Yay!

Things are looking up - my back feels better(ish)... my computer is back from Acer and I'm crossing every appendage I have that it stays fixed (or if it goes again, it does so between now and December 4, 2010 as that's when my warranty is up)... the wedding planning is kicking into gear and I bought my tiara. I'm really going to look like a princess.

It's a little surreal. I hope I'll look like *me* but all the same, I'm scared shitless. I'm a klutz. My dad once told me the worst mistake he made was putting hardwood flooring in my bedroom before I moved out. Why, you ask? Because every morning as I was getting ready for school all he could hear downstairs or in the kitchen was "pling, plink, tink, BOOM" of absolutely EVERYTHING I own slipping from my hands and landing on the floor. And then you'd hear my mutters and quiet cursing at my clumsiness.

I'm the chick who broke her ankle by walking across a freaking front lawn .... how am I going to manage to gracefully and elegantly waltz down an aisle in front of a hundred family members and friends? Dad will be there, but if anything, he's gonna mess up my hand-eye coordination and I'll be even wobblier.

FML. I'm kinda glad this is the only wedding issue I'm having right now... as compared to two months ago when my wedding was nothing but a huge headache. Le sigh.

Less than five months now... wowzas. Is it July yet? :)

Update

Here's a quick update on my life...

1. My wedding is in 5 months - I have been in planning 'blitzes' where I go go go, then nothing.
2. I'm desperately trying to save up for my wedding, and life just gets in the way every single time.
3. Like my car - we blew two winter tires... expensive, nice winter tires. Had to have the set replaced at a cost of ~$500.
4. My computer blew up. Well, not literally. But the motherboard died in it, after 14 months. Thank goodness it was under warrenty, but I needed to ship it via UPS to Mississauga (and not the states, once again, thank goodness) but that cut out a chunk of change.
5. My back went out and I have had to fork out ~$150 in massage therapy.


I love life, really I do. I need to find serenity and calmness, and get back on track.

My Writings

I had these posted on my PR Course blog, but I figured I would post it on this blog, for all 3 followers I have. :)

Enjoy!

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I started writing this piece with someone completely different in mind. Then it evolved into someone else, and by the time I was finished, I realized I had taken out certian aspects of three of my closest friends that had something in common with my grandmother, who passed away on March 21, 2003.

The three people I had originally thought this was going to be, and in order are: Amanda, Sarah, and my mother, Judy.

Of course after realizing this was now about my grandmother when I had edited it, I brought the whole thing together, but there are parts of Mom, Amanda and Sarah in there somewhere.

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Elizabeth Mackenzie Murphy

Her hair used to be long and brown, then silver, and then white. Her glasses never changed in the 19 years I knew her. The lenses perhaps, but the round, owlish frames were an unvarying reminder that she would be a constant in a life that was wrought with change. Her gaze never faltered when looking at me with the love that only a grandmother could share with her grandchild.

She was someone that I trusted completely. When I was with her, I got that feeling inside me, like a six-year old after bouncing up and down in the big balloon castle for those precious three and a half minutes – like I had just climbed to the moon and floated back down.

She relaxed me. Speaking with her let my mind explore places and times I’d never seen before. Those conversations encouraged me to speak freely about the things I would have normally kept to myself.

She exasperated me with her unwavering strength and conviction about who she was in the world, and her place. She had a purpose in her life and she followed her path without hesitation.

She bossed me around. Not because she felt that she needed to be dominating, but because it’s simply what grandmothers do. She bossed me around since I was old enough to speak, and she always told me that it was only for my best interests that I kept my fingers out of my food, brushed my hair and teeth, and always wore clean underwear (because you never know when you’re going to get hit by a bus and you’ll want to have clean underpants for that glorious occasion).

Her voice was like sandpaper, with a hint of butter underneath. You knew that she used to have a gorgeous voice, tarnished now with the cruel reminder that she was no longer the woman she once was. Her height had diminished with her age, towering in her twenties at a little over six feet; at the age of 84, she was a feeble five feet, nine inches.

