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.