Friendships for what they are to me, what they could be, and what they aren’t

Today I wrote a guest post for Just a small town girl… The blog author, Mandy, runs a series every Friday called “Lasting Impressions” for stories about best friends, lost friends, childhood friends, celebrating friends – basically anything you want to write about friendships. I wrote about how special my friendships are to me, and how hard they are to let go. And the dilemma I feel faced with a lot lately – How do you let a friendship be for what it is in the past and what it might never be in the future?

You can go over to Mandy’s blog to read my post, or yah know, don’t. After all, guest blogging allows me to be a little bit more anonymous, and therefore honest since not everyone reading knows me, so if you want to leave me floating in Mandy’s anonymous part of the blogosphere, that’s fine by me.

xoxo
Je

Home Court Advantage

[This final guest blogger is actually a journalism nerd friend from college who's been blogging at Word Is Born since 2005. That's like super early in blog time. Unless you're Dooce. Let's be honest, he might be the reason I started blogging in the first place. But that still doesn't mean he's "Gods Gift to Blogging," as he likes to call himself. *Groan* But ladies, he's male. So of course he needs our wise wisdom and advice since we are the Alpha gender. Could you imagine your boyfriend's parents (or perhaps your ex-boyfriend's parents, if you're single) coming to stay with you for TEN DAYS. Not eye, said the Blind Mouse. Huh? Is that the saying? Anyway, help a brother out. How can Paolo survive 10 days with his new girlfriend's parents? (Even if they are proclaimed angels). ]

I’ve been dating my girlfriend, Amanda, since July and it’s been a wonderful whirlwind of a relationship. By December, I spent Christmas with her family at her hometown in Indiana (I’m from and live in Seattle) and I purchased a home in Tacoma that we’re moving into later this month.

Last week, Amanda sprung upon me that her parents bought their plane tickets to Seattle, which is great and something we’ve planned for.

“Sweet action,” I said. “When are they coming?”

“April 29,” she replied.

“Cool. How long are they staying?” I asked, assuming we’d entertain them for a long weekend, which is the standard parental visit term in Washington State.

“Um, I think they leave May 9.”

Whoa. I wouldn’t expect my own parents to stay 10 days (nor would I allow it)! Parental visit terms must be extended in Indiana.

“That’s cool,” I replied calmly, masking my anxiety.

No matter how great you get along with your girlfriend’s parents, and I love these people like family, there’s still an uneasy instinct about entertaining them. This has been the case since the beginning of time. Surely Adam was scared shitless of Eve’s dad, God, which is where the term “God-fearing man” originated.

After my initial shock, I had to remind myself that I am GOOD with parents. I am that not-so-edgy, polite young man that mothers pray for and fathers can tolerate. It’s always been that way. I can remember that sometimes the least awkward part of a high school dance was waiting with the parents while my date spent extra time finding the right bra for the dress, covering up tan lines, or contemplating if wearing the matching shoes would be worth the blisters.

Also, I’ve got home court advantage. This is my house, after all, and I can control the environment of the visit — When we eat, what we eat, where we go, when we go. You want to watch 60 Minutes? Sorry, we’re watching Lost!

I can set up traps for rooms I don’t want them to be in… Home Alone-style: “This is my house, I have to defend it.”

I really should be more optimistic though. Amanda’s parents are absolute angels and they’re coming over to help us renovate. In fact, they’ve promised to complete a house project for my birthday. They’re not playing against me on my home court — they’re on my team. And, they’re fixing the rim at halftime.

Still, this will be a long 10 days. It’s tough hosting anyone for that long, right? Amanda’s parents only see her a couple weeks a year and it’s a long trip from Indiana, which justifies the trip duration. We owe them, too, as we stayed at their house for that many days — three of them without power — over the holidays.

I just need to stay focused on my game and prepare the house and myself, FTW.

For more short stories, rants, photography and other delights, please visit Word Is Born, authored by God’s Gift to Blogging.

Do Not Drink and Shop Online

[This wonderfully hilarious post is brought to you by Katie from Don't Call Me Kathleen, and I think we might be blog twins because my regular readers should know, I am famous for drunken mishaps and Baby Jesus loving. So she couldn't really have done any better, picking a story to fit into my little corner of the Interwebs. Here's a quick background story to show you how dumb I can be sometimes (even though I claim to be the smartest shizniz eva) - when Katie contacted me about guest blogging, I went to her blog to read a little bit, thought her blog title and tagline were pretty funny, and went to write her back. I think I must have quickly glanced at her email for her name, and wrote her an email back with, "Hi Kathleen!" Yeah. Biggest brain fart of 2009 so far. Anyway, I read this post last Monday morning after she sent it over, and it freakin made my morning. I hope it makes your Monday morning too...]

Driving. Texting. Shopping.

