Month: August 2008

Driving to work Monday, I heard an acoustic version of Summer of 69 that I had never heard before. Hearing this totally pure and organic version of its former self, almost (almost) sent a tear roll down my cheek it was just that good. I always liked the original version, but the acoustic version is unbelievable.

Monday night, I was laying in bed, wondering why I had not yet fallen asleep. It was well after midnight and suddenly this thought popped into my head: Years ago, Mr. X and I had some email exchanges that I recall, though not in detail. I wonder if we were to read them now, would they show any evidence of where we’ve ended up? It’s too bad I don’t have them anymore.

Or do I?

I jumped out of bed, fired up the laptop and started combing through my email. I’ve had my main email account for just about 10 years now and I thought there was no way in hell I’d have saved any of these emails, especially since I never could have known the importance and significance they would hold for me, right now, at 12:30 a.m. on a Monday night / Tuesday morning, a little over a year into the best relationship of my life.

When I found an email from October 2000 from the lady from whom I adopted my Sammy dog, I knew I had Oprah’s chances in a Supermarket Sweep that I would find at least one Mr. X email.

“Velvet, I located the information for Tippy…” [that was Sammy’s ‘shelter’ name]

Sigh. I cannot imagine my life without this little dog…the dog who has mysteriously managed to procure a subscription to “Cruising World” magazine. Then I found an email where I placed an ad in the Macon Telegraph in April, 2004 because Thora had run away from the home where my ex was living.

“Black mutt in Bolingbroke, ran off Thursday night during storm. One blue eye, one brown, answers to Thora.”

I never really wanted dogs, but they have taken such a hold of my heart that I can’t imagine life without them. That pet chinchilla was fun, but the dogs are way better.

Then I found the folder that contained a variety of emails, at the very bottom of which I found what I was looking for. Not all of the emails, but emails where he was my boss, and I was his employee and we were discussing work related issues, punctuated by brief asides of a more personal, though not intimate, nature.

From August, 2004, there’s an email where I complained to Mr. X about how we were all being treated at work with our workspaces and he jumped to our department’s defense and ripped some new assholes. There’s another email from later that month where he went head to head with our poor excuse for a Division President, and made the idiot look like, well, an idiot. I started forwarding these emails and then Mr. X called, asking why I was still awake and laughing at how all of this is coming back to him, things he had long forgotten. I said, “You know, it’s the forceful, in-control person in these emails who I fell in love with.”

The original relationship was good. But this? This relationship blows everything else away. I loved my job, but sometimes you have to trade something you love to get something you love more.

I know all of you two of you are dying for the update of what happened in New York. Let’s just say that one half of Team Gloom and Doom was their usual self and the other half of Gloom and Doom was also their usual self. Let me rewind a tiny bit.

Friday I had planned to leave work a little early. Then someone decided at 10:45 a.m. to call a mandatory meeting for noon with the requisite meeting request. I replied and said that I was leaving early and would not make this meeting. Friday we were getting off work at 2:00, but the last time I went to New York on a 2:00 Friday I sat in major traffic the entire way. So this time I decided my internal goal was noon to get out of the office.

At five minutes to 12, someone said that they overheard I would have to crank out six Proposals for new business. I’ve never even done this before, and considering that two other people are responsible for Proposals, I had to ask “why me?” The answer came back that one of the two is totally inefficient and the other one is running circles around the inefficient one and so therefore I got the prize (of more work.) Then that person said, “Pick up your stuff, and walk out right now.”

I’ve never done something so bold before but my weekend was in serious jeopardy. So I did it. I shut off the computer and left. My logic here was this: If they can allow the aforementioned inefficients continue to keep their jobs, and there are more than one of them, then I’ve got to be allowed one tiny indiscretion. As I stood at the elevator, I saw the food for that 12:00 meeting coming in, and I could hear the craziness of the office behind me. But, I left.

Mr. X was not prepared for my Houdini-like escape artistry and was not ready when I was. So I lollygagged around for a bit, then harassed with several back to back phone calls and texts. Finally I just drove to his house and stalked him in his driveway until he came outside.

It took several extra hours to get to NY as there were breakdowns and traffic everywhere. When we finally got there I needed several drinks. We went around the corner to a Greek restaurant (go figure) and ate and drank, and then the bartender sent us with her high recommendations to a very specific intersection in the Village. We followed her advice and meandered around several bars before I practically fell asleep and we took off back to the hotel.

I. Am. Lame. And I never said I wasn’t.

Saturday morning we got up and promptly went off to Bloomingdales (it’s like no other store in the world) where I bought a pair of deeply discounted hooker shoes and Mr. X helped. Then we went over to my brothers where we met up with Gloom and Doom. Everything actually went fine, Gloom and Doom were surprisingly chipper and in good moods. Mr. X and my dad did a lot of talking. And somewhere in between that talking, we went to lunch.

