TheEx – Page 2 – A Most Unreliable Narrator

reviews: music: bloc party – intimacy

I take Bloc Party seriously.
By this I mean that they are one of the few bands I actually listen to and by listen to, I mean that I sit down and pay attention to the music and the lyrics. I like a lot of bands, but there are a scant few that I return to time and time again. Joy Division is one, R.E.M. is another, Elbow is definitely up there and Bloc Party most assuredly rounds out the set.
For me, and I will assume for a lot of people, music is a very personal thing. This is not to say that I do not enjoy my fluffy pop or my occasional foray into old school gangsta rap, I do. But this is to say, that when I love a band, I really take the band to heart. For those who know me, you know how constantly I refer to High Fidelity as a bible to my life — I AM the female Rob Gordon. (Complete with relationship problems, neuroses and other high jinks. But that is for another post.) And like Rob, who arranges his music automusicgraphically, I too also do the same. I can get from one band to another by telling you where I was, when I first heard it and what I was doing (or who I was doing).
If my choices seem a little chaotic at times, that is totally okay. Straight and narrow never won any interesting awards. But this is not really about me, per se, but more about Bloc Party and the release of their third album, Intimacy, a mere 18 months after A Weekend In The City. The album was released digitally at the end of August, with the physical release set for, in the U.K. and U.S., at the end of October. Word on the street is that the title tracks available on the physical release will differ from the digital download, but like the good little fan girl I am, I will have procured both. Silent Alarm, their first album with the stunning single Helicopters, came out kicking and squalling to the world in 2005. A Weekend In The City was their “falling in love” album in 2007 and I wasn’t too terribly surprised to find out that Intimacy is their “break-up” album of 2008. When the title track is entitled, “Ares,” and the song begins with “War! War! War!,” I got the feeling that Kele Okereke was stalking my life.
So, then, I must step back and do a bit of back story before I continue. Bloc Party, like a multitude of other bands over the years, is a band I heard of but never really got “in to,” until I met TheEx. TheEx and I have an interesting back story in that musically, we were perfect. We could, and often did, spend hours talking about music from producers to labels to motifs, sound, lyrics and design. Our joint collection neared nearly 2000 compact discs (60% his), dozens of vinyls (his) and over 100 gigs of digital music (mostly mine). We were concert whores who would travel hours for a good show, only to turn around and come back home that very night. With him, I found my perfect music man, someone who could discuss with me the nuances of music on a variety of different levels and not have to explain to him why I was found of the production values of X album over Y album or why I loved A band over B band.
TheEx was crazy about Silent Alarm and was eagerly waiting for A Weekend in the CIty, which came out in the very beginning of our relationship. And I’m not quite sure what it was about A Weekend in the City, but that became “my” album while Silent Alarm became his. To me, A Weekend in the City became the anthem of our relationship. Every song, every melody, every lyric no matter how distant somehow spoke to me, about us. I could see him in every song and certain songs became “our” songs. Every time I heard “Sunday,” with or without him near me, my heart would swell with love for him, because he would love me in the morning when I was hung over and strung out. And even though I knew that On was about doing coke, to me the lines, You make my tongue loose/I am hopeful and stutter free, was about how I felt around him. He made me feel hopeful and stutter free — I could (and did) tell him everything and anything, anytime and any place.
At the time, I felt that he made me an honest woman and with him, I was so much better off than without him. I like Silent Alarm, but A Weekend in the City had this energy that I responded to, a hunger if you will for living and for life. I liked the simplicity of Kele’s lyrics and the fact that he was able to lyrically say what he meant without going overboard with metaphor and unnecessary imagery. (I’m looking at you Radiohead and Coldplay — fucking wankers.) I adored the fact that every single time I heard the album, I heard something different and that everything about A Weekend in the City resonated with me emotionally and intellectually.
Like most intimate of relationships, TheEx and I did not end with a quiet whimper but with a huge, ferocious fuck-off bang. For the past couple of months, I’ve been trying to reclaim my musical tastes but have found that in reality, I was hiding from it. I forewent listening to Pandora, XM and my CD collection on general to podcasts and NPR. I did not want to put myself through musical depression – even with bands that I claimed as mine were also his and by listening to said bands would conjure up all the feelings, the good with the bad.
When I found out Bloc Party had released a new album digitally, with the physical release forthcoming, I was surprised. I was, apparently, not the only one. Bloc Party has been touring almost non-stop since the release of A Weekend in the City, which was released in February 2007. Other than a single released last summer, the synth dance song “Flux,” there has been no talk or announcement of a new album. Shortly after the digital release at the end of August, reviews started showing up by the beginning of September, with a split vote on Intimacy.
People fell into several camps

