the last time.

The last time I got asked out it was via facebook.

How do you politely turn down a guy when it’s through a facebook message? When he can see that you’re on, that you exist, that while it’s taking you a week to respond to him it’s taking much less time for you to respond to others? How do you turn someone down that you met at a wedding when he was a coworker’s date?

You just do. Because that whole awkward situation that turns into dating someone you were never really all that interested in to begin with? Way overrated. Been there. Done that. Don’t want to again.

The last time I went on an all out full fledged he came to my door and picked me up and I liked him a lot kind of date? There were strings attached. It was a lot heavier than butterflies and how I felt when he walked me to my door.

And he had to get gas after he picked me up.

The last time – until last night – that I’m pretty sure someone might have been potentially interested in me was a week ago. And I would have rather washed my mouth out with soap than kiss him. And when he sent a text message to me that said “Call me tomorrow?” it seemed so convenient that I fell asleep before responding. Nobody asks you to call them tomorrow. You can say “Talk to you tomorrow” or “I’ll call you” but “Call me tomorrow?” I think not.

The last time I think I had anything remotely in common with anybody I found at all attractive was last night when I met a guy that used to work in the field I’m in but left for something lighter because he didn’t want to have a heart attack at 40 like his dad did or work the hours his mother and sister (who coincidentally I know) work. A guy who hunts and deep sea fishes and asked me to go with him. Who has an apartment in Charleston and visits all the time. Who’s gone to Bonaroo almost every year and was ecstatic in his love for outdoor concerts. Who drinks bourbon and ginger without becoming angry. Who showed up at our dinner table last night leading me to send a text to my friend sitting across from me that said, “I think HE is cute!”

And he was. Now let’s just see if HE calls.

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.

many the miles.

Last night I met up with my West Coast Best Friend’s guy friends. I spent a couple of good hours playing pool and drinking a few beers with them. We then headed to a different bar and my jeans and solid tee suddenly felt.. inadequate. I sent WCBF a text stating that fact, to which she replied, “I bet you look like a million bucks.” You can easily see why I love her. But as I sat there – the guys being great and mellow – I longed for girl friends to fit in with. The kind that are easy going and fun and.. here.

I thought over this this morning as I sat watching the Today Show. They referred to today as the 5th anniversary of the United States’ declaration of war. 5 years ago today I stood with about 150 other students from my University. We held hands in the cold night air, facing outward and looking onward to our capital. Behind us, and surrounded by us, was the Washington Monument. It was that hour we spent there, during which Bush made his official DOW, that would stand as one of the most vivid memories of those 4 years.

We don’t just always remember the romantic moments.

Or even the ones spent with our closest friends.

Still, looking through some stuff in my room the other night, I found the print out of an old instant message conversation that must have been had somewhere in the first couple of years I was in college, around the time my mom was going through chemo and radiation.

Zac: “Life is so crazy. It’s hiding around every corner when you least expect it.”
Zac: “It reminds you that it’s there.”
Me: “It certianly does.. makes you appreciate everything.”
Zac: “You know when I first met you, Kristin, I honestly thought that I had met the most stunningly beautiful girl in my life and maybe I had but I never took much stock in the things you had to say but the more I knew you and I guess I never did but the more I saw you smile and laugh and be sad the more intrigued I was with you. Like that’s why I always wanted that date with you cause I just wanted to see what you were really like. But I think I always knew you were a great person. I guess what I’m trying to say is that even though life presents us with things that we’re not really sure about we have to work our way through them as best as we can. I’m not sure what any of that has to do with anything but, you know.”
Me: “Yea. You always did make me smile.”
Zac: “Would you have ever gone on that date?”
Me: “Definitely.”
Zac: “You’re a sweet girl.”

And while it’s not always the conversations, or even the people, that stick with you over the years, there’s something to be said for the way each experience, each moment shapes us into who we are, and who we become.

take two.

“All this time, I wasn’t hungry for success, I was hungry.”
sophie kinsella, remember me?

