EastGirlsWest

So I just wrote my last post and put it up on the site. Moments later The Husband, who was sitting five feet away from me, and who receives many Google Alerts every day to help him write content for this site, received an alert that included EastGirlsWest - specifically the reference in my last post to public television and PBS.

This is our life.

“I mean, how do you stay up so late?”

“Well, some of us only need eight hours of sleep, instead of ten. Some of us had one glass of wine tonight, instead of three.”

“So what are you wearing tonight?”

“Something that makes me look like I’m in my twenties.”

“I mean, is this too expensive? Have I lost my goddamn mind?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s real anymore. And that’s as honest as I can be.”

The Betrothed and I found ourselves there the other day, looking for wedding bands. We started off in Nordstrom on a whim, and when the saleswoman told us it could take up to eight weeks to order the bands we were eyeing, we got serious. The Big Day is in one month, and there’s no time for special orders and complex engraving.

Tiffany’s had just what we needed. Bands. A variety of style and sizes. We dove right in with focus and precision.

Except…

“What ring size are you?”

I looked at The Betrothed, distracted by looking at man rings. He’s the one person who’s bought me a ring in the last few years - one that fits perfectly. I thought he might know the answer.

“Honey? Do you know what size I am?”

He looks up, slightly confused and distracted. “Huh?”

“My size. Do you know what it is?”

“Thirty-six B?”

Peggy Post was on These Days today, discussing wedding etiquette. It was a fantastic hour, full of entertaining listener calls and, as you might expect, good advice. My favorite little morsel from the segment? That second and third time brides are now known as “encore brides.”

Apparently, I’m an Encore Bride. And after doing a bit of online research, I discovered that this is a whole big thing. Who knew?

For some reason, I love this. It’s both appropriate and polite yet mildly judgemental in a can’t-prove-it-in-court kind of way.

Perhaps you read the Dooce entry last week in which she posted one of her college diary entries. She was inspired to do this by her blogger friend Sarah Brown and her Cringe project. Cringe is both a series of monthly readings in Brooklyn, and a book that Sarah is compiling. The content? Old journal entries, diaries, poems, letters and other great works written during one’s teenage years. Cringe, indeed. Dooce’s post was the first I’d heard of Cringe, but I was intrigued.

Coincidentally, it turns out my brave friend Mary C. Matthews shared some high school journal nuggets at the last Cringe reading. You can see a video of her performance here (spoiler: it involves many references to Dances With Wolves). I laughed so hard I couldn’t stop crying while I watched it.

I am now inspired to sift through the detritus of my own youth in search of something cringe-inducing. Shouldn’t be too hard. I remember somewhat recently reading through some notes I passed during class with my best friend in high school. Every single one was about how my hair looked.

More soon on this topic, I promise. I’ll start digging into the back of the garage tomorrow.

I pedaled on the elliptical alone the other day. Angela was traveling back from Erie, and Tay was out gathering supplies for our New Year’s Eve party. Forgetting to charge my iPod ahead of time, I was left with only my thoughts for 40 minutes. And in the final hours of 2006, I found myself focused on what a new year means.

Of course, one of the first thoughts I had was about resolutions. Would I make any this year? Then I realized that I make the SAME damn resolution every year: to commit to exercising. This year, for the first time in my life, I’ve made it happen. Chalk one up to progress.

On Christmas Eve my family played a game. Twenty-six pieces of paper were put in a bowl, each with a year written on it starting with 1980 (the earliest Tay can remember). We took turns drawing, and then had to share something about the year we got. It could be a small moment or a huge event. Something funny, sad or meaningful. Something that would be a good story.

It was hard for us to remember really specific moments within a year. We all tended to focus on a big event, like “I moved to Boston”. Or in some cases it became a year in review: “I switched jobs, started skiing and went to Italy.” The small moments blend together, especially the older we get. Oddly, the farther back the year, the easier it was to remember and share a smaller moment. I guess that’s just how we remember our childhood - unwrapping a special gift on our birthday, what we wore on the first day of school, who we sat behind in third grade class. Not years, just little pictures.

