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

519 Miles

I've been awake for over an hour now.  Since the first rays of sparkling sunlight started coming through the windows.  This is the last morning I will wake up in my bed in my own apartment.  I'm ok with that right now.  There's a beautiful cool breeze coming through the open windows, birds chirping, and the pre-rush hour hum of the traffic on I95.  I'm in love with these sheer golden curtains that I got years ago for my Fishtown Guinness themed kitchen and my giant aloe plant that now enjoys the sill that I've spent so many mornings sitting on with my coffee.  The apartment is beautiful today and I already feel twinges of missing it.

I hear him breathing, still sleeping, in the other room.  His feet are the only thing I can see when I turn and look in.  His feet.  Generic male feet peeking out from the futon.  They could belong to anybody but they don't.  They belong to the man I will marry.  I never thought I would utter those words.  I am shocked and awed. 

In about an hour the day, and this weekend, will start rolling and it won't stop until Monday evening when I arrive in my new home, in North Carolina.

"I hope you know what you're doing."

Yeah, me too.

Truth is, I have no idea what I'm doing but it feels right.  That's something right?  I'm happy.  I feel good about everything that has come my way these past few months.  Life threw a curve ball and I was ready for it.

It's time for contacts and a shower.  Target opens in 45 minutes.  I need packing tape and I need to finish packing.  48 hours until we pack the car and leave Philadelphia!

***

It's a good thing my mother sent my electric blanket and crocheted shawl this week, it's been a cooler than normal July after a wetter than normal June and I've been bundled up.  Wore jeans, a tee, and my hoodie tonight to the gig.... late July in North Carolina and I'm screaming "freezation!" to which he looks at me and laughs and shakes his head. 

It's now been a month since I left Philadelphia.  I've given up on my hair.  My once semi-tamed waist length perfectly spiraling curls have been replaced by a mid-length suffocating poof of curls that behaves as well as the 11 yr old son of a tourist at the condo's pool.  Or as my wonderful other said this morning, "It's not that bad." I flipped upside-down to shake it out of the bun and he followed with, "Well, before you woke it up it wasn't too bad.  .....still.... it's not quite homeless girl, 42nd Street-Port Authority."  Ahaha, well, this is how it's going to be with this southern coast humidity.

My big hair and I are famous here.  I sit at bars, in restaurants, alone, and strangers walk up to me, sit next to me, or put their arms around me and give me a hug and say, "Its so nice to meet you!  I'm ____.  I've heard so much about you, I feel like I know you already!"  I feel welcome.  I don't feel like a stranger.  I don't quite belong but I'm comfortable.

I have yet to see one of those spectacular sunrises over the ocean.  Every morning I wake up after the sun is high in the sky and the tourists are already flocking to the water.  The salt air is thick and I get to admire the ocean quietly through the sliding glass doors to my third floor balcony.  My car is now coated in a sticky layer of sea salt and sand, the windows completely hazed over and rust bubbles have started popping up on the hood.  Still, nothing beats the constant sound of the waves or the salty air and the sand between my toes.  And bless the brown pelicans!  I adore those beautifully ugly birds.

Northbound

My heart was pounding so loud I couldn't hear anything else and I couldn't breath.  I had to keep driving.  There were things I needed to take care of and I had put them off as long as I could.

Things Philadelphia has taught me: "one way" signs are suggestions so look both ways before crossing that one way street, traffic lights are optional especially when making a left off of Broad St, and sidewalks and center turn lanes can both be used as travel lanes or parking spots depending on what you need them to be. 

2553 miles to Barstow, CA

But I am not headed west.  I am going north.

I knew this would be happening for the past year.  It was just the details that I was unsure of.  Now everything is falling into place.

By the time I saw the "Leaving Cape Fear River Basin" sign I had a headache.  My heart didn't calm down until Goldsboro, NC.  Tori sang me songs of betrayal that I could no longer relate to but her songs of adventure sat nicely in the passenger seat.  Fear sat quietly in the backseat not making a sound.

Signs kept teasing me to turn around and head back.  Showing me all the roads that could take me to the place I started.  I fought the urge.  North.  About 6 hours to go.

I made it to the NC/VA border, to Roanoke Rapids, before I had to stop for gas and snacks.  By that point my breathing was normal and my insides were numb.  I can do this.  I was about to pull the rug out from underneath a whole lot of people who mean the world to me.  I couldn't find a care anywhere in me.  Even the love I had felt earlier that day and for weeks prior couldn't be found in that moment.  I gnawed on some turkey jerky and washed it down with Lipton Green Iced Tea.  I felt absolutely nothing.  Key back in the ignition, cranked the engine, and allowed autopilot to steer.  She went north.  It required no thought, no backlash, no explanation.

By the time I hit Richmond my backseat friend had moved from the passenger side to the center.  I could see the tips of his sticky-upy hairs in my rear view.  I ignored him and wished he would put his seatbelt on and leave me be.  He leaned over the center console and a wicked little grin lit up his face and I felt his hand brush my shoulder.  The rocks in my stomach moved around a bit and everything that had been falling into place sprayed up in the air and filled my car with dread.  North was suddenly the only direction to go.  I hit the gas.

Philadelphia healed me over the years.  It brought me home, taught me what home was, not a geographic location but a frame of mind.  It showed me who my true friends are and what the "job" of a friend is.  I learned the difference between freedom and indifference.  Love had become my best friend over the past 13 years though I still struggle with forgiveness.

Highland, MD couldn't come fast enough.  I stopped at the Twist 'n Turn and met up with a friend.  Just an hour and then I'd hit the road again.  Just one beer..... and some fries.... and 2 more beers.  Three hours later we headed back to his house, he opened the garage to his multiple bike projects carefully explained each.  I nodded and smiled pretending to understand.  For a moment I was whisked back to New Years Eve in that same garage staring at the same dismantled Harley.  It was colder then.  Much colder.

I hopped back in my car and reached into my glove box for the Monster I had stored in there over a week ago.  The first few vile sips stung my tongue with super sweet and poked me into post too-far-from-home gig mode.  130 miles to go nearly 12 hours after I left the house this afternoon.  Luckily, this is a drive I've made many times, several with very little to no sleep.  Philadelphia loomed ahead. 

By 3 am I cozied into my bed.  Alone.  Exhausted.  No longer numb or anxiety ridden and once again ready to take on the task at hand.