Our Story – “These feelings that won’t subside.”

(Here’s the prologue, here’s part one, plus the editorial note, and here’s part two.)

Suffice to say, I put Calvin on the spot by spilling my feelings to him.  Even with the caveat, “You don’t have to say anything…” what on EARTH is a guy supposed to say?  So he responded the only way he really could, at the time. “Um… thank you?”

We joke about it now, because he knew he loved me, when I said it to him. He just didn’t feel that he was free to say it back. And honestly, we laughed together at his response as soon as he said it. He did say he cared about me a lot, and that he’d never say “I love you” to anyone until he was absolutely positive he felt it and meant it. He said I shouldn’t read anything into the fact that he wasn’t saying it back, and that he “liked the hell outta me”. I truly wasn’t expecting anything at all from him. It was kind of selfish, really. I was bursting to tell him, and felt relieved afterwards, even if he couldn’t respond in kind. It put him on the spot, though.

Heh. We just got done laughing about it again, just now.

So. 1996 came and went with no particularly major developments between me and Calvin. Our friendship continued apace, though I probably wasn’t as forthcoming about all the HELL that was going on between me and my ex as I could have been. Once Calvin starts caring, Calvin gets protective. I didn’t want him to worry, though at the same time I needed his support. It was a hard balance to strike. Eventually, though, everything all came to a head, and early in 1997 I left my crazy-ass husband.

I stayed at Calvin’s house, with him and his wife and Michael and Marie, for a couple of weeks. I was pretty damned numb, really, the whole time. My personal drama with my ex pushed absolutely everything else aside. Calvin and his family were very supportive, good listeners, good advisers, kept me company when I didn’t want to be alone, and left me to myself when I needed privacy. I became very close to Michael and Marie during this time, and I would watch them while Calvin and his wife went out, or the kids and I would go to the nickel arcade or to the movies to get us all out of the house and give their parents some alone time.  Even after I moved back into my house, the kids and I spent a lot of time together in this manner.

Yes, I was in love with Calvin, but still wanted to help him fix his marriage. Just as he had wanted to help my ex and I, if it would mean that I would be happy.  Our feelings would have confused anyone else, but they made perfect sense to us.

When I could move back into my own house, after my ex vacated it, I continued to do things with Calvin and his family. Michael was in Pop Warner football, and Marie was a cheerleader (a cute wee little thing with pigtails and pom-poms bigger than her head), and I went to their games. Calvin owned a power boat and the five of us would all go to the lake many weekends.  There were birthday and pool parties for the kids in their back yard, and we all attended whatever events were going on in the valley.

So it should be no surprise, what with all the time I spent around him and watching him with his kids (I’ve often told him that the way he was with his kids was one of his most attractive qualities), that in tandem with becoming solidly independent and recovering from my relationship with my ex, I was also becoming more and more heartsick for Calvin.  As that year progressed, and as my personal drama died down a bit, it became more and more of a struggle to keep my feelings for him manageable. 

Ha.  I write that sentence now and realize how absolutely ludicrous it is to “manage” a feeling like love. 

The summer months went by, and I wrote in my hand-written journals a LOT, about how guilty I felt befriending Calvin’s family but at the same time wishing I could have him for my own.  About how lonely I was for him, spending my moments away from him wishing I was with him, then spending the time in his presence trying to hide my feelings from everyone else.  About how conflicted I was, wanting Calvin’s relationship with his wife to work out for his sake and for the sake of the kids, but also NOT wanting it to work out, for very selfish reasons.  About how THAT made me feel guilty, that I could even consider wishing a broken home upon Michael and Marie.  About how I was worried that even if Calvin and I ever did end up together, he wouldn’t be heart-whole.  (Which, in hind sight, was silly – as drama went I feel mine with my ex was pretty extreme, yet I still had an intact heart to give to Calvin.)

It helped, and yet didn’t help, when Calvin (at last!) admitted his feelings for me. When he finally told me he loved me, it was almost with a sense of, “Well, now what do we do?” Yes, we could both admit we loved one another, but he was still married, he had the kids to consider, and he was desperately conflicted about his relationship with his wife. They had a lot of history together (“twenty fucking fucking years”, as Calvin puts it – they started dating when he was fifteen and she was thirteen), they had two children, they had a lovely home and all of the “wants” they could hope for, but they didn’t get along at ALL. It’s not my place to tell his or their story, but suffice to say there were arguments and knock-down-drag-out fights on a regular basis. Though they both cared about one another, neither one of them liked the other.  The love they used to feel was tied up in childish actions and reactions that were established as routines when they were teenagers, but which echoed down through their adult relationship to the point where they were acting more like squabbling siblings (though much worse) than husband and wife.  So though they appeared like the “perfect American family” on the outside, what was going on inside was anything but perfect.

