#4: how not to get over your ex-lover

#4. Keep your ex-lover’s phone number on speed dial.

Two days ago, I finally decided I would no longer initiate contact with my ex-lover. I felt empowered. I felt free. I even felt kind of cool. Then yesterday, while I was walking home, I called her.

It was an accident. I meant to call my brother-in-law whom I had removed from speed dial several months ago to make room for her. So I pressed 4 and patiently waited while the phone rang. He wasn’t picking up, so in my mind I started composing the voice message I would leave. Voice mail picked up. It wasn’t my brother-in-law’s voice. It was hers.

I pulled the phone away from my ear in shock and promptly disconnected. All my best laid plans not to contact her were foiled by my phone and my stupidity. I hadn’t taken her number off speed dial. What’s worse is that I’d somehow totally forgotten I’d put it on speed dial in the first place. I felt deflated. I felt cretinous. I felt totally uncool. Then I started to laugh.  When I got to my house I did what I should have done weeks ago. I took her off speed dial and put my brother-in-law back.

And now, a day after my dumb deed, I am trying to just keep laughing.

myscarytimesucker

so for a myriad of reasons (most of which are kind of scaring me) much more of my time than I’d purposed was sucked into building a myspace page today. yes. i too have a myspace page. and frankly, (and, need i remind you, frighteningly) building it was one the most enjoyable parts of my day.

i need to get out more.

though now that i have a myspace page, i’ll probably find excuses to stay in more often.

yikes.

you too can get sucked in at www.myspace.com/beclimbingtrees

talking to myself

Lately I’ve taken up the on-the-verge-of-becoming-crazy habit of talking to myself out loud. While walking home or writing, or making dinner, I’ve found myself audibly voicing the thoughts in my head. Phrases like “nice one girl,” or “maybe you should have thought about that one earlier,” or “damn you’re hilarious woman” keep escaping my lips. When it happens, I look around to make sure no one else is watching. And usually no one is. And it occurs to me that maybe that’s part of the problem in the first place.

love and farts

Perhaps my latest love disaster could have been avoided if I’d remembered this important lesson from adolescence: real friends are the people you can fart around.

this deep thought is dedicated to molly shea, a true and beloved friend

aunt emily

My aunt Stacy told me some stories about her aunt Emily that’s had me laughing out loud all week. I’d like to share two of them with you. (apologies aunt Emily, but these are just too hilarious to keep to myself.)

Aunt Emily apparently had some bladder control issues in her day. On numerous occasions she wet herself in public. That alone is kind of funny, I know, but what’s more hilarious are the ingenious methods she crafted to cover up her accidents.

While shopping one day, aunt Emily got to laughing so hard about something that she peed her pants in the aisle. So, being the brilliant woman she is, she grabbed a jar of pickles and smashed it on the ground and Voila! pee problem solved. I can just imagine her standing in the aisle, feigning a look of shock at the liquidy scene before her as help arrives.

Another incident occurred at a dinner party. For the special occasion, aunt Emily and everyone else had gotten themselves all dressed up. But even in her best cocktail dress, aunt Emily managed to wet herself on the sofa in the parlor before dinner had even been served. So when the hostess called everyone into the dining room, aunt Emily remained in her seat until everyone had left. Then she got up, flipped over the cushion, and voila, pee problem solved again.

I must admit I respect a woman whose pee problems don’t keep her down.

thanks for the laughs aunt Stacy.

silence

Lately, I’ve forgotten what’s so good about silence. I know silence, like green vegetables, fiber, and sleep, is good for me. I can vaguely recall a time when I actually scheduled “quiet time” into my day. I’d purposely find a place with no distractions, sit myself in it, and do and, more importantly, say nothing. I convinced myself I liked it (much like green vegetables, fiber and sleep). I convinced myself it was good for me. I convinced myself I ought to go about acquiring more of it. And then, somewhere along the way, I forgot all that.

The woman I love stopped talking to me about a month ago. The story goes something like this. We met. We started hanging out. We started making out. Then we started hanging out a lot more and making out a lot more. We spent hours in each others arms talking, kissing, falling in love. Sometimes I would wake in the middle of the night and find her hand still tenderly holding mine. I would kiss her back and whisper the question I could only utter in darkness, what if, my love, this does not last? I would fall back asleep peacefully, neither expecting nor needing an answer.

Then silence set in. First it was a few days. Then a week. Then more. She needed time, she said, time to herself. Okay, I replied, take your time. And I told myself to recall my comfort with silence. But as the silence goes on I cannot for the life of me remember what about silence I was once comfortable with.

For now though, when I wake in the middle of the night with no hand to hold and no ear to hear my whisper, it is enough to recall that I might remember again someday.

climbing trees

The last tree I climbed was a cas tree on the banks of the Rio Chachagua in Costa Rica. My friend Grace and I had been bathing in our favorite swimming hole all morning. After a few hours we got hungry and began walking toward town, water dripping from our glistening bodies onto the thick carpet of leaves, roots, and grasses beneath us. As we walked, she pointed to a wirery tree in the distance. “Has comido cas, amiga?” she asked as she began walking toward the tree. Yes, I’d eaten cas, I replied. It’s my new favorite fruit. She smiled and I followed her to the base of the tree.

A sticky-sweet stench rose from the circle of rotting green and golden spheres that speckled the ground around the tree. Strips of red and golden bark hung to the otherwise smooth trunk and branches. Grace wrapped her bronze hand around a branch and in a single motion pulled herself up into the tree’s bosom, about seven feet from the ground. She climbed higher, hopping from branch to branch without a flinch of fear or hesitation. She reached a cluster of round, green balls and plucked two of them before turning her head in my direction. “Venga,” she said as she brought the fruit to her mouth and bit into it.

I am not technically afraid of heights. I have never vomited or fainted or broken into an uncontrollable sweat because my feet are a bit too far from the ground. But I don’t exactly like heights nor the tingling feeling in my stomach and head that comes with them as I vividly imagine myself falling to a painful death. So I am not technically afraid of climbing trees. I’m just a lot more comfortable plucking fruit from the top of the mound at the grocery store than scampering up a slick tree in the middle of the jungle to get some.

We were, however, miles from the grocery store. And, like so many other occasions during my stay in Costa Rica, the opportunity to do something that nearly scared the shit out of me seemed more compelling and important than sticking to the safe stuff. I grabbed a branch and pulled myself up. The exhilaration (along with the inevitable barrage of images of my death) was palpable. Without looking below me, I scaled the tree, reached out for a cluster of fruit and plucked a single shimmering cas. As I sank my teeth into its sour juicy yellow meat, Grace called out from her perch a few feet above me, “Vamos mas arriba.” We climbed until we could get no higher and then descended with swimsuits full of fruit. I walked home with a full belly and the satisfaction of having done something that scared me.

I try to remember that day and that cas tree often, especially when I feel myself wanting the safety of the ground rather than risking the sweet juices of heights. So, as I embark upon something else that scares me a bit (yes, I am kind of blogaphobic) I figure I need a reminder that I’d rather be climbingtrees than merely standing on the ground.