She Has Chosen Gratitude: Jamie

If I have a tombstone, I want it to say that. More than that, I suppose, I want it to be the truth. "She has chosen gratitude." (But, let's be real here, I want to be cremated.)

I have a lot to complain about. I do it a lot and it doesn't help. It shrinks my world down and makes it small and puts me smack dab in the middle of it. That world is boring and dramatic and makes me eat all the peppermint Oreos.

In an effort to conjure perspective, I tried to arrest my hatred and replace it with gratitude which is the mother of all beautiful virtues. And the things that make me feel most thankful happen to be specific individuals that have taken up permanent residence in my life, like a huge piece of furniture. So, I need a place to dwell and that's why God created blogs.

Today, let me tell you about Jamie. I choose Jamie because I was thinking about where I was a year ago and how present she was with me and it made me miss/ feel supremely loved by her (also, Jamie is the only person that I know for sure reads my blog).

I don't remember when Jamie and I officially met. I just remember being very confused by her. I was a Sophomore. She was a--I'm still not really sure. I knew she was ahead of me and I knew that they had her stationed in the Freshman dorms. This did not make any sense and she petitioned hard to get moved to live with the older girls. Eventually this happened, but thankfully not before we became minor acquaintances. It took some time but eventually we each became one another's safe-haven. She used to spend the night in my room (I, shockingly, rarely ever had a roommate) when her roommate became too much to bear. I used to go to her when I needed to get away from everything. This was easy because, oddly enough, Jamie and I ran in very different circles. We didn't have a lot of overlapping friends and just walking to her dorm was a little like walking to a different planet. Jamie teaches me about finding comfort in other people.

Jamie and I have always been on the same page regarding Jesus. We both like

him. We both want to look like him. We, neither, have any clue how to do this. Together we have searched for churches and thrown ourselves in with hope. Together we have been disappointed. Separately we kept looking and once I found a church that I really loved, I saw her during greeting time. Of course. Me and Jamie--always on the same page. Jamie teaches me about never giving up.

We made dates every week to eat dinner and share music and talk about books and boys. She pretty much only talked about one boy. She was in love with the same boy for, what,

five years? He was the only boy she ever talked about, he was the only boy she ever needed. He, on the other hand, did not seem to return the sentiment. This fact, combined with the fact

that I had never seen any evidence of his existence, clearly indicated to me that he was undoubtedly imaginary. After years of hearing about this fellow, I finally met Mr. JD and he really was all she said he was. Only by now, he was completely into her and that doesn't seem to be waning any time soon. The last time I saw either of them was when they got married this June. I wrote very touching things in the guest book. Jamie teaches me about patience.

A year ago, Jamie and I had been living in a barren and exhausting landscape for about six months. She had a long bout with unemployment and had just found a job. Two jobs, to be accurate. I didn't know it yet but I was thiscloseto getting fired from my first real job. We were in South Dakota to help start a church and it didn't seem to be going anywhere either. I was out of options and had to leave her there and go back to Kansas City where I battled my own unemployment status with fists of fury. I hated leaving her there. I felt defeated. She felt defeated. We both seemed to find ourselves in corners but we wrote letters. We relied heavily on our unlimited text messaging plans. Now that she lives in beautiful, hopeful South Korea, I can't text her. It's been months and I still instinctively pull out my phone when I see the woman at Walmart who wears cowboy boots with her Capri pants. Jamie teaches me about endurance.

I have to save all my texts for the end of the day when I can sit down and email her. By then, though, I've forgotten most of the silly things that happened and instead of knowing the little bits of my life, Jamie gets a very broad overview and I get the same but I'm very happy for that much. Jamie teaches me about gratitude.

Well, that was nice. It doesn't make today suck any less but it does take some edge off. At this point I'm going to take a shower, drink half a beer (to take the rest of the edge off) and then read my book in bed until I fall asleep. And tomorrow will be a brand new day.

I hope.

I'm not a lot but you can have all of me,

Libby

I want to be my me.

I watched this movie tonight, 500 Days of Summer. I'm going to tell you kind of a lot about it. So, if you're thinking that you really want to see it and don't like having things spoiled for you then you should probably stop reading somewhere about now-ish. You can leave your window open, go rent the movie. Don't forget the goobers and the take out. I'll still be here when you get back. That's fine. It's probably best this way, anyway, that way you'll know what I'm talking about most of the time and you can get your brain set with your opinions and what not.