The question that plagued Calvin’s mind was, would it be better to stay in the relationship for the kids’ sake, or would it actually be better in the long run to divorce and hope for a more positive example of a relationship to demonstrate to the kids? That was, of course, a decision I couldn’t make for him. I continued to be as supportive as I could, as a friend, and listen to him as he agonized over his situation.  I can’t say it wasn’t hard to be his friend, when all I wanted to do was yell, “Pick me!  Pick me!”  And yet I actually, honestly, WAS rooting for him and his wife to make it, if only for his happiness and for the sake of the kids.  I felt, on a near-constant basis, a combination of selfish, guilty, elated, worried, depressed, lonely, and, encompassing it all, ridiculously in love.  I was, in short, a mess.

Calvin knew by this time that the thought of prolonging his marriage was almost too intolerable to bear, but the unknown factors scared him - would we get along?  What would happen to the kids?  Would they be angry, hate me, hate him?  What if he was making a mistake?  What if there was NO right answer?  Those of you who know Calvin, or have read about him to any extent here, understand that change, and the unknown, absolutely MESSES WITH HIS MIND.  In this case, of course, his concerns were extremely valid.

As the year progressed, our feelings for one another continued to grow.  Long, frank conversations clearly defined that yes, we really did want to be together, and yes, we really did think we could make it work.  But overshadowing it all were those looming questions – was it the right thing to do?   Could we all be happy, in the end?  It was all so overwhelming that we tried to push the worries and the deep and pressing questions aside at times.  Considering how we felt about one another, how stressed and worried we were, and how much we craved to be together, we found it harder and harder not to act upon our feelings.   Inevitably, the day arrived when our emotions overcame any sense of wrongdoing.

As Calvin puts it, “I knew that the first time we made love would either make things easier or make things much harder.  I’d either get you out of my system, or things would click and mesh so well that it would be impossible to ever give you up.”

Guess which one happened.

To be continued…

Coming soon to a blog near you.

This one, actually.

The next installment of “Our Story” is forthcoming.  I hope to begin writing it this afternoon, work permitting.  It’s one hell of a process coming back together after a laptop crash.  I did manage to get back all my mp3’s, though, so iTunes is intact and currently saving my life from boredom.

Some intrepid readers have found (and commented upon, thanks! I’ll respond shortly, AcronymCo’s network doesn’t like Flickr for some reason) the host of pictures I uploaded yesterday, from last Friday’s stroll through the ASU Campus, and last Saturday’s stroll with Calvin around Old Town Scottsdale.  I’ll be writing those Readers’ Choice entries over the next few days.

Calvin comes first, though.  He’s starting to feel neglected and unloved that I cranked out all the entries about my ex, but am taking my time with the entries about him.  I meant nothing personal, and the slight was not intentional.  But his feelings are all hurty. 

That’s what I get for marrying a sensitive new-age guy.

Not borked.

I can has a new laptop.  It’s pretty and shiny and has a widescreen and doesn’t have toast crumbs stuck in the keyboard or cat paw prints on the lid.

AcronymCo can be handy with the toys, if it means increased employee productivity.

I’m in the process of re-loading all the necessary software and making sure all of my files are intact.  Which, as of this moment, they’re not.  The IT guy still has my old hard drive, and all of the files are still accessible on it (I pulled the photos from last Friday – thankfully intact – off of it this afternoon, but missed some others).  So I’ll be visiting him tomorrow morning when I go back to work.

I’m still hoping I don’t have to re-load all of my CD’s into iTunes again.

Borked.

My laptop STB (defecated upon the furnishment of sleep, that is) yesterday afternoon.  AFTER I’d spend the morning taking pictures, then uploaded them onto the laptop, then removed them from the camera (note to self, don’t do THAT again until the pics are safely on Flickr).  I was working on them in Photoshop when the laptop blue screened.  I rebooted.   It blue screened again.  It never recovered.

So!  I took it to the IT guys at AcronymCo and I expect to get a new laptop on Tuesday afternoon.  I hope the IT guys can recover some of the stuff off the hard drive (those pics, other pics, my iTunes library…) but I guess it’s not the COMPLETE end of the world if they can’t.  I’m currently writing on Calvin’s laptop, which I must say I like a great deal better.  For one, it doesn’t take a half an hour to boot up and connect to the internet.  AcronymCo’s laptop builds are so damn bogged down with scripts and layers of protection that they’re cumbersome indeed to boot up.

Anyway!  That’s neither here nor there.  What this means to my photo entry plans is that I am somewhat thwarted.  I still plan on completing what I set out to do, but the timeline is a bit askew.  I shall discuss the weekend plans with Calvin and hopefully finish what I started this weekend.

