Remember How I Needed Music?

My boyfriend sent this to me in an email this morning. I immediately loved it because it was happy and cheerful and made me want to go get in the car and put the windows down and drive around in the sunshine.

Then he told me to read the lyrics… It was over, after that.

Here, just give it a listen and then a read:

All my life I had this funny little feeling
It came and went time and again with all my daily demons
Call it a deficit, an emptiness inside
Why is true love hard to find? Why does true love hide?

But now I found you and I know that we will be
So very happy, if you could only see
That I was made for you and you were made for me

The road in front of us is long and it is wide
We’ve got beginner’s luck, we’ve got it on our side
If you are willing, well, I think I’m qualified
And with beginner’s luck we’ve gotta take the ride

I’ve got a plan, you know, I’ve got it all worked out
And all you’ve got to do is pack your bags and check your doubts
You come around and you will see just what I am
A true love through the worst of times, a true love til the end

So now you’ve found me and you only gotta see
How complementary we can really be
‘Cause I was made for you and you were made for me

The road in front of us is long and it is wide
We’ve got beginner’s luck, we’ve got it on our side
We will be stronger if our forces are allied
And with beginner’s luck we’ve gotta take the ride

We’ll take the ride as far as anyone can go
We’ll brave it all, yeah, hand-in-hand and toe-to-toe
I’ve got it all worked out, don’t worry ’bout a thing
Just give your hand to me and here, put on this ring

The road in front of us is long and it is wide
We’ve got beginner’s luck, we’ve got it on our side
If you are willing, well, I think I’m qualified
And with beginner’s luck we’ve gotta take the ride

I am frowny faced

And I really shouldn’t be…

I know I have a metric shit-ton of things to be thankful for, that this is probably one of the greatest periods in my life… Everything is moving along effortlessly, I’m happy, healthy…

But I’m grumpy.

I realized today that I’m going to get a total of four hours with my boyfriend this week. I haven’t seen him since… Sunday, April 17th… Or maybe that Monday morning. IT WAS SO LONG AGO I CAN’T REMEMBER.

And I’m pouting. The reason we get so little time this weekend? Work.  (more…)

17 Things That New York Taught Me

1. I am not nearly as tough as I thought. Sure, the New Yorkers that I ran into were nice — especially when in a one-on-one situation. But between the absolute panic that was pulsating through my body and the tryin’-to-look-hard thing I was doing so I didn’t appear lost or scared, I realized in there that I was just not tough. All I wanted to do when I was in Times Square was look up to the heavens, pray to the baby Jesus that he would not only freeze time for a moment, but would also send a heavenly helicopter to airflight us THE HELL OUT OF THERE. Instead, we had to hoof it for several blocks trying to find our way out of there.

2. I am not a city girl. Well, not a BIG city girl. I sparkly-heart Atlanta and I really am much more myself when I’m in an area where everything is super close and accessible. I don’t like having to drive fifteen minutes to get to the grocery store and I don’t ever want to live in farm land. I thought this made me a city girl. But I am not one… Sorry to disappoint you all. Devon made a good point to me today, “You are in your settling down space, in your Saturn Return… It makes sense that New York didn’t woo you right now.” A few years ago, I probably would have taken to it effortlessly. Instead, I feel like I never want to go back there again.

3. Being short in NYC puts you at a particularly unfortunate disadvantage. I couldn’t get a cab, I couldn’t get respect. People were running over Harrison left and right. Like, SERIOUSLY! THAT’S MY KID, ASSHOLES.

4. I spent 24 hours in the city and I could already tell that it was chipping away at my sunshiney heart. Now, right… Okay, okay. So maybe I don’t have a real sunshiney heart. But I felt noticeable more gruff, more rude and more bent out of shape than I have felt in a long time.

5. Do not go into the M & Ms store in Times Square. No matter how much your child begs you. DO NOT. Sure, you can get this awesome rainbow of M & Ms, that’s cool. But it’s $12/POUND! They give you these giant bags — like the size you’d get for two pounds of whole bean coffee — and if you filled it up, it would easily be five or six pounds of candy. The people in there were… AGGRESSIVE. Probably the rudest I came across. And it is WALL TO WALL people and shit every where. And the best part? Cyndi Lauper and Prince busting through the speakers and near-deafening levels. Seriously?

6. Don’t stare at the rats in the subway. Don’t talk about them either. If your super-comfy sneakers (how in the WORLD are women walking around the city in heels?) and your backpack aren’t giving you away as a tourist, talking about the rats in the subway will do the trick. The kid loved them, thought they were cute and wanted to give me the play-by-play of their activities as they scurried along the puddles and into the cracks and crevasses under the tracks.

