What happens when you don't go to church

So I’m home alone on a Sunday, and I’m cleaning and cooking and working and cleaning dog beds. Typical Sunday. I take these two foam things we let the dogs sleep on out into the yard to hose them down because for some reason my three year old dog has started peeing the bed, and sometimes just peeing on the carpet, and a junker car drives by and honks. I look up, as though I know anyone out here, and then go back to my hosing.

But the car turns around, and then pulls into my yard - we don’t have a driveway, you actually have to drive through the yard to park on the landing in front of the barn-like garage and carport. He drives toward me, and I stand up, and it occurs to me what I look like: I’m wearing a tank dress (I’ve started to refer to them as housedresses) because it’s the only thing I can stand to wear in the heat and humidity. I’m squinting through my glasses, my frizzy hair is piled on top of my head, and I’m wearing no bra, though I do have an apron with a wild horses print on it tied around my waist – it was an ironic gift from my best friend, but I actually wear it because I cook and bake and wash dishes by hand. Also, as though I have new readers who need this info: I’m ultra white and have tattoos.

The fellow driving his beater car across my lawn is a black guy (p.s. more than once in the last few weeks, I’ve been in restaurants with people who have stage-whispered “black” when referring to perceived cultural differences. I’ve also gotten a stage-whispered “white” when someone was telling me which Taco Bell was preferred, because the employees were all, you guessed it, “white”) about my age, smoking a swisher sweet and wearing a white wife-beater tank top.

I say hello when he leans out his window. I’m thinking about where my dogs are. Inside the house.

He tells me he’s looking for “Heavah,” she lives somewhere around here and she looks just like me.

I tell him I don’t know anyone named Heather out here. Then he points out my tomato plants, and tells me that he grows tomatoes, too, and eggplants and okra and beans, and his watermelons are doing well, too.

When he describes the wall he built to keep his tomatoes off the ground, I say, “yeah, we should have done something like that, too. Anyway, good luck finding her.”

Then he drove away.

When I told Roomie about it (we tell each other any time anyone comes here, as it happens so rarely) suggested that the guy was “fishing.”

I’m trying to picture how that would have gone successfully for him.

“Oh, Heather? I don’t know her. Would you like to come inside for a lemonade? Or some homemade salsa?”

Am I being innocent?

Anyone remember that movie Ferngully?

Of course we have neighbors we hate.

No, that's too far. We don't hate them. They just seem like dicks.

My house sits on an acre, just far enough back from a busy road. We have a big yard, and we like to spend time outside, usually tossing a ball for the dogs, and often with a beer (or large glass of wine) in hand. On one side of us, close to our house, is a house that's empty save occasional visits from the grown kids of the dead lady who used to live there.

On the other side, past the vast expanse of our lovely yard, live The Jerkoffs. It's a couple and a kid, and someone who looks like a grandma seems to appear from time to time. Roomie has seen the kid shooting at birds. That's just a really good way to piss off this particular hippie. And, charmingly, while the kid was shooting at birds, Grandma was just chilling on a riding mower, watching.

It's not like we have seagulls or some other kind of asshole birds around (like steller's jays, which are big, fat jerks), but sweet songbirds, cardinals, something called a titmouse,  and amazing, huge pileated woodpeckers -- rare, protected Woody the Woodpecker birds. Roomie also saw the kid chasing the chickens around their chicken coop throwing rocks at them. Cool, right?

(Don't get me wrong, I'm OK with eating chickens. I'm just not really into being an asshole to them while they're still alive. I get the irony, but as I see, it, 90% of the point of raising chickens is eating eggs -- or meat -- without feeling guilty about the horrible treatment the animals experienced while they were still alive.)

While all that makes me think the kid is a turdface, I wasn't really pleased when I heard his dad yelling at him while they burned whatever they were burning (they do it so often I suspect it may be their garbage) in their yard one morning. I'm not sure, but I think I heard him smack the kid, too. Excellent. (Mom's an unknown. Guilt by association, I say.)

Oh, and I haven't even mentioned the dogs. They have dogs, but they don't appear to be pets. They live in a pen outside next to the chicken coop, and they bark incessantly. I don't hold it against the dogs. They look out and see our off-leash pooches running around, frolicking happily with owners who love and snug them and throw balls for them. I mean, I'd bark, too. It's like the dogs are yelling, "Hey!  We want to play! This is bullcrap! Did you guys see this? We live in a cage! Look, see how huge this yard is? Why can't we run in the yard?! That looks like fun! We want to come play! Come get us! Can we hump your dogs?!"