GAH.  I HATE technology sometimes.

I was born in a small town

From Heather:

1) You can name everyone you graduated with.
Practically – I was 14th in a graduating class of 98.

2) You know what 4-H means.
OMG. Brad had a calf he showed in 4-H. (Which means, by the way, Head, Hands, Heart, and Health.) “I Pledge My Head to clearer thinking, My Heart to greater loyalty, My Hands to larger service (hah, I originally typed “lager service”, and wouldn’t Service to Budwiser make sense??) and My Health to better living for my Club my Community my Country and my World.”

3) You went to parties at a pasture, barn, gravel pit, or in the middle of a dirt road. On Monday you could always tell who was at the party because of the scratches on their legs from running through the woods when the party was busted. (See #6..)
Or the Lake, or the middle of Morrison field, which doubled as the t-ball field on weekends.

4) You used to ‘drag’ Main.
Um, no, but only because we didn’t even have a Main street.

5) Most people went by a nickname.
HELL yeah. Bubba, Rumpy, Guy, Stumpah, and Jeans.

6) You scheduled parties around the schedules of different police officers, because you knew which ones would bust you and which ones wouldn’t.
There weren’t no cops round where we lived. Nearest was the next county over. I’m even too country for THIS list.

7) You could never buy cigarettes because all the store clerks knew how old you were (and if you were old enough, they’d tell your parents anyhow.) Besides, where would you get the money?
Oh Jesus, yes. The lunch lady, the drug store lady, the hardware store lady, the gas station guy, and the grocery store lady all knew my family.

8 ) When you did find somebody old enough and brave enough to buy cigarettes, you still had to go out into the country and drive on back roads to smoke them.
Nah, we just rolled our own in a pack of Zig-Zags.

9) You knew which section of the ditch you would find the beer your buyer dropped off.
Yeah… sure. It was beer. Sure.

10) It was cool to date somebody from the neighboring town.
Guys from Auburn were soooo cuuute.  RIGHT KIM?

11) The whole school went to the same party after graduation.
Had to. It was a lockdown.

12) You didn’t give directions by street names but rather by references. Turn by Nelson’s house, go 2 blocks to Anderson ’s, and it’s four houses left of the track field.
Directions to my Grandmothers: Take 115 to 231. Follow 231 till you get to the Penny Road Store. Go over the bridge, take the first road to the right, next to the big run-down barn. Take the dirt road past the pond, turn left, Grandma’s house is at the top of the hill.

13) The golf course had only 9 holes.
Golf? We ain’t never heard of no golf. There’s put-put up Old Orchard Beach way, though.

14) You couldn’t help but date a friend’s ex-boyfriend/girlfriend.
Or, just date your ex over and over and over again.

15) Your car stayed filthy because of the dirt roads, and you will never own a dark vehicle for this reason.
Your car also stayed filthy because of “mud season”, beer bottles, and dog hair.

16) The town next to you was considered ‘trashy’ or ’snooty,’ but was actually just like your town.
BWAAA! That’s so true. New Gloucester has 4300 residents and is considered “cow country” compared to Gray’s 6900.

17) You referred to anyone with a house newer then 1950 as the ‘rich’ people.
Nah, there weren’t no rich folk round our parts.

18 ) The people in the ‘big city’ dressed funny, and then you picked up the trend 2 years later.
Yep, like three pairs of socks with the cuffs of your peg-leg jeans stuffed in ‘em. They still dress like that, I think.

19) Anyone you wanted could be found at the local gas station or the dairybar.
Eventually, yes. You could call ‘em up on the CB.

20) You saw at least one friend a week driving a tractor through town or one of your friends driving a grain truck to school occasionally.
My sister drove the “Chariot” as her main transportation for several years. A tractor with a wooden bench and bed hand-built onto the chassis.

21) The gym teacher suggested you haul hay for the summer to get stronger.
No, but the shop teacher missing three fingers recommended ROTC.

22) Directions were given using THE stop light as a reference.
There WAS only ONE light in my town, and it was flashing red in one direction and flashing yellow in the other.

23) When you decided to walk somewhere for exercise, 5 people would pull over and ask if you wanted a ride.
Walking wasn’t a decision – if I was walking on the side of the road it meant I broke down, and it didn’t take long for someone I knew – even out in the middle of nowhere – to stop and offer help.

24) Your teachers called you by your older siblings’ names.
“You’re Wendy’s sister, right?”

25) Your teachers remembered when they taught your parents.
My teachers were my parents’ contemporaries.

26) You could charge at any local store or write checks without any ID.
Hell yes. We had “credit” everywhere, and there was no card involved.

27) There was no McDonalds.
Nope, nearest one was 25 miles away.

28 ) The closest mall was over an hour away.
Close! 48 minutes.

