But this. I remember this. I want this.

The more I become involved with blogging, the more obsessive I get and the wider my circle of “Blogs I Read” becomes. Metroblogging Seattle, Seattlest and Slog are all great about linking to other local blogs to point-out interesting posts around our community of bloggers. We’re all self-sufficient, for the most part, so why not support each other? One local blogger, Gluten-Free Girl, recently got married and Seattle Metblogs posted a congratulatory link to her wedding post. I skimmed through the post, mostly because it was long, and mostly because I don’t know this person enough to read about her wedding. However, at the end, a thoughtful commentary about what she remembers most about her wedding caught my eye. With dating and relationships always on my mind, I thought it spoke well to what I, and most of my girl friends, want. Plus, it’s so beautifully and eloquently written with love that it made my day a little bit more sentimental and bright. Enjoy…

I have so many memories of the wedding. Well, quite clearly. There are a hundred dozen more that I could never record here. It’s all too elusive, like the light slipping from the sky outside the window as I write this.

But this. I remember this.

I was never a girl who imagined her wedding. I never wanted to be a princess. I never imagined my gown or fixed on how everything should look.

In fact, for much of my life, I never thought I would get married. Not that I didn’t want it. I wanted it. But all through high school and college, I felt like the ugly duckling. Plump and ungainly, a bookworm in vapid southern California in the 1970s and 80s, I just never thought I could be loved.

Even when I grew out of that phase, slowly, I didn’t have much chance to meet good men. I didn’t go on my first date until I was 21 years old, and even that was awkward. (Now I know: how could it not be?) I fell hopelessly in love with every young man who seemed to have a decent brain and made me laugh. For awhile, life seemed an endless array of hopeless crushes, all deeply felt and unrequited.

And then I was a teacher. No single man crossed my path for years at a time.

When I lived in New York, I made up for lost time. Flings and big relationships both. Finally, I felt like a woman. I let go of the notion that I could never be loved.

But I was in my early 30s. Easy predictions in the media said that a woman had more chance of being hijacked by a terrorist than marrying in her late 30s. I grew indifferent. It would never happen.

And then I was in a terrible car accident. And in pain for nearly two years. And then I grew sick with celiac.

And then I was reborn.

After I was diagnosed, and went gluten-free, I felt it in my gut: I needed a year to myself, to be with this new self, before I started dating again. I met the Chef four days to the year after I had been diagnosed.

And then I was reborn again.

But through it all, even in the years when I thought it would never happen, meeting that man who would love me entirely, there were moments I believed. And it always happened when I heard Stevie Wonder’s “For Once in My Life.”

Throughout those years, I danced. In my living room alone. In clubs in New York. In the car as I drove to where I needed to go .Whenever that song came on, I danced. And immediately, I always imagined playing it at my wedding, dancing with that unknown love.

And then I would cry.

At our wedding, the Chef and I danced to a slow song, something meaningful to us. Truly, it wasn’t much more than the seventh-grade shuffle. We didn’t care that everyone was watching us.

But the second song on that mix? “For Once in My Life.”

When I heard the first few notes, I thought I would start crying. But the Chef grabbed my hand. And he started twirling me.

There we were, in our own back yard, on the green lawn, everything green light and trees, that blur of green that can only come when you’ve given yourself to the world and you don’t mind which way you are spinning. And we twirled. I lay out my arm to the side and let the force of the spin take me, whichever way I would go. I felt his hand in mine. I twirled and twirled, faster and faster, laughing.

I looked down at my red cowboy boots, spinning quickly. I saw the grass brush the hem of my dress, staining parts of it green. I didn’t care. I was dancing with my love, after a lifetime of dancing alone. With his hand in mine, I could give up gravity for a moment, give up knowing the best way to be, give up all those hopes and dreams. And just dance with him.

I saw of blur of faces around me, snatches of color. People I loved, someone with a question, a face open wide in laughing. I felt his hand, and I danced.