So that's the background on how I felt when, one day, I heard the sound of large machinery coming from the neighbor's yard. It sounded angry, and hungry, and as I looked at the stand of trees and brush that separates our property from theirs, I saw limbs and leaves heaving and shaking as they clawed and cut them out of the ground. Tiny birds fled the destruction.

My vision's not great, but it was totally a scene from FernGully (p.s. Avatar was basically an expensive version of FernGully, but without Tim Curry. Incidentally, I have loved Tim Curry since he was trying to figure out who killed Mr. Boddy. Anyone with me? My early exposure to Rocky Horror only confirmed my adoration).

So now I think of my neighbors as the new embodiment of Hexxus.



Except my neighbor is in no way sexy.

In summary: Tim Curry is rad, my neighbors are dicks, and Hexxus destroyed enough bird habitat that we can now see the dickface yard better and hear said dicks yelling at their kids more clearly. Yay.

On the other hand, I now have a much better view of the daily activities of their chickens.

But that's another post.

There is only one right way to hang toilet paper

Almost two years ago, there was a change between me and my roommate.

He found himself looking forward to coming home. Not because he wasn't at work anymore, but because he was looking forward to spending time with me. Cooking dinner together and watching TV. Silly boring things.

I found myself eagerly anticipating him getting home after work. Looking at the clock. And if he didn't come home, or came home late, I was way more disappointed than I should have been. I mean, he was just my roommate.

And after my last roommate (hell satanspawn bitchface hoooker hell hell), it seemed to me a good idea to keep my distance.

But, he had this big blue eyes, see? And I told my friends about it, that I had a crush on my roommate, and they were like, "that is a terrible idea. Remember what happened with your last roommate? Crazyface bitchass. And you weren't even sleeping with her. Don't do it. It'll end poorly, then you'll be out one awesome roommate. He picks up dog poop AND mows the lawn. Also he's super nice. And, you know. I mean, he's single, right? Can I maybe come over for dinner sometime?"

One friend was at least a little more honest.

"If you hit that, let me know how it goes. He's pretty cute. Maybe you could warm him up for me."

And I was like, "Oh, pishposh. Nothing will happen. I'm sure he's not interested in me. Plus, he's such a responsible person, he wouldn't do something like that."

Well. I was wrong. I'm way glad I was wrong.

One really good thing about getting together with your roommate is that you already know you can live together and you're comfortable together. Because moving in with a boyfriend can be really hard -- I know from experience. The guy I was with in college? Even when he was out of work and I was going to school and working full time, he couldn't be bothered to wash a dish. Or scrub a toilet. Ever. I think, in three years, he may have .... no. Actually, I don't think he ever cleaned the toilet.

But Roomie and I were OK with each other's habits. There were no arguments or bad blood about how clean the bathtub was, or who left dishes laying around. All was copacetic as far as home was concerned.

So a few weeks ago, I was going to the bathroom, and I noticed, to my great irritation, that the toilet paper was hung the wrong way. Underhand.

I realized that Roomie and I had never talked about how toilet paper is hung. And I didn't think that I'd ever noticed it being wrong before. I shuddered. Had I just been lucky? Did he have a willy-nilly approach to TP, and somehow, either I hadn't noticed, or it always happened to get thrown on the right way? Had I been the one who'd replaced the roll most of the time? It didn't seem like it ... I've lived with guys who left me empty rolls, and Roomie's just not that kind of a guy.

"Um, so have we ever talked about how we like toilet paper hung? I mean, are you the kind of person who thinks that there is a right way to hang TP?"

He looked at me, and quickly answered.

"Fuck yeah. Overhand."

"Oh, thank god. It must have been your mom."

Old southern women

Forgive me if you already saw some of this story on Bookface, but it's so awesome it bears retelling.

Not too long ago, I accidentally got sort of wasted while talking to my best friend on the phone. 

No. Really.

So the day after, I was as hung as I'd been in a long time. Naturally, Roomie and I took the opportunity to take a break from our weekend projects and catch up on movies. He's been pushing me to watch the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movies (not for the lesbian scenes, I swear) for awhile, so we settled in. Problem is, we only had a love seat in our living room. No chairs. No couch.