These are normal actions that we all do daily. But, slap the word drunk in front of any of these words and you have a few phrases that have almost guaranteed negative results. You could end up in jail, having sex with you ex boyfriend who you broke up with because he had herpes, or worst of all, buying something ridiculous.

You’re thinking to yourself; “Shopping really doesn’t compare to Drunk Driving or Drunk Texting. What’s the big deal?”

Dear friends, I’m about to go Mother Goose on you, and tell you a wonderful story. Gather ’round now.

It’s worth mentioning that this wasn’t just any shopping. This was online shopping. This wasn’t shopping for anyone. It was for my Grandmother.

It was a cold and dark night. And by cold and dark, I mean I was drinking Guinness. I was having a wonderful time with some friends; catching up, laughing and having heart-to-heart talks. I opened up to them about my recent stay in Florida, and how it made me feel much closer to my Grandmother. Since my Grandfather has taken ill, she really has been under a lot of stress, and in some ways, I do feel that my stay there helped a bit. All of my friends suggested that I send a little something down, just to remind her that though I’m miles away, she’s still on my mind.

Their suggestion stayed with me throughout the night, and as I traveled home, I decided that they were right, and I was going to send something nice down to her. When I got home, I didn’t waste any time drinking from the bottle pouring myself a glass of wine and beginning my search for the perfect gift. I went through the traditional gift ideas; Flowers? Jewelry? Makeup? Gift Card?

Flowers would die. She has too much jewelry. She doesn’t wear much makeup. Gift cards are too impersonal. I was stuck. Then, it came to me.

She’s religious, she’s a die hard Catholic who watches the morning mass and says her rosary 3 times a day. I’ll get her rosary beads, or a statue or something! Fantastic!

Within minutes, I had Googled to a website that featured a handmade plaster statue of baby Jesus. I figured that my Grandmother could put it on her dashboard in the car, or maybe in her room on the nightstand. I went with white, though they did have a great selection of colors including purple, black and red. At an economical $35, it wasn’t too expensive, but I was confident that it was of quality material and wasn’t simply a hunk of sidewalk chalk.

I checked-out, and turned in for the night.

Fast Forward: 3 Weeks Later

I get a phone call from my landlady that I have a package. I asked her if it had a return address on it, and she told me it was from Divine Interventions. I knew then that it was my Grandmother’s gift. I wasn’t going to be back at my apartment for a few days, so I made a quick call to my father and asked him to go to my place, pick up the gift and reship it to my Grandmother. He was glad to do so.

When I finally made it back to my apartment, I came across my Divine Intervention Invoice that my father had made sure to leave me. I was breezing over it, and noticed the itemized billing section:

“1 BJ B-Plug”
“1 Jackhammer Jesus”
…

I don’t remember ordering a Jackhammer Jesus. I WAS intoxicated. Since it was for my Grandmother, I really didn’t intend on seeking a refund. I figured it was probably some sort of statue of Jesus building something. He WAS a Carpenter. But, wait, did they have Jackhammers back then?

While debating this, I saw the typo in the first product. “BJ”. Yikes! I started laughing. They made a big typo, and it was pretty inappropriate. I figured I should go to the website and tell them about it, especially since they’re religious folk. I typed the website into my browser. I stopped laughing.

I didn’t get my Grandmother a Statue of Baby Jesus.

I got my Grandmother a Baby Jesus Butt Plug. It was on its way to her house.

Lesson Learned: There are many-a things a wise man does not do while drinking. Driving, Texting, and Online Shopping.

Just in case you’re wondering, I was able to intercept the package and have it sent back to me. Come to find out, I also was accidentally given a Jackhammer Jesus, which is another sex toy.

Jesus should be in your heart, not in your vagina.

Sloshed in Seattle

[You know how I previously wrote that if you talk books with me, I'll love you forever? Redacted. If you talk drunken debauchery with me, I'll love you forever. Is there anything funnier than a good drunken story? A college journalism friend of mine, Cari from Flipflops in the Rain, might be somewhat of a fair-weather blogger, but the girl can drink. Therefore, I'll love her forever. She's shared some of her greyed-out Seattle memories here for us. And since it's Friday, go out and make some of your own funny drunken debauchery stories this weekend! Please?]

I’ve known Jeanna since college, but other than knowing that she always matched her shoes to her bags to her accessories, I didn’t know too much about her. It wasn’t until I started blog-stalking her that I realized how much we actually had in common. I could run through a list of boring similarities (We have fluffy cats! We love San Francisco!), but really, the most important thing to know is that we both like to go out, drink and have a good (sometimes ridiculous) time.

Lucky for me, drunken debauchery was one of the three stipulations to write about for this endeavor in guest blogging (an interesting proposition to someone who’s generally too lazy to post on her own blog). So, in honor of ThatsWhatJeSaid’s Seattle roots, I thought I’d pull up one of my own fabulous Seattle stories that rivaled the time Jeanna peed on a federal building – or perhaps the two times she almost burned her apartment down.

