LaurieWrites

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This post is sponsored by Serve from American Express. Sign up for Serve and receive $10 credit towards your first use. Comment below within the next 7 days for your chance to win an extra $100 credit to your account!

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Serve works well if you know what you're doing. 

Ahem. 

When Clever Girls told me I was going to be part of the #CleverServe project, I was psyched. Things are nuts around here, and also, given the holiday, money is...well, what money is: a fun, elusive thing that allows you to eat well and have fun but is not unlimited and nor are those blasted elves on shelves bringing any extra for kicks (at least not that I know of.) So it was really cool to be able to invite Jean, Sue, and Sarah to a nice dinner at Grapeseed Bistro in Bethesda to try out the Serve card. These are three of the busiest working moms I know, and I jumped at the chance to spend some time with them. 

Also, wine. 

Dinner was great, as it always is at Grapeseed. My favorite thing was a Mediterranean wine pairing that kicked off the night beautifully, and the pork shank that was thankfully more memorable for how delicious it was than it sheer size. We sat and ate and drank and talked for a few hours, which as you know if you're trying to grab any kind of time with friends in December is a gift itself. 

Then oysters with bacon buerre blanc. And I told you about this pork shank. 

Seriously, so full. 

I had activated my Serve card, and hoped I'd done it correctly because after all the wine and the oysters and the pork, well, no logistics, please. 

And that is where I think I screwed up. Rather than go with the best, and intended, usage of the card, which is to split and easily reimburse people for dinner, I just thought I'd cut out the middleman and pay for the meal. 

I am a dumb, dumb sugar sort of mama. 

For some reason the card was only approved for part of the amount in the account, and therefore part of the cost of the meal. This left about $100 left over, which left Sarah and Sue in charge of making up the difference, and me, aka Failed Sugar Mama, trying to sort out the whys and wherefores with a waiter who probably hated me and my Serve card. 

(This is entirely my fault and not Serve's.) (Please don't blame me if you go to Grapeseed with your Serve card and they process it, but look terrified while doing so. All my fault.) 

Jean would like you to know that this was all my fault. 

Anyway, the cool thing about this, and the silver lining and the cherry on top, etc., is that I was just able to go into my Serve account and reimburse Sue and Sarah from the account. And voila, that is, apparently, how the card is supposed to work, which is the point that I missed although it was clearly pointed out to me several times. 

Is it New Year's yet? 

So all things considered, this card is cool if you use it correctly, plus it's hooked up with American Express, so it's easy to get any problems resolved and customer service is solid. The neat thing about it is if you do split dinners, amounts can be reimbursed to bank accounts right from the table, via the Serve app, or you can handle it from a desktop later, as I did. Also, sign-up was very easy, the card came very quickly in the mail, and all communication was great. 

You just have to read the directions, Laurie. (These directions would have told me to go to the Serve blog to figure out just what in the world I was doing, and also that I'd get an extra $50 credit to somehow embarrass myself with if I referred a friend! And if you comment below? You'll be entered in a giveaway to win a $100 credit to a brand new Serve account. So do it! If you want to know more, they're of course on Facebook and Twitter too.) 

And all in all I don't think the ladies were too bothered by it. They  hang out with me enough to know to expect some...gaps here and there. 

Also, wine. 

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Remember to sign up for Serve and receive $10 credit towards your first use. Comment below within the next 7 days for your chance to win an extra $100 credit to your account! Official sweepstakes rules and regulations may be found by clicking here. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.

 

Head shots and Tiny Prints and cute blogger babies.

I hate to have my picture taken. 

If you ask many photographers, they will tell you the same thing. "There's a reason I stay behind the camera," is a common theme, or, quite simply, "Hell no." 

And mostly it's easy to avoid it. When I'm with friends or family who consider me the designated shooter, other people slack off. Occasionally they'll force me into a group shot or catch  me doing something stupid, or in a moment that they think is important enough to document and share.

Like my birthday.

Like for instance, my mother was so entertaining, taking pictures of me in the emergency room this weekend and texting them to my family as "Laurie on Morphine." Haha. Ouch. My side.

Pretty! (Ugh. Obviously I have no remaining pride where it comes to posting unflattering photos of myself on the internet.) 

But for the most part I can count on staying under the radar. 

This of course does not count times when I'm with bloggers. If you've hung out with bloggers, who you know are obsessed with capturing every moment, every facial expression, every unfortunate eating photo, every ill-advised late night gang sign you're way too old to throw so it shows up on Flickr and now Instagram and maybe therefore Twitter and sometimes randomly on a PERSONAL WEBBLOG and so when those blogging events both large and small throw down you just practice the chin tuck Carson Kressley TRIED to teach you in Chicago in '09 and hope for the best. 

Sometimes with little success. 

Sometimes with a little bit more.

And some people? Should just always be in the picture.

A couple of weeks ago it occurred to me that I was going to need a new website soon and that for that site I might need a shot or two of myself, not the self-portrait variety, although I can handle those pretty well too at this point.

(That one was a lot harder than it looks. It's good to have goals.)