See, Roomie is 6'2". Snuggles are nice for awhile. Not for 4 hours on a teenytiny lil loveseat with someone with allll of those limbs -- it seemed like he sprouted a new limb every time something violent happened.

By halfway through movie 2, we were on Craigslist. We found a guy selling a giant leather and micro-suede couch for cheap. I took another Aleve and we hitched our moving trailer to the truck and headed to town. On the way out there,  Roomie's mom called with an offer for some free furniture we needed.

While nice southern boys helped Roomie load up, I got to talk to the old southern women who were watching over the moves.

First, the Craigslist guy's grandma sat on the stoop, smoking a cigarette (which she referred to as "my habit") and telling me about how she had recently been so sick she thought she was going to die, but just as soon as she got out of the hospital, her husband had been diagnosed with brain cancer. He died two weeks later. Then her sister died.

"So," she said, poking her smoke into the air in front of her and shaking her head, "You can forgive me for my habit. I don't know what I'm going to do."

I forgave her.

Then we went to Mama Roomie's landlord's house. She was a sweet, tiny thing named Dell, and she wandered around muttering intelligible things as her grandson helped Roomie. She asked me to help move a few things, folding chairs and such, and praised Jesus that I was strong enough to do so. Then she told me I could only use her bathroom if I gave her a quarter.

As we stood on the front porch, she started waving her little hands around as she asked Jesus to bless our vehicle on our trip back to Aynor, and to fill it with angels so no demons could touch us. Then she looked at me, shrugged her little bird shoulders and said, "You're good now."

The Homestead

Wow, so, holy crap. The south is crazy.

My life has been insane.

The end.









I kid!

I'll give up some of the details, starting with a bit of advice: Don't ever live in someone's living room. Especially your boyfriend's dad and stepmom's living room.

Really. Just don't. And their garage? Probably not a lot better than the living room.

Yeah. It was horrible.

But now we have a house! It's junky and drafty and in a teeny tiny little town (Aynor, S.C., population: 640) and it has stinky cupboards and a garage that looks like a barn and I absolutely love it.

But it's tons of work. We got a good deal, but when we moved in, there was dirt everywhere. Gross dirt. Other people's dirt. A thick orange syrup covering the bottom of the fridge with hunks of mac and cheese in it. Cat food scattered under the sink, covered in mold. A freezer full of mildew. And cockroaches -- or, excuse me, palmetto bugs -- everywhere, dead. Upturned, legs in the air -- they left rusty spots on the floor when you scraped them off the hardwoods or the bathtub. Dead lizards in the windowsills.

But that? The scum everywhere? The smell of cat urine in the laundry room? Not the worst of it. The worst was the NASCAR room.

Oh yeah. You got that right. It was painted glossy black, and someone had applied a checkerboard wallpaper strip all the way around the room, plus wallpaper strips of the NASCAR logo placed randomly about the room.

Still. Despite the scum, the cockroaches, the NASCAR logos, we could see the house's charm. An acre. A porch. Two rows of 50-year old muscadine grapes. Enough rooms for all of our crap.

So now, we've been here for two weeks, and everything's different. Before, we were actually fighting from time to time -- something we'd never really done before. Not bad fighting, but fighting. It's amazing what a home does for you. We're both in such better head spaces. The other day, Roomie was singing a song in the kitchen. The words? "I'm so happy ... I'm so happy ..." ... and this is coming from someone who's taking calculus.

We've worked our asses off, and there's more work to do. But here's ye olde photodump:

I heard once that Oregon is one of the least-churched states in the U.S. Well, folks, I now officially live in the Bible belt. And church is allllll up in my face, considering what I now do (if you missed out on that: I work for a company whose clients are all churches). Plus, there's a church on every street. I drive an hour to work every day, and I haven't counted the number of churches I pass on my way to work, but suffice to say it's a lot. A lot a lot. There are two big ones in my tiny town, plus I see signs all the time for churches that meet in smaller places, houses, community centers, malls. If I were a photographer, I'd start a photo project on the churches. I love the quaint chapels with the manicured cemeteries, and I love the gospel barns (photo to come of that one). They're just so damn cute.

This sign sits at the end of a vacant lot across the street from our hardware store, which is right next to the tire center. We also have a tiny BBQ joint I haven't gotten to try because it's only open during lunch hours, and "sometimes on Thursday and Friday nights," according to a sign in the window. My new doctor says it's been around forever and it's owned by a "nice black family" and it's "real good." I can't wait to try it and guest blog about it on Donuts 4 Dinner.

