to tomorrow.

Watching Oprah right now as I clean up in my room before showering I heard her say, “You can do unto others all that you want to. It’s already gonna be done unto you.”

I began listing my resolutions last night, in the car with my mom, as I drove the way back from Charleston, from seeing my best friend’s baby girl, from great luck in J.Crew, from the long day we’d had.

No drama, I said. Mom concurred. Drama. I HATE drama. I always AVOID drama. But somehow? It seems to find me. To magnetize to me. To AFFECT me. No no no more.

Less stress, I added. Oh yes, Mom agreed. I stress a lot. Always have. You can see it in the writing on my face and probably, honestly, nowhere else. Because, amazingly, I remain pretty calm. (I blog it all out.) But I dislike it. Quite a lot.

Talk less to others, I thought to make a change on my increased verbosity in recent years as today I sat, mostly in silence. For 3 hours in silence as my car got fixed and I turned the pages in my book. At the Ford dealership as the recall I’ve known about for over a year got taken care of. At the car wash. Talking less is good. Talking less is helpful. Talking less, while it means I’ll have a whole lot of more mess going on in my head than I (already) do, might be good for me. Might be exactly what I need. So people, please start expecting a little silence out of me face to face, email to email, phone to phone. If you want me? You want to amend anything with me? In 2009? You’re going to have to want me. And maybe the truth will hurt [me]. But the truth it will be.

In 2009? I’m hoping for a lot.

Cheers.

yes, there is.

A couple of weeks ago my 6 year old cousin Leigh Anne came home from her school in Salt Lake City jabbering about how a boy that day had told her Santa Claus wasn’t real.

“It’s just, I just, well, I just know it’s not true. Because if he really weren’t real, we’d be going to all this trouble for nothing.

“She was so sure of things.

One Sunday morning, weeks ago, the roommate and I sat at brunch at Adriana’s reading the paper. Over and over again I read through the DHEC article that colored the first page in all it’s exclusive newsworthiness. “What’s this Virginia thing?” I asked looking at the page the roommate was reading, where I believe a Macy’s ad advertised the well known words. It was then I learned. As per usual, something I feel as though I should have learned of long ago. Of 8 year old Virginia in 1897 Manhattan who asked her father if there really was a Santa Claus. Because that’s what the kids at school were telling her. And so her father told her to write to the New York Sun telling her, “If you see it’s in The Sun, it’s so.”

So Virginia wrote, “DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, ‘If you see it in THE SUN it’s so.’ Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus? VIRGINIA O’HANLON. 115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET.”

Shortly thereafter, in an unsigned editorial printed September 21, 1897, the following was published:

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

I hope you make glad the heart of someone this Christmas, and that I may, as well.

booooo!

I think and hope that everyone has a memory of their favorite halloween. You know, not the ones where you sit back and make fun of other people’s scantily clad selves, or the ones where your mother made your costume. But the others. Where somewhere there exists THE GREATEST COSTUME EVER.

I was in middle school, back in the days when I used to figure skate, when I experienced my greatest halloween costume ethereal experience. I was going to a halloween party I went to every year.

I had brown hair then too and I wore one of my figure skating outfits (Yes, spandex. Yes, probably hot nasty colors.), tights and all, and carried my skates over my shoulder. And I did something I’d always wanted to do and never done since. I used a fake bloody wound and ripped up my tights and put it on my leg.

My bff at the time, a pretty blonde girl, wore her skating outfit too, skates over her shoulder, except she carried a crow bar.

Are you getting it?

I was Nancy Kerrigan and she was Tonya Harding.

And I’ve loved that costume even since.

memorial weekend.

Last Friday I was really upset with McHottie. I let it get to me in a way I wish to never have happen again. He did everything I asked him not to do and nothing I asked him for. He shirked my deadline. He mouthed off. He got an attitude with me in front of El Boss, who then proceeded to take my side. (Today he continued his meanness.)

After leaving work that afternoon I drove around killing time, waiting for my brother to get here from Charleston. What started off as me looking for shoes for a dress I had ended with me buying another dress and then pair of shoes to wear with that.

A couple of hours later I met up with my brother and got in the car with him for Clemson. Our mission: to clean our our condo there because Dad is closing the sale on it this week.

Once there, we went to 356 for sushi. My favorite sushi. The shel roll is a delicacy – shrimp tempura, tuna, cream cheese, and avocado. But there’s just something in the way it’s cooked. In the eel sauce. In the wholeness of it all.