That Intimacy was an attempt to return to the area that Silent Alarm began, failed with A Weekend in the City and was struggling to fill and was a mixed-bag.
That Intimacy not only returned to the horizon of Silent Alarm but surpassed it. A Weekend in the City? A blip and could be written off as their sophomoric disc (which it is).
That Intimacy failed on many levels, was absolute drek and that Bloc Party, as a whole, are a bunch of pretentious wankers.

For me, I’m apparently in the minority. I love A Weekend in the City more so over Silent Alarm (and thought it was one of the best albums of 2007) but Intimacy is growing on me. I was looking for, excuse the obvious, but the intimacy and the slowness of A Weekend in the City only to be greeted by dance pop and synth experiments hold over from their single, Flux, which at first annoyed me. But it is the lyrics, oh $deity, I love you Kele, the lyrics more than make up for the choppiness of the disc, the messiness that is “Zephyrus” and the overwhelming urge they have to experiment TOO much.
But it is with their weaknesses that they also have their biggest strengths — Bloc Party has no problem selling out arenas, have gained a fairly successful following in the U.S. and tour almost constantly. They have hit almost every major festival abroad and in the U.S. The fact that they have, somehow, managed to get into the studio to record a third album and not only record it but have the production completed in a relatively short time is almost mind boggling. And according to the interview with bassist Gordon Moakes on pitchfork, the band is just as surprised as their fans at the quick turnaround.
I don’t view the turnaround as a negative thing, rather again, I look to the lyrics for the answers. If A Weekend in the City was about falling in love, relationships and living life, Intimacy is about breaking-up and the obvious, almost debilitating aspects of separating from the one you love. From “Ares,” declaring war on the person who wronged you, to “Halo” about questioning the love, to “One Month Off,” at the anger of one’s partner after a long term relationship ends, to that remembrance of the good times in “Better Than Heaven,” to the pitiful, desperate plea of return to that love in “Ion Square.”
Every relationship counselor (and Cosmo issue) will tell you that separation after a break-up tends to follow the same rules of grief that the death of a loved one follows:

Denial. – “Mercury.” “Halo.” “Better Than Heaven.”
Anger. – “Ares.” “One Month Off.”
Bargaining. “Signs.” “Halo.” “Bilko.” “Trojan Horse.”
Depression. “Signs.” “Halo.”
Acceptance. “Zephyrus.” “Ion Square.”

Some songs resonate with better topics than others, but the point is still there. This is Kele’s exorcism against the end of a love that obviously broke his heart. And it is with this, with Kele’s lyrics and the buffing of the depressing themes with synth tunes and dubbeats that most will find to be a turn-off and thusly, a shite album. Some will claim that this is a desperate attempt to grab the glory they had with Silent Alarm and failing while others will claim they are attempting to parody their influences and are bilking too much of their popularity by riding on the coattails of Coldplay and Radiohead. I don’t think Intimacy is a great album, but I do think it is a good one. I do agree that there is, at times, too much going on at one time while at others, it seems almost perfect.
While I would recommend it, I would recommend it after listening to the first two albums — like most great bands, you need to get the scope of the band’s lineage before diving in several albums in. With several months between the digital and physical release, who is to say what the physical album will sound like? And as for me, I unfortunately saw too much of TheEx inside the lyrics after my first spin with the disc a few weeks ago. The beginning of Trojan Horse chilling reminds me of the rituals that TheEx performed before we too made love. Signs, also eerily like the lasting days of our relationship. And Ares and One Month Off remind me of me, in those “OHNOESHEDIDNOT” moods I would would sometimes (occasionally) cycle through. Despite my initial reservation, Intimacy is the tip of the catharsis to push me over the edge. It is not the time for a new love or to sign a new lease, but at least now, I know that one day there will be.