Hipstermatic shot of the front door and the 1980s crappy stained glass.

We painted out living room smurf blue to cover up the painfully cheery peachy color. I like it.

We also bought edible lettuce plants, a good plan since we can't install a huge garden like we had originally hoped, on account of the fact that there's a chance our landlord doesn't own our house and we may have to move out. But that's another story.

Yard! Ball! Cilantro!

When you live in a tourist destination, you think the tourist crap is stupid. Fortunately, my girlfriends realized I'd have a different opinion once I left. Yay Bend! Now, where is my University of Oregon gear?

The former NASCAR room. It's now Kermit green. We also have an elephant gray room. Don't diss the mistint aisle at WalMart.

Ain't she sweet? We just need some rockers. Maybe a swing.

Reasons for not blogging

Here's me: I get up before dawn every day (on a rare occasion even early enough to go to the gym) and then leave the house while the rest of the household members are just waking. Then I drive 1 hour and 15 minutes to work. Then, they still expect me to work all day (seriously!). After all that, I have to drive back home. Guess how long that takes? Yeah. A long freaking time. Next up: Cooking dinner. (Please don't make me explain why I cook dinner for Roomie despite my horrific days. Trust me, he's more than earning his keep). Then there's eating. Then dishes. After all that, I'm ready for bed. Except I'm poor right now, so I've been doing some freelance writing to make extra cash. So before I go to bed, I work on that.

I know. Woe is me. I'm the big dummy who decided to move across the country, thus deliberately making my life harder. Boo and a bigole hoo.

However. I have upsides to report. Writing freelance trivia stories is the SHIT, compared with writing for a newspaper. I mean, it's trivia. Definition: trivial. So it doesn't have to be timely. No one has ever asked me for a nut graf. And attribution?  Not really a huge whoop. It's HEAVEN compared with newspaper writing.

Also, my mom and dad sent me a box the size of a medium-sized dog. The box was stuffed with gifts and hand made cookies, candies and dessert breads. The box gushed love. The stuff was practically seeping out of the seams. I didn't know you could mail love like that. I thought it was restricted, like mailing paint thinner.

Oh, also. I had a birthday. I'm 30. I went to Charleston. In Charleston, I did some fun stuff, like saw sea turtles. Right up close and personal in little tanks at the sea turtle hospital at the Charleston aquarium. We were instructed not to put our hands on the edges of the tanks, lest they snap off our fingers. They were hungry.

Hewo wittle turtle! OK, I kid. This sucker was like 250 pounds.

This was the scotch sampler at this sweet cigar bar upstairs from a tobacco shop in Charleston. I like scotch. Scotch, scotch, scotch.

I also like a crab shack that has buckets set into the table for your crab shells. It's just damn convenient. (And yes, his sweater says "COMPASSION" because he's the BEST kind of hippie. The kind who's nice and likes animals, but still eats them, and who also smells good.)

And another thing that's maybe small but perhaps also worth mentioning. Things? For me? Since moving? Pretty hard. But the guy I moved here for with? Totally, 100%, worth it. Seriously. Want to know how strong your relationship is? Try living together with your partner in his parent's living room for awhile.

Actually, you know what? Don't do that. It's terrible.

In other news, here is a weird thing about the south: Girls here are really into monograming everything. I'd been told this more than once before I figured something out. I'd seen cars all over the place with these stickers across the back windows. The stickers were usually pink, curling cursive letters. Three letters. I kept thinking they must be letters signifying high schools or sororities. But that's because I'm stupid. You've figured it out, haven't you? Yes. Girls here monogram their CARS. With big stickers in ugly, overly-feminine fonts.

And no, I didn't get one for my birthday.

Oh, one more thing about southern girls: If they don't like you, they can be MEAN. And, well, if you're doubting my sincerity, let's say I'm a pretty keen judge of mean, having practiced the art misself. I'll say this: I'd think long and hard before starting any sort of shit with these southern girls. That is, if you're given the chance to avoid it. I'm not entirely convinced it's possible.

Related note: I have a new favorite new phrase, one I'd love to try out in a sentence: "Now, I don't mean to be ugly, but ..." and then say something suuuper mean/insulting/likely to start a fist- and/or knife-fight.

So that's it for now.

God bless America.

Wait, no! Sorry! I mean, Merry Christmas!

