Something is not right here

Communication…

It’s a vital part of who we are. God created us all to be communicators whether we want to or not. In my book it is the most important part of a relationship between two people. Whether it be communicating with your boss, spouse, friend, or potential lover it’s imperative to figure out how best to communicate with each other early on.

It’s tricky because people communicate in so many different ways. Some people communicate better verbally, some better with actions, and even some better through written word and song. It’s all acceptable, yet confusing at times.

You see, I like to consider myself a processor. I tend to listen, soak it all in and then sit on things for a day or two before I can come to terms with what has been said. Now, I don’t do this on little things, like what kind of milk to buy, 2% or skim, that would be crazy…but I do process on the bigger things in life. Things like whether or not to send my kids to summer camp, or whether or not to approach my boss on a sticky subject matter, or even whether or not to go out on a date with a cute electrician (more on that at a later date). Those are definitely all “process worthy.”

But my question to you is this, what happens when one person communicates one thing with words and a totally different thing with actions? How do you communicate with someone whose verbal communication speaks a totally different language than his/her actions?

It can be confusing, right?

I have this friend, ok, my non-boyfriend boyfriend, who falls into this category. His verbal communication skills are awesome! I’ve never known a man who can communicate like he does. He is a total people person and loves creating relationships. It’s a skill I truly wish I had. When we go to dinner he makes friends with the waiter/waitress, he chats up the people behind the coffee counters, and even invites strangers to join us for dinner. All super cool qualities to have, that I have never even thought about until I met him. And it’s because of his actions, that he creates these relationships. In fact, we were out to dinner the other night and he made our waitress feel so comfortable that at one point in the meal she actually sat down at our table to chat with us. I love that!

But (come on people, you had to know there was a but coming…no one is ever that perfect) his actions speak a totally different language.

What do I mean by this? Well, I’m not going to spill the detail, but suffice it to say the reason he is my non-boyfriend boyfriend is because we are at two totally different places in our lives. We are headed down two different paths. Well maybe not two different paths, but, let’s just say I am so much further along in my path than he is. But the key is we enjoy spending time together. Unfortunately for me the time we do spend together is often very confusing because he communicates differently verbally than he does with his actions. I often leave his presence very confused and frustrated, but at the same time very excited for the next time when I may see him. And for a processor like me…this is VERY FRUSTRATING!

Bottom line, when communication is good I often feel understood, and emotionally connected which in turn makes me feel confident. But more often than not I am too afraid to do what it takes to create those feelings in any of my relationships, because that would require vulnerability. And vulnerability scares the crap out of me. Because in my mind vulnerability can only mean one thing…hurt.

It’s the one hurdle in my life that I am still trying to overcome…


“The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.” -George Bernard Shaw

Sorry people...I just can't do it

It is with deep sadness that I write this post today.

I know many of you have come to love my blog and look forward to reading it every day, or at least I have convinced myself of that anyway. But I just can't do it anymore...and by "it" I mean the weekly update on the Bachelorette! Sorry people, I just can't sit through two hours of it every Monday night. I am honestly so embarassed for Ali and the tools she has to choose from that I spend most of the show hidden behind a big pillow on my couch saying things like...

"oh no he didn't" and

"wait, what, huh?" and

"you've got to be kidding me!"

It just isn't worth my time...I may post something here and there every now and then, but I just can't commit my precious time to the Bachelorette this season. I don't know what it is, but I think it's funnier to watch the girls pawn over the Bachelor than the boys pawn over the Bachelorette.

Now, do you want to know what I did last night instead of watching the Bachelorette?

I read this...


...well, I read it after I stared at the cover for the first 30 minutes of the Bachelorette. I have one word to describe this cover...YUMM-O. I don't know about you but I want to go out and buy a 1,000 copies and plaster my bedroom ceiling with them...

Project Love: Day #4

To Young to Love

Yesterday I talked about my first celebrity crush…Tom Cruise. Looking back on that “incident” still makes me cringe. I think writing about that experience has made me think about it even more. My plan to write about it and forget about it obviously backfired!

But, it did also make me think of my first real crush.

It was on my 4th grade teacher, Mr. Big (name changed to protect the innocent). For your pure enjoyment here is a picture of my fourth grade class, the year is 1981.

Mr. Big is obviously the only adult in the picture. Look at him, will you? Even today, some twenty plus years later, he is still handsome. He was tall and had a fantastic head of hair and beautiful blue eyes. He was the sweetest man I knew. In fact if that guy, the exact one in the picture, asked me out on a date today, I would be all over it.

