The song remembers when*

(this will be the first of a series of posts)

During the move, I found a box full of old cassette tapes. Most of them were mix tapes I’ve made at one point or another…I thought it might be fun to pull them out and post the track listings with a bit of background as to what was going on in my life at the time.

I’ve arranged them more or less in chronological order. People who know me well will notice some major holes, and here’s why…after every breakup I’ve ever gone through, there’s been a massive purge. I made *dozens* of lovey-dovey mix tapes for K in college, and they’re all gone. I just couldn’t bear to have them around, and putting them in a box and hiding them wasn’t enough…

Ahem, anyway. The first one is titled “And So It Goes…”, and it was made during the summer of 1993, between my freshman and sophomore year of college. Earlier that year, I had broken up with J, and when I came home for summer vacation, I briefly dated this guy (we’ll call him E) with whom I’d engaged in mild flirtations with the previous summer. E was also freshly out of a relationship. We tried to do casual, but neither one of us seemed to do that very well…and when he finally broke it off, I made him this mix tape:

Side A

This Night — Billy Joel
And So It Goes — Billy Joel
Take This Heart — Richard Marx
Kiss — Prince
Send Her My Love — Journey
Can’t Fight This Feeling — REO Speedwagon
In Your Eyes — Peter Gabriel
Something About You — (I have no idea…I don’t even know what song this is.)
If You Leave — OMD
The Longest Time — Billy Joel

Side B

No Ordinary Love — Sade
All Shook Up — Elvis Presley
Kiss the Girl — from The Little Mermaid
Fever —
If — Janet Jackson
Paradise City — Guns ‘n Roses (this one had an inside meaning)
Can’t Help Falling in Love — Elvis Presley

(I had thrown in a couple of lame instumentals to fill up space. and as with most mix tapes, the first side is much stronger than the second…)

Was I in love with E? Did he break my heart? I don’t know…I was in a pretty vulnerable place that summer. When I think about this tape, I remember sitting alone at night on a swing at the park, wondering if anyone would ever love me again, though I know that was more about J than it was about E…

I linked to the lyrics to “This Night,” because that song, more than any other one, sums up that short-lived romance with E. We’ve been in contact since then. He’s married. And I, after a few wrong turns, soon will be. I have no hard feelings, and I smile when I think about him and the summer of 1993…

*post title is from a Trisha Yearwood song that I always powerfully identified with. Music is so strongly tied to our emotions, isn’t it?

Bad daughter

As you know, I’ve been pretty preoccupied this week with grading and getting ready for my shower today and moving and…well, you know.

My dad’s birthday was on Thursday.

I didn’t forget that it was my dad’s birthday entirely…I thought about it earlier in the week, when I called my mom to ask what I should get him. And I thought about having something to give him when I see him today.

But what I did forget to do was call my dad on his birthday. :-/

Sorry, dad. Happy belated birthday, eh?

Seven years

morellicake.jpg

And I link to this post again.

I’ve posted this photo before, but I just adore it so much.

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I can’t believe it’s been seven years. I still wish I could have introduced her to Rand. I still wish she was going to be here to see me get married.

I miss you, gram.

Happy, happy, happy!!!

My 33rd birthday. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better…

Well, I didn’t, anyway!

Happy news to follow. This gets a little bit long, so I’m going to cut…

*updated w/new photo!* Continue reading

15 years? Really?

Well, I’m now ready for my 15-year class reunion tomorrow, having just had my toes all prettied up. (I got a manicure too, but just had them put on clear polish because I hate polish on my nails.) 🙂

Sadly, jen 14221 seems to have passed on her problem to me. 😛

And, while we’re off celebrating the 15 years I’ve been out of high school, Rand and I will also be celebrating 3 years together!

me and rand

me&rand

E&R dancing

Awww…

I’ll be back with pictures on Monday!

Oh. My. God.

I feel ill.

I was just doing some bill-paying and such, and I logged in to a credit card account that I don’t use much. I’m trying to pay off the balance, so the only activity I tend to see on it is my last payment and the interest accumulated.

As such, I tend to not look at my statement until it’s time to pay the bill. (I signed up for the statement-by-email quite some time ago.) Imagine my surprise when I saw a balance nearly $3000 higher than it was last month.

Gasp. Choke.