Later on we headed to meet up with some friends and then out – to Tiger Town Tavern. You’ve just got to love Clemson.

I fell asleep that night on the couch in the condo next to the one we own. And when I woke it was time to start the packing. And, if I may say so myself, I lucked out. Mom had mentioned to me, “If you want anything from the condo, you better get it now.” I know my response bordered somewhere along the lines of there being nothing up there I either wanted nor could fit in my place. But I was wrong. There has, for a long time, been a black and white poster there that I have loved. It was taken from one of Dad’s Beatles albums when he was in college. The creases are still clear. He unfolded it and framed it in the early 70s. Looking at it, you see a crowd of people and amongst them, visibly, is Paul McCartney (and Linda). And I have loved it always. And I got it (even though Mom is adamant it’s not mine).

When we finished on Saturday, we stopped by my favorite burger place in Clemson, Mac’s Drive In. And we raced to eat before we got back on the road so that I could get dressed and ready for the wedding I had to head to that evening.

Saturday afternoon, dressed in my new outfit with my old purse, I headed off to the ceremony with two of my guy friends. I sat through a wedding where in one ear, lines from Wedding Crashers were quoted and in the other, I heard, “Add ‘between the sheets’ to the end of each hymn title,” as the hymnal was flipped through at random.

At the reception I danced and danced, spilling my pinot grigio on my dress not out of inebriation, but out of joyfulness. I spent time with friends I love. I went to a bar in the Vista and had a couple of beers. I got home at a decent hour. I kept my smile in tact.

Sunday morning I got up and packed and left for brunch with Mom and Dad. Already half way to the lake at our club, I drove the rest of the way to meet up with my sister-from-another-mother and her family and spent time sitting on the deck of the house reading my now new favorite book, Love the One You’re With (and I’m only on page 81).

That evening we went on a cruise on the 2 week old boat, strawberry daquiris in hand, and found ourselves stranded in the middle of the lake, a problem later resolved to being a loose plug-in. We hooked up the trolling motor and moved slowly along as my sister-from-another-mother and I comedically paddled at will until we met up with another boat who pulled us all the less than 2 miles back to our dock. Home in time to eat our delicious dinner and to get in a game of Cranium.

On Memorial Day we sat in our pajamas for hours. We feasted on a breakfast of sausage biscuits (and later that day on a mountain of barbeque and ribs). We read our books and told stories and laughed. We took boat rides and drank beers. We filled the dock and talked endlessly. We celebrated togetherness with our family of choice.

when looking ahead, look back.

Last night I sat in my room watching Come September. I realized, in watching the end and how things really do work out in the long run, that that’s not really just a concept created by the cinema nay a fabrication designed by writers, but the truth.

A couple of nights earlier I sat and finished watching a borrowed copy of the movie Playing by Heart. It had taken me awhile to get into it but once I did I found it interestingly addictive. There is a line towards the end of the movie, a line I couldn’t seem to find to quote, that describes the truest of relationships as that which brings out the best in us, the good within. And that’s the part of me I want to see myself. That’s the part of me I’m often fighting. That’s the part that I realize only one person seems to bring out.

So if things really do work out best in the end and relationships – even with friends – only truly work and survive if they’re bringing out the best in us, individually, then why do I just not feel this overwhelming sense of relief? Or of clarity?

Maybe it’s because I am realizing that the end is not near and my friends? I hate to say it but they’re really not always all that. I mean, don’t get my wrong. I have some really wonderful friends. But they have other things going on – other lives that include boyfriends and different cities – and I’m not really something they’re too concerned about losing, or just in general.

Friday night I have a surprise birthday party to go to for McHottie, thrown by his wife and brother. And I’ve really been looking forward to it. It’s at a farmhouse in the country. They’re having a band and a pig pickin’. And it should be a lot of fun, especially considering that the weather here has been wonderful lately.

Friday night I have a party to go to and nobody to go with me. And I’ve asked. Really, I have. But I didn’t realize fully until today, this afternoon, at work, how upset about it I really am. The thing is I don’t want to go by myself. I understand that people go places by themselves all the time. I understand it because I do; I go to people’s houses for parties by myself. I’m actually pretty brave about that whole thing and pretty over needing an “escort” to go out. But this party? This night? I really didn’t want to do it.