Friends don’t let friends waste wine when there’s stories to sell

What you need to know is that it took every freakin’ ounce of my being to not drive ~200 miles today to remove your cock with a rusty spork, throw a smoldering cigarette into the open wound and then hang said penis off to dry from the balcony while I merrily drove home.
And I’ll explain this to you one more time since you clearly didn’t get it the first time: Your problems are everyone’s problems. Even on a platonic level, your actions involve everyone around you, not just yourself. You have never quite grasped, as every other normal human has, that their actions reverberate to those around them, involved or not. And your problems trickled over into my life when I was involved, regardless of what capacity. Your issues have effected not just me, but your family and your friends. The psychological, emotional, verbal and physical hurt you inflicted has cost me time, money (spent on therapy), self-doubt, lack of self-worth, and even to some extent sexual crisis. This is to name but a few. You have no idea how much pain and suffering you have inflicted because you have no conscience. Your big outpouring a few months ago on how terribly sorry you were to have hurt me, you were going to spend a lifetime making it up to me, you were going to get your shit together and you had never meant to be like this, add, rinse, repeat. You may have meant it, at the time, but what has become clear in the recent months is that your words mean nothing. It was a facade because someone (me) told you that you had to make amends for the hurt, pain and suffering you had caused. And I also told you that I could not tell you when or how or where this amendment was going to take place and I was suddenly to believe that you were getting your shit straight only a few months later? Clearly, I am naive, gullible and way to quick to believe that everyone can change that quick.
You believed it to be sincere because you wanted or needed it to be sincere. I told you what you needed to do and that’s what you did. It’s how you run your life. Someone dictates that you need to do X in Y circumstance and that is what you do. Every. Single. Time. You cannot make your own decisions without running to 15 different people to tell you what to do. It’s sickening.
You know why I hung out with you this summer? Because I believed in you. I believed that underneath the hurt, the pain, the abuse and every other cliche was a good man. That ultimately, standing by you and supporting you, as I promised I would to the very end, would be its own reward.
And this is why I’m pissed. I’m so beyond pissed right now that it has taken every once of will power and restraint to not murder you, you fucking bastard.
What I want you to ultimately know is that I’m pissed because you made a mockery of me, my friendship and of my love. You turned what could have been a pleasant memory of a something into nothing more than a horror film that I can’t stop watching. Especially so since you still have NO idea what the fuck you did. It took every once of my strength that day to not lean over and strangle the crap out of you. Or knock some sense into your head.
And to add insult to injury to tell me that you were “thinking” that perhaps in 3 weeks, 3 months, or 3 years that you were going to start dating again and that I had better be happy for you and if I wasn’t, then so what? And to even add more salt to the wound, to then suggest your surprise that I wasn’t currently dating someone? WHAT SELF-ABSORPTION IS THIS? Please tell me. No wait, I’ll tell you. Clearly, you do not know me, to have gone through what I did with you for nearly ~2 years with you, standing by you, loving you, encouraging you to be a better man, to get on the right path to life and then to have you, hahaha, tell me that I needed to be happy for you to go frolic with someone else? I love(d) you and when you love someone, you don’t let them down, you don’t let them go and you stand by their side through thick and thin. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? Really, this is a joke right? You think I could easily transfer all that emotion, energy, desire and love to someone else because we were no longer together? What am I? The whore of Babylon? Seriously! Do you think emotions run that quick and that shallow that I could transfer what I felt for you onto someone else? That sir, took the fucking cake.
And I’ll tell you why I’m not in a relationship with someone else: After finding out about your costly porn addiction, the mere act of having sexual intercourse with anyone makes me nauseated. I may talk about sex, I may flirt, I may proposition but the actual thinking about having sex with someone other than myself makes me queasy. It took me FOUR MONTHS to even feel normal to masturbate again. So do not tell me, fucker, that your problems do not effect anyone else.