So thanks to the lovely Leticia Barr, I scored an invitation to a truly lovely evening at Mary Gardella's LoveLight Studios in Savage, Maryland (one of the coolest spots within driving distance from my house, a place that has good restaurants and fun shopping, and also artist studios/residencies on site, which is where Mary works.) 

I got to hang out with some bloggers, talk about Tiny Prints (no hardship at all because I've used them before and was very happy with my holiday cards last year) and also have Mary work her picture-taking magic. 

It was a lot of fun. 

And Mary took my picture. She made it less painful than it usually is, because I especially freak about portraits. I feel weird. I obsess about my lipstick, and my hair (oh dear God, my hair.) This particular day I had come from a sad family event, so my eyes were puffy and my sweater was wrinkly and...and...whatever. 

I like this one. 

I even posted it on Facebook, where it has a number of "likes" that I'd like to share with you because I think it's hysterical, but I am not the kind of girl to be liked and tell. 

That is Mary's way, it seems -- to make the picture-taking process as relaxed and low-pressure as possible, which is not only gerat for a person like me, but works wonders in family and child situations, too. I enjoyed it, and I feel good about the images. (There were more, but this is all I feel like posting.) And besides this particular picture, what it did was force me out of my comfort zone, with a person who knows perfectly well what she's doing, in a place with blog friends who when it comes down to it are very, very supportive of all of us feeling good, and feeling comfortable in our skins, both in the moment and on the screen. 

I think that's pretty cool. 

Plus I got to spend some time with my new friend Huck, who is wonderfully good for any picture-taking nerves. (Babies!) Thanks to his mom Stephanie for letting me borrow him for half an hour. He's a lover, not a fighter. 

Here are Mary's photo tips, mostly for working with kids, but I always assume this can be transferred to grownups, too. We're not much different, really. And thanks to Leticia and Tiny Prints for giving me a nice night out at the end of a very sad day.

Things can swing back into balance from unlikely places and things. Thats my favorite. 

the sidewalk bends where your house ends.

I broke you down that time, remember? I wasn't in my right mind, you said. I told you about yourself. I said things I ought not to have said, you said, except really those were the things I ought to have said all along, especially the time that you did that horrible thing.

They were just dogs. They just had to be taken to a professional conference, and left in a hotel room where I was terrified someone would steal them -- rare breed, crated, unaccustomed to anything but the sun shining on them through our kitchen and dining room while I was gone.

Just dogs.

I was sorry if you didn't like the image you'd constructed with my assistance. I really was. It's so much easier. It keeps it going so much longer -- the minimizing, the less-than, the biting of tongues and the self-edits.

"You are not yourself right now. I just can't even talk to you right now."

Except I was. I finally was.  If you couldn't handle that -- the unusually harsh tone of voice, mascara smeared from an exhausted crash interrupted only when you finally chose to show up three days later with demands and judgments -- I just didn't know. I couldn't help you. I couldn't adjust my volume. I finally didn't know for sure you wouldn't hit me. I finally saw an edge in your eyes my soul couldn't tolerate. 

I finally acknowledged an absolute willingness to take responsibility for pretty much anything that I couldn't abide from a bag  boy at the grocery, much less a man who stood up every day and said he was there for whatever. 

You rejected even the things you knew I was right about. You handed me all that you could find in the vicinity to shut me up, the things that worked, the things that never did. You didn't care. You just wanted it to stop, to end -- not even just opposition, although that was the worst. Just, everything. Noise. Input. Opinions. Girls. How we thought and felt as a result of what you said and did. Yeah, no.  

My understanding is that you have some measure of fulfillment now, that you landed safely, probably when it all got to be too much. I understand that there are three versions of you running around in the world, three! (I'm also quite the internet snooper, truth be told.)

I think of you sometimes. It's a pathetic Jack Kerouac thing, it's middle-aged people reminiscing about acid and my compulsion to tell them about my cracked concrete steps on that unseasonably warm April day and you asking me if I'd sign on, if I'd go to Santa Fe.

It's knowing I knew so hard that no, I'd never go, and wanting so hard for you to wash your face and straighten up so we could leave.

It was everything then. You were everything then. And I'm sadly sure that your likely delightfully sober wife hangs the lights and gave that precious U2 t-shirt of mine away long ago, the one I gave you when I gave you other things except you had no other clean clothes so I decided I needed to give you my coolest garment too, you know, for some reason.  

I miss that shirt, still, like I don't miss you at all. I earned it. You took it. 

No one gets to miss the storm of what will be.

December. I cannot believe it. Another year just about burned and what? How did that happen? What happened?  Where did it go? 

I've been running since September, it feels like, inside and out, and with four days of rain and a winter weather advisory today I want to stay home and in bed and let it all shake out. (I have the best bed in all the land. I recommend getting a slightly shittier bed so you don't want to be in it all of the time, but I'm already screwed. I love my bed like a person, except slightly more appropriately.) It's true that things are circling back to some kind of center -- I've been having that thought lately, incessantly, actually: "sometimes the center holds." And I don't know where this comes from except it's what I keep thinking in spite of some data to the contrary from this stupid, irritating writer brain.