Finishing my book last night, I started a new one called The Wonder Spot. I think I was mostly taken by the description on the back of the book, describing tha narrator as “an everywoman who doesn’t quite fit in anywhere. She’s looking for a career but lacks a calling, looking for love but winds up with men who hold her off instead of pull her in. At cocktail parties, she feels like a solid trying to do a liquid’s job” and “with every misstep, she’s closer to creating the life she wants to have.” And I thought, as I read that over, how many times do I see that person in myself? How many times do we?

The summer before I started 6th grade I got my hair cut off above my shoulders. I went with my best friend at the time to get our ears pierced. We’re talking big deal. I was going to start off at my new school feeling good. I even got contacts for the first time. No more of those red Fisher Price (no lie) glasses my mom adored so much.

I remember going home, so excited. (Not only that the pain was over, but that I’d finally gotten my ears pierced.) I remember showing my dad, and I love my dad, and him looking at me with a rather furrowed brow, tilting his head and saying, “I don’t think they’re even. I think they missed the marker on one of your ears. Yea, you’re going to have to go back and get that redone.”

What? More pain? Yea, he was serious. So I trucked back up to Merle Norman and had that ear repierced.

My junior year in college I decided I was ready and old enough to get lasik surgery. I’d been wearing contacts for about 10 years and I scheduled my surgery a couple of weeks before the end of the semester. I’d heard it was pretty painless. I had to get the surgery done on a Tuesday – mid school week – and recover in time to turn in some final papers and do a mock trial. It just.. wasn’t that easy. The surgery was, in fact, not painless. The recovery was haulted by the fact that the insurmountable work I had to get done kept me up at night. And the surgery, in the end, was not strong enough. Blamed on the fact that my eyes were just that bad, I scheduled a second surgery to be done in 3 months time. I had to go through that pain I swore I would never voluntarily encounter again. Again.

The point here? I’m finding out the hard way that I’m just not the person that gets things right the first time. I have to try, and maybe even fail, and then try again. It might be the same path, it might be an entirely different route, but sometimes it takes a failure for me to see the light.

The same rhetoric applies to my relationships. Because, as I’m learning, sometimes it takes time, and maybe even a step back, to see the cracks. Sometimes, even, it takes a mistake made, something regrettable, to realize the value of people in our lives. On the television show Felicity, her friend Sally spoke to her through a cassette tape telling her, “When your heart gets broken, you sort of see the cracks in everything.” And it’s true. I mean, it’s when we’re down on life, on ourselves, that we start to try and figure out where things went wrong, where we went wrong. Some say tragedy is meant to harden us. Maybe that’s just because we don’t want to go through that same tragedy again, have those same.. regrets.. all over again. Or, we could just chalk it all up to a learning experience. At least, that’s what I’m trying to do.

"out to hollywood.."

It’s funny how things change. Our memories evolve into dicey tales, pieced together by what’s past. It’s neither here nor there, the way we remember, the way that as we age, time changes the lenses through which we see.

The air was breezy, not still as it was where I was headed. Behind me I left days of bliss and sun, wind and turning pages. Now I moved towards something different, something I was catching.

I saw the street sign up ahead, lined by the moss that hung from the trees. The familiarity of it all overwhelmed me. As I turned towards a direction now unfamiliar to me, something different swept over. From pasture to television line streaming from the blue sky, I knew it. The house which I once remembered as sitting brightly amongst the crest of Toogoodoo, was not where I had placed it in my memory. I turned around, somehow certain of what I would find.

When it felt right, when the air I breathed in turned sunny, I took the road less traveled and I found the place I was meant to be. I found that memory of my first trip there, that house painted in a yellow so unfamiliar, more like that of a Goldfish than a marigold. More like something in between. A something meant to ward off evil spirits.

Our strokes, done in earnest and in a pace matched only by our sweat and tears pouring down in the hot sunlight, still lined that house. That chair out front, many years have seen and gone, is still occupied. That place those first memories carry still resides in my heart.