On Our Way To Crazy

Tomorrow morning we head to Dallas for the wedding of my good friend Steffanie. I realized today that when I was writing about my friends from high school, I never got to Steff. That is a shame, because she is one of my very favorite people.

I’m fuzzy on the details of how Steffanie and I got to be friends. We met in the 8th grade when she showed up at volleyball practice. Her parents had just moved from across town and she had transferred schools. She wasn’t there very long… after a couple of weeks she went back to the school she’d come from to finish out junior high. I don’t remember much about those times, but I do remember seeing her at volleyball tournaments and speaking to her.

When we went to high school, there she was at volleyball practice again. She and I became friends pretty quickly, and she later told me that she approached me early on because she remembered me as being one of the only people who was nice to her when she was at our junior high. Honestly, I find that hard to believe, as I was not terribly nice in junior high. But I’m glad I was, because Steffanie is a joy to have as a friend.

One of my favorite things about Steff is that she does her own thing. She, Melanie, Kelley and I ran together throughout high school. We all played sports the entire time, but Steff quit early on and got into all sorts of things. Dancing lessons, musicals, travel, languages. If she wants to try something, she tries it. If she wants to go somewhere, she goes. If she wants to change her major 14 times, no problem. Go from long brown hair to short spiky blond? Absolutely.

There was drama in high school, as there always is, but we somehow avoided it. I may have struggled with everyone else, but Steff and I never had trouble. It was like our friendship was somehow above that. At the end of the day, we just wanted to swim and eat candy and watch movies on her parents’ big fluffy couch. My friendship with Steffanie was like a calm in the storm sometimes, and I am really thankful for that.

Steffanie and I stayed good friends through college. Real friends, not friends who went to high school together and kind of keep in touch. We had similar frustrations with school, something that was a sharp contrast to the college experiences of our other friends. Steffanie became someone I could be real and honest with – not someone I felt I had to be my ‘old self’ with. We bonded over not knowing what to do with our lives, conflicting desires to stay home and go away, problems with the people we’d grown up with. I’m thankful to be able to say that I consider her a better friend now than I ever did in high school. Even though we don’t talk terribly often, when we do, it’s like no time has passed. I can say with full confidence that we would be everyday friends if we were in the same place. She’s the kind of friend that you can tell your meanest thoughts, and she won’t hate you. She’ll just laugh because she probably thinks the same way.

I am thrilled to be a part of Steffanie and Jack’s wedding this weekend. I don’t know Jack well, but anyone who makes her that happy can’t be bad. I will put on my pretty pink dress and my strappy black shoes and pray with all my might that I don’t trip and fall on my face in front of everyone we know. And we will dance and drink and laugh, all to celebrate Steffanie. Because she is fabulous.

Blogger has been giving me all kinds of trouble this week. I couldn’t get things to post correctly until this morning, and now everything I’ve tried to post this week is up. Strange.

My favorite radio station, Lighting 100, is celebrating their 16th anniversary this month. To celebrate, they play a string of songs from a year in their history every morning. I really enjoy it, because sometimes it’s a little nostalgic, and sometimes it’s a glimpse of what I would have been listening to if I hadn’t been so lame at that point in my life.

This morning, the year was 1994. In 1994 I was in 8th grade at Kimbrough Middle School, and slowly making the musical transition from the music that defined my junior high years (Boyz II Men, Shai, Mariah Carey) to the more rock-oriented tastes of early high school. I had a boyfriend named Randy who I broke up with after a few weeks because our names rhymed. I played volleyball, ran track, and played percussion in the junior high band, something I would quit after that year because sports were cooler.

So. Year: 1994. Song: Mr. Jones by Counting Crows.

I remember the first time I heard that song. I was at the 8th grade spring dance. I had just finished slow “dancing” with a guy named Lance, who I had only danced with because my friend who had a crush on him dared me to. (How do I remember these things? I also remember that Lance rode his bike to school and drank milk at lunch while the rest of us were chugging giant sodas.) Mr. Jones started, and everyone went crazy. Clearly, I was missing something.

I loved it. It became my new favorite song on the spot. I went out the very next day and bought the cassette, and drove my parents crazy listening to it over and over and over again.

It occurred to me this morning that August and Everything After has been in my regular rotation for twelve years. TWELVE. I can’t think of any other music that has consistently been a part of my life for that long. I pulled it out at work today and have already listened to it twice. It has some of my very favorite songs: Anna Begins, Sullivan Street, A Murder of One. But Mr. Jones, while possibly overplayed to many, will always be special to me. That opening guitar will always make me want to turn it up, roll the windows down, and sing at the top of my lungs.