1 in 3 women are or were in an abusive relationship.
1 in 3.
You may not have beaten me to a bloody pulp but what you did was just as bad and the effects are just as lasting. The lying, the manipulation, the crying game when you were out of control, the begging for forgiveness, the deception, the duplicitous of your actions. Everything.
I thought that being jailed AND found guilty of assault against your ex, nearly killing me LAST WEEK in the car due to your uncontrollable road rage/anger issues, getting us evicted from a local grocery store for picking a fist fight last summer, the fact that you’ve lost friends and burned relationships all because you are so out of fucking control would be the wake-up call. Clearly, I was wrong.
You. Do. Not. Get. It.
You are out of fucking control and you need some serious fucking help. Moving ~200 miles away and burning your bridges with me is not going to solve your fucking problems.
I’m well aware that the picture painted from you to your friends, family and anyone else is that I am the woman scorned. I am the manipulative, duplicitous hussy who was after your money (hahahahahaha. That’s a good one.), who treated you badly and connived and manipulated my way into your heart and your family. I know this. I know how this will run. And I also know that I cannot warn any future women you date, that I cannot tell them your history and that I can’t, by the act of sisterhood, convince people to string you from your fucking balls and remove your penis.
It’s unfortunate, but, I can’t.
You fucked up. You fucked up so goddamn hard and so fucking often with me that I cannot imagine, in a million fucking years, how I could ever let you back into my life again. I’m sure one day I’ll find forgiveness, towards you, but you sir are to never darken my doorstep again. Ever.
I thought I had worked on forgiving you, but, clearly with the rage that I feel towards you right now that isn’t happening anytime soon.
You cannot make it with “anyone,” because you cannot make it with yourself.
I’ve deliberately removed your name from this post, after thinking long and hard, because I really want to come out of this with my dignity and grace intact. I am me, you almost sucked me dry, but you didn’t. But everyone knows who I’m talking about. And I have no fucking qualms about airing your dirty little secrets because well, I didn’t name YOU did I? Because clearly, I could be talking about anyone. And you can’t get me for slander or libel because your arrest record is public record and I have either character witnesses or surprise, surprise, records culled from public places where other acts of violence took place. Since your name is not mentioned here, you would have to prove beyond all shadow of doubt that I am naming you specifically (which I’m not) and that I’m harming you professionally or personally in some way that detracts from professional or personal dealings.
And the $500 (for grad school apps and the such) I owe you? You’ll be getting that, as I promised as I would, when the disbursement kicks in a month or two. And I’m doing that so that my conscience is clear, that I followed through with my promise and I am not beholden to you anymore for ANY. THING.
For almost 2 years I lived in a smoke screen, lying to people about how “happy” I was with you, because clearly I did not know any better and that I truly “loved” you and this was just a blip! I can make him happy, I can make him overcome his demons, my love will be shining through! Fuck. That. I’m no longer to going to lie, use subterfuge, and deceit to cover YOUR problems and issues which became MY problems and issues. And I have to come to terms with the fact that I was in an abusive relationship that I will be cursing your fucking name when I start seeking therapy at battered womens crisis center. Thank you, for that. I’m sure I’ll really fucking enjoy it.
You are not a “good” man underneath.
Your family, knowing your problems (because OH! They know! He once was violent towards me AND his parents! How lovely was that!), shied you from reality of your situation and cover your tracks with money and false promises.
I do not love you anymore. (Man, that was easy.)
I no longer believe in you.
I do not support you.
May your “soul” rot in fucking everlasting hell, you motherfucking asshole.
It’s finished.
P.S. And I don’t know when you’ll read this, it may be three hours, three weeks, three months or hell, even three years. But I’m totally okay with that, because it means I no longer have to actually deal with YOU because since clearly you did not listen to me the first time, all those months ago when I wrote something nearly similar, to get you to even CONSIDER your complete fucktardness, then airing everything in public? I’m so totally okay with that. You have no fucking idea. I am no longer protecting you. You can kiss my luscious ass goodbye.

