful two years right around 2007-2009 that everything in my world was upside down but everything in my head was right where it needed to be. 

That was a very different life.  Very different.  I always had plenty of sleep but not nearly enough to eat.  I slept in my car, on trains, in business lady's hotel rooms, and occasionally on couches but I was never too sure where my next meal was coming from.  I liked it that way.  And I had a great job that I loved and a few solid friends that were there for me when I got tired of moving and just needed to sit still for a bit or talk to someone other than myself.  Or do laundry.

It was a very different life.

I live at the beach now.  I wake up everyday to palm trees and sand and the Atlantic Ocean.  Brown pelicans are my absolute favorite and I don't remember what regular non-salty air smells like. 

One day last week I peeled myself out of bed at twenty after 6 in the morning, before the sunrise.  Its all backwards.  I prefer my sunrises after impromptu late night road trips to see my favorite bridge in Delaware or after spending the night in a bar or a friend's garage 2 states away.  Sunrises look better while driving north over the Girard Point Bridge in light rain after having created an adventure out of an otherwise typical Tuesday night. 

I had an 8 am work meeting.  What a special kind of hell this is.  Three cups of coffee later the meeting finished up and I headed to a friends house.  We sat on the couch, put our feet up, and opened a few beers and eased into the day.  I'm still easing into that day and it's now nearly 10pm over a week later.  I can't get a hold on this routine.  Time and I are at war.  Its a war I have no delusions of winning, I'm just missing my tempo rubato movement.   

479 Days with central air

It feels closer to 11pm than 8.  The days are noticeably shorter and the nights are considerably colder.  Its not cold enough to put away the flip flops yet but I smell Thanksgiving in the night air.  The house is quiet.

On August 1, 1999 I made a promise to myself to do one thing every day that scared me.  I had spent my entire life up to that point following the rules and playing it safe and on that day I realized how stupid that was.  I made this promise with a stomach full of nothing more than a half dozen or so White Russians.  I made it quietly and without words or even acknowledgement of the room full of friends and family talking around me. 

My father died that morning.  He died with a heart full of "what ifs" and "I wishes" three days before his 59th birthday. 

The months that followed included a wide variety of activities that I did for the sake of "it scared me" or more so, the ideas of them made me very comfortable.  I pierced my tongue, twice.  I got my first (of many) tattoos.  I talked to complete strangers and went to bars and clubs that I'd never considered visiting in the past and took some crazy road trips.  It was all little stuff but at the time, and for the person I was, it was a string of big stuff squeezed into a short period of time.  Not much scares me anymore and when something does I reach back to that promise and go for it.  Life's a little boring from time to time without the internal struggles with fear.  My anxiety and panic issues are nearly gone.  My biggest adventures are just another day but in a wonderful way.  I continue to make things up as I go along and I barely plan anything, including my wedding day.

People always ask how we met, my husband and I.  I usually laugh and say simply, Facebook.  Facebook, the ridiculous social media site where too many people say too many things they shouldn't say in a public forum and the rest of the folks post silly and stupid memes and animal videos.  Most days I resent it for the negative and political crap I see scrolling through.  Yet, I still go everyday to check up on friends now hundreds of miles away. 

I tend to be a smartass and on this particular day, I was being just that on a friend’s post.  Never once did I think that the crap I was spewing would grab the attention of a man who would be intrigued enough to want to talk to me.  He friended me, sat quiet for a few days, and then poked me, repeatedly.  His interest was piqued enough via FB messages that within a few days we were on the phone.  Those conversations lasted hours and many hours of sleep were lost in getting to know each other.  A week after the first phone call he boarded a plane to meet me in person. 

I’m not entirely sure why I agreed to let someone I had never met stay in my apartment with me.  I lived alone and my neighbors weren’t the type of people I could go to if there was a problem. He flew in on a Monday night and waited at the airport over an hour until I finished work and drove down to pick him up.  It was late February and clear and dry out.  We had an easy winter that year, little snow, and it was cold but not bitterly so that week.  After a second pass around PHL, I saw him standing alone by the wrong airline pickup, backpack in hand, heavy leather jacket and knit cap on, smoking a cigarette.