GOING

So I've been. I went there. Here's the quick-n-dirty for those too impatient to wait for the ending: I got a job. I loved Roomie's family.

So, yes, in a way, the ending is written. But there's so much more. Like the rash. The rash! Yes, I got a rash.

As I returned from my job interview, a four-hour affair in which I was assured that the department I will work for is fun, funky, teasing and *diverse, I decided to take a nap. Roomie's mom was very understanding about my sleep deprivation and exhaustion, and was more than happy to wait out my short nap before she took me to the beach again (she lives four blocks from the beach. Swoon). So I took a short one, and woke refreshed.

After the nap, I stood with her in the kitchen, chatting, and absent-mindedly rubbed my right shoulder. And I realized something was off. Raised skin. I looked down. It looked like hives on my shoulder.

We inspected. It looked like maybe some heat rash. Now, I've been in much more extreme heat than this for longer periods, much hotter sun, but I was on vacation. Vacation does not entail polyester suits. So to me, this seemed like a reasonable reaction. (I have serious white people skin. My people are from the North.) So I went ahead and went out to dinner with Roomie's dad and stepmom and step brother (yes, they're adorable). On the way back to Roomom's, where I was staying, I noticed that The Rash had spread a bit. We hit the market for some Benadryl.

The next morning, I had an angry rash all over. My arms. My neck. My back. My face. And I had to get on an airplane soon. For 12 hours.

I called my mom. I may have cried. (I shouldn't tell you, but I once had scabies. It sucked. I was afraid I'd given it to grandma, whom we stopped by to meet after dinner [painfully adorable] and I was freaked out.)

Anyway, I could go on and on about the rash, but I finally saw a dermatologist: It's not contagious. Some sort of allergic reaction to something. The south? I hope not. Atlantic Ocean crab? Maybe. (FUCK)

But here's the short of the long (the long of the short, etc.): I got the job. Nailed it. I start Nov. 8. That means I have a very short time to wrap up my life, my job, my home, and go there.

So now that I've been there, what did I think?

The family is every bit as wonderful as I assumed they'd be. Roomie explained them all as I expected. They're charming, they're loving, they're wonderful. I don't think they paused long enough to wonder about me to think that I could be anything other than what they expected: I am the girl that their darling boy loves. So of course I'm great. And they are the people who raised my darling boy. There. Perfect. Done.

The place though? Well ... I don't know. It was a reality check. I think the job will be good. I'm not looking forward to my commute (Potentially more than an hour. One way. Every day), and the land? I was told that I would drive through some beautiful country on the way to the jobsite. I didn't see it. It looked like Mexico's countryside, which, in my view, is not so pretty.

I think there's a good chance I'll feel like a stranger in a strange land. But I'm trying to remember that I didn't like Bend at first, and now it's home. This browny sagey landscape is now so lovely, so deeply dry and crusty and dusty-lovely to me, I have to think that maybe I'll find a way to love this new home. Maybe I'll find friends like I have here -- OK, well. Maybe that's not so likely. I've had some ridiculous luck here.

So, here I go. I'm leaving in 7 days. I have to pack my home and my life and figure out how to make my dogs happy and how to make my new family get the smelly, difficult pack who will show up on their doorstep (in about 10 days) and quite suddenly be a part of their family. I have to say goodbye to my mom and my dad and my niece and nephew and my sister and so many friends, and I have to arrive ready to be a part of something new. I have to do this before Roomie arrives to support me.

But here I go. I'm packing now. We're going. We'll be there soon.

Love is effing crazy, you guys.

*By diverse, I mean there was a vegetarian and a British guy. I'll take it.

The coast is clear

OK guys. Sorry about that. Those of you who missed it, here's the scoop on my absence: I'm interviewing for a job with a company that's fairly conservative. Like, it's safe to say that I won't be playfully calling anyone "bitches" while at work, at least until they really get to know me. Well, maybe not ever.

Which is fine. I'm all for new experiences, that's what this move is about.

But they wanted to see some of my blogging experience, and I was like, uhhh .... yeah ... OK, wait a second ....

then I exported this blog to another place with a nicer title, and deleted a bunch of posts, and edited swear words out of others ....

then I was like, "Yeah, you can totally see my personal blog, but it's just silly personal stuff. I'm not sure it's even relevant," and since I had so many other awesome writing samples (when I'm not blogging or on twitter or le Bookface, I actually tend to keep my verbal shit together, believe it or not), they didn't even bother to look at the shadow blog I spent hours culling.