Meijering at night.

Growing up, my mother installed a strange power relationship with food into our heads. I’ve never quite figured out where her ideas came from but essentially her idea was that less food in the house the better. Let me explain further: She would sometimes “forget” to go grocery shopping and or she would buy a few packages of hamburger, American cheese slices, saltines, and popcorn. For a family of four with eating habits for a family of six.
We’re large people and a bit on the tall side (I hover near 6′, Mumsy at 5’10” and brother at 7′. My now-ex step-father is about 6’1″.) While my mother is now borderline morbidly obese, my brother and I are just plain chubbeh. We could stand to lose a few pounds, but, we’re both fairly active (then and now) and are not sit at home stuffing our faces type people. We do, however, have large appetites.
It wasn’t that we were poor, Mumsy made a really good living as a home health care nurse (let’s just say, she neared six figures by the late ’90s in Michigan) and she certainly could afford to feed us, but, without fail, every week she would go grocery shopping and bring home the exact same items:
Continue reading “Meijering at night.”

It's a nice day for a white wedding.

I am currently getting ready to leave to drive to A2 for Erika’s wedding. 006 is going to be my date and we’re also going to be looking around A2 and Ypsilanti for apartments for me on Sunday. I’ll be home sometime Sunday afternoon, in which the new season of Mad Men begins. I’m so terribly excited about the new season, you have NO idea. 😉
Consequently, you can follow me on Twitter as we dance and drink the night away.

Tweet tweet: Lisa 2.0 or something very similar.

I’ve been writing online since the mid ’90s. Sometime in 2001, when LiveJournal was still accessible only by invite codes, I snagged a code from someone (unintentionally stealing it from the person it was meant for — not my fault that the originator posted it PUBLICLY!) and started using LiveJournal. For a long time, up until 2004 or 2005, I would cross reference entries between my own domain over to LiveJournal. The writing on my own domain slowly petered out and I started using LiveJournal for all of my “blogging” needs.
But I’m a voracious blogger, as it were, known for indepth analysis of the human condition (that sounded totally Pretentious Fucktwattedness, henceforth known as PFT, but I’m okay with that) and short non-sequitors that were mostly one or two lines of text. Stream of consciousness thinking, as it were, are my calling cards. I could start out a post about the joys of doing laundry only to end up discussing the rituals 006 and I used to share. There was never any “thought” process to my writing, it is what it is.
I’ve owned my own domain since the mid-’90s when one could buy them ONLY from Network Solutions (then Internic) and pay exorbitant amount of cold hard cash for the said privileged. I knew friends who ran their own servers, never paid for my own web hosting up until recently and for the most part, maintained (in the blogosphere) at least some sense of anonymity.
For the last couple of years, I’ve felt disjointed on how to combine my “internets” life with my public and personal ones. I’ve had exes who attempted to sue me for libel and slander, ex-employers who found my website and kept tabs on me after I left the company (even after I’ve left on my own accord and I was not dooced) and a local (in-state) family farm who claimed that my using their family name in the title of a piece was ruining their business. I’m everywhere and nowhere and the projects that I started, always seem to fall to pieces while modgirl.net languishes in disarray from terrible lack of upkeep. So thus began the great “re-organizational plan.”

Finish the archives for modgirl.net and never touch that website again.
Start updating She’s Got Plans and cross-reference to LiveJournal.
Keep small non-sequitor stuff to Twitter.
I’ve been asked about the Podcasting plugin that is showcasing on the bottom of this page, here is the scoop: I have over 700 CDs and close to 70 gigs of music, most of which I’ll probably never listen to. I thought it would be great to create a podcast, called AutoMusicBiographically. Each episode, starting with the beginning of the alphabet, I’ll showcase a particular band and discuss how they are relevant to me and to music in general while showcasing a few of their hits. I’m pretty excited about this new project, just need to get other stuff done before I get going on that one. I do, however, have a friend who does audio production work so this should far easier to get accomplished.

And so, what can you expect on She’s Got Plans?

Music, book, television, and general pop culture reviews.
Library school (and grad school) bru-haha.
General commentary on the absurdity of the human populace.
Project updates, including but not limited to: Knitting, cooking (because I’m relatively new to this whole “cooking” thing), writing (I’m working on flash fiction pieces to be compiled for an anthology), exercise and diet shit (gluten intolerance, like everyone else on the planet). The usual project and entertainment crap.
Team Sassy updates. Steph and I are walking 50 miles in October to help combat MS. Cross-referencing both websites with updates.
AutoMusicBiographically. I’m so excited for this project to begin!
Photos. There will be lots of photos.
And whatever else I can think of.

