date night

My husband Adrian and I have a date night tonight at the Mission Inn.  We have been together almost twenty years, but have only been married for a little less than three years.  It took Adrian almost seventeen years to marry me.  I call myself the patron saint of patience, but, in reality I was not patient at all. 

We had been together twelve years when I moved to San Francisco to join Adrian in his second year of dental school at UCSF.  I left my prestigious six figure law firm job in Houston for him and I didn't let him forget it.  I bugged Adrian every day for two years to marry me.  And, I do mean every day, sometimes twice a day. 

In his third year of dental school, Adrian (finally) asked me to marry him.  He proposed in Sonoma County by the ocean.  His original plan was to ask me in a hot air balloon in Napa, but I nixed that idea quickly.  "Are you fuckin crazy?  I am scared to death of heights," I reminded him in a sharp voice.  "Ummm, I guess I will cancel it," he told me in a sad little voice.  "Damn right you will", I thought to myself. 

And I wonder why it took him so long.

The proposal did not start out auspiciously. We were driving back home to San Francisco from the bed and breakfast that we stayed at in Mendicino and every time we stopped to look at the cliffside ocean views I tensed up thinking Adrian would ask.  But he didn't.

About an hour into the drive, I had to go to the bathroom and we stopped at a beach.  I used the portable restroom and came running out with my pants around my ankles chased by the bees that had reared their ugly heads when I opened up the toilet. 

Shortly after I had pulled up my pants, Adrian decided that was the perfect moment and got down on a knee right there in the sand and told me he loved me and wanted to marry me.  Even though I knew I had forced him to ask me through my persistent entreaties, I said, "yes". 

It took Adrian another three years to marry me.  It wasn't the wedding we had planned, but when I said my vows at the San Bernardino City Hall in front of Adrian's parents and my mom it was as if I was saying the words in a cathedral with vaulted ceilings.  I could feel God's presence and the weight of my vows echoed in my head as I said them.

The only thing missing was my dad.  Right before he died, my dad told Adrian that he knew he didn't have to worry about me because Adrian had always taken good care of me.   On the day of my wedding, I know he was looking down at us from the big casino in the sky smiling. 

After the civil ceremony, Adrian's dad Alberto, who died a little more than a year ago, took us all to lunch at the Mission Inn.  I spilled salsa on my cream wedding suit and I remember Alberto shaking his head and laughing as he said in his Argentine accent, "Juanita, I love you."

Tonight at the Mission Inn, I will remember us all around the table as I raise my wine glass to the heavens.

Sweet and Tender Hooligans

I turned forty on Friday and as I sat on the cruise ship sipping a Malibu and Diet Coke, I reflected on my life, especially my childhood years. My childhood was scary and difficult in many ways.  Yet,  my teenage years, while also chaotic and scary at times, were amazing in the way only the teenage years can be.

My favorite activity in high school was ditching. When my mom dropped us off at Chaffey High, my twin sister Jackie and I ran and grabbed our best friends Melinda and Tracy and maneuvered ourselves off campus by car or bus. We walked the Montclair Plaza and begged for quarters. “Could we please have a quarter," one of us would say in a sweet voice. "We need to call our mom to pick us up." 

Picture this. Melinda has spiked black hair and is wearing her typical attire of ripped jeans and a tight blouse. Tracy and I have thick black Siouxsie eyeliner on and concert tees with thermals covered by men's boxers and combat boots. Jackie has blond bangs and is probably wearing some type of lace dress. Suffice to say, Jackie and Melinda usually did the asking. I would not have given us a dime, but people did.

We earned a little or a lot of dough depending on how crowded the mall was. Sometimes, we accidentally asked the same people twice and they looked at us with a scowl sensing a scam. With our stash, we shared fast food in the mall's food court. Melinda and Jackie preferred pizza rolls from Sbarro's. Tracy and I usually shared a corn dog.

After eating, we stood out in the front of the mall and chain smoked. We bought our cigarettes at the liquor store next door to Melinda's duplex with a note signed by my mom (aka my handwriting). We smoked Marlboro Lights. I first started smoking in seventh grade when a girl named Christy asked me to come to her house after school. She lived in the Section Eight apartments across the street.  We took a pack of her mom's Virginia Slims from the freezer. Christy taught me how to smoke in the park behind the restrooms. I only coughed a little.

Back to the ditching, one day, Melinda and I ditched without Jackie and Tracy and drove to Hollywood in Melinda's 1964 White Covair.  We had heard a rumor that the new Oingo Boingo album was going on sale at Tower Records.