The next six days flew by.  It was the typical courting dance with all-night conversations, laughing til our sides hurt, wine and beer, music, and countless Primos Milano hoagies.  I do miss those hoagies, roasted red peppers and fresh mozzarella on a fresh roll.  Even better was that it was a block from my apartment and I would come home from work to find a glass of wine poured and that hoagie on the kitchen table waiting.  He quickly learned the way to my heart was through my stomach! 

There really is nothing extraordinary to our story.  The timing was just right.  We were engaged three and a half months after meeting and married another five months after that.  It hasn’t always been easy but I don’t regret a thing.  I suppose that whole scenario should have scared me more than it did.  Sometimes I feel like I got to the point where fear bored me.  Its a waste of energy and time.  And there’s never enough time. 

It has now been just over 14 years since I made that promise to myself.  I cannot think of a thing I regret doing or not doing.  Although I call on that promise less these days, its still there when I need it and I can’t wait to see what I need it for next. 

Today

Yesterday was a bad day.

Today may have been a little worse but they are both over.  Now it's time to clean up what we can.

A wonderful woman, and friend, lost her battle with cancer today.  My heart breaks a little more every time I think about it.  That's the nature of losing loved ones. 


Two years ago I took myself on a little road trip adventure.  A friend had moved 500 miles south and I decided to go for a visit.  My week long trip turned into ten days and ten days turned into two weeks before I finally headed north again.  I stopped in College Park, MD to visit my cousins on my way home.  Many a get-away was spent in their cute little house on the dead end street a stones throw from the college campus.  I would sleep on the daybed that was as soft as clouds and smelled like fresh linen.  We would drink coffee lazily in the morning and venture out into the world around noon.  I adored those visits.

This particular trip found me arriving at their door after 8 hours in the car.  No surprise with DC traffic and an accidentally missed exit taking me through the center of the city.  Still, I felt rejuvenated after the vacation and car ride.  I washed up and took my prim and proper little cousin to a biker bar.

I had a few other friends in the area as well and tried making my rounds as often as possible when in town.  We met up with one friend at the bar.  It was one of his favorite watering holes.  There was live music that night and a 16 year old kid from France visiting and sitting in on guitar.  I was told on more than one occasion that I had to hear this kid play. 

Immediately after walking into the bar, a delightful 73 year old biker turned and catcalled ever so politely. My friend laughed and introduced me to Papi, one of his riding buddies.  Sweet and funny and just wanting some company.  "Not THAT kind of company," he said.  Just someone to talk to and go out and eat with.  Because I was "just so pretty and nice and laidback." 

His wife had passed 8 months prior and he just didn't want to go on living without her.  But "the good Lord obviously isn't ready to let me go," so he needed to "make the most of biding my time until I can be with her again." 

My cousin was smitten and certain I should befriend Papi and go on great adventures together.  We listened to music, drank a few beers, ate some food, and had a good time.  At the end of the night he showed us his bike.  "The Cadillac" of trikes, fully loaded and beautiful.  Next time I was in town I was to let him know and we'd go for a ride.

I never made it back for that visit.  Several months ago I got the news that he had passed.  He was finally back with his wife.  He was finally at peace and happy again. 

Today's passing was a much younger woman.  One no one was ready to say goodbye to.  I've known her for 34 years.  I've gone through school with her kids and as an adult worked with her and her kids in various projects putting on shows at our local schools and in a charity organization. 

She was always there with a smile, a hug, a little silk rose before opening night.  We'd go out for drinks after shows or just hang out at the pool.  She was a beautiful woman who left an impact on everyone who knew her.  She suffered immensely this past year.  I will miss her greatly but am happy she is no longer in pain.

