Last week for our anniversary, Aaron took me to my most favoritest Nashville restaurant, Mambu. (I would link it but they don’t have a website! Heresy.) It’s in an old house, with the hostess station in the foyer and the tables in the adjoining rooms. There are no doors, only big wooden doorframes linking the rooms together.

We didn’t have a reservation, assuming they wouldn’t be too busy on a Wednesday night. So when we told the hostess we’d like to sit inside and she gave us kind of a strange look, we were confused. The restaurant didn’t seem too full. I was glancing around the place when I realized why… through a couple of the doorways I could see Keith Urban eating dinner. A wall was blocking my view of his companion, but I had a feeling I knew who it was.

When the hostess came back to seat us, she briefed us on what was going on: Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman were eating in the room where we were about to be seated. I guess she just wanted to let us know so we didn’t flip out when we walked into the room. Smart girl, because as a general rule I make no guarantees not to flip out.

She sat us literally ten feet away from them. I wanted to turn and stare, but I mustered up every bit of self-restraint I’ve got and managed to act relatively cool. I felt like we needed to be really on during dinner… lots of laughing and talking with no awkward silences. You know, because if she sees how fun we are she’ll totally want to come over and be our friend, right? (Right.)

We eat (salmon for me, steak for Aaron), they eat (steak salad AND steak for both of them). They get up to leave. The door is right behind Aaron, and when they get to it, Keith (we’re on a first-name basis now) realizes he’s forgotten something and goes back to the table, leaving her standing in the doorway. I used this chance to check her out… she is gorgeous and had on a really cool t-shirt. I think I was a little too obviously staring, but they were on their way out so I figured it was alright. It was pretty freaking cool.

So there you have it, folks, the story of my dinner with my new best friend Nicole Kidman. We hang out all the time now… we are totally BFF. Here we are the other day, discussing the finer points of So You Think You Can Dance. (She totally loves it too! It’s so super awesome.)

At 7:30 Tuesday night, I thought this entry would be about how we missed Ben Lee (!).

At 8:15, I thought it was going to be about how excruciatingly painful it was to have to both watch and listen to opening band Say Anything, who were so profoundly awful that I literally cannot find the words to describe it.

At 9:15, I thought I would be expounding on the various means of torture I was plotting for the people who sat next to (and in front of, and behind) us who had gotten free tickets because their company is a Ryman sponsor, and who showed up in COMPANY POLOS and spent the first half of the show looking at each other and making “who-is-this-guy-how-do-they-all-know-the-words-i-do-not-get-this-darn-kids-these-days” faces and talking really loudly about the people they work with before mercifully leaving.

But at 9:30, I knew I would be posting about the amazing awesomeness that is a Dashboard Confessional concert.

I went in with really low expectations. I only know a couple lines from a couple of songs, and I certainly wouldn’t say I’m an emo fan. But Chris Carraba knows what he’s doing. He knows who his audience is and what they want from him, and he gives it to them. And they eat it up.

They love this music. LOVE IT. It’s not about him. It’s about his songs. They know every single word, and the sing them at the top of their lungs. Their eyes are closed, their hands are in the air, their hearts are on their sleeves. These songs are the soundtracks of their lives. It’s passionate. It’s emotional. It’s honest. I’ve never seen anything like it.

It makes for quite an experience for a newcomer. I enjoyed every minute of it, and I’ve been listening to A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar for the past two days. I need to learn the words so I’ll be prepared next time he comes to town.

I don’t think I’ve posted before about how I am married to a 14-year-old emokid in a 27-year-old body. I have posted, however, about how random emo songs get stuck in my head out of nowhere.

Tonight, those worlds are colliding. Against my better judgment, I am going to a Dashboard Confessional concert.

I am… not excited. I’ve been listening to Dashboard the last couple of days to get the songs in my head, and I don’t really love them. I like the older stuff a little better, and some of them are familiar, but overall it is just not my thing. I think I’m too old for it. I keep having to alternate his songs with something more my speed and then forgetting to go back to them. From my current playlist you’d think I was going to a Will Kimbrough show tonight. (Now THAT I would be excited about.)

Ben Lee is opening for him, and I’m pumped about that. I love me some Ben Lee. And I’m trying to keep an open mind about Dashboard. I do like some of it. Aaron really likes it, and as a general rule I think he has good taste. And it’s at the Ryman, which I love so very much. So it has the potential to surprise me and be a really enjoyable evening.

Or make me want to stick bamboo shoots up my fingernails.

We’ll see.

My renewed excitement over That Thing You Do reminded me of another obsession that movie sparked within me: Ethan Embry.

He charmed me as The Bass Player, and my love for him grew with Can’t Hardly Wait and Empire Records, one of my top five favorite movies ever. But since those days, he hasn’t done a whole lot, and he kind of fell of my radar.