When we arrived at the record store, we noticed some commotion and realized that the band was there. I shook hands with the lead singer Danny Elfman while Melinda chatted with Johnny Vatos the drummer. We screamed the whole way home.

When we got back late that afternoon, I raved to Jackie about meeting Oingo Boingo and she yelled with tears in her eyes, "Oingo is my favorite band, not yours!"  To this day, Jackie still harbors a grudge.

Our other favorite pastime was crank calling. We flipped through the phone book and picked a random number to call. When someone answered we asked, "Is your refrigerator running? Yes? Then go catch it." The joke was old and stale but it never got old to us. Elderly people's reactions were always the funniest.

Tracy and I also figured out a way to get free food by calling restaurants to complain. For some reason, we always used an English accent. Tracy would call McDonald's and say in her best British voice, "I just bought some food and found a hair in my Big Mac." Typically, the manager would get on the phone and say, "Please accept our apologies and pick up food on us." 

I remember one time, we picked up our food wearing my mom's fake furs, high heels and huge sunglasses. I suppose we thought we were incognito, but the reality was that we just didn't care what people thought.

In the end, I suppose that is what I miss the most as an adult. I worry about everything and am always analyzing my behavior (sometimes admittedly over analyzing). But. as a child and teenager, I never worried about the effect of my actions. I just wanted to have fun.

Maybe I need a little more fun and little less worrying.  Cheers to that.

The Big 40

I turn forty in three weeks.  Forty is supposed to be the new thirty, but it doesn't necessarily feel that way.  There are some days where I feel sixty.  Yet, there are other days where I wake up feeling like I am sixteen and blast the Smiths while driving to work with a smile.

Many would say I have accomplished a lot in the last forty years.  I made it through my childhood for one.  And through my crazy twenties.  I almost self destructed more than once and it was not for lack of trying but instead through sheer grace and luck. 

This weekend we hung out in Hesperia at my mother-in-law's house. The house that my late father-in-law Alberto built.  People often put down the high desert, but I am beginning to see why my husband loves it so much out there.  Please don't tell him though because I am loathe to move over the Cajon pass (...over the Cajon pass and through the desert to my mother-in-law's house we go...).

We hung out, swam, went hiking, ate Pozole, drank margaritas and played Mexican Train Dominos.  Life should not be about being always on the go.  It should be about relaxing and spending time with family.

In my twenties life was about the party.  In my thirties, life was about accomplishments.  Now that my forties are almost here, I need to figure out what life is about.  Maybe it should be about reinvention?  Or maybe it should be about challenging myself?  The truth is, I am not sure.  I will just have to wait and see.



 

girl time

Tonight, watching a rerun of "Sex and the City".  I am struck by the accurate way it portrays female friendship.  As the four women sit around a breakfast table at a posh Manhattan restaurant, they talk about life, their loves and the lack thereof.  Earlier tonight, I had sat at TGI Friday's and engaged in a similar deep conversation with two girlfriends of mine.  Life was mirroring art although my girl talk was a less hip suburban version of Carrie's experience.

When women get together we talk.  We really talk.

And, there is a difference on this issue between men and women.  Men (at least straight men) do not bond with their friends the way women do.  Men do activities together like watching sports and going to bars, but if you ask what they talked about the answer is usually something superficial about a car or the newest weapon on Black Ops. 

I have always pitied women who give up their friends when they get into a relationship.  We have all known these women although they probably don't know themselves.  They are the women who go to a bar with friends for a girls night and hook up within five minutes and stay with the same guy all night.  That kind of girl has always annoyed me to no end.  If it is a girls night out, the point is to hang out the with girls and the guys are irrelevant.  Fortunately, I do not have girls like this for close friends.

I have two best friends.  I have known my best friend Tracy since I was sixteen.  I admired her from afar in high school.  She was a cool punk rock chick and I was a nerd with glasses.  When we got a class together we hit it off instantly.  She was the yin to my yang and still is.  I talk to her every day and we talk about everything.  And, I mean everything.

Melinda is my "other" best friend.  We call each other cousins.  She is like part of my family and although we sometimes lose touch and get caught up in the chaos of ordinary life, it doesn't matter.  When we see each other, it is like we are kids again.  We have known each other since we were in elementary school and grew up blocks away from one another in Ontario.  Her mom watched us most afternoons after school.  My twin sister Jackie and I would ride our bikes for hours with Melinda.  When I think back to my childhood, Melinda is always right there beside me.  In my mind's eye, Melinda and I are usually sitting behind the liquor store smoking a cigarette. 