In red lettering, at the top of my statement, it said something about high-risk activity on my card and to call customer service right away.

So of course, I immediately dialed customer service. They were very nice. They closed my account and are sending me an affidavit that I need to sign and send back to them so they can investigate.

The charge was $2795 to United Airlines. She asked if I was sure no one else (such as a friend or family member) has access to this account. Um, yeah. No one does. And even if they did, I wouldn’t want to know someone who would charge $3000 in airline tickets without telling me.

I can’t figure out how this happened. This card doesn’t leave my apartment. Ever. I don’t get statements in the mail, and even if I did, I would shred anything that had my account number on it. Gah.

It doesn’t matter. They’re going to take care of it, I’m sure…but still, I feel sort of violated.

Oh, baby…

Sometimes, I have a hard time understanding people. Via a link I clicked to through another link this morning, I read an article by a woman who decided on adoption after trying fertility treatments, and then a long discussion about infertility and adoption and various options in response to the article.

The insensitivity and rudeness astounds me, of course, but these comments really got under my skin:

It is important to understand that it is easier to conceive a child when both male and female are younger (below 30). That is how nature created us.

So it’s important to settle down in life and have a child sooner in life rather than waiting and exploring science (IVF etc).

For the life of me, I can’t understand what is wrong with the world. A woman has the best chance of having a “healthy” baby if the baby is conceived prior to age 30. With each year that passes 30 the risks (for mother as well as child) begin to pile up. I don’t know what they are teaching in school these days, but when I was in school in the 60’s this information was taught in “health” class. So, if a young woman had the idea that someday she’d like to be a mother, she was armed with the facts. If she ignored those facts, she was at least aware of the consequences that might be hers. This is the fact of the matter. A woman over 40 certainly may conceive, but if she does so, her health and the health of her baby will be at risk (not might be: will be). SO. With all the helpless, homeless babies out there in the world, who Need a home, and who Need someone to love and care for them, why on earth would a woman (who has, by her own choices, blown by her healthy childbearing years) not consider adopting one of these most needy children??

(emphasis mine)

As a soon-to-be 33-year-old woman, I can’t help but take statements like these personally.

Continue reading

Getting to know yoooooooou…

I’m a few days late on this, but this is my response to this week’s “Getting to know you” post at Create a Connection.

Where were you in 1987? In school? Working? Single? Married? Attached? What was important to you?  What were you doing creatively? Tell us a bit about your life then.

In 1987, I was 13 years old. I was attending middle school in St. Marys, PA. I was discovering boys, and discovering how mean girls can be.

Where were you in 1997? What would you like to share about the nineties?

In 1997, I was working my first real job as a newspaper reporter in DuBois, PA. I was also getting over the heartbreak of losing my first real love. The late 90s–my early-to-mid-20–were a pretty rocky time for me. Everything was uncertain in a way that was really hard for me to deal with.

Where did you plan to be or think you’d be in 2007?  Have your realized your goals? What is one thing about your present life you love and one you’d like to change?

Plan to be? Hmmm…I can’t say I ever planned to be where I am now, but I can’t say I wish it had turned out differently! I probably assumed that I would be married with kids by now. I definitely assumed that I would be working a full-time job of some sort, and I didn’t think that I would be teaching. I didn’t think I would be in Buffalo, either, but I have no regrets about the direction my life has taken.

How do you see your life in 2017?   Do you have any goals or dreams for your future?

I guess I don’t expect any radical changes. Personally, I hope to be married and perhaps own a house. Career-wise, I’m not sure…perhaps gainful employment in secondary ed? A freelance career? An MFA in writing, or possibly a Ph.D., with a full-time university position? Decisions, decisions…

Okay…

I’ve been avoiding directly addressing the Virginia Tech massacre, because really, what is there to say? I’ve been kind of walking around in a vaguely horrified stupor for the past couple of days.

And then I read this. And whatever the reason, that was the thing that broke me. The image of this professor, wounded, blocking the door so his students could escape. Reading that he was a Holocaust survivor.

My heart goes out to everyone on that campus and to everyone who knows someone on that campus and all the friends and families of the victims. I don’t know what else to say.

Silly quizziness

As seen on All Things Jennifer.

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ETA: Interesting. Rand somehow took this quiz while we were eating breakfast together. I wonder how that happened…can anyone enlighten me?