Filed under: .SARA, Dating, Faith, Family, Joy, Life, Love, Monday, Relationships
When you have to go back into your secret email archives to find your username, you know it’s been too long since your last post.
Little has changed, in some respects, since my last post – I’m still at the same job, with the same degree, with the same chum at my side and the same cat on my lap. I still think I’m too short, my back still hurts inexplicably, and I still sing to myself when I’m looking for things or running late.
But creeter-readers, in other respects, everything, everything, has changed.
My mom got married last summer. In 2007, my mom, alone and bored and feeling sorry for herself, did what every bored-alone-self-pitying creature does: started Facebook-creeping old friends to see if she could find someone more boring and less pretty than she was. Instead, she found her old high school boyfriend (whose heart she broke when she ran away from their relationship). 6 months later, I came home from Rome to find her ami in our kitchen.
“Hello,” said jet-lagged, freaked-out moi.
“Hello,” said OhnoI’mmeetingthehostileyoungestdaughter! him.
1 year later, I spent many an evening waiting impatiently for my mom to get off the phone with her boyfriend so that I could use the phone to call mine. Another year after that, I sang “Great is Thy Faithfulness” at their wedding, the song standing next to my mom’s extravagant happiness.
My mom is one of my very best friends (oh, go ahead and boo my clichédness, it’s true). We’ve shared so many ridiculous life moments together, but one I never anticipated sharing was the awkward giddiness of a first date. My chum and I have known each other since 2003, been best friends since 2006, and dating since 2008. Simplified version. I’m missing out on whole lifetimes of one-sided obsessions and non-break-ups and time spent together in the backseat and time spent alone in Mexico. But the point is, my first “boyfriend” (ha! I find that word ridiculous) coincided with my Mom’s (reunion with her) first boyfriend, and it made our relationship into something more than mom & daughter, more than friend & friend. For the first time, I realized my mom was a woman just like I was, and it has forever, beautifully changed us.
When I told my mom that le chum and I were dating, that after 2 years of being friends and awkward friends and then not friends at all, I had realised I didn’t want to live without him, she turned to me and said, “I’m so glad you were braver than I was.”
Braver? I don’t know. I suppose it did only take me 2 years, compared to 35, to realize I was willing to risk changing my known life for one that included le chum. But then again, I didn’t have 4 kids and 30 years of assorted relationship history to take responsibility for, which takes a kind of courage that is only watched on a screen, not witnessed in your own home.
Every relationship takes extraordinary courage. Relationships are about trust, which is about risk, which requires an unusual confidence in both you and in the other party involved; a confidence that is a choice, an exercise, a perspective, and sometimes, an act of faith. Always, an act of humility.
Wish me luck, wish me grace, wish me supernatural courage and stamina. August 13 2011, five years to the day that we became best friends, le chum and I are getting married.
And I’ve never been so excited about where life is going next.
Filed under: Uncategorized
~Interpol
or: “The Way I Grow Up”
Since the last post was from January, I don’t think that anyone will mind at all that I am posting out of turn. I doubt, also, that anyone reads this blog anymore, if ever they did.
The last two months are a little hazy. I lost two people very dear to me. It is funny to me to say TWO people dear to me, although I really do mean it to each of them in their own way.
Jenni and I split. It was ugly. We were both right to be angry, we both fucked up pretty bad. Some of her things are still here waiting to be moved out. It makes it harder, just because I know it will all be gone soon. I pretty much know what is hers and I am trying to get the table outside cleaned off so that when she comes, she won’t have to be here that much longer. I told her I didn’t want to be here when she got the rest of it; it’s hard for both of us, but mostly I’m thinking about me. I don’t want to see her. I get too angry and I’m trying to lose that part of myself.
I have been using my time not working to do a lot of soul searching. I am broke. I’m using my brother’s computer. A lot of my time is spent gardening, hiking, cooking, playing with my dog, and sometimes just sitting in the sun, closing my eyes, and thinking. A lot of thinking.
When my dad died everything changed for me. It has just become embedded in every thought I have. It makes me sad often, and every once in a while i break down and sob uncontrollably. I have avoided doing it in front of other people so far; it’s rather unbecoming. It has made my mood a little more erratic, but it could have also to do with everything else that is going on. Little by little I am losing my mind, but each instance convinces me that little by little I am just becoming the person I was always meant to be.
Filed under: .RACHEL, Film & Television, Geek, Humor, Lazy, Nerd, Pop Culture, Technology, Wednesday | Tags: Chris O'Dowd, Graham Linehan, Katherine Parkinson, Richard Ayoade, The IT Crowd
I know that just putting up another video is cheating, but I’m lazy and I might as well post something since it’s Wednesday.
So here is one of my favorite segments from the British sitcom The IT Crowd.
Since embedding on this particular video is disabled, you’ll have to see it on YouTube. But it’s well worth the trip. So click on the hypertext above, and prepare to fall in love with a couple of nerds and their technologically impaired boss.
Now I have to go get my laundry out of the dryer.
I’ll actually write something next week. (Or will I?)
-R
Guess what I’ve been doing lately. Here’s a short film by Johnny Kelly that tells all about it:
Ever faithfully,
Rachel Creeter
Filed under: .RACHEL, Mix Tape Tuesday, Music, Pop Culture | Tags: BOAT, Setting the Paces, Topps
One of my current favorite bands is not so well known. I can’t even find an official Page to put in the Music category of things I “Like” on Facebook (perhaps because they don’t have a Wikipedia entry, as far as I can tell). But! They do have a website, complete with jukebox and YouTube videos and professional-type things.
Oh, the band is BOAT, by the by. (Gosharoony, I don’t think I’ll ever get over my love for alliteration…)
So go ahead and wander over to their site and give their music a listen. I think all the songs are great, but perhaps my personal favorites on the jukebox are “Name Tossers” and “Bee Buzz.”
Because of the catchy tunes and the sloppy vocals, the songs (“Bee Buzz” in particular) are almost cathartic to sing along with. Seriously. I’m pretty sure I accidentally sang out loud on several occasions while I was working in the library in college.
It kind of bugs me that I can add their official Page on Facebook, but I can’t list it under the Music section of my profile. I mean, they’ve been reviewed by Pitchfork and have albums for sale on Amazon…what’s with Facebook and the wikiweb being so behind the times? C’mon Wikipedia, you have never failed me before. Quick, someone go make an entry for them!
-R
