Time is ticking...ticking...ticking away.

We're in the last leg of our Bermuda time together, and I have to say, I don't want to go home. Home is where the responsibility is. When I get home, I run right into the end of the summer semester, finals, job, kids, cooking, cleaning, cleaning, grocery shopping, wedding planning, getting ready for the school year with the boys (I HATE back to school time!) and preparing for the fall semester for me. I run into actually having to quit my job. I'm not used to leaving a job on my own, I don't know if I can handle it! hehehe.
But seriously, this has been so magical. Even being alone every day isn't so bad. I have been swimming, rock climbing, walking...I shopped a couple of days, successfully in that the only things I've purchased so far were fishing poles. I went to the beach one day (so lonely I didn't last long). I've taken loads of pictures. I've made a couple of friends.
And then there are the nights. I love them. We have so much fun. One night we'll fish (so freakin' funny walking up and down these steep trails, studded with sharp rocks, trying to carry the poles, the hooks, the string, the squid, AND the drinks), and the next night we go somewhere. Last night it was the Dockyard. Three nights ago it was St. George's. No matter where we go, though, we have fun. We always have fun. We have fun in Nevada, too, don't get me wrong. I guess it's just the being alone. I don't know.
In 65 days, we'll be married. I'm so excited about that, until I think of everything that has to be done. When I get home, it's time to shake down everyone who hasn't been forthcoming with their addresses. Ugh.

Fun!

Day six in Bermuda and I'm dreading the idea of leaving. Is it leaving Bermuda, or is it leaving Bill? It's both. I want to bring him with me. 

Last night we continued the non-stop thrill ride of our relationship when we drove all the way back from Horseshoe Bay (or is it Beach? Anyway, the one with the word "Horseshoe" in it.) in the dark on the scooter with no working headlight. I said "we" but what I meant was, Bill was driving and periodically shouting back updates to me. They were all the same: "I can't see!" to which I kept replying, "You're doing great! Just stay between the lines!" to which he kept replying "I can't see the lines!" 

Ah, romance. 

There were lots of helpful drivers along the way, all of whom stuck to the same helpful line: "No light!" to which Bill switched up his lines and yelled back one of two things: in the beginning, it was "I know!" but by the end it was "No shit!"

We both agreed it was one for the (unintentional) bucket list. For really, there should be two bucket lists for everyone - the one you make, and the one that makes you. We keep adding to the latter of the two. 

Either way, I am having a lot of fun, even though my skin is crispy red and he is working 12 hours a day. 

Just found this story from 2007 and wanted to share.

She DOES Use Jelly

By Jen Lukenbill

On my personal MySpace page, I have listed “stealing jelly packets from restaurants” as one of my favorite things to do. This only briefly touches on an addiction that has both shamed and comforted me for many years. I’m not talking about stealing. I’m talking about jelly. Not petroleum jelly, either, smart asses.

When I say that I’m addicted to jelly, I mean that I consider it a meal. Though I don’t remember specifically when my love for jelly turned into an obsessive addiction, I believe it was after my parents got divorced (that and the weather are my most often-used scapegoats). My mom had always made some sort of biscuit-type thing with jelly in the center, and I don’t want to play the blame game, but… my dad never ate jelly. I lived with him after the divorce, and one can only take so much tuna and egg whites.

So I came to realize that if it was good food I was after, my mom’s house was the way to go. I would visit, then feel guilty about eating leftovers, and would grab the peach preserves and a spoon instead. Inevitably, my brother would throw a fit because I had eaten his favorite jelly and my mother would lovingly remind me that I had chosen to live with my father and she didn’t get child support for my jelly addiction.

In college, there were always two containers full of jelly at the salad bar – usually grape, which wasn’t my favorite, but beggars can’t be choosers. I would get a slice or two of bread to attempt to pass off the jelly as part of a roll-up or sandwich, and then pile a small mountain of jelly on it that would have fallen right through that bread had I tried to lift it. I didn’t have a lot of friends in college.