So what are the chances that on the same day I post about my love for one of his movies, Go Fug Yourself features him? None too kindly, unfortunately, but that is beside the point. It’s like all my high school obsessions are coming back to haunt me.

(I still say he’s adorable.)

It all started with a few myspace comments. A couple of other fanatics left quotes on my page. It was in my head.

I tried to rent it, but Blockbuster didn’t have it. We’d cancelled Netflix, so I couldn’t get it there. I went to Target, but they don’t sell it. I was going crazy.

I had to drive across town to Best Buy. The urge was too strong. I had to see it.

Finally, last night, after weeks of frustration, I got to watch it.

That Thing You Do.

People, I love this movie so much. SO MUCH. I’d actually forgotten how much I love it… until I put it in the DVD player. Several times I found myself just sitting there grinning like an idiot. There may have been dancing. That stupid movie brings me so much joy.

I love it when they play at Villapiano’s and their fan precedes them. I love the man in the really nice camper. I love it when they hear their song on the radio for the first time and they’re all dancing in the store. I love it when they play in Illionois on the giant record and Lenny sings lead and Tom Hanks does the fist pull and the head bob. I love Cap’n Geech and the Shrimp Shack Shooters. I love it when Lenny gets married, and TB Player goes to Disneyland, and Guy gets to meet Del Paxton. I love it all.

It’s a movie that means a lot to me. It’s tied to a lot of good memories and a genuinely joyful time in my life, and every time they play the song in the movie (which, admittedly, is an awful lot), it makes me happy. When it ended I wanted to start it right back up again. (I didn’t, but I probably will watch it again this weekend.)

I. LOVE. IT.

*I’ve got a pig in competition down at the livestock pavilion, and I am going to WIN THAT BLUE RIBBON.

This is a story about a girl named Gertrude*.

I once had a really fabulous neighbor named Julie. Julie and her husband, Mark, were wonderful neighbors, and we had a great time hanging out with them in our yards and doing other neighborly things. We were very pleased, as we hadn’t had much luck in the neighbor department before them.

Julie had a sister. Gertrude. Gertrude, while perfectly nice, always rubbed me the wrong way. She the kind of person who says things like, “I’m only working until I get married and don’t have to anymore,” and “If your stand mixer isn’t Kitchenaid you might as well not even have one.” But because I only saw Gertrude in passing every now and then I never gave her much thought.

Then Julie and Gertrude decided to start selling Pampered Chef products together. Because I wanted to support Julie, and I love Pampered Chef products, I offered to host a party. Julie did my party, and she did a great job… she wasn’t pushy, we all had a good time, I got lots of free stuff and a couple of my friends signed up to throw parties. Another friend of mine, who had recently become a stay-at-home mom, decided after that party that she’d like to sell Pampered Chef, too, and signed up under Julie. Or so she thought.

Not long after the party, Julie and Mark moved away. Gertrude, now running the PC business on her own, ran the parties my friends hosted. From my understanding, she was the polar opposite of Julie… pushy, demanding, informing the guests that if they aren’t using PC products they might as well not even be cooking, blah blah blah. Really unpleasant. Then, when people reacted to that and didn’t buy/offer to host parties, she got upset and frustrated. Not good.

My friend who had signed up to sell the products, who was now under Gertrude, quit after only a couple of months. She just couldn’t take the voicemails from Gertrude asking what she could do to “make all her dreams come true.”

After all of that went down, I didn’t hear from Gertrude for several months. Then I checked the mail yesterday. In it was a green postcard that stopped me dead in my tracks. Literally. Aaron ran into me.

“Come help me launch my new business! Please join me as I begin an exciting new venture as a Mary Kay Consultant!”

From, you guessed it, Gertrude. Then I got a voicemail.

“Hey, Brandi! It’s Gertrude, Julie’s sister. I know we haven’t talked in a while, I just wanted to see how you’re doing! Give me a call when you get a chance, I have something REALLY EXCITING to share with you.”

You have got to be kidding me.

If I hadn’t gotten the postcard first, I would have immediately called her back, thinking Julie was pregnant or they were moving back to town or something. Thankfully, the USPS saved me the trouble.

I just can’t bring myself to wear large amounts of purple eye shadow. And I refuse to help Gertrude get her pink Cadillac.

*name has been changed to protect identity and also to reflect the guilty in the most unflattering light possible

It was Wednesday. We had been at camp for two days and everyone was finally settled into the rhythm. Things were running smoothly. I was relieved and feeling quite a sense of accomplishment. We’d worked hard to plan this camp, Aaron and I. He was the camp admin and had planned all of the evening activities, and I’d been responsible for all the recreation. My games were a success, and my elaborate plan for moving 500 students around the campus of Ouachita Baptist University in a timely manner without running into each other seemed to be working. Things were good.