Oh, by the way, I’m the one off to Mr. Big’s left with the blue jacket, blue jeans, blonde bowl cut, and red high heels. Yes, I said high heels! Hey people, I was serious about this crush…I was no dummy! I knew men liked a woman in heels. I didn’t care if we were on a field trip out in the middle of the country or not, I was gonna wear my heels.

I’m sure my mom fought me on my shoe choice before school…but it looks like I either won the fight, sucka! Or I wore tennis shoes, like she suggested, and then snuck the heels in my book bag and changed on the bus. Either way…I think I made the best decision, right?

And see the cute little red head two people to the right of me, in the green jacket. That is (still to this day) my best friend, Super Mom. She and I met for the first time this particular year and became fast friends. At the time we lived right down the street from each other and from fourth grade on we were inseperable.

We still see each other, not as often as I would like, but we are still the best of friends. In fact, she is the one that my dad first called when he found out my ex was leaving me. I was too embarrassed to tell anyone and my dad knew I needed the support. She was at my house with coffee in hand within 30 minutes. God love her! I still tear up when I think about how supportive of me she has been over the years.

But that’s a post for another day, back to Mr. Big.

He was dashing! I loved going to school that year. Oh who am I kidding, I’m a girl, I loved going to school every year. But that year in particular was awesome. I’m sure I was an annoying fourth grade girl who giggled too much, who was bossy at times, and who always wanted to be the center of attention, but Mr. Big always made me feel like I was special. No, not, “this is getting creepy and deserves to be an After School Special” kind of special. But you know, he always had this way of including me and making me feel like the center of attention even though there were twenty other kids in the room.

Come to find out, when one of my other friends in this class posted this picture on Face Book, it turns out that all of the girls in that picture felt the same way I did.

Huh, guess I wasn’t as special as I thought.

And that particular year, my friends, is the year I believe my insecurities about men always liking my friends better than me, started.

Love is a Battlefield

Project Love: Day #3

Love Fades

When I was a kid I had several celebrity crushes. My biggest was In fact, Tom Cruise. I had a poster of him on my wall in his Top Gun fighter uniform that I would kiss every night before I would go to bed. I loved that poster and was destroyed the day that I “took” it down.

It was a day that has seemd to live on for me. It was a very sad yet embarrassing moment in my life, one that continues to haunt me. Telling you this story is a huge step for me because I swore that I would never ever talk about this moment again in my life. But I’m thinking that maybe if I share my embarrassment with you then I will somehow erase it from my brain and not think about it every day.

Seriously I think about the day that the Tom Cruise poster came off my wall… EVERY. SINGLE. DAY!

It was a rainy summer day. My friends were gone and I was forced to entertain myself at home. We didn’t have cable TV, video games, iPods or Wii. However, I suspect if we had had those things, I would have been bored with them as quickly as my kids are now. But I digress.

What we did have were cassette tapes. And as you can imagine, my favorite cassette at the time was the Top Gun Soundtrack. I mean seriously, who didn’t love, Playing with the Boys by Kenny Loggins or You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling by The Righteous Brothers

Am I the only one that used to fantasize that Tom Cruise would meet me in the bathroom at my local McDonald’s in the mall and break out with “you never close your eyes anymore when I kiss your lips?”

Like most little girls with a huge crush on Tom Cruise, my favorite song was definitely, Take My Breath Away by Berlin. I used to listen to that song over and over and over again. Listen, rewind, listen, rewind, listen, rewind. In fact, I listened to it so much that I finally wore the cassette tape out. Lucky for me this was the day and age of the “single soundtrack”. So I convinced my dad to take me to the mall so that I could spend my allowance on a new cassette. And when I got it home I got smart and recorded it ten times in a row on a blank cassette so that I wouldn’t have to rewind it anymore. Smart, I know…classic cassette tape to cassette tape recording…seems so ancient doesn’t it?

WARNING: Here comes the embarrassing part. I usually like to be warned of instances like this so that I can huddle in the fetal position behind my couch with a pillow over my eyes.