There was a time, after my son was born, that I didn’t think about jelly very often. In fact, I really didn’t think I had a problem anymore until I started my PB & J sandwich routine. They’re cheap, fast, and the best on-the-go lunch break meal ever. I ate one every day for the last year… until the Peter Pan crisis.

I’m not prepared to talk about Peter yet, but suffice it to say that I couldn’t have made it without my jelly. Jelly can mask an unfamiliar peanut butter flavor with ease, and I have come to realize that I only used the peanut butter as an accent, a supporting actor to my jelly’s lead.

So all of that brings us (don’t ask why) to last Monday. It was a bad day all around… my mom left for a trip to Albuquerque to visit our old baby-sitter, which led me to realize that I was really going to miss her. I had just found out that my brother and sister were going to Chicago for a four-day vacation with their respective mates in celebration of my sister’s boyfriend’s birthday, yet neither of them even called my husband last week when it was his birthday. It had been an insane day at work and my boss had started a new diet, so that eight-hour battle combined with rejection/dejection in learning of my brother and sister bonding and not telling me (I would just prefer to be everyone's favorite person, OK? Some people are like me... I looked it up!) had turned my mood black and my eyebrows drawn up in my patented "Jennifer Stare".

I saw the package almost immediately… it looked like a beacon, wrapped in white, shiny paper, perched jauntily on the porch. My husband beat me to it, excited to think it might be the birthday present my brother had promised to send him.

It wasn’t. When I opened the card and read that it was a gift from my cousin John, his wife Tracey and daughter Haley , I knew that whatever it was, it would be fun.

Shawn hovered over me as I took the paper off. What I saw upon peeling the paper off and letting the box see the light of day again was, simply, incredible.

The words on the box stated that it contained 200 restaurant jelly packets -- 80 strawberry, 80 grape and 40 mixed fruit. I now had those three flavors in addition to the peach preserves, huckleberry jam and raspberry all-fruit spread waiting patiently in the refrigerator.

My cousin John had made this his project after overhearing a rousing, intellectual debate in which I apparently confided that my sister was more of a peanut butter freak, whereas I couldn't pass up the jelly. I loved it, and him for thinking, then searching, then actually purchasing and mailing it, just to make me laugh. The worries that had plagued me all day melted away, and I realized that I would always feel close to him... he was that big brother I never had.

No, I'm not a social person, and choosing to be a hermit rather than drive hours to see a concert given by a band I'd never heard of appealed to me greatly. Of course Ryan and Shannon still love me, and I would love to think they liked my husband, so I'm going to smile and pretend I never knew a thing. Besides, my son has a baseball game the day they leave and I have to get some kind of vaccine at the clinic, so, darn it all, there goes the time.

All right, you've caught me. I just want EVERYONE to like me the best, because I'm selfish, OK? God!

But no matter what, I've now got a very large cardboard box taking up the majority of a cabinet shelf, and life is good, my friends. Life is good.

You'll have to excuse me, sadly; I have to frantically search for the perfect return present.

Remember this before I dismiss you: one day, when you're having horribly bad luck, there might just be a freakin' giant box of jelly waiting, all aquiver (get it?), in the box that is their hiding space, waiting to see your look of pure dreamy bliss as you discover the bounty that is yours.

Johnny, you're the king.

In retrospect, it was not a good day to artfully mutilate.

Today began with the news that someone close to me had died.

I guess to say Ed was close to me was a stretch; however, he and his wife owned the last house my ex-husband and I bought together.

Ed knew we couldn't afford a riding mower yet, and we needed one, having gone from a tiny square of grass to three acres. He came back and mowed for us for the first few weeks until we secured our own rider.

Ed was wonderful to our son, laughing at everything the four- and five- and six-year-old Hunter said as if each utterance was simultaneously the funniest and most clever thing he had ever heard.

Ed was a solid, dependable man who loved to work outside, who loved to build things or put things together or go out on his boat or enjoy the company of his family.