7. Don’t pack a rolling suitcase. Actually, don’t pack much at all. In all my ins and outs on the train, I never saw an escalator or an elevator. What do all the handicapped people do in NYC? Or the old people? Or the people with stupid, over-stuffed rolling suitcases? Lugging that motherfucker up stairs was NOT.FUN.AT.ALL. If I ever do this again, I’d rather re-wear shirts and stink a little than over-pack. Seriously.

8. My son might be tougher than me. He was completely at ease in the city… Totally not bothered by the tsunami of people pushing and pulling at you, threatening to pull you under the surface. I was gripping his hand like nobody’s business partly because I was so afraid of losing him in that great big place but also because I NEEDED AN ANCHOR. And he was fine. Loved it, even. Thought Times Square was one of the most fun places EVER. I’m still a little twitchy from the experience.

9. My experience is a bit tainted because it was a) my first time and b) I had my son with me. If I ever manage to summon the courage to go to NYC again, I will do it without my child and I will go and stay with a friend. I will also stay VERY, VERY far away from crowds. VERY.

10. Don’t tell cab drivers where you’re going before you get in their cabs. Just get the fuck in and THEN tell them where you want to go. Mo’fo, if I’m willing to pay you $12 to drive me fifteen blocks, you need to just do it. Dammit.

11. Stay with friends. Hotels are STUPID expensive in NYC. Even if you have to go stay out in Queens or the Bronx or Brooklyn and hoof it into the city to do all the things you want to do, it’s worth it. Hotels are nice and all, but I prefer coming “home” to somebody, especially after the city beat me up all day.

12. Make your itinerary and then crumple it up and throw it away. Yes, I think I saved time by buying some of our tickets ahead of time (at the Museum of Natural History) but we never ended up making it to the Empire State Building and you have to buy those tickets for the day you’re trying to go — so, money wasted. Figure out what is the MOST important thing that you want to do and make it happen. Don’t plan to do more than two or three things a day. It will take you almost as long to GET there as you will spend there.

13. If you start in Philly, take the Chinatown bus. There’s a few to choose from and tickets are HELLA cheap. We were able to get seats on a nearly empty bus to NYC for only $10. It only took us an hour and a half and we left Philly around noon.

14. DO NOT TAKE THE CHINATOWN BUS FROM NY. It is the stupidest, most competitive thing I’ve ever seen. I was not able to get a seat NEXT to my own freakin’ son and none of the heartless assholes on the entire bus were willing to give up their precious window seat so that I could sit with him. Instead, we sat across an aisle from each other (could have been worse, I know, but dammit!) and he kept looking at me with sad little, “OMG MOM I WANT YOU” eyes the entire time. It also took us about two and a half hours AND the train takes you to Canal Street and you have to walk TEN BLOCKS THROUGH CHINATOWN to get to where the buses pick you up to take you back to Philly. NOT WORTH IT.

15. Bring twice as much money as you think you’re going to need to spend. Trust me. Everything is more expensive and, if that wasn’t enough, the fucking taxes in Manhattan were enough to send me into shock. Have a back-up plan (savings account or friend to mooch off of a bit) or you will dry up all your resources.

16. Skip the Central Park Zoo. Seriously, lamest zoo ever. We waited in line as long we spent in the zoo — max, a half an hour, 45 minutes. DO the Museum of Natural History and plan to spend about five hours there. We only had about three, I regret not getting to see everything.

17. Give yourself time to just walk around little outlying boroughs and explore. We did this a little bit over on the east side of Central Park and it was really beautiful. I wish we had done this in more neighborhoods. New York is really a beautiful place if you stop looking at things right in front of your face and start looking at the buildings.

I’ve got a lot more to write about this trip… This adventure, really… But I’m exhausted and cranky and really needing a solid night’s sleep. More soon.

You Are Not A Lot of Things

A little something to my single mom friends

YOU are not defective.
You are NOT defective.
You are not a product of your circumstances.
You choose the path you travel.
You are in charge of how you feel.
You are the only one that can filter for your heart.
You might be broken.
You might be hurt.
You could have been burned or wronged.
But YOU are NOT defective.

YOU have all the power and capability in the world.
You are stronger than you think.
You will likely be pushed to the brink, your very own edge…
You will have to suffer great things before you realize your strength
But it exists, maybe just below the surface…
Maybe down a few (hundred) layers.
But it is there.
The gusto. The power. The strength.
The stamina. The willpower. The chutzpa.
You are the strongest person you will know but,
in order to learn this, you will have to fall to your knees and let yourself be beaten.

You do not have to repeat history.
You do not have to feel regretful for your mistakes.
You DO, however, HAVE TO learn from your mistakes.
You can’t control everything
But that which you CAN control, you must master.
You will make more mistakes, no doubt.
You will offend, upset, alienate and then move on from countless people.
And in the end, the people around you are the real-deal-folks.
You must appreciate their love and support.
You will need to depend on their guidance and input.
You will look back at the pressure you’re under right now
and you will smile sweetly, remembering the woman you once were.