Last night I had a dream that we bought a new house. One of the contingencies of buying the house, however, was that you had to move in with the family who currently lived there.

The family that lived in the house we bought? The Seavers. From Growing Pains.

At lunch today, I was sitting at a stop light when I noticed the car in front of me. A bright yellow Ford Ranger with light covers. I immediately thought LAME, because I am a snob.

But then I thought, wait a second. I’ve seen this truck before. Maybe not the exact truck, but one eerily similar. Driven by a guy a dated in high school.

I met Ryan the summer before my senior year. He was the brother of my friend’s boyfriend. We were the same age and had been in the same class for years, but had never met. We’d all been swimming at my friend’s house, and as they were leaving he asked for my phone number. I was thrilled. I gave it to him.

He called that night, and we talked for hours, in that way high school kids do. I remember really enjoying myself – it was fun to talk to someone who’d been in the same place and knew all the same people, but had had such a different experience than I had.

After that, we were dating. We spent a fair amount of time together, swimming and going to movies and baseball games and such. He would pick me up in his white Ford Ranger with the light covers, and off we’d go. Whenever we got to our destination, he would take the light covers off and put them in the cab so they wouldn’t get stolen. I didn’t really understand the point of them, and it annoyed me to have to wait for him to take them off (and put them back on) every time we got in and out of the car, but it wasn’t a big deal.

What was a big deal, however, was how we had NOTHING to say to each other. We said everything there was to say during that first phone call. We would literally sit on the phone, not talking. Sit at the table, not talking. Movies became our saving grace. After a couple of weeks of silence, he called me.

Ryan: I think maybe we shouldn’t date anymore.

Brandi: OH MY GOSH, me too.

Ryan: Really?

Brandi: YES. We ran out of things to say two weeks ago.

Ryan: I KNOW! Okay, good. So no more dating.

Brandi: No.

Ryan: Awesome.

Brandi: Yes.

To borrow from Seinfeld, it was the world’s first truly mutual breakup.

When school started again, we ended up in the same English class. We were friendly, but we had some kind of unspoken agreement to pretend like the summer had never happened. One day, our assignment had been to bring in a poem to read to the class. After that was done, we played I Never. (We had one of those teachers who wanted to be cool.) One guy got up, took a slow turn around the circle, then said, “I have never kissed anyone in this room.” I looked around the room, wondering if anyone had kissed anyone else, when my eyes landed on Ryan. My friend Melanie was elbowing me and laughing. I had completely forgotten we had even dated by this point. I looked at him, he looked at me, and we both shook our heads. Crisis averted.

I heard he married a girl that lived down the street from me, and I hope they are happy and doing well. It’s funny that I thought of him today, as there is an off chance he might be at the wedding on Saturday. I wonder if he remembers any of that, and if makes his wife wait for him to cover and uncover the lights on the truck every time they leave the house. I hope not.

The default song in my head lately has been “Vindicated” by Dashboard Confessional. This is strange, because I’m pretty sure I’ve only heard the song once, a couple of summers ago on that concert show Pepsi used to do. I remember liking the chorus and being impressed that the kids knew all the words to what he said was a new song.

I also remember hitting Rhapsody the next day to hear it again and it not being available. Currently they only offer a 30-second clip, so I’m sure I haven’t heard it there. I don’t listen to any radio stations that would play Dashboard. In fact, the only other Dashboard song I know is the one about how your hair is everywhere. And even that song is only in my head because I sing it to Miles all the time.

I’m clearly not a big Dashboard fan. I mean, I get the appeal. I worked with teenagers. But at the end of the day, he kind of sounds like a guy who is a little too old to be whining about his problems all the time. I don’t have time for that.

And yet, my brain insists on holding onto this song. I don’t even know the words, really… in my head it goes, “I am vindicated/I am something something something/ I am blah de blah la la la doobee doobee doobee do”. I had to use the 30-second clip I have available to me to see if I even had the melody correct. (I did, in the off chance that you both know the song and can’t decipher my blah blahs.)

Where is this song coming from? Why is my brain obsessed with it?

I can really work myself into a tizzy.

Last night as I was falling asleep, it occurred to me that I had sent out a package from work yesterday that was missing some pieces. The missing pieces were entirely my fault; I had just plain forgotten to include them. I wasn’t sure if the recipient needed the package ASAP or if it was something I could rectify by sending the rest today. In my semi-conscious state, I managed to convince myself that this was of ultimate importance, worthy of being fired over, and started working on ways to explain what happened and get things taken care of before anyone realized what had happened. These plans included lies of varying degrees and blaming the mishap on everyone from the receptionist to Fed Ex to the guy who fries up the fish down at McCreary’s. If I was going down, they were all going down with me.