Anyway. I'm getting encouragement to keep up the shadow blog, so I'm posting this one in both places, RBR and MOU until I decide what to do. That's sure to encourage loyal readership, right? Right?

Hmm. Probably not. Meh.

Anyway, I have tickets now. I am going to fly out to meet the prospective job peeps on Sunday. My flight leaves at 6:25 am. Which means I'm flying 12 hours, in three planes, across country the day after a two-day going away party. Sounds fun.

Also, I need a suit and I need to get my hair done. And work extra in preparation for taking two days off next week while I charm the pants off of some business folk as well as Roomie's mom, dad, grandma, step-mom, aunts, uncles, cousins, step-brother, step-sister and five-step-nieces and nephews.

Holy shit. That's like 15 interviews in two days.

So, you know. See you later. I'll try to update from the road.

More on feeding a southern boy

This week, I was shopping the Safeway discount meat bin (If you don't know what this is, you should. Look for it. At Safeway -- Vons in some parts of the country, I guess -- they have these bins in the meat department where they toss soon to be expired meat. It's usually 30-50% off. Oh hells yes. I eat expired bologna.), and I saw a small container with two veal cube steaks. I've had bad luck cooking veal, but I decided to try it again.

When Roomie came home, he saw what I was cooking and told me he'd never eaten veal.

"That's 'cause you're a good person," I said.

He agreed.

I had on hand some breadsticks I'd made (they were supposed to be baguettes). They were no good for regular eatin, but they were perfectly cracker-ey for homemade bread crumbs. I had fresh mozzarella, a hunk of parm, eggs, pasta, and best yet I had everything I would need to make this Smitten Kitchen tomato sauce that I absolutely adore. (A note for my super foodie readers: The veal parm recipe also calls for fresh parsley and fresh basil, and while I had the parsley, I had no basil. I did have fresh tarragon on hand, and the tarragon substituted for the basil in a wholly surprising and totally transcendent way)

As we sat down for dinner, I realized Roomie didn't have a knife to cut the meat. Fortunately, his fork was more than sufficient to cut the veal into bite-sized pieces. After the first bite, he looked at me, wide-eyed. Seriously, if cows had blue eyes .... I almost started to think I should feel guilty for cooking some poor, tortured creature and making this sweet, animal-loving, doe-eyed hippie enjoy his (or her -- do they make veal out of young heifers?) dead body. I offered all I could come up with as a remittance, an apology for making Roommie realize how tasty animals can be when they're disallowed from ever feeling fresh air, from ever running, from ever getting the opportunity to be what they were born to be.

"I'm sorry I made that baby cow taste so delicious."

I think that's good enough.

Two vignettes

1.

Last night, I glanced at my phone and noticed a missed call from my Bestie. We've been trying to chat for a few days, but keep missing each other.

(It should be noted here that both Bestie and her mother, Itinerant Woman, are notorious Anglophiles -- especially on such an occasion that the Anglo is a goodlooking man. Bestie also so happens to have a mini wiener dog named Ralph.)

I had a dinner guest over, so I couldn't call back. I sent her a text (which was all true, by the way):

"Hi boo. I'd call you back but Roomie and I have an Englishman over for dinner. His name is Ralph. I'm sure you understand."

Her reply:

"Of course. Carry on."

2.

A friend of mine recently called me "demanding."

"You know I mean that with love, right?," she asked.

"I also demand love, so yes," I replied.

But when I got home, I told Roommie about it.

"Did I tell you Jules called me demanding? Do you think I'm demanding?"

He looked at me with some surprise.

"Of course. You didn't know that about yourself?"

It was a lot like a first date. I even shaved my legs.

One of the funny things about my moving plan is this: I agreed to move to Roomie's ancestral home without having met, or even spoken to, any of his family.

Not-a-one. Not even on the phone.

And I'll be inheriting a brood. There's dad, there's mom, there's stepmom, there are uncles and aunts, a few cousins and there's a 93-year-old matriarch. All within probably a 50-mile radius.

I'm excited about it, for the most part. So far, they've been terribly sweet. This is good for me, because in the past (long past) I had a boyfriend whose mom thought I was stealing away her baby. It was a nightmare. That's not the case here. They all seem to be (judging by Roomie's reports) genuinely delighted he's found a lady he likes enough to bring home, a lady who likes him enough she's agreed to cross the continent. Whenever he talks to his family back home, they always end the call with messages for me. "Tell Ells we said hi and can't wait to meet her!" Cute shit like that.