First, McHottie’s brother (Otter) will be there. The same brother that has kissed me.

Second, MJ will be there. And probably with his girlfriend. And that idea alone makes me uncomfortable. It’s not because he’s not just a friend. It is, however, because he has said things to me that make me uncomfortable to be around his girlfriend. It is the plain and simple concept of you not discussing your disinterest with who you are with with other people, particularly of the opposite sex. And, even more, of you complaining about your status quo and not doing anything about it. It’s about respect.

And thirdly, other than McHottie’s wife, whom I adore, and his mother, I will know no females. I know his guy friends, but not their wives and girlfriends. And that can be, you know, uncomfortable. I don’t want to be that girl.

I don’t want to be that girl that couldn’t find a girl friend to be her wing-person.

But I guess that’s who I am.

And so Saturday, itself, was already looking up to be a better day than the stresses of Friday night. Saturday I had planned on two of my good friends to come into town from different towns, respectively, to come stay with me. One was coming from Greenville for a much needed break from her live-in boyfriend. Another was coming from Charleston. And each, separately, have since cancelled. Leaving me, again, alone. Any old day? No problem. St. Patrick’s Day in 5 points? Yea, that sucks.

Last year I had the worst St. Patrick’s Day I could have imagined. I didn’t write much about it and I told, maybe, just a few friends. But the shock of it all, the fight, the disappointment, and everything else combined made it difficult to recreate. It made it difficult for any future St. Patrick’s Day to be worse. Is loneliness worse?

"grey sweatpants, no makeup."

“I have a certain curiosity for life that drives me
and propels me forward.” rachel mcadams.

I have never really been the biggest fan of New Year’s Eve. I don’t really think it was ever something I sincerely disliked. In high school I, in fact, I enjoyed it very much. But in high school we were ridden with traditions and swallowed whole by a crew. As time wore on, inevitably, places changed, people changed. And last year, the disappointment from a friend made this year waver in excitement for me.

I did not make it to the Peach Bowl to see my beloved tigers lose. I did not dress up and don a tiara and toot a horn. I did not shout “Hap – - – py New Year!” like I love to do. I did not kiss anyone at the stroke of midnight.

No, this year was very different from years past. As 2008 came to life, I found myself sitting on the floor of a dirty house with just a few around me. Toasting with cheap champagne in a mellow atmosphere. Overwhelmed with exhaustion.

New Year’s Eve, after all, is just like any other eve.

As I left shortly thereafter to drive the few blocks home, I first stopped at my car, still chatting with the girl I’d walked outside with. We were discussing a few recent events and the company we’d kept, we being the only females there. We were discussing, as it came to be, Mr. Perfect. For Mr. Perfect was in the company we’d kept.

And she, apparently, has feelings for Mr. Perfect.

Now, it’s okay. I have no claim on him whatsoever. I have no reason to be like this nor to diminish her hopes. When she spoke of eligible men, he was one of them. When she spoke of people thinking they’re dating, it is because he often visits her at her work to try to encourage programs and planning for a group which we (both he and I) have envisioned in great detail for quite some time. This group, being an active group of individuals associated with her work. So they are often seen together. Discussing, that is. And when I say he is a nice guy, he’s the nicest of nice. He’s why I call him Mr. Perfect. Too perfect, in fact, for me.

So why this feeling?

I told my long lost best of this conversation while at dinner last night. She says martinis make me chatty, so we went to Martini Night at Travinia. In any event, her response to me was, “Did you tell her about y’all?” “Y’all” being that whole feelings thing, date thing, that happened years and years ago. “No,” I told her. What would that accomplish? It would not make her feel better and so, thus no need for discussion.

But the thing is, I just don’t see them together. And even if I could, I don’t see him with her. I just, don’t. And even if I felt I could express the reasons why and not be judged, I feel as though I would judge myself for my thoughts as to why. And so I shall not.

I want him to be happy. And I don’t think that he’d be happy with me, nor I happy with him. Why? He is black and white. He is do or don’t. He is yes and no. He is the guy that doesn’t like to see movies in a theater because of how much they cost and I am the girl driving to Greenville Friday night to see Atonement because that’s the nearest place it’s showing. He is the guy that never drinks and I am the one that oftentimes needs a drink. He is the someone that doesn’t ever curse and I, in the moment or whenever, when I’m mad about losing a life in Nintendo, just can’t stop. He wouldn’t miss church on Sunday morning, I didn’t go this past Sunday because it was raining. He’s just.. not the same.. as me.