But for those of you who are going to keep reading, then I guess you'll have to deal with some spoilers. It's the story, as the trailer states, of Boy Meets Girl. But where the trailer leaves off and as the title would even imply, it's obviously not one with an ending where boy and girl walk off into the sunset hand in hand. It's 500 days of Summer. It's a girl named Summer and obviously these two know one another for, what, a year and a half? A rough rounding, that is.

Tom has been looking for the one until he found her, she hasn't been looking for anyone. Early we get the understanding that she doesn't believe in true love. In bed at an IKEA she tells him that she's not looking for anything serious. He says he's cool with that. Before they leave the living room section, she holds his hand and walks with her head on his shoulder. Not long after that they're in bed in a much less public venue.

Here's my favorite thing about the film: the chronology. It runs through the course of the relationship the same way that our brains do. It gives us a scene from day 1, when they met. Then it gives us a scene from, say, day 49 with that day in the park when he drew a city scape on her arm, then shoot back to day 27 with the glorious/ dangerous shower sex--and weren't those the favorite days?

Shoot to day 279 or something like that, when things start to go down hill and they get in a fight and she says, "Look, Tom, we're just friends." And he sets her straight with the fact that she's not the only one who gets to make that decision and that with all they've been up to, they're a couple, goddammit. And he leaves. She shows up at his apartment a few hours later with sexy, wet, walking-in-the-rain hair and an overdue apology. Go back to one of the early days when she first sneaked up on him in the copy room at work and suddenly we only remember the happy times again.

But officially and inevitably it ends and Tom is worthless. Walking to the corner store in a bathrobe buying whisky and Twinkies kind of worthless.

At this point, the audience chooses a villain. My movie watching companions all did, anyway. One would say that she was a heartless bitch who was just using him. Some say she led him on. Some say there were mixed signals. Another said that he was a bum, a schmuck and should get on with his days and over with his self-indulgent, broken hearted bullshit. Hearts break. Bad things happen. We live through them.

I couldn't pick a favorite. I couldn't pick a villain and I couldn't pick a hero. Sure, I sympathized with him because I've been there and no one wants to see a broken heart. But let's be honest, in the first few days she said "I don't want to be anyone's girlfriend. I don't like the idea of being anyone's anything." She spelled it out in the first place. My paraphrased version says, Don't get your hopes up. I can't promise I'll be here every morning when you wake up. She was fair from the beginning.

I don't want to be anyone's anything. I'm afraid to tell all of them that while I don't know which one's worse, I think I'm Zooey in this movie. I get her--she says most of what I want to say. It's not that easy though because I'm him too, sometimes. My heart has hurt so heavy at times that it took a day or two to get my shit together. There is one chapter in my life story that reads little more than "She drank vodka and cranberry out of the same Styrofoam cup for four consecutive days."

(It's never been worse than that one time, though. That was one four-day stint 5 years ago and I think we're all a little happy that we've all moved on.)

But there seems to be the underlying sentiment that it's all well and good that she doesn't want to be anyone's girlfriend but she forfeits all that extra stuff, too. And maybe in this case she should have. Maybe knowing how in love with her he was from the get go--Tom shouldn't have been the place to go for it. But does a girl who doesn't want a label have to be the girl who doesn't get whimsical dates to IKEA and doesn't get to hear wonderful things and doesn't have to surrender herself from time to time knowing that she owes him an apology? I don't know.

I don't want to be anyone's anything. I want to be my me. I know that I was created for more than solitude and it would be nice to be my me next to someone else who was his him--but that's muddling the ultimate point.

I am both of these people all at once and my brain has been in a dilemma since somewhere around the beginning of June. There's a part of me that just knows the kind of girl I am. But then there's the part of me that knows what I always thought I wanted to be. I'm trying to marry these people but there's a lot of pull and a lot of push and I think it's oil and water.

In the end, let's be honest, neither of them would have been able to get all of what they were looking for and remained together. Would you rather see a compromise? I wouldn't have. I prefer a broken heart to a compromised one. Don't get me wrong, though, I don't think that means that plans never change. But no one's got a right to hang on the hope that the other person leaves what they want on the side of the road.