We laughed, and we danced, to the song I always imagined at my wedding.

And in the end, it feels like that is how life will be, with him. A sometimes dizzying spin of images: the smell of great food in the air, people we love gathered around us, the feeling that we might fall. And we will go around and around, again and again, in a circle that feels different each time, but not really. Sometimes, I will want to close my eyes and not take in so much. Sometimes, I will want it all to slow down. Sometimes, I might worry that the song will end.

But through it all, in this whirr of brilliant, beautiful images, in the middle of this twirling circle, will be the feel of his hand in mine.

Currently Feeling: A ulcer-esque nagging stomach knot. Blech. Too much drinking? Not eating properly? Too much coffee? Who knows.
Currently Anticipating: Little Miss Sunshine at Redhook Brewery tonight with everyone!
Currently Loving: That I’ll be basking in 90-degree weather this weekend.

Welcome to sunny seattle!

Looks like that goal of living in Sydney, Australia with Sarah by this time next year is looking sweeter and sweeter…

Currently Feeling: A little hung after six tall cans last night on the green.
Currently Anticipating: Sushi dinner with my dolphin sister and cousin tomorrow and bowling at The Garage with Justin Lawson!
Currently Hating: E-stalking.

meat cake!

In my current state of looking-for-a-new-job postmortem boredom (that just sounded nice), I’ve found some amazing things on the Internet lately. Seriously, I think I’m addicted to the Internet. The first one I discovered today. Look at this cake:

Looks fantastic, eh? Would you say buttercream frosting with raspberry glaze? Maybe a cinnamon-flavored cake? Or perhaps marzipan?

Nope. Guess again. It’s a Meat Cake!! It’s made of meatloaf with mashed potato icing and ketchup glaze. Freakin weird, eh? Read the thoughts and process behind it here. There’s even a whole meat cake gallery. Apparently, meat cakes aren’t as uncommon as one would think. I just about barfed when I first realized what it was, but then after reading the ingredients, it sort of made me hungry. I could eat mashed potatoes for the rest of my life! (And be fat.)

The second great Internet find of the month is ICanHasCheezburger.com, where I endlessly laugh. How can it get any better than a Gene Simmons ferret?

Currently Feeling: Anxious to get off work and start drinking before DOTL.
Currently Anticipating: Justin Lawson coming into town this weekend.
Currently Reading: Suite Francaise for the book club at Queen Anne Avenue Books.

Thursday’s Fun with YouTube

Please find me a man who can speak this eloquently:

(Semi-attractive Chris recites the lyrics to T-Pain’s Buy U A Drank)

Currently Feeling: Weirdly unsatisfied with summer.
Currently Anticipating: John’s birthday party/Stephen’s going away shindig tomorrow
Currently Loving: All my newly acquired running buddies. Nothing like a little motivation!

I want to evolve organically

I can’t tell you how unsettled I am lately with some peoples’ life-partner choice. Is it just me, or is the world full of 80 percent bad couples and 20 percent good? I can honestly only think of maybe three couples who I’d want to model a relationship after. Now that we’ve been out of college for three or more years, it seems everyone is in the race to find someone they can settle down with or tie the knot with their long-term college sweetheart. A lot of people measure their success by plus or minus one and can’t move on from a relationship that’s terrible, while everyone on the outside is going, “what the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

I feel like some people just have relationships fall into their lap and are bouncing from one commitment to another. Frankly, it gives me the heebie jeebies. What happened to healing, discovering yourself and your mistakes, and waiting for something genuine to come along? Maybe I’m too picky and know what a great relationship is supposed to feel like, so I’m less likely to kangaroo myself into a new one every six to eight months. I’m what I’d like to call a Healer. I need a healing period after dating someone. A little Man Break. A time to collect my thoughts, figure out what happened, and just forget the whole stress and hubabaloo for a minute before picking up the pieces and moving on to the next one. It’s becoming increasingly more real to me that I probably won’t be getting married before I’m 30. If you would have told me that a couple years ago, I probably would have grabbed the edge of the couch to brace myself and breathed deeply into a paper bag. But now, I feel it’s much more realistic than settling.