We nearly also saw the end to something else less human but with a life of it's own this weekend.  Tongues can be sharp when paired with thoughtlessness.  Allow ego and self centeredness to join in and you have a perfect storm.  I can't say we all made it out of this one unscathed but we are out of it.  Commitments will be fulfilled.  Then things can end on our terms. 

Wouldn't it be nice if all things could end on our own terms? 
 

Once

I'm still a little jumpy when I hear an odd little noise on the other side of the room or think I see a shadow on the wall somewhere.  I always expect to see a giant roach running by or a mouse scurrying along the edge of the room.  It's still strange to lie in bed and not hear the scratching and running of mice behind the wood paneling that's no longer next to my head.  Change was in the air.  I had been saying it for nearly a year but I still wasn't prepared for what happened.  I wished for it on a hundred stars and still wasn't ready when it happened. 

I had a best friend once.  The greatest best friend ever for 20 years or so.  From piggyback rides through the halls of high school and late night mischief all over town to college and back.  By the time we were adults and back in our hometown we'd meet weekly for late night coffee sometimes talking until the sun was coming up. 

I'm not sure how long it's been.  He's married now.  So am I.  He always did get sucked into relationships, not calling or hanging out for months at a time.  Months have turned into years.  3, maybe 4 by now.  I'm pretty sure he's lost forever, with the others.

Change and I don't get along very well.  We never really have.  I prefer Time to Change.  It's easier for me to work with.  Plus, I can lie about Time.  I certainly cannot ignore Change.  Though I can close my eyes and ears and pretend for a few short minutes that everything is still the same.  That does as much good as lying about Time.

There's a kid here.  A fiery compact package of everything a singer-songwriter should be.  Every time I see him I'm taken back to Rhawnhurst on a January day 2008ish.  We played hooky and sat in the old man bar on Verree Road all afternoon.  Joe sat between us covering his toothless mouth while he told all his best stories.  "There's not enough time.  All you can do is love."  We walked out of the bar around 4 pm to the city streets carpeted with a lightly falling cinnamon snow. 

I wonder if tomorrow's snow will smell of cinnamon.

Tonight I spent some time with an old mutual friend.  It's been a while since I've heard some of her stories and they warmed my insides.  It's exactly what I needed to recenter my Self.  Hopefully it's exactly what I needed to climb into bed and sleep soundly.

11 28 13

Whoever designed this room (and whoever ok'ed the design) is an ass.  No human being can sleep in a room with curtains that don't close.  The light coming in is ungodly even at 3am in the least sunny city in the continental US.  I say this as somewhere in the next zip code, on the other side of this king size bed, my husband is peacefully sleeping.  By 4 am I was groggy enough to close my eyes again and the heating unit decided to make the sound of a passing freight train every time it kicked on.  No human being could possibly sleep with all that racket.

My husband stretches in his sleep, groans slightly and curls back up.

It is Thanksgiving 2013.  My grandmother is in from Greece for the first time in 2.5 years, I am freshly married, jobless, and in quite a pickle.  I'm sure by this time next week, things will be better. 

Pickles are only good when you can eat them.

5 am, my head is beginning to ache and my mouth is dry.  Although I'd love some conscious company, it would do no good for both of us to be awake right now.  My husband.  My husband of 12 days.  "How does it feel?" "Does it feel different now that you're married?"  Really?  It's supposed to feel different?  Did these married and previously married people feel any different when they got hitched?  Is it supposed to feel different?  The only thing that's different is now I have stopped asking him if he's sure.  Of course he's sure, and now we are stuck with each other.  I feel the same way I did 13 days ago and 3 months ago and 5 years ago.  The world is still the same.  Nothing has changed.  I wish certain things had changed, like my ability to get some sleep even when not in a soundless, lightless room.

There are members of my family that apparently are quite upset at the way I decided to handle my wedding day.  Apparently, the "my" in that sentence should be spelled "their."  I understand its that they just want to celebrate with me but there really is no compassion on their part that our ideas of celebrating this particular event are completely different. 