N00bcation, Day 1

There are landmark days in everyone’s lives… Days when you do something you’ve never done before…

Today was one such day for me for today, I took my son on vacation.

Seriously, it doesn’t seem like THAT big of a deal but my son is eight year old and I have never been on a vacation, just me and him… It’s always been the two of us with my parents or my best friend or something. I’ve always been in such a financial bind that I’ve never been able to afford to even take the time off from work, much less afford to PAY for a trip.

This is one of the benefits of moving home last October. I’ve been able to dig out of debt and squirrel money away so that we can do something fun… So that we can make memories! So yes, treasure. Big deal. Huge deal. ‘uge even.

This afternoon, we left our sweet little Atlanta and voluntarily climbed into a metal tube hurtling through the sky a bajillion miles an hour. We landed in Philadelphia. I’m very proud of the two of us… We found our hotel shuttle without trouble… We found our hotel easily (and it’s cute! and nice! and right next to Rittenhouse Square!). We threw our stuff down and recharged (and recharged my phone – Contrary to what they tell you, if you accidentally leave your phone on when the plane takes off, it won’t crash. Woops.). Then we went and got pizza, noms. Froyo, noms. Then walked around Rittenhouse Square. Took pictures, acted like silly tourists.

Man, I love spending time with this kid.

Tomorrow is the highlight of this trip. We’re taking the Chinatown Bus from Philly to NYC and then staying overnight in a hotel in the West Village, The Jane. On the agenda for tomorrow: The American Museum of Natural History, traipse around a bit, dinner somewheres, traipse around a bit, Times Square for the M&Ms Store (seriously, this might be the kid’s only must-have event, lol) and then, hopefully, by then it’ll be dark. I want to buy something from a street food vendor and I want to walk around a fully lit-up Times Square with my kidlet and show him how big the world can really be…

But in order to do all of THAT… I had to print our tickets. So we slid our shoes back on and went downstairs to the business center and found…

This…

This… Asshole.

(more…)

Seriously.

I saw this on Gawker.com today… and my god. It’s… It’s amazing.

The Mountain from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

This was filmed between 4th and 11th April 2011. I had the pleasure of visiting El Teide.
Spain´s highest mountain @(3715m) is one of the best places in the world to photograph the stars and is also the location of Teide Observatories, considered to be one of the world´s best observatories.

The goal was to capture the beautiful Milky Way galaxy along with one of the most amazing mountains I know El Teide. I have to say this was one of the most exhausting trips I have done. There was a lot of hiking at high altitudes and probably less than 10 hours of sleep in total for the whole week. Having been here 10-11 times before I had a long list of must-see locations I wanted to capture for this movie, but I am still not 100% used to carrying around so much gear required for time-lapse movies.

A large sandstorm hit the Sahara Desert on the 9th April (bit.ly/?g3tsDW) and at approx 3am in the night the sandstorm hit me, making it nearly impossible to see the sky with my own eyes.

Interestingly enough my camera was set for a 5 hour sequence of the milky way during this time and I was sure my whole scene was ruined. To my surprise, my camera had managed to capture the sandstorm which was backlit by Grand Canary Island making it look like golden clouds. The Milky Way was shining through the clouds, making the stars sparkle in an interesting way. So if you ever wondered how the Milky Way would look through a Sahara sandstorm, look at 00:32.

Aggressively Happy

I think that my generation was probably one of the first ones to benefit from the compact disc. When I was eleven or twelve years old, my sister and I shared a bedroom still… And she was in lurrrve with this boy and their song was “Heaven” by Bryan Adams. I recall laying in bed in the dark, giggling while I asked her questions about boys and dating and all of that and then, when we were finally ready to go to sleep, she’d press play on her previously-queued up cassette tape and we’d listen to Heaven before bed.

Moments like that really make me appreciate my family and my childhood. I don’t have any awful memories of childhood, really… Save a few incidents with shit-smear mean kids or dumb broads along the way… Any time I hear that song though, I am instantly transported back into that upstairs long, narrow bedroom and I’m in the day bed and Julie is on the trundle. We are only four years apart, but growing up, it felt like such a larger space in time… I think I always felt like I was right on the edge of where she was… Always trying to scramble to stay in her shadow. I have looked and looked and looked, trying to find a copy of that cassette tape to give to her for no other reason than to hear her laugh. (more…)

My boy is home!

I’m not sure I could be much happier right now. Long, extended weekend with the boyfriend and then the kidlet comes home after a week at the beach with his dad. He crawled into bed with me around 7:00 this morning, all snuggles and neck hugging and “I love you”s — it was wonderful.