Take My Breath Away…a classic! I loved this song SOOOO much…the lyrics were so romantic, so inspirational and at one moment they just took me away. I got up and was singing at the top of my lungs to one Mr. Tom Cruise. I was stroking his face with one hand while singing into my hairbrush with the other, gazing lovingly at the Flat Stanley version of my future boyfriend. There was no stopping me, it was just me and Tom eye to eye, cheek to cheek. The song was coming to a close and I gently rubbed my index finger across his beautiful, surgically enhanced lips when in the flash of a second, the music stopped, I hear my brothers giggling, I jump onto my bed while grabbing the poster at the same time screaming at them out of pure embarrassment.

I was yelling at my brothers to go away, screaming to my mom to make them go away and crying because I had just ripped my poor boyfriend in half. The devastation of that moment when you are scared shitless yet embarrassed at the same time…This feeling will live on forever in me!

I will never ever forget this moment in my life. And to this day, I believe it was that particular moment that I no longer had a crush on Tom Cruise.

My parents replaced the poster for me at Christmas, but I didn’t have the heart to hang it up. In fact, just looking at the poster or the thought of hanging it up made my stomach cringe with embarrassment.

So long Mr. Cruise…may you be loved by many others.

Lesson learned: When singing to a Flat Stanley version of your future boyfriend, shut the bedroom door.

Love is a Battlefield

Will jump on Oprah's couch for you

I HAVE A CRUSH! I know I’m 38 years old! The idea of a crush at my age seems crazy, and maybe a little creepy. But I think it’s ok to have a crush. At least that is what I have been telling myself in the days that led up to this post. It was kind of like I was convincing myself that it was ok to have a crush…on a guy…who is in a loving and committed relationship. I know…bummer, right? But that’s ok because he doesn’t really know I exist anyway...so I’m good with it!

My crush is the total package. He is funny and tall, successful, hard working, and a great dad. My crush is a friend of mine on face book. In fact, my heart actually skips a beat when he posts something on my wall or leaves a comment about my witty status updates. I tend to run into him without any warning…when I least expect it…you know, usually on my “fat” days or on days that I have a humongous zit on my chin. There is just something mysterious about him.

The funny thing about my crush is that I don’t know that I necessarily picked him as someone I would have a crush on. He just kind of snuck up on me when I was least expecting it. Honestly, I think crushes are kind of silly after the age of eleven. Well, except for the perfectly normal one I have on Ryan Reynolds. Now that goes without saying. Unfortunately I have created such high expectations for my crush that he is bound to eventually disappoint me, and that’s not fair to him. In my mind, he is this perfect man who can do no wrong. He is suddenly the funniest, most attractive, smartest person I know. He has somehow become this perfect man that I know doesn’t exist…how do I know this? I know this because reality is never perfect.

The hardest part about having a secret crush is in fact, the secrecy. I often find myself trying to be cool and under the radar when I run into him or when replying to something he has posted on my face book page. Never in a million years would I ever do anything to let my crush know that he was the one. In fact, a couple of years ago, my friend, Tanya and I found out Mr. Crush was going to be at a particular bar on St. Patrick’s Day so we made plans to go to that bar and “accidentally” run into him. But I chickened out at the last minute and we left because I didn’t want it to look obvious…I was secretly afraid that he would be able to read the desire in my face.

Why do I do this? Why do I put myself under this kind of pressure? Well beside the fact that he is not available, I would have to say, of course, it is because I am afraid to know the answer to the question I am burning to ask him…”do you like me?” Because what if the answer is no? That answer would be the worst one…oh the humiliation! Sure, I’m willing to chalk up some of this pressure to issues with my self image, but only so much…the rest is just reality.

Let’s just say, for example, I am fantastic…there is nothing worse that knowing that being fantastic is no guarantee that he will like me back. It’s either yes or no…it’s either possible or it’s not…In my mind it has everything to do with hope and whether or not I have it. And I don’t want to destroy what I have tenderly been nursing all these years. It’s the possibility that my crush doesn’t like me that drives the secrecy. And the secrecy drives the hope…it’s a vicious cycle that I am not willing to break. But there is also the other side of this equation. What if he does like me back? Unfortunately, I may never know, but if he did I think I would die of sheer happiness on the spot.

So, Mr. Crush, in order to continue keeping this a secret and bottled up inside I can assure you I will continue to do the following things. First, I will not be staring at you like I do when I see Ryan Reynolds. I will continue to avoid telling anyone who you are. I will treat you just like I treat all of my other friends…that’s right, craptastically! And I will continue to be my usual funny self when I am around you. However, I cannot promise you that I won’t giggle hysterically, in that annoyingly high pitched girl way, when I see you again.