I was walking to morning service with Abby and Michelle, two of the other counselors, when a couple of the youth pastors approached us. Our ‘late night’ event that evening was a student talent show, and the staff had decided that we should put on a staff skit at the end of the show. The idea was to play the Dating Game, with the three of us as the bachelorettes. They’d choose a seventh-grade boy to be the bachelor and write questions for him to ask us. We would create personalities to answer with, and when he chose his date, we’d send one of the big hairy stinky boy counselors we had around the wall. Ha ha, joke’s on the kid, the end. Great.

We decide that Michelle will be really girly and silly, I will be really mean and bitter, and Abby will incorporate the phrase ‘peaches and cream’ into every answer. It comes time for the talent show, and the kids blow us away with their creativity. We have dancing. We have skits. We have songs. Everyone is having a great time. Then it’s time for the staff skit.

The three of us get on stage, and it’s set up just like the dating game on TV. Three stools, a wall, another stool, and a host. It all looks very professional for a skit idea that was hatched that morning at breakfast. They even have music. The host gets things going, introducing the bachelor and bachelorettes and getting the questions started. We answer in character, but we’re not very good and are cracking ourselves up. Michelle’s girly answers are hilarious, and the kids are dying every time Abby says ‘peaches and cream’. (We later learned that was because there was a song out at the time that uses the phrase as a euphemism. If only we’d known.) I didn’t think I was very funny, but as it’s not much of a stretch for me to be bitter and condescending I think I pulled it off okay. Still, I was shocked when the bachelor chose Bachelorette #2 – me.

I immediately started looking for the big counselor guy who was meant to be the date, but he was nowhere to be found. Then the head youth pastor’s wife came around the wall with flowers. Since we couldn’t find the guy, I decided to just take them and go around the wall to be this kid’s date. I remember thinking that the flowers were a strange touch, but with all the commotion I didn’t give it much thought. I also missed the collective gasp from the audience.

So. Music is playing. People are everywhere. I have flowers. I walk around the wall, and… time stops.

Aaron is there. He’s down on one knee. He’s got an open ring box in his hand. And 500 teenagers are screaming their heads off.

I froze.

Eventually, Aaron realized I wasn’t moving and kind of crawled over to me. He asked. I started crying. I think I nodded, but it’s all kind of a blur. Luckily he interpreted the crying as good and emotional rather than sad and embarrassed, and he stood up and went into hug mode. Where I am much more comfortable.

It was more perfect that I could have ever imagined. That camp had been a huge undertaking for us, and that it was successful was a really big deal. I was (and am still) thrilled that he chose to ask me to spend my life with him in the middle of it all. Plus, I’d always wanted to be proposed to in front of a lot of people, although I’m pretty sure I’d never mentioned it to him. To be on stage in front of the people we care about and the kids we’d worked so hard for was exactly as it should have been. I can’t believe it’s been five years today… it feels at the same time like it was yesterday and like it was a million years ago.

The last couple of times I’ve gotten my hair cut, I’ve gone to this too-cool-for-me salon. Both times I’ve gotten fabulous but overpriced haircuts, but I don’t love the salon. They massage your head with oil at this place, which I think is totally awkward - where are you supposed to look? In the mirror? At the guy? If you close your eyes, are you too into it? It is wrong to make the disclaimer that you’re actually just closing your eyes because you don’t know what else to do with them and you don’t think you should be making mirror eye contact with a guy rubbing oil into your scalp? Am I possibly obssessing about this too much?

Aaaaaaaanyway, today I made an appointment with the girl who used to do my hair before I decided I needed fancy layers and sweepy bangs. I set the appointment for ten tomorrow morning and hung up the phone. A few minutes later, the phone rang. It was the salon.

Hair lady: Brandi, this is Nancy at England’s. I told Angel I’d set an appointment for Brandi at ten and she wants to know if this is Brandi with a ton of hair or Brandi with a normal amount of hair?

Me: … uhhh…

*awkward silence*

Me: I guess I have a lot of hair. Tell her I’m Aaron’s wife, see if that helps her know who I am.

Hair lady, yelling: Angel! It’s Aaron’s wife! Do you know who that is?

Hair lady, to me: She knows who you are and she wants you to come in fifteen minutes early because you have so much hair.

Me: ummmmmmmmmmm… okay.

I don’t know how much hair normal people have on their heads, but apparently I have about triple that. I was in a wedding a couple of months ago and the hair girl complained to me that my hair was hard to put into an updo because there’s so much of it. Hair people have commented on my thick hair my entire life. It is clearly a bad thing, as not one of these comments have been a compliment. Always a complaint, coupled with a sigh of resignation to the horrific task that is before them.

Is it so wrong to want someone (who I am PAYING MONEY TO) to cut my hair some slack? Maybe comment on how it’s kind of a nice color, or in good shape? Would they prefer I have thinnng hair? Wouldn’t that eventually mean they were out a customer, as bald women typically don’t get haircuts?

Maybe I’ll just shave it off. That’ll show ‘em.