Except I can’t think of anything. Not necessarily because I don’t have any drunken stories that funny (although I don’t), but because I have a tendency to forget most of the awesomely embarrassing details from my nights on the town. This could be considered a good thing – unless of course you have friends that love to share your not-so-fine moments over and over and over again until you feel like you actually remember doing it.

So I decided to share a list, in no particular order, of some of the things I apparently did when I lived in the Seattle area:

• Fell asleep under a Pioneer Square bar’s pool table at my brother-in-law’s birthday party. (Pretty sure my family didn’t know I drank then, and they just assumed I was narcoleptic.)
• At the same Pioneer Square bar, jumped up on a bar to dance with my friends and immediately toppled headfirst onto the floor behind the bar, practically taking a bartender out with me. (He shockingly helped me up, made sure I was OK and made me another drink. For those of you not in the know, Pioneer Square’s not exactly the definition of classy.)
• Snuck a flask into a college event at Seahawk Stadium, got yelled at by an employee for doing so, yelled back and told her she was crazy, then ran away before she could confiscate my precious flask. (This is cooler when you consider that I was no longer in college. And even cooler when you know that my mom convinced me to buy that flask.)
• That same night, we crashed in a hotel room underneath the Space Needle, about 15 people deep. As soon as we all got there, I screamed, “I’m taking my pants off now!” and stripped. (I’ve got nice legs.)
• Got kicked out of a bar because my friends stole a fur hat (from a guy?!) and then placed it too close to a candle. (Who puts open flames around drunk people anyway?)
• Sprained my ankle dancing. Woke up the next day with no recollection as to how it became the size of a softball or why I’d slept with a bag of frozen peas. (I never went to the doctor because I was embarrassed he might think I was a drunk. I still have ankle problems.)
• Drank several bottles of wine with some friends, then got lost in the woods on a camping trip and became convinced a bear or wildcat was stalking us. (In my drunken self’s defense, this is an actual possibility in Washington state.)
• A lot of falling-asleep-at-weddings-and-in-random-places stories and running-away-from-friends-thinking-I’m-funny tales. (These ones have pretty much blurred together into one scene anyway.)

The moral of this story is… I miss Seattle. Even though I don’t quite remember it.

First Kiss

[Ah. The first kiss from that person who rocked your world for the first time and is sorta forever hard to get over. We all have one of these. Or at least I do. Lily from Lily Speak is sharing here with you a story of her first kiss, first love, first crazy butterflies and memories that are forever imprinted... I just started reading Lily's blog, which I highly recommend. She's a very wise, strong and introspective woman - my favorite kind. Oh, and she seems pretty freakin fun too. I'd grab a beer with her in a red hot minute if she weren't in Minneapolis. We could talk a bit about heartbreak, a bit about how COLOR is so much better than black, a bit about hippie yoga stuff, and then clink glasses and shout "I am WOMAN, here me ROAR." And on that note, I bring you Lily...]

I can’t believe how many details from that night I can actually remember. Or for that matter, the should-be bigger ones that I can’t. For instance, I know we were juniors, but I can’t pinpoint the season other than I know it was before prom, and I think it was after Christmas. So I guess that means it was late winter or early spring, but I really don’t remember.

It’s no wonder really that I remember the most minute and random little details about that night. I clearly remember the first time I ever even saw him.

Honors Chem, 11th grade, he was wearing the long-sleeved cross country team t-shirt with his last name on the back. I watched him from behind chemistry experiments and periodic tables until finally we were assigned to a group project together, and I actually had an excuse to talk to him and call him “about the homework” (instead of pretending that’s why I was calling).

Anyway, we became class-friends and our friendly and outgoing personalities led the way to some version of new-friend flirting. Eventually, we were hanging out sometimes. One night, a friend of his was performing in her high school’s One-Act plays, and we made the trek across the Twin Cities metro to see the performance with two other of our friends in tow.

Remember how in high school when you went to the movies with the boy or girl you liked, how you’d keep inching towards each other in your seats, in the dark, testing your limits to see if they’d lean in too or instead shift the opposite direction? Yeah, during the performance, we kept shifting towards each other, bumping elbows on the fighting for space until finally, as both our arms were crossed across our chests so as not to seem too obvious, his right hand found my left hand, sneakily, timidly, above the shared armrest. I remember the rush of feeling his fingers on mine. Of course, I’d held other guys’ hands before, but never ONCE had it made my stomach do flip flops like that. A perma-smile was now plastered across my face.