Ed was the second friend to leave us this year. Bill was the first. Bill was married to Marilyn, a former co-worker of mine, and Bill, like Ed, had been so good to my family. Bill had written a children's book and paid my son, then eight, to illustrate it. Bill, so ill with cancer at that point, had nonetheless commandeered the bail money to spring me from jail that terrible day last July.

This is getting mixed up in my head, but it was this jumble of thoughts that swarmed as I decided it was time to attack the bushes in the front yard.

I had been told to do it a week before by my aunts, and, since I don't pay rent on this house where my grandparents raised a family, I figure a few chores here and there are nothing in comparison.

Ed's passing this morning was the predominant thought on Bush One. Bush Two was Bill. Bush Three became Johnny Flynn, the grandfather who had lived in the house across the street from where I was savagely cutting, the grandfather I secretly adopted as my own before I developed a relationship with the busy, distracted man my grandfather had been.

The hedge clippers were rusty and reluctant. Manhandling was necessary.

The polite Clip, Clip morphed into Rip, Slash.

Bush Four turned into the lost relationships with my siblings, two of whom went to Chicago this weekend to see Lollapalooza together. Could I have gone? No way. Did they even think to ask? No way again.

My youngest sister, whom I had seen earlier that day, who went out of her way to hug my son, then cut a wide swath around me when I reached for my own hug.

Bush Five was the final obstacle between me and Bush Victory. I stopped to survey my work and realized that, if bushes were fingernails and I was a compulsive nailbiter on a binge, they would probably look like these nubbins. Bitten to the quick.

It was hot out there. Very hot. I was in my swimsuit, with towel tied around my waist, a vicious case of Swimmer's Ear ravaging my canals, sweat diving off me as if I were a burning building. My eyes felt like the only dry thing in my control.

It was Bush Five that wrenched the power from me. Bush Five opened the floodgates.

Bush Five remains untouched. There are some things I'm not ready to attack yet.

The unchanged

I am different. As a day-to-day thing, I don't think about it, but at moments when my mind is wide open this awareness invariably finds its way into my mainstream conscience, where pop-ups like "I love doughnuts!" and "People suck!" reign.

In the four months I have been off work, things I expected to accomplish have fallen by the wayside (my vow to become an amazing juggler has only culminated in the reality of very short bursts of three-ball success; the promise of "Play the harmonica after watching this 10-minute video!" has somehow kept me from watching the 10 minute video. If it's only 10 minutes, after all, well, I could do that anytime!).

Many people have said, in that sage and somehow smug way, that this time was meant to be mine so I could find myself. The ways my days unwind are fairly straightforward - if Hunter is here, we swim and sleep and play computer games; if Hunter is gone, I try to sleep or stay at my friend's house to distract myself from the horrible, empty ache that fills my body and is so much worse than anything Pepto Bismol vows to fix. Mafia Wars has become my Pepto and is worthy of a whole blog in itself.

As always, I digress.

My birthday was last week and my sister, my sister who is entirely different than me despite our two parents in common, my sister who is 24 to my 34, my sister who is brilliant in all the ways I'm not and more, gave me a book. Not just any book, not a book on how to organize my life or lead with my head instead of my heart, but a book by our shared favorite author, Alice Hoffman.

This is the way that I will never change. Alice Hoffman writes of things that I find thrilling and beautiful and impossible. As a child, the only fairy tales I wanted to hear or read were Grimm's Fairy Tales, horrible, bloody stories sparing no details, stories that gave the promise of the fantasy but not without the horror of the reality. Hoffman's latest book speaks of these stories, even marinates in them.

The Story Sisters was released in June, but, being jobless, I was unable to afford the luxury and the library has not had it in stock or may not even have it at all. I have never asked. Fortunately, Shannon knew, and gave me the gift, as she has with so many incredible books before.

Love you, sister. No matter how I may continue to change, I will always love these books more than any other present.

To borrow my straightforward buddy Marth's phrase, "That is all.".

Like it matters what I say.