29) It was normal to see an old man riding through town on a riding lawn mower.
Lawn mower, John Deer tractor, snowmobile, four-wheeler…

30) You’ve pee’d in a cornfield.
Corn, hay, alfalfa… any kind of field ya got.

31) You laughed your butt off reading this because you know it is true, and you forward it to everyone who may have lived in a small town.
Srsly.

Administrata

You probably won’t a) notice; or b) care, but I have done (or am in the process of doing) a couple of administrative changes. First, I took all of the Colloquial archives and imported them into this WordPress site. So now the archives here go back as far as 2003. However, the layout of those entries looks a little wonky, so I’ll be fixing those in chunks as I have time.

I’m also in the process of going back through all of my “uncategorized” entries (now greatly increased due to the imports) and adding categories to them. Since there are at current count forty-three pages on the WordPress admin panel of uncategorized entries, at 15 entries per page, that’s… (subtract two, carry the four…) 645 entries that I have to add categories to.

Gack. I wish I hadn’t done the math.

Finally, in the midst of all of this, I’m updating the Best Of page to reflect the WordPress URL’s of the entries imported from the Blogger weblog sites. And I’ll start to add on the “best of” entries from the beginning of this year, as well.

So pretty much the only thing that won’t change is that I won’t ever import the original Snerkology journal over to WordPress. I like that it’s out there, that little site that I constructed and coded with my own two little hands… erm, ten little fingers. I like that I changed the layouts of the pages, like, seventeen times. It’s like going back into my own little on-line scrapbook, and I like it just the way it is.

EVERYTHING else, though, is here on WordPress. Finally.

You guys are so spoiled.

There wasn’t really a definitive winner for my Bossy Assignment. An even number of votes went to the Art Museum, Mill Avenue, and a “day in the life” entry (the DBG got one vote, the poor Zoo got none – but I’m not surprised, since I’ve done more than one entry about the both of them in the past). Scottsdale did edge out the others with one more vote than the rest of ‘em.

This is where I spoil you, and get ambitious myself.

Tomorrow I will take my gear and shoot not ONE, but TWO tours – one of Mill Avenue and one of Scottsdale. Expect that entry to be up on Saturday or Sunday. THEN I’ll do a “day in the life” entry, expect that entry to be up Sunday or Monday. THEN I’ll do the Art Museum, entry date to be announced.

As for today, I’m going to do some cleaning, some cooking, some reading, some working out, and I’ll get my gear ready for tomorrow. I’m actually going to take my tripod out in public, people. I wonder if I’ll need a press pass. I’m going to make a day of it – take my iPod and a book, have breakfast somewhere, have lunch somewhere, probably (hah! definitely) stop for a beer or two somewhere. Perhaps meet up with Calvin when he gets off work somewhere. I will take pictures of people and places, bridges and mountains, buildings and trees. It will be glorious.

(Readers: “Define ‘glorious’.” Laura: “Hush, you.”)

Tripod fun

A couple of results of playing with my camera, recently. I got a tripod and wireless remote shutter release from Calvin for Mother’s Day (oh! And a gift certificate for two massages and some roses from Marie!), and I was goofing around in the back yard the other night taking pics.

Playing with moon shots, aperature and shutter speed. Is it me, or is this photo more interesting with the moon offset, instead of centered?
Exposure: 0.004 sec (1/250)
Aperture: f/11
Focal Length: 300 mm
ISO 400

No flash, no artificial lights. Just me, a camera, a tripod, and a wireless remote shutter. And the moon.
Exposure: 10 sec
Aperture: f/4
Focal Length: 75 mm
ISO 400

A few more pics are up in the 5/08 set on Flickr.

New favorite blog

see more politics and fun!

PunditKitchen(dot)com. Thanks to Morag for the linky goodness!

Random?!?

(The next installment of the saga is below this, FYI…)

And another thing… (readers: “What was the first thing?” Laura: “Hush, you.”) So last night Calvin and I were watching Must See TV (the series of shows on Monday night that we plant ourselves in front of each week). On The Big Bang Theory, a series of laughable events culminated in Sheldon explaining Schrödinger’s cat in detail to Penny. It was used as a comedic device throughout the rest of the episode.

After Must See TV was over, I went to the DVR list and pulled up the episode of Bones that had been recorded while we were watching Big Bang, since they’re on at the same time but on different stations. In the episode Angela was trying to explain a social paradigm that Zack just wasn’t getting. So he says, “I don’t get it.” Hodgins says, “Think Schrödinger’s cat.” And Zack says, “Now THAT makes sense to me.”

Is it me, or is it completely random and strange that such an obscure reference should be used in two shows – one a comedy, one a drama – on two separate stations, in the exact same time slot?

Insert Twilight Zone theme here.