This Afternoon's Minor Distraction

I'm standing there, absently wiping the green counter top and staring out the window, wondering about what it would be like if I really did get this job that I applied for. Because I want it--I want it real bad. I'm thinking about what it would be like to have a job where advancement was a possibility. I'm thinking about what it would be like to have one of those jobs that I wasn't kind of embarrassed of. And in the middle of the daydreaming, a man approaches me.

He came in on a mission. He didn't look at the menu, he deflected my offer for fudge. He looked straight at me and leaned his arms on the glass counter top. I pointed at the sign that said not to lean, he read it but didn't get up. I think maybe he didn't realize that's what he was doing. "I'm on a fishing trip--of sorts." I surveyed his scene. He sort of looked like he might be going fishing, it was only forty degrees outside though and I couldn't imagine that would be all that much fun. He wore a short sleeved plaid shirt with long underwear underneath, he had grey whiskers and hair that looked like it was nice when he left the house but by mid-afternoon, it was completely out of its initial place.

"Oh, alright," I said, looking at him with marginal suspicion. "Do you want a sandwich or something?"

"Fifteen years ago I was walking behind the stores along this block. There was this gorgeous pickup truck, it was painted bright yellow and there was the most beautiful music playing from it."

"Okay." I smiled, anxious to hear where he was going with this and pleased that he didn't need me to wash my hands and stuff them into plastic lunch-lady gloves.

He smiled back at me and squinted his eyes in resignation.

"But I suppose you don't know anything about fifteen years ago."

"No, sir. I'm sorry. I was... eleven, fifteen years ago."

"Oh." He sounded disappointed and surveyed the scene.

"But, you know, next door there's a florist. He's much older than me, his name is Bob and he wears Hawaiian shirts. He's been here for years and years. I'd say that if anyone knows anything about that, it'd be Bob."

"Bob, you say? Right next door?"

"To your left."

"Thank'y ma'am." He tipped his invisible hat. Kind of a Jimmy Stewart move, on his part.

About six minutes later, I saw him leave the florist and walk across the street, get in his own pickup truck and leave. This didn't surprise me. He had very little to go on.

And here it is, seven hours later and I can't get it out of my head. What the hell was that about?

Don't Pretend There's Not a Little Home-Ec in You

As the weather is getting colder and I seem to be the only one rejoicing in forty degree temperatures, I find myself gravitating towards the kitchen. Seriously. I didn't notice it until this afternoon when I had such a strong desire to make peanut butter cookies that I took to the interwebs in search of a recipe that wouldn't require me to find a way to the grocery store. I generally do not love peanut butter cookies. I've never had a good one. They're always burned and crispy or big and caky featuring a Hershey's kiss (I'll choose to not discuss how combining peanut butter and chocolate isn't my most favorite thing ever). Certain things can be crispy and certain things can be light and fluffy but if there's a spectrum between those two, I feel like the perfect peanut butter cookie needs to land about a quarter past crisp with that chewy snap in the middle. Scanning my cupboards, it's been brought to my attention that I have very little in the way of baking materials but I'm determined and I'm about to venture in there and embark on a sort of hodge podge of an adventure involving flour, sugar, only one egg and 1/2 a cup of peanut butter. Just as soon as my butter softens.

In the mean time, some parts of my house are very clean and fantastic. Other parts are downright embarrassing. Like, how did it happen that my makeup found its way to the television stand? Why is there a pile of towels on my bathroom sink when there's a place to hang them not two feet from where they lay? And more than that, why is it that I keep seeing these things, feel bothered by them and yet, just walk away from them? Who does this? I do this. Until I get so sick of it that I schedule an entire afternoon to tackle these things that have effectively piled up when all I had to do was spend half a second to fix it in the first place. I don't think I can say that I'm lazy. That's not it. I'm not lazy. I'm something else entirely. Why is it that I can't overlook a misplaced apostrophe in a text message (even if it means re-typing it entirely) but I can't reach over and hang up a towel?

And another thing, I can not function if the cushions on the couch are askew but if my cat dragged out all of my gift-wrapping ribbon and has strewn it all over the house, I could actually leave it there for hours without even thinking to pick it up. And only then it's because I think that if someone comes over, they'll judge me for having crap strewn about. It has nothing to do with the fact that there is an actual mess on the floor. But those couch cushions: We're not trash, here. Fix those. What's wrong with you?