I’ll be tweaking the front end for a bit while I discover new plugins and widgets and of course, start driving users to the website, etc. That’s it for me, for now. I need to get to bed. Good night internets, sleep well and don’t hog the bed.

Stuff White People Like: White is the new black

I like to think that I am different.
Well, I DO.
But here’s the thing, no matter how awesome or cool I am, there is someone out there who is just a bit more awesomer or cooler than me. I know, shocking as it may seem, someone out there is living a life similiar to mine but doing it just a bit more edgier, a bit more hipper and well, a bit more stereotypical-er.
Indeed, I never really thought of myself as being totally rebellious or mainstream — I was always just me. And I never thought my actions were completely reactionary or followed a set of protocols that are seemingly unwritten, but, I recently found out that perhaps I was oh, so, terribly wrong.
Continue reading “Stuff White People Like: White is the new black”

My Dentist Says I have Hot’n’Sexy Teeth

Okay, he really did not say that, but that was what he was conveying with his “Excellent work, as always Lisa” on the commentary on my ereet brushing skills. I owe it all to Sonicare. Seriously.
The other day I received a few “nudges” from people about updating my LJ. “Hrm.,” I thought to myself, “It hasn’t been THAT long since I’ve updated.” Apparently, it HAS. Nearly two weeks. Eek. Let’s recap with our heroine shall we?
Sunday, April 1, Sara and I drove to Detroit to see Snow Patrol play at the Detroit State Theater. Little did we know that the exact same evening at the exact same time, there was a WWE event happening at the Civic Theater right next door, something going on across the street at Comerica Park for the Tigers and another event was taking place in the same neighborhood. Parking was scarce and we coughed up the $20 bucks to park in the ramp near the State Theater. After watching OK GO perform (which, ironically, they were pretty damn awesome live), Snow Patrol came on stage to the thundering applause of all the teenyboppers and hipsters that were either drunk or semi-drunk. We had few cute Asian girls in front of us who were beyond adorable and also beyond sober. Sara and I had ground floor “seats,” which in short meant we were less than 25 feet from the stage. That was exciting.
The show was excellent, not as good as Bloc Party mind you, but still excellent. Sara and I decided to leave during the “encore game” to head home and beat the traffic.
Hah. Hah. Hah.
Remember the casual mention of the other events earlier in this entry? Yes, well, it took us over an hour to get from the parking ramp to the highway – which was less than two miles away. The traffic guards, not local policemen but simple hired hands, were screaming at all the moronic drivers (okay, this IS Detroit after all), “KEEP FUCKING MOVING!”
Sara is one helluva navigatrix when it comes to this shit. She got us out of the jam and onto the highway fairly quickly. If left to my own devices, I’m sure that I would have been screaming at the traffic while slamming my hands on the steering wheel.
As we were hungry and also needed some gas, we decided to stop at one of the towns that litter the 96 highway between Grand Rapids and Detroit to fill up both tanks. Again, thinking that we were over 20 miles from downtown Detroit (if not more so) and heading westward, there shouldn’t have been an issue.
We were wrong. Again.
We stopped in the tiny town of Wixom where after slugging back caffeine, filling up the gas tank, we pulled into McDonalds. Where we waited for nearly 20 minutes in the same damn spot in the damn line to grab our “all white meat” chicken and greasy fries! Every restaurant in the vicinity is showing the same issue: Long lines, one person seemingly working and every redneck from Detroit to Lansing getting the same bright idea as we had, which was evident by all the yelling and screaming and waving of the fake title belts that we saw from their minivans and SUTs.
We hopped back on the road and drove another 15 miles to Brighton (Consequently, TheEx and I realised on our own road trip the previous weekend to Detroit to see Bloc Party that a good portion of the ‘burbs around Detroit were named after English towns. Brighton. Manchester. Birmingham, Pinckney, Chelsea and even a nod to the north with Dundee. If we really were feeling Anglophilic, we could have crossed over to Canada and driven to Essex, Middlesex and London.), where the longs were similarly as long but not as slow. Stuffed with McDonalds goodness, we headed home, arriving nearly four hours after we had got into the car. The two hour ride home was more than doubled and we concluded next time we attempt to go to a show in Detroit, we WILL be double checking with other local events first to see if said show is worth seeing with the hassle of the damn traffic and moronic drivers.