I drew 1985, the year I started high school. The first thing I remembered was walking to high school for orientation day with my best friend Jessie. We were both nervous, but she made me laugh the whole way there. Jessie died in 1994. Even the happy memories often remind us of what we’ve lost. People we loved who are no longer in our lives. Olde acquaintance, be forgot. And I suppose each year after a loss is another milestone in the healing of our grief.

When 2001 was drawn, it was hard for any of us to recall anything except 9/11 that year. We knew exactly where we were, what we were doing, and who we called first. And for all of us, 2002 represented a time, after the election of You Know Who, when this country took a devastating turn. And as much as YKW likes to wish it so, I can’t imagine that a decade from now I’ll remember 2006 as the year Saddam Hussein was executed. Likely I will recall it as the year that the majority of Americans finally woke up to the inanity of this war and made their feelings known during mid-term elections.

Leaving Cape Cod the day after Christmas, I sat next to The Betrothed on the bus to Boston. As we watched the bare trees beside the highway move by in a blur, we reminisced about the past year. Vacations, good meals, house projects, career changes, health challenges…I was only halfway through reciting this list of things that defined our year when The Betrothed interrupted. He just looked at me and said “I love you.”

My eyes welled up, and he put his hand over mine, and I could feel his chin on the top of my head when I leaned into his shoulder. I knew I would never have to try to remember that moment, because it’s always there.

And I think that’s what he was trying to say. Our year, our 2006, wasn’t the list of events. It was us - living it together. The list of events will change, some years more than others. Life will be hard, and wonderful. Some things we will remember, and others we will forget.

So maybe the calendar change just marks a renewed commitment to keep moving, alongside all the people I love. On the bus, definitely on the elliptical, and on my increasingly strong two legs.

Happy New Year.

I’m in Cape Cod. I just did an extremely satisfying and much-needed shot of Enbrel. Before that I drank two glasses of cabernet. Before that I spent the entire day driving around Massachusetts to retrieve our lost luggage. And prior to that I spent a day getting from the Pacific to the Atlantic. And in the beginning? There was shopping. Lots and lots of Christmas shopping.

The first few shopping trips are actually fun. I’m filled holiday cheer and the giving spirit. I buy beautiful and thoughtful gifts. I treat myself to an eggnog latte at the mall, and smile at my fellow shoppers.

Then quickly, it all goes to hell. By the last week before Christmas I’m a bitter, broken woman. I’m filled with stress, hate the mall, hate everyone, have no time for lattes and actual nightmares about people not getting presents. I think this photo that Aaryn took of the two of us at Fascist Valley a few days ago says it all.

But somehow the shopping gets done. And briefly, relief. It’s fleeting though, because mere hours after buying my last present I have to start packing all of my purchases into a too-small suitcase for transport to the east coast. (Here’s Tay, lying on a luggage conveyor at Boston’s Logan Airport. The same conveyor that did not deliver any of our bags, all containing gifts.)

Yet despite the shopping, and traveling and the stress, there is still some real Christmas joy. Yesterday afternoon my sister and I walked through the middle of Boston, arms linked, past the Macy’s Christmas windows, eating warm, roasted peanuts. I was wearing a hat, scarf and gloves, smelling the winter air, and listening to Jingle Bells play over the loudspeaker for all the pedestrians in Downtown Crossing.

And just tonight, in Provincetown, with my family, we found a Christmas tree made of lobster traps. The tree topper was a bunch of buoys. Only in New England, people. Only in New England.

Finally, there’s this. The most honest, hearwarming and real holiday video I’ve seen so far on The Internet. It’s two EastGirlsEast, my dear friend Mary and the love of her life, who completely charmed me with this wish:

I would like to erase abstinence-only funding on the federal level, as a stocking stuffer.

Watch it. It’s the best of Christmas and it will make you smile.

And any minute now, I will have come full circle back to that eggnog latte.

“So, he’s definitely interested. And she’s beautiful, and smart, and it looks like she might go out with him. What do you think?”

“Yeah, it might work. I just don’t understand why women are attracted to men.”