In other homemakey news, today I incorporated an office-type situation into my living room using items that I mostly already in other corners of my house. Put that in Real Simple and smoke it! I took the small folding table that previously held my birthday cake and covered it in the fabric that I have hanging over the windows in the living room. Add one dining room chair, one lamp (because Arryn gave me great ones for my birthday--my favorite one is going to need some work but you'll love it when it's finished) and a lap top and voila! Instant office. I'm so happy with myself today.

The cookies are out of the oven. There are two on a plate next to me right now. They're too hot to tell how they'll ultimately but I predict a little on the crumbly side. That is to be expected, all of my brown sugar was clumpy and, when heated, let off tiny sugar bombs inside the cookies. It actually looks really cool.

Have a great night.
-Lib

Call It Off

I lied in that last post.
It was a minor, insignificant slip up and it won't happen again.
Let me come back to you.
I love you.

Love, Me.

Hi everyone.
I'm writing to tell you that I'm moving. Sort of. It will be just as easy for you to get to me though.
My bloggyblog is moving to libbymparker.wordpress.com.
You can still subscribe to me and know when I write stuff.
You can still even leave comments.

It's better for everyone this way.
I love you.

I'm Pretty

If there's one thing that the world knows about women, it's that they want to feel attractive. I'm no exception. I always liked to believe that I was something different. I was a girl who didn't need to feel pretty because I was a girl who had other great qualities. I'm smart and literary and sometimes witty and that makes up for the lack luster looks. Right? No, not really.

According to a lot of articles that I've been reading lately, women multi-task in ways they don't even know about. It's nearly impossible for a woman to zero in and concentrate on one single thing. I never thought this was weird--I still don't. I think it's weird that a man could possibly think about only one thing at any given moment. Usually these these articles are about sex, about how difficult it is for a woman to reach orgasm while men can pretty much get there regardless of any interference. For women, though, apparently it takes a subtle balance of self-confidence, a clean house, full (but not too full) tummy, temperature and don't forget the determination and patience. If any of these aspects becomes disrupted, the whole balance gets thrown off and I guess you just hope to God that determination weighs more than the rest.

Feeling attractive works pretty much the same for me. There are way too many factors to keep track of but sometimes they all swing together in a way that causes me to walk out the door and down the street with long, deliberate strides. I don't want to just feel pretty, I want to feel like a good woman. It starts with a shower and is almost guaranteed if I go to the trouble of shaving my legs. It creeps through my check book, into my kitchen and surveys the amount of dishes in the sink and the whole-grains and leafy greens in the refrigerator, it goes into my bedroom and through my journals. It rifles through the Rolodex of recent dreams and friends who need correspondence and then goes into my iPod. If everything seems to be in check, I'll just feel good about myself.

This morning I woke up and threw all of my laundry into the washing machine. Arryn then calls me and asks if I want to go shopping with her and the kids. Of course I do. It's Labor Day and I don't have a thing to do. So I search through my closet. I've got jeans that are two sizes too big and jeans that are one size too small. But any too small is too small and out of the question. So I pull on some gigantic jeans. All the tops that are left in my closet are those tops that I never, ever wear--otherwise they'd be in the laundry right now. But I'm thinking, "I'm going to look cute today," so I hike up my jeans and try on about 5 different shirts. Frustrated, I opt for make up. Purple eye shadow, eye liner, foundation, eew. Let's work on hair... I didn't get a shower today so there's sort of an abundance of oil happening at the roots and crunchy dryness happening in the ends. I'm officially a repulsive human being. So I do what you do when you feel disgusting, I texted my friends and told them about it. And they said, "Hey--I've been there dude. I don't know how to fix it, though."

I did. I put on a belt. I washed my face. I pulled my hair back into a pony tail, tore off all the layers of tops and put on an old dorm t-shirt and a hoodie. I put on my flip-flops and stuffed my self worth into my pockets knowing good and well that feeling pretty is only a minuscule part of being an attractive woman.

As I was buckling Genesis into her car seat after a day of talking and walking around Hobby Lobby and Target she kissed me and thanked me for being her best bud. She told me that she thought I had such pretty collarbones (except she didn't know what they're called, she said "I like your those things, they're so pretty" and pointed at my chest. Needless to say I was confused.) . Nothing in the world could make me feel more beautiful. I've always wanted to be the kind of girl who had nice collarbones.