I shouldn't be disturbed hearing rumors about myself; I live in a town of about 9000 in the Midwest and rumors are its lifeblood.
Today I heard one that really made my blood churn. I think it's because the close-minded people I used to work with (and there's specifically three of them I think of here and one I definitely do not lump in with the rest of the losers) continue to talk about me three months after my dismissal. Have you people not done enough to me? Do you have to continue to pick at me and discuss me with every customer you have, many of which then contact me with reports of your sharp tongues? I think you're pathetic, all three of you, four counting the guy, and this is why:
1. I did sell my house. Did I lose 42,000 dollars in doing so? Hell no. I'm not retarded. In fact, I think I'm much smarter than all of you. And I made money on the sale, not that you sad sacks care about the truth.
2. The girl responsible for at least 10 co-workers losing their jobs because she will say anything she can to further her own pathetic goals? Nobody went to her house and sat in her driveway while she called the sheriff's department on them and had them removed. There is no sheriff's report, because it never happened. I think it's so funny that my unemployment was denied because of this total fabrication, and I think it's funnier that nobody bothered to check the validity of the claim before firing me. It never happened.
3. Every day I have been away from that job has been better. I have been off for three months, I have not used my credit card in that time, I have not collected one penny of unemployment, I have not cashed in my savings or CDs and I have no sugar daddy, yet I am still able to have time off, and that's fantastic.
God, the four of you suck. Enjoy this post, because I dedicate it to you.
That's really all I have to say.

You want the moon? I'll tie a rope around it and bring it down to you...

What do you want to be when you grow up?

That question should never be asked, in my opinion. It sets us all up for failure.

Deny it. Go ahead. If you present a valid counterpoint to my point, I will listen with an open mind and be prepared to admit I was wrong.

But you won't. Because, provided that a.) you read this and b.) you take the time to let it sink in properly, you will realize that I'm right.

I am, in addition to being right, a lifetime victim/loser in the worldwide lowest self-esteem competition. For me to be this confident, well, you'd have to present one hell of an argument for me to concede.

This is why I am right.

When asked what you want to be when you grow up, you are, let's assume for my purposes, a child. Children have the most open of all minds, because they haven't been beaten down mentally to the extent the average adult has. Children don't understand failure on the scale that adults do, if indeed they understand failure at all on a scale measuring outside of their own world.

Children also have the benefit of imagination without limitation. This, I believe, goes almost hand-in-hand with an open mind. It's a beautiful, amazing thing, and I hate to see it disappear. I think I know the exact time it blipped off of my son's radar for good, and I mourned it no less than I would have a death. In fact, I believe it died with my grandfather. A lot of things did.

My point is that tonight, over twenty years after I left true childhood behind and remembered to close the door behind me so as not to let the heat/cold out, the door blew open again. And open = good.

The door opening contradicted two things I previously believed as a child on the cusp of adulthood:

1) The world really is your oyster.

2) Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

There IS a Santa Claus. And just as it was explained to Virginia in that long-ago letter to the editor, so was it shown to me.

Santa may not be the Santa person just as God may not be the dude in the robes and hair. But both are real. I was given the gift of a new life tonight, a life I thought I blew my chance at forever. I denied it. I cried about it. But in the end the rope still dangled. I'm grabbing the rope before I convince myself I don't deserve it.

Grabbing the rope also means turning away from the future I once thought was good enough. It means blowing the head off of that future, which suddenly looks a lot like settling to me. It means, maybe, blowing off a person who has been crucial in my post-marriage development and it means maybe blowing them off for good.

But oh, the rewards! The possibility of being able to return to school and not have the stress of figuring out how to pay for it...the possibility of dreaming again, the possibility of actually answering the question I feigned scorn upon hearing for the first time, years ago:

"What would you do if you knew you could not fail?"

I have no answer, still. I don't know when I will have one. But what I do have is an open book with both permission and time to look up the answer.

Thank you. Thank you for believing in me. You are definitely in the minority.

To the rest of you, I will definitely keep you posted, whether you want it or not.

"Waiting For My Real Life to Begin" - great song. I can't believe the waiting might be over for good.