But I'm also kind of nervous. What if they don't like me? What if the tattoos are too much? What if they don't think I'm pretty enough for him? What if they judge me for being a wino? What if they hate my A-hole dog? I realize these are mostly asinine, insecure thoughts (with the exception of the dog concern. It's totally reasonable to think that she might cause problems), but I cain't hepp it. Fears are fears, you can try to reason with them, but sometimes it's hard to make them go away.

So when Roomie announced that one of his uncles was coming through town with his wife (not the uncle who works with my new friend. A different uncle.), I was both excited and nervous. I started getting ready hours before our date at a local brewpub. I tried on multiple outfits, checking with my girlfriend, Q.

"Is this cute?" I asked, spinning in front of her in a blue cotton summer dress.

"Yeah, it's cute," Q said.

"Is it too much? I think it's too much."

"It's not too much, it's cute."

It was like a first date.

See, Roomie and I never had a first date. In case y'all hadn't heard, I didn't know Roomie before me became my roommate. It wasn't until months later, after I shed a boyfriend (OK, he dumped me. But I think we all know that was HIS loss), after Roomie and I were totally comfortable living in a one-bathroom house together (if you catch my drift), that things got interesting. So I never had that "oh-my-god-is-this-the-right-outfit?-Do-I-look-too-fat-or-too-skanky?" thing with him.

But the universe won't let me get away with missing out on that stage. I'm going to have plenty of time to cash that anxiety in by meeting Roomie's mother as I pull up into her driveway ready to move in (Fortunately, Roomie and I have a very good feeling about getting along swimmingly with her. Seriously. And I don't get good feelings about anyone.). With my dog.

As we walked into the pub, Uncle was sitting at the table. I spotted Roomie's sparkly blue eyes across the room. As we walked up, he was sort of stuck in the corner, so I reached over and shook his hand. As we chose seats, Auntie returned from the bathroom. She gave Roomie a big hug and then turned to me.

"Hi, good to meet you," I said, putting out my hand.

She looked at my hand.

"Honey, if you're moving to South Carolina, you're going to have to get over shaking hands," she said as she folded me into a big hug.

Seems like a good sign to me.

The first 10

The first time I ran 10 miles, I cried.

I'd started running after I left a 5-year relationship. I was living with a good friend temporarily, and she ran, had in fact started running to treat her depression. So we'd get up in the mornings and go for runs, and spend the whole time talking and processing and working through all of the psychological garbage I'd collected over five years with a guy who I loved desperately despite the fact that he was a major alcoholic with a moderate cocaine and prescription drug problem who was sometimes verbally abusive. Oh, and he never wanted to have sex. Wondering why I left?

After awhile, another runner friend suggested I do a half marathon, 13.1 miles. I decided to go for it. I printed a training schedule off the internet and got to work. By this point, I had gotten into another relationship and fallen in love again. He was tall and skinny and funny, a former bike messenger and road bike racer. Sometimes he'd drink a Pabst before we ran, but then we'd head out together, and he was a slow loper of a runner, so I could keep up with him. We'd take my little dog out and run by the river and talk. He called me Sporty Spice.

But then he dumped me.

So I started running alone. Just me and my little dog. And it was good for her, and I felt good, and lost a little weight and even more inches despite my regular diet of carbs, cake, cheese and beer. I'd do several short runs a week then one increasingly long run on the weekend. I'd tried to get to 10 miles a couple of times, but kept getting held back by screwups. My hamstring would bother me, or I'd uknowingly pick a route with bodacious hills that I simply could not run up. I knew all I had to do in my training was get over that damn ten mile mark. As someone told me, "If you can run 10 miles, you can run 13."

As I was coming to the end of the trail, my breath started catching in my throat. At first, I thought something was wrong with me, that my lungs were seizing. Then I realized it was just the pride catching in my lungs. I didn't know until my eyes started to sting how glad I was that there wasn't a man with me. The rest of the day my body buzzed warmly, and I couldn't stop grinning. And I finished the half marathon. I ran the whole way -- I mean, other than when I was drinking gatorade or peeing. I understand that people pee and shit themselves in marathons in order to get good time, but that ain't me.