That is what friendship is about after all.  It is about having adventures with someone.  Being the Lucy to someone's Ethyl.  Or about being Carrie's Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte.

Food Wise II

On July 5th, I had my weight loss surgery and now, some seven weeks later, I am down forty pounds.  Forty pounds.  That is the weight of a small child.  And, damn it, I feel good.  Yesterday morning, I went running with my dogs and as my feet pounded the pavement to the sounds of Amy Winehouse, I felt almost weightless.

Not that everything has been easy.  I cannot eat much at any one sitting.  It is hard to eat enough and I struggle to get the required calories in.  On Saturday, we barbequed in Hesperia and when I sat down to dinner, I had two forkfuls of salad and was done.

My husband has definitely noticed the difference and squeezed my butt on Sunday.  It felt delicious.  Like when we were dating.

And, I don't mean to be graphic but the sex has been awesome.  Niagra Falls kinda awesome. 

So despite my intial regret at having the surgery, I am glad I did it.  I am happy I took the plunge to get to a better me.  When I sit down to think about it, I don't think I would have ever lost the weight naturally.  I would have hemmed and hawed and maybe lost twenty pounds and then put back on thirty.  A year later, I would have been at three hundred pounds having to do the surgery with more risk factors.

Obviously, my story does not end here.  I still have a long way to go.  My short term goal is to be down fifty pounds by my fortieth birthday on October 7th.  My long term goal is to have lost one hundred pounds by the end of February. 

And then, watch out world, this skinny bitch will be lighting the world on fire.

Food Wise

My relationship with food is complicated. 

The problem with food is that it is not something you can give up.  You cannot go cold turkey on turkey.  Instead, I must learn to live with my demon, albiet in a more sensible way. 

In case you don't know, I had gastric bypass surgery and for the last three weeks since surgery, I have been on a liquid diet.  The hard part for me now is getting enough food to sustain myself .  In the morning, I force myself to eat a cup of yogurt.  I cannot eat the whole thing.  The most I can get down is half a Yoplait.

So things have changed.  I have changed.  I have lost twenty five pounds and feel pretty damn good.

My cure was extreme I must admit.  I am not the only one.  Yesterday at the hair salon (I call it a salon but it really was just the Fantastic Sam's down the street), the woman who cut my hair had lost two hundred and fifty pounds after having the same surgery.  She still weighed over three hundred pounds. She told me how her biggest accomplishment was getting behind the wheel of a car again.  Yet, she still struggles and admitted to me that she can cheat and that she eats candy and drinks beer.

My surgery was not a panacea.  I should click my heels and say it three times so that I do not forget.

Heartburn

How does a marriage end?  It is with a word?  Is it a compilation of a little million pieces of disappointment?  Is it with the thought of something else?  Or is it with a moment that cannot be taken back?

I have always been a giver.  My first love/boyfriend Cesar drove me crazy in love.  I followed him around, bought him jackets and shoes and watched him cheat on me at the Metro.  No matter what he did to me, I wanted him.  I loved him more than I loved myself and that was the problem.  Years later, he called me and told me I was the one.  I was smart enough to turn away.

To turn away.  That is what is required to end a marriage.  For one of the married persons to turn away and not look back.  That is probably why so many marriages end with an affair.  It is easier that way.  To have someone else to turn to, I imagine, has to be easier than turning to a life alone. 

I have never been good at keeping ultimatums.  For years, I told Adrian to marry me or I would leave him.  I never did.  It was seventeen years before we tied the knot.  The knot that binds.

A binding can be used as an adjective or verb.  As a noun it means a strip sewn or attached over or along an edge for protection, reinforcement, or ornamentation.  Thus, marriage can be protective and/or reinforcing (for me at least, it has never been ornamental, I make a bad trophy wife).

When used as an adjective, a binding is defined as uncomfortably tight and confining.  To marry someone and compromise is hard.  The daily necessity to try and try again can be confining and at the very least uncomfortable.  At times, it can be downright painful.

Like I said, I am a giver.  I give and give.  Yet sometimes, I feel it doesn't come back.  As if I am sitting at the end of a dinner table in the last seat waiting for a meal that never comes.

Dinner.  I wish.  Just in case you don't know, I can't eat right now.  My stomach has been stapled and my system re routed.   And yes, if it isn't obvious, my heartburn is caused by more than the surgery.  I am hoping it goes away like most heartburn does.

Now dear reader, just in case you read too much into this, my marriage is not over.  Marriage is hard and I have a feeling my weight loss will change many things including my marriage.  Change can sometimes be big and sometimes change can be small.  But, just so y'all know, I feel a big change is coming.  A big change.