However, I’ve been known to get occasionally down on myself for the whole “perpetually single” thing. But then I rationalize my life Carrie-style, and say, “I have a great job, apartment, car, friends… “Why does one-minus-a-plus-one feel like it adds up to zero?”

Good point. It shouldn’t. But, sometimes it just does. Can we chalk this up to societal pressure of what a successful person or woman has—the perfect, successful relationship?

Today I ran into a celebrity quote from this month’s issue of Cosmo. Celebrities. Wow. What a junk show. They’re in bad relationship from bad relationship, entering rehab, getting DUIs, puking up their food, flashing their va-j-jes. Why should I listen to what any of them say? But, this one struck close to home:

“I think women get caught up too much in having a plan – I’m going to get married at this age; I’m going to have a kid at this age – and then they just try to find a guy who will fit into that picture…I don’t want my life to be based on that. I would rather it all evolve organically.”

Wow. That’s it. I want to grow. I want to never look back with a life of regrets. I never want to say, “What if…” I don’t want a cookie cutter life, nor do I want to run away from anything out of fear.

I want to evolve organically…

Currently Feeling: Frustrated with the job search. I’m feeling REALLY impatient.
Currently Anticipating: DOTL tonight. So super serially excited.
Currently Loving: The dog days of summer.

Neighborhood Battle

Ahh. Summer. It’s that time of year, finally, where windows in your house are constantly open, the fan is drug out of the hall closet, and it’s necessary to sleep in only what’s necessary.

For me, this newfound, bedroom-window-wide-open state of sleeping has led to another summertime gem:

Neighbor Sex.

Ewww.

I hadn’t noticed it before, but my bedroom window faces out to the street, and my neighbor’s bedroom window faces toward my window on the side of our building, (the two walls form a 90-degree corner). Basically, this puts our two windows mere feet from each other. Even Stella is a little disturbed by it, and took up meowing and staring from my windowsill to theirs every time they talk or make noise.

I first discovered this new Neighbor Sex when I came down from our rooftop patio late last week after having the “I’m just not that into you” conversation. I was lying in bed, trying to figure out how I felt—sad or complacent—when I heard the moans. Ok. That’s always a little weird. I mean, we all have loud sex, but who wants to hear others doing it? It’s just creepy and gross. It’s bad enough when you overhear your friends or roommates, but it’s even grosser when you overhear people you don’t even know. And let me tell you how fun it is to hear passionate lovemaking when you’ve just been dumped.
Jerks.

But last night was seriously over the top. It was way more details than I EVER needed. For instance, I heard their conversation before they got nasty. I heard him tell her she looked pretty (did she put on some skimpy lingerie?!), then I heard the moans…both female AND male. But, for the male it was more grunts than moans. And I heard bodies slapping. I mean, really, slapping, breathing, grunting, stopping and changing positions, moaning and then the finale.

I felt really, really violated. I was in my own bed…where else was I supposed to go? And I was reading and didn’t have a movie to watch, so drowning out the sounds with the television was out of the question. And no way was I going to shut the window! I would have melted to death by morning.

This, my friends, is a conundrum.

I’m sure it’s going to continue. And I’m not going to sleep elsewhere or shut the effing window. So, I’ve decided that I’m just going to have to beat them to it. I’m going to have to have the loudest, grossest, most detailed sex ever…hopefully when they’re listening. And we can have a f*ck-off.

That’s right. I’m challenging my neighbors to f*ck-off.

Currently Feeling: Sad and bored without Amanda or a boy toy.
Currently Anticipating: Drinks on the Links starts tomorrow!
Currently Reading: Twilight: a 14-year-olds book about love and vampires. (Weird.)