I kind of started to panic. Then I started getting upset that I work in a job that doesn’t mean anything and gets me all worked up over something so dumb. I decided the best thing to do would be to just go to sleep, but everyone knows that the last thing you’re going to do when you TRY to fall asleep is actually fall asleep.

Aaron and Miles, thankfully, were blissfully unaware of the situation.

I guess I finally fell asleep, but I woke up around 2:30, and again at 4:45, and again at 6:15. Each time it took me forever to fall asleep again, and my brain was racing the entire time. What if they did fire me? What kind of job would I look for? How would I explain why I left my last job? What would my parents think? When I woke up for good at seven, I was trying to figure out when my boss on the east coast would be getting up to go to the gym so I could call her and tell her what was going on. (What I planned to tell her depended on what time it was: the truth or one of my fabulously intricate lies.)

I made it to work without incident or embarrassing phone call, but I still had that knot in my stomach that something was about to go horribly wrong. I emailed my boss and the recipient of the package to explain what had happened (I even told the truth!) and see what they wanted me to do.

Of course, there was no rush on the package and I could send the missing pieces today with no problem. They wouldn’t have even known they were missing if I hadn’t brought it up. No big deal. Which, if I had been thinking (or at least fully awake at any point), I would have known all along.

I spent ten hours completely freaking myself out for absolutely no reason. At all.

I need to go back to bed.

Out there somewhere, I’m sure there’s a list of things you’re not supposed to let your dog do. Information about how you are supposed to be dominant and here’s how to make that happen. In fact, I know there is. I read Dogs For Dummies.

On that list, I’m sure, are things like “Don’t let your dog sleep in your bed” and “Don’t give your dog food from the table” and “Don’t let your dog completely control you”. They probably have tons of reasons why you shouldn’t do those things. Maybe the dog begins to think he is in charge. Maybe one day he’ll get rid of you so he can eat whatever he wants, including those chocolate graham crackers you won’t let him have (See! Discipline!) because they will kill him. He’ll eat them OH YES HE WILL.

We, of course, do not follow these rules. Miles? Is in charge. He’s like Charles, but with better hair.

We tried, we really did. We weren’t going to let him up on the bed. We got him a little doggie bed and put it on the floor, where he could see us but knew he wasn’t allowed where we were. When he jumped up on the bed, we made him get down. He was learning that he had his own bed, and that was where he could hang out. But, y’all, his little face is just so sad. Even when he is licking your face and wagging his tail, his eyes are sad. Sad and hard to resist. And eventually one of us (who? I can’t remember. No really. No idea.) started letting him hang out on the bed. Not while we were sleeping, but just while we were hanging around. He’s just so cuddly.

Today, that little doggie bed might as well be on the moon for all he uses it. He not only sleeps in our bed, he sleeps between us. He does not appreciate it when you make him go to the foot of the bed. He rebels by lying on your pillow. If your head happens to already be there, well, too bad. That’s what you get.

Miles was a shelter dog. When we picked him up from the house of the woman who ran the place, there were probably 15 dogs in the front yard. When she opened the door to bring him out, the barking we heard was unreal. There is no telling how many dogs were in there. The woman told us she’d just bathed both Miles and herself, but y’all, all we could smell was dog. Miles is very laid-back and chilled out, which probably served him well in that environment. That is, until mealtime.

I’m sure he had to fight for his food. He eats like he still does. As soon as that food hits the bowl, he is all over it. But his food obsession is not limited to dog food. Anytime you open the fridge, he is there, dying to know what you’re eating, and more importantly, can he have some? He sniffs at the bottles in the door and the food on the bottom shelf. And if you’re cooking, you can forget moving easily around the kitchen. He is at your feet, just waiting for something to fall. (Or for you to hand him something. Not that anyone I know does that.) He has also, somehow, learned to distinguish the sound of the pantry door being opened from the coat closet, even though they are right next to each other. Open the pantry, and his little head pops up and his ears are perked. He’s ready.

I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to give people food to dogs. But it’s just so funny. My favorite thing lately to give him has been ice cubes. He works so hard to get them chewed up, but he can’t seem to get it done before they melt. All that work for nothing. It’s like a race. A really, really funny race. He has also been known to eat pretzels, chicken, sausage, lettuce, croutons (those are especially fun because they fall apart when he bites into them and he gets confused) and pizza that was laying in our neighbor’s yard.

He eats our food, he sleeps in our bed, his sad little face dictates just about everything we do. I want, I want Miles in charge of me.