We exchanged silly, goofy puppy dog looks at each other after the show as the four of us walked through the school and back out to the car. It was a long ride home from ‘Tonka to the southeast suburbs, and I remember sharing the front bench-seat of his bright teal Pontiac Grand Prix. “She’s So High,” came on the radio, at which point he reached over and squeezed my thigh, then grabbed my hand again and held it the rest of the long way home. (You better believe this song STILL reminds me of that exact moment, as does driving at night heading east on I-494 between Highway 100 and France Ave, since that’s EXACTLY where we were at this second).

I can not believe I remember that.

Ok, actually I can.

Anyway, none of us wanted to call it a night at this point, so we decided to head back to his house to watch a movie. We stopped and rented “The Mod Squad,” and parked it in his parent’s basement.

The flirting continued.

We sat on the couch, him on the end by the table, me in the middle and kind of leaning his direction. As the movie went on, I’d inched closer and closer, leaning in a little further every couple of minutes. Too nervous to outright make a move, but too strongly attracted to everything about him to be able to stop myself.

At one point, our friends went upstairs to make popcorn and get sodas. The butterflies in my stomach started doing backflips as my fluttery heart anticipated what my head knew what was happening. I felt his eyes on me. I peeked over my shoulder, too nervous to fully turn and face him. I think he sensed this because he then started playfully tickling me (what an obvious and classic move, right?), and of course I then was twisting and squirming. Eventually, I found myself facing him, his arms around me, on the couch in his parents’ basement, with my pulse just absolutely racing.

I knew it was going to happen. He leaned closer. My pulse raced faster. Is this for real? Our eyes seemed to ask each other. He leaned closer again, his arms wrapped tighter, and finally it happened.

He kissed me. The kind of sweet, innocent kiss that stays with you because up until that moment in your life you’d never been kissed like that before.

And almost a decade later I still remember exactly how every single thing about this moment felt. How I couldn’t catch my breath, how his lips felt, how his eyes watched mine when we pulled back, the way he looked at me and smiled, how he held me even closer for the rest of the movie (like I was really watching at this point), and how he kissed me again as I left his house an hour or so later.

This wasn’t my first kiss, and I’ve kissed plenty of guys since. Too many guys, probably. But even in the actual relationships I’ve had since, the first kisses are sometimes fuzzy and no where near as memorable as this one was. Maybe because as I got older relationships started differently?

But this kiss? Is etched permanently in my mind, as are so many other moments with him over the years. If you’re curious, this very night started a short and very sweet thing between us, we went to our junior prom together, and then we got together and dated for real starting a couple of months into our freshman year of college. We fell head over heels in first love puppy love, dated for a couple of years, then as things go, we grew up and apart and have stayed very close friends ever since.

He was my first love in every thing that means: first kiss, first sex, first love, first heartbreak. And this moment on the couch with a crappy movie that we barely watched playing in the background, this is where it started.

Hasta la vista, baybay!

Okay friends, as some of you know, I’m off to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for a week to celebrate a Dolphin Sister’s wedding. I’m super excited to be on the beach next week, lying horizontally with a book and a drink. I might do a little horizontal lying in my room too. And a little horizontal stuff with my BF. That might be the extent of my trip, so I’ll spare you the recap post when I get back unless there’s a funny story worth telling. (I’m also reading the review copy of the giveaway book I previously mentioned while lying poolside all week, so stay tuned for that).

But, in the meantime, I worked hard to line-up some guest bloggers to fill my space here until I return. I’m super excited with the posts that have been written for this week. To those I approached or those who volunteered, I asked that their guest blog fall into one of three general categories:

• Drunken Debauchery
• Embarrassing Mishaps
• Dating, Relationships & Sex

One blogger responded with, “Sticking to your core pillars. Clever,” when I sent over the requested topics. Precisely. These are probably what I would consider to be my core blog pillars, so I thought it’d be best for my readers if the posts fit. Here’s what is scheduled for the up-coming week:

Lily Speak: A “Dating, Relationships & Sex” post that brings us back to the very first person who made you feel all butterfly-o-rific. Le sigh.

Flipflops in the Rain: An affair in “Drunken Debauchery” stories throughout Seattle. A woman after my own heart!

Don’t Call Me Kathleen: The trifecta with a post that encompasses drunken debauchery, embarrassing mishaps AND sex. Don’t miss this one.

Word is Born: Paolo needs to defend his honor, and nest, against invaders! Another “Dating, Relationships & Sex” post that is going to need your advice, so help a brother out when the time comes!

And of course a Mexico-related “Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! (Saturdays for Breakfast)” post – Yo Quero Bacon! where I will be going on a personal quest in Mexico for a special bacon product.

Have a great week without me, Interwebs! I might die from withdrawal during my week without you, not gonna lie.

Currently Feeling: Relieved to have all the roommate drama and switch taken care of before vacation.
Currently Anticipating: A week on the beach! Like DUH!
Currently Nervous About: Dying in a fiery plane crash. Or being stranded on an island ala Lost after we crash. Although, if that happens, please let a Jack-look-alike be around. Hot damn!