My brother has a friend from high school who was married for 15 years and is getting divorced. My mom says, “Velvet, did you hear about Elton and Kiki?” I said, “Oh yeah, that they are getting divorced?”

And there’s my mom, as usual, stabbing her ketchup-laden french fry with her fork while simultaneously stabbing me in the heart, saying, “Yup, fifteen years down the drain.” Opinionated? Yes. But opinionated doesn’t cover the adjectives I’d use here considering that Mr. X is completing a divorce and that she knows this!

This is standard-bitchy with my mom. You just never know what you’re going to get, but you know you’ll get her nasty opinions, without a care for how anyone else may feel sitting in her presence and she’ll think she’s right. If you were to even bother calling her on it and say, “What’s the alternative? Stay with someone for 50 years who makes you miserable just so you can say you didn’t get divorced?” she’ll keep going, putting her foot in her mouth even further and making herself look like more of an asshole, lashing out at anyone in her path.

Yeah, I know she’s from that generation and we’re from this generation, but again, here we have it. I don’t believe in voicing nasty opinions that take a direct shot at someone who your daughter said she’s blissfully, madly, deeply in love with. Nor do I do believe in staying with someone who makes you miserable just to say that you didn’t get divorced, or to borrow her famous line, to say you didn’t quit. Divorce is a pretty big deal, and I’m sure these friends of my brothers didn’t just randomly decide without a second thought to get divorced just like Mr. X didn’t wake up one day and decide that today he wanted sausage with his eggs and also, he’d like to get a divorce. So I’m not sure what makes the Gloom part of Gloom and Doom think she’s such an expert because she and my father have bickered for 44 consecutive years now. What a claim to fame.

So it’s been two days since that bullshit and for some reason, I’m madder about it now than I was on Saturday.

There’s more eating and drinking, drinking and eating, walking around the city and discussions of returning and then there’s a drive home. Somewhere around Delaware I said, “You know, the last time I was driving through here, you and I started that x-rated texting spree.” He said, “I remember that. That was fun!”

So we started texting each other, yes, even while sitting next to each other, and then it got slightly heated and we just couldn’t wait to get home so we could rip each other’s clothes off. It was a long 2 1/2 hours from the Delaware border. Very long.

There are intense feelings of satisfaction and of accomplishment in finding my own way, physically and figuratively.

I know there are zillions of GPS fans out there. Spare me. The only person I’ve ever met who hated the GPS as much as I, was the checkout girl at Dupont Italian Market. Though, she had actually owned one and had specific complaints with its performance, or lack thereof. I just hate the idea of a machine telling me where to go and what to do. I’d end up ripping it out of my car, telling it to fuck off, and throwing it out the window.

“Fuck you! YOU turn left!”

My brother was going to buy me a GPS for Speedracer but I said no. I like the challenge of finding places on my own. Besides, having worked for Developers who develop land on unnamed dirt roads, most of what I would have needed from a GPS wouldn’t have been available. Some of the best “directions” I’ve received could never have come from a GPS.

“Make the second left into the property where there’s a big wagon wheel over the entrance. Now, the guy is in jail, but his wife still lives there. He met her through a Russian mail-order catalog. Just drive by her and if she comes to the front door with a gun, just wave and drive faster. I have an easement over her property so she has to let you pass. All the way in the back of the property you will see a huge pile of tires. Don’t get out of your car, there are a lot of snakes back there. Just wait for the guy there, and he’ll come and tell you what to do.”

I’m so glad I don’t work for him anymore.

Today I didn’t feel like doing any work. I consulted Yahoo’s homepage for news. Then I read this. My favorite part: “A GPS is not a substitute for common sense.” Gee, ya think? I know plenty of people for whom it is. In fact, I know plenty of people who live their life by a GPS of some sort.

“I have to finish grad school by 26, then I need to be married by 28 so I can have four kids exactly two years apart before I turn 35.”  

Sunday I was having a selfish, “me-day” where I blew everyone off to sulk in my bed about nothing in particular. Well, okay, maybe the whole job thing has burned me out already, but that’s a story for another day. When I was finally fit for human interaction again, Mr. X and I were on the phone discussing some plans we have for this weekend and next. He said something that just means so much and in the spirit of finding one’s way, I wanted to share.

“I realized how cool it is that we got to know each other for five years before anything happened.”

It was his way of saying that he knows this is a once in a lifetime deal. Well, that’s my interpretation. I also think it speaks so much to his personality, mine, and ours together. It might have taken us a little longer to get where we are, but it was well worth the journey.

So this weekend and next, we’re off, to take peeks into various parts of our future. I think we’ve decided where we’re going, but not exactly how we’re going to get there. The getting there part changes daily, especially with me, whose unpredictable reactions generated this text from the man: “Baby, you are all over the place.”

I wouldn’t trade it for any GPS no matter what.