Me? I’m a mess of contradictions. We? We’d be a mess of contradictions. I think Ian McEwan said it best in Atonement. “His excitement was close to pain and sharpened by the pressure of contradictions: she was familiar like a sister, she was exotic like a lover; he had always known her, he knew nothing about her; she was plain, she was beautiful; she was capable – how easily she protected herself against her brother.. They would be alone together soon, with more contradictions – hilarity and sensuousness, desire and fear at their recklessness, awe and impatience to begin.”

For he, Mr. Perfect, very much deserves someone he can understand, someone who understands him. Whereas I, when you look at a map, am the one with the lines drawn every which way. I’m every map with it’s intersections and interruptions and crossed paths and windy roads. And even though you look right at it, searching for your way, you can get lost in it every time.

“Maybe I don’t want a Happy New Year, he said.
Maybe I want an intense New Year with a lot of growth experiences & I had to admit I’d never thought of that.”
story people.

happy new year y'all!

Cap’n Andy Hawks: “It’s Saturday night again!”
[He slaps Parthy affectionately on her rear end]
Parthy: “Oh! It’s Wednesday night and don’t you strike me!”
Cap’n Andy Hawks: “It’s Saturday night forever!”
Parthy: “Yes, and Fourth of July.. and Christmas.. and..”
[imitating Cap'n Andy when he celebrates New Year's Eve]
Parthy: “Hap – - – py New Year!”
show boat.

So even though it’s Monday night and even if you’re not with the ones you love, celebrate and have a good time. Love the ones you’re with.

Have a Hap – - – py New Year!

p.s. i love you.

So much goes on in my head that I have to pick which bubble to burst at which moment, as if my thoughts are fighting for prominence.

I was driving home a little after midnight last night (a fact which may have contributed to my waking up at 8:05 this morning when I needed to have been at work at 8) and my mind was awash in thoughts. I was on my way home from seeing P.S. I Love You. Now, I don’t care what the critics or any of your friends are saying. And I may be the cheesy girly movie type who likes everything from Center Stage to The Notebook to Elizabethtown to anything and everything on Lifetime and Hallmark. But I liked this movie. I liked it a lot. There was something invigorating about it. And I do recommend it. Because when I wasn’t crying? I was laughing. And that’s what I think makes a movie good. That movie really drove it home for me.

At one point in the film, Harry Connick, Jr. said to Hilary Swank that there’s no one, dead or alive, that’s going to fault you for living your life.

It helps, sometimes, to be reminded of that.

It’s New Year’s Eve today.

It’s New Year’s and I don’t have just 2008 ahead of me. I have my whole life ahead of me. I have a lifetime of mistakes to make, tears to cry, laughter to bring, to shake my core.

It’s New Year’s and next year is going to be better than the last. I have wonderful friends to lean on. I have y’all to guide me. I have parents who encourage me. And I have me to see it though.

Curtis Mayfield sings a song of the same title, “P.S. I Love You.” And as I drove home last night, it came, unexpectedly, out of my speakers through my ipod. And on it, he sings, “Yesterday we had some rain but all in all I can’t complain.. Nothing else for me to say and so I’ll close but by the way.. Everybody’s thinking of you, P.S. I Love You.”

hee haw.

I believe it may be time for me to address, in short, the events of this Christmas. This Christmas was, yet again, (and I think, very much to my parent’s delight) a redneck Christmas in our house. The first year our Christmas was declared as such an event was a few years back when my brothers both got a heap of camo, rifles, and fly fishing rods. “It’s a redneck Christmas!” I cried.

To boot, we have spent many a year at the Boykin “redneck” Christmas parade which, for the first time ever, was cancelled this year due to “too much success.” We also have, most recently, attended the Christmas party of a client of Dad’s in Lexington where you’ll find more camo than Christmas and more meat cooked up in more variety than anywhere in the US, I’m sure.

And this year, I believe Mom and Dad were determined. For this year, I got the camo. I got the Real Tree shirt. And I, yes their only sweet sweet daughter, got the camo jacket.

What boy can resist this city girl now?

at christmas.

this is a wish for you:
peace of mind,
prosperity throughout the year,
happiness that multiplies,
health for you and yours,
fun around every corner,
energy to chase your dreams,
joy to fill your holidays!
(d.m. dellinger)