My day was absolutely perfect and wonderful.  Would I have enjoyed having more of our friends and family there with us?  Of course.  But we would not have been able to do it the way we did had there been more people.  It would have been an organizational nightmare not to mention an expensive day which would have, in turn, made the whole thing not perfect, not fun, not remotely something I'd look back on and smile about.  In the end, we pleased ourselves and isn't that what matters?  It was our day and it was perfect and I don’t regret a minute of it.  Nor will I apologize to anyone for it even though it breaks my heart that some people I love with all my heart are upset by it. 

I’m beyond exhausted now.  This is the first truly sleepless night I’ve had in months.  Well, there were a few all night phone calls back in February but that’s different.  It was nights like this back in Port Richmond I would surf the web and watch hulu until I drifted off.  Nights like this in Fishtown I would make 4am pancakes.  Nights like this in NY I would go to the roof and look out over Manhattan making up stories about what people were doing there at that moment.  Tonight I’m marveling in the sheer size of this bed and the fact that people can indeed sleep with light and sound and a blogging out-of-sorts woman next to them.  It’s all fair, there have been many nights where this was the other way around.  So it goes.

He has grabbed the sheets and covered himself which means he has about 2.5 hours worth of sleep left in him.  Perhaps it’s time I attempt sleep again.  Perhaps this time it will work. 

Sleep well.  Happy Thanksgiving.

beach living

It's that perfect time of year when we can open the sliding glass doors to the ocean and enjoy our morning coffee without sweating our asses off in the southeastern North Carolina heat and humidity.  I've been back to hot showers for the passed week though I have not had to turn on my electric blanket yet.  In fact, I feel the electric blanket days may be over.  May be.  It also occurs to me that I've slept in the same bed every night for 84 consecutive nights.  That hasn't happened since spring of 1994.

The ocean is rough today.  White caps as far as the eye can see and waves breaking  25 feet out pulling white foam all the way up to the shore line.  There is a crispness to the air though not bitter like up north.  It feels like fall but it's not painful.  My bones aren't beginning to chatter as they have for the past 13 years.  I want to bake apple pies and pumpkin tarts.  I miss my daily 3pm Dunkin Donuts pumpkin coffee on my way to the music school most of all.

I love autumn.  The way the smells hang in the air just a little better than any other time of year.  There's something wonderful about the smell of a food truck scrapple egg and cheese on a kaiser or a cheesesteak with fried onions.  The smell the passed few weekends on the boardwalk reminds me of my Oxford Ave rooftop.  I am sad to know Britts is now closed for the season and I sense a depression to living on the beach in winter creeping in.  Now I'm looking forward to my move into the city.

Almost every night this week I've been able to sit outside and play and listen to music.  This is a town of musicians.  The sheer numbers of them seem to match that of Nashville.  Everyone plays and/or sings.  Everyone.  The Nashville players are all monsters and the ones who are any less don't stay in town very long.  Around here, most of them are great players.  Some of them not so much.  But the love of playing is unequalled.  People here play simply because they love it. 

Friday night's stop was the first Irish pub I've been to since moving.  Although I find, like many other things down here, the term "Irish pub" is used loosely.  Still, they had Guinness on tap and it was the most Irish pub-by place I've been since Philadelphia.  I sat on the back deck they called a Beer Garden and listened to a conglomeration of local players and drank my Guinness out of an embossed pint glass.  My thoughts drifted to the set of glass Guinness tankards packed away up north.  And not so much the mugs themselves but the best friend who is packed away with them.  The term best friend is not used loosely here though it is a term of the past that tonight makes me mutter "sonuvabitch" under my breath. 

You really would have liked this.



"My life is very exciting now.  Nostalgia for what?  It's like climbing a staircase.  I'm on top of the staircase, I look behind and see the steps.  That's where I was.  We're here right now.  Tomorrow, we'll be someplace else.  So why nostalgia?"  ~Jeanne Moreau