I want to thank everyone who helped me create this book, except for that guy who yelled at me in Kmart when I was eight because he thought I was being “too rowdy.” You’re an asshole, sir.
It's awesome when you know right away that you're going to like this writer. As opposed to other books, classic stories with countless fans, which I have tried hard to read but which left no impression on me. I must then humbly return them to the library unfinished, like a failure; and I love to learn new things, but I have to be honest with myself—I’m afraid of being the dumbest person in the room. This fear has left me with the unending task of attempting to better myself even though the only person I’m trying to impress is me because I usually don’t have a clue what other people are thinking.
Maybe I’ve managed to socialize or suppress all of my
natural instincts away. I
often second guess my choices, thinking I am acting like a carefree woman when,
in reality, I’m starting to wonder if my lack of a make-up routine is more
about laziness than a statement about female media images. Here’s hoping that my
forties lead to a surge of self-confidence, or at least a mild case of knowing
what I want.
Normally, when people walk into a house for sale they know
if it’s the one for them. Not me. If you’ve read a previous post called Money
Pit, you’ll know my notes before we bought this house included only one word:
scary. My husband is the one who saw beyond the shiny diagonal cedar in the
bathroom, the stale smell of cat urine permeating from the pink carpet, and the
homeowners who stayed to watch TV while I tried to politely look around. I could tell by our second visit that I was wrong because I couldn't see myself living in any other house. Luckily, I did a better job picking him out
eleven years earlier.
The summer of 1991 was already a hit because the two popular bars in
town were competing for business by offering bottled beer for a buck and, as
luck would have it, I had turned 19 that June. We had mutual friends who joined
our table near the end of a hot July night. His first friend had obviously been
puking shortly before asking me to dance (charming), and his second friend danced
like a fence post, so when the DJ announced the next song would be the last dance,
the man who would be my husband a year later did not have to do much to improve
upon his predecessors. But it was more than that. Mick Jagger was
still whistling the notes of Waiting
on a Friend when I knew he was the one, like a puzzle that fit together in all the right places, and there was no doubt in my mind, this attraction would
have a lasting impression. And that's an awesome feeling.