She was the most stubborn woman I had ever had the blessing of knowing. It made me realize that genetics are truly phenomenal, and that my mother and I have both inherited more from her than we ever thought possible. It aggravated her more than anyone else that she could no longer do the things she had routinely done for the last 80 years.

It broke my mother’s heart the day she had to go into the nursing home – cursing and swearing that she didn’t need to be there, that she could take care of herself, and everyone else, like she had always done. After the first week, she had become everyone’s favourite, like we knew she would.

Sunday’s at Nan’s house turned into weekly trips to the hospital-esque home. Homemade birthday cakes, lovingly crafted by Nan’s experienced hands, were replaced with cards signed hastily by my mother, and I watched as Nan drifted further and further into her own solitude.

After four years, Nan was no longer the person I had idolized as a child, but someone whom I cared for as an adult. The only thing that remained was the frame – the foundation of a house long abandoned, crumbling at the seams.

When she died on that cold, winter’s day, my mother, sister and I held each onto each other and remembered her for who she was when she was strong of body and mind.

The Cutting Game

Ending a friendship has an agony all its own.

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By Amy Sohn (Email)

Most people are not, generally speaking, comfortable discussing their ex-lovers in mixed company, but ask about an ex-best-friend and suddenly everyone’s eager to talk. An EBF is different from a friend who drifted away, or a once-best friend. She is a former bosom buddy who, through some specific conflict or a series of slowly escalating mini-conflicts, no longer wants to see you or speak to you, ever again.

I have one EBF. The technical reason for the breakup was that I had started dating a guy she had once, briefly, loved, but she and I had been growing apart for years. She’d wait a week to return my calls, and I’d wait two to return hers. Then I’d call and apologize, and she’d say, “It wasn’t like I was calling you.” After I told her about my new romance, we had a few strained get-togethers, and then over the phone, she said she didn’t want to see me again. “But we were best friends!” I cried.

“Not really,” she said. “I never considered you mine.”

Even today, I’m still dissecting where things went wrong. Although I understand on some level that I was unhappy, too, on another I am burned by the rejection. Perhaps the reason friend breakups are so painful is because, unlike romances, friendships rarely begin with an understanding that they might end. “It’s just more painful,” says Jane, an ad exec in her thirties, “when the only reason someone doesn’t want to see you is because they don’t like hanging out with you—not because they hate your parents or they’re busy at work.”

Jane’s EBF is named Leigh, and when she tells me the story, her voice shakes with emotion. Jane met Leigh soon after she moved to the city. They spoke every day for a year, lived a block apart, and hung out all the time. Then one night, they had a flare-up over whether Jane was invited to a certain party, and Leigh dropped her.

“It made me second-guess myself for a while as a person and a friend, even though I know I was a chump for hanging out with her,” says Jane. When they see each other at the gym, Leigh acts nonchalant, but Jane gets nervous. “It is similar to having an ex-boyfriend in the sense that I never want to bump into her, and when I do, I get this bad feeling. My heart beats fast, and I try everything possible not to look in her direction.”

Though there are men with EBFs, too, more often they choose a slow drift over a blowout. Many women break up over man issues, but others do it after years of misunderstandings and quiet resentments, a by-product of poor communication. “Girls are pretty bad at saying ‘You really pissed me off,’ ” says Jane. “You’re too afraid to change the dynamic between you.”

Since my breakup, I have gotten bits and pieces of news about my EBF from friends. When I learned she had gotten married, I felt joy for her and sadness that I was among the last to know. I have watched our mutual friends, inevitable casualties of war, drop me.

Right toward the end, when things were getting so strained it was clear an explosion was coming, I ran into her on Crosby Street. As I approached, she recognized me and then scowled. “Did you just scowl at me?” I said, shocked.

She laughed and tossed her head. I could have walked away or had it out, but instead I felt the need to make small talk, to prolong some semblance of normality. I hated the awkwardness more than I hated how she treated me.

I’d been reading an article about a famous writer who had fired her agent for being slow to sell the film rights to her book. I held up the paper and said, “Can you believe this? The woman gets her a huge book contract and makes her an international success, and this is what she gets in return.”

“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “I kind of understand where she’s coming from. I mean, if a relationship isn’t satisfying, why pretend to be happy?”