I also came to the brilliant conclusion that damn near every female on Earth wants a Snow Patrol song written about or sung to them. Think about it.
This past weekend, Easter weekend, TheEx and I made plans to travel up north to unwind and just chill. Our plans were shortened by a night as I had a four hour job interview with a local insurance company Friday morning, thus, instead of leaving Thursday evening as originally planned, we left Friday afternoon.
The weather around here has deteriorated from high 60s one day to freezing and snow the next, thus, by Friday afternoon, we packed our winter boots, mittens, and coats and drove three hours north, where the weather was much worse and our plans for a weekend of wine tasting, driving along the countryside, and checking out the 45th parallel were shot to shit.
TheEx and I took advantage of his parents not arriving until Saturday to laze around a Jacuzzi bathtub for several hours, with Tori Amos and R.E.M. piped in the overhead speakers. We watched tv, read magazines, and had the obvious gratuitous sex. Of course. After his parents arrived, nothing much had changed other than we went out to Funistrada for another excellent dinner, capped off with snow angels and watching Ameros Perros, which I had already seen but loved. We drove back to GR early Sunday afternoon to meet up with my family for Easter dinner, chocolate, and the highly anticipated season opener of The Sopranos (whoa baby!).
Though we have only been up north several times, the patterns are already setting in. Pizza the first night we arrive from Bear Paw or Johnny Salami’s. Errands into the village to pick up perishables for lunches and breakfast. Dinner at Funistrada for Veal Saltimbocca and Anniversary Chicken. French toast prepared Lisa way in the mornings. F1 racing or West Ham games in the afternoon. Lots of reading, relaxing, and naps.
And our lives in GR aren’t that much different. We’ve been cohabitating a schedule that somehow works. We haven’t killed each other yet, haven’t had a single tiff as of yet in regards to anything. And it’s weird, in a way, of this whole “living together” because we don’t think of it as living together but as an extended temporary stay. Once the whole “living together” thing is mentioned and we both do the deer-in-headlights look and just shrug our shoulders. We’ve got our routines, our patterns and our duties, it seems. I’ve declared that one night a week is “date night” were we go out and have a date. This weekend we are seeing a hockey game on Saturday night, the following weekend who knows? We now have the McPaper (USA Today) delivered in the mornings and the local rag on Sundays. We talk about days, our domesticity and our plans for future events. Trips that planned, things we want to do, places we want to go and lofty goals that seem within our reach at that bright, shining moment even if they are really just lofty goals.
But we don’t talk about the future, except in hypotheticals. “If we hypothetically get an apartment together,” I said last night as we walked to dinner at YesterDog’s before walking to Billy’s for Mikey’s surprise party, “I would like to hypothetically get a place in Eastown.” “I hypothetically agree with you that our hypothetical apartment should be within a four block radius of Eastown,” TheEx replied. “With a hypothetically large deck for grilling” he added later on that night.
But of course this idea of hypotheticals gets blown to shit when his mother this weekend, in all of her lovable charm and graciousness, asked me quite sincerely, “So Lisa, what are you doing for Thanksgiving?”
Our six month anniversary is coming up in a few weeks and that in and of itself is kinda crazy, weird, and awesome all at the same time. Because I can recall from our first dates, how I tried to break up with him several times because I didn’t, couldn’t predict that we would ever be in the same place emotionally at the same time. Why bother stringing me along after going through a nasty divorce (that is STILL being dragged out by petty mind fucks and vindictiveness)? And apparently, I was wrong (for once, it does happen) and we’ve worked out series of communication and nurturing skills (heh, how professional) that seem to work. And of course not everything is perfect and it can’t be, but, despite my initial reservation, I fall more in love with TheEx with each passing day.
Damn, that took several hours. I have more to update but I have to motor for work.