He and I are going to NYC in a week and a half for our first little vacation together. I told him about what our plans were this morning while we snuggled and he screeched, “CAN WEEEEE RENT A FERRARI!?”

I laughed so hard. “No, baby.”

Boys are so silly.

Whoever You Are

Recently, I found the poem that I wrote, Whisper Singing… And it got me to thinking.

I emailed it to Colin with the message, “This is the first poem I wrote about you…” I wrote it in July… And I met him in November. But it is… I really do believe it’s about him. He and I talk all the time about how we met at the perfect time — even two months earlier would have not been the right time.

And this part:

And it makes me well up inside… Not because of the love that I have — as incredible as it is… But it reaffirms to me that everything happens for a reason. It’s so cliche, but it’s so true — especially for me.

I look back at parts of my life and I try to trace them back to their origins… I try to figure out what the formula was to create whatever sort of incredible thing.

It works for every part of my life.

I think about my son, first. He’s eight now and when I stop and try to think about the last eight years… I’m in absolute awe at how much has happened. There has been a lot of life lived, a lot of anguish, a lot of heartache, a lot of victories, a lot of failures. And I see his long eyelashes or his little bird-chest with his ribs pushing through his skin and I am thrown right back through my memories… I think back to that early pre-dawn Sunday morning, sitting in that dark apartment waiting to see what my pregnancy test said. I think about how I thought about abortion — I mean, I was a 20 year old doofus, on drugs, partying, about to be evicted from my apartment, wrapped up in a terribly dysfunctional co-dependent relationship with a man that never loved me… It could have all been different, but it’s this way because of the choices I made.

I mean, the multi-layered absolute chance encounter with Colin — it’s changed my life. Meeting him has set me on a path full of confidence and positivity… And all of the multitude of events that had to line themselves up so that he would be alone and I would be drunk enough to be daring… That he would be wearing the hat that caught my attention — the hat that his grandfather purchased likely fifty years ago — that sat in a box in a closet waiting for his head. That he would be the kind of man that would be ready to love me. That his life experience was such that he would be able to appreciate me in all my… Jami ways. I think about all the years of dating such losers — conditioning periods, I suppose, to show me what a real man is supposed to be like… So that when I found him, I would know. I know.

I feel like, in a lot of ways, Hollis and I have an undercurrent synapse that just connects. Maybe it’s because we’re both Scorpios. Maybe it’s because we’re both writers. Or mothers. Or bitches. I don’t know. Maybe it’s everything. But I think about my relationship with Hollis now — shit, I cried on Thursday night at the mexican restaurant telling her about where I’m at lately with writing and how I’m feeling resinspired and how I want to really start focusing on a book. And where did it start? What did I do to get so lucky to have a friend like this? I met her when I took her blogging class last year… Because of Date Wrecks… And I started Date Wrecks because I was dating online… Because I was single after the sociopath… So… I suppose I can thank the sociopath for where I’m at professionally? But meeting Hollis has set my life on this entirely new trajectory.

Shit… everything that happens has the potential to send me on a new trajectory, right?

The point here is that it’s all connected. Whatever sort of horrible shit you’re trudging through right now, know that your work is not without purpose. You are exactly where you’re supposed to be, in the most perfect time for you to be there. I don’t believe in God in terms of Sunday hats and choirs and tithing and all of that… But I think this whole epiphany lately is part of my spiritual journey. Because we’re not just all scattered around like confetti. There’s an order here… It’s almost like a rhythm.

If you sit long enough outside on a summer night, the song of the crickets and the frogs will eventually make a tune… The melodies fall in step with one another and it’s beautiful.

I finally hear my life’s rhythm. It’s the most incredible, beautiful song. And it’s mine… All mine. I don’t have to sit and wonder if something bad is going to happen. I don’t have to dread change or worry pointlessly about all the steps I must take…

I just need to close my eyes and move my body and my feet in time with my personal song… And I really do believe that everything else will line itself up.

Holy Moly

Five months ago today, I made out with a stranger on the patio of a bar.

I haven’t been in a relationship for this long since… since… 2008…? Shit, I can’t remember.

Also? This is the happiest I’ve ever been. When I see Colin, I am filled with all kinds of disgusting sweet fluttery thoughts.

Little things happen all the time that remind me why he’s such an amazing boyfriend. This last week, he was really put through the ringer.

You see, the second week of recovery from having your tonsils removed is the worst. The pain from the huge cauterized portions of your throat has nearly subsided, as the underlying tissue begins to heal and the nerve endings simma’ down now.

Then the scabs start coming off and, if you can picture this, imagine sucking on the scabs on a child’s knees. (more…)