I could give you a list of where I've been beyond the bits and pieces I've shared here, but that's probably really boring. I could tell you about the people I've been with and that is so much less of any kind of boring, given as I am to hanging with compelling people whenever possible. But those stories will have to hang themselves on the line one by one. I don't know where to begin, so I'm going to let them pick and choose. 

I don't ever know how to catch up after so much time away. But I can say that I've been to Pittsburgh, California, Philadelphia and then back home. I've been in a place called the Mississippi Delta that I knew nothing of before some friends pointed me there, and it will take a good long while to share just what I think and feel from that experience. I've been consoled by rain on a tin roof and delighted by the sight of the Pee Wee's Big Adventure dinosaurs from the highway enough to put returning to see them on my ever-in-progress life list.

"Au revoir, Simone!" 

"Au revoir, Pee Wee!" 

Such is the state of affairs, constantly, around here. 

(The rain on the roof part is as good as you'd expect, and if you've heard it, you know.) 

I've shriveled from three hours drinking Champagne in a steaming hot tub under desert rain with some of the smartest and nicest people I've ever met. (I am not making that up. I am not.) I have chopped up and roasted a sick amount of winter squash hours before I got on a plane simply because I didn't want it to rot on my friend's counter. I have chaperoned a field trip. I have gawked at William Faulkner's story notes from where he posted them on his bedroom wall a long, long time ago, and watched a late-day southern sun slant beautifully through trees in his backyard. I have bought one single Christmas present that now I have to take back because someone else bought it too. I have won a football helmet autographed by this year's NFL rookie squad, and I have had a genuine Hog teach my best friend and me how to pour a Guinness. I had a wonderful Thanksgiving with my family, twice. I have won a $500 Apple gift card. I have lost a camera. I have held Crow for .5 seconds. I have not been eating my vegetables. I have communicated, incessantly, and mostly well. 

And that is just the past 30 days. I've been lucky, mostly. I'm guided and supported in some kind of providential way by some of the smartest and most compassionate people I have ever known. I have had friendship and love of an insane level thrown at me from various quarters. I've sung my way across four or five states in vastly different parts of the country. I have come to some kind of comfortable truce with not knowing much, with throwing my best light and dark intentions in the washer of the world and sort of hoping for a change that they'll run together. 

I have not been stopped once, not on the highway or in security. I have had two plane rows entirely to myself. I have been -- remarkably, and there are a few people out there who will know just how much -- almost entirely unafraid of flying, for the first time in my life. 

And in the middle of all of the problems and confusion and absolute lack of clarity that I've suffered for months on this latest go-round, I have a core of something now that I know is relatively solid in spite of the fact that my brain is porous and short-sighted enough that surely it could all come undone at any time. 

It's been an interesting span of days. 

December First

It is your birthday. You would have been 90 years old today. 

"90?" you would have said. "That's too damn old anyway." 

There is a reason why I'm like this. 

I went to visit you in the cemetery on Thanksgiving for the first time since you died. 

I didn't think for these two years that I could do it, so I didn't. I put it on my life list, even, because it was something I really wanted to do this year, but I had no idea when I'd manage it. And then I went to this two-hour yoga class that morning for the holiday (yoga people like giving thanks and gratitude and all of that bullshit. It's why it's probably good that I hang around them a lot.) And in savasana I set a couple of unintentional intentions (because that is also how yoga messes with your head. It clears a lot of the garbage out and makes you think good things are your idea.) 

So I decided to go see you, that it was time, and that I was capable, and that it was a good use of my time on that particular day. 

I told Sarah on the way that I was going, in the context of another conversation, and she kind of went with me, because she shows up for me like that. She was in my phone in my pocket, anyway. She said she would help me do it  when she saw it on my list, which I thought was the most uncommonly sweet thing that I'd never have to take her up on, and yet that's how it turned out. 

(You would like her so much, because she is straightforward and not sketchy and truthful and fun, like you. You would appreciate that she is a good friend to me, that she is available to me at times like that when I am sad and resolute, when most people would have nothing to do with me at all, also like you, as it turns out. You would make her pancakes and bacon and point her to the Jack Daniels under the sink. And for that, among many other reasons, she would like you too.)

I stopped at My Mom's Place and the same lady who has been there for 20 years was selling flowers. I cried behind my sunglasses because I suddenly couldn't stop when I told her I was there to see my grandparents. She probably hears so many of these awkward stories a day, but she responds like they're new. She's a nice person. She and her son sold me some roses, the color of fall in the sun.

As I told Sarah, she is always open in daylight, even when you pull up there most afraid she won't be. 

You were there. 

There is no nameplate quite yet, which made it easier, I admit. It eased me in. But I knew you were there, because I remembered leaving you there almost two years ago. 

I talked with you, with both of you. I sat scraping dirt and leaves away from the granite while the most amazing late November sun went down around us. I told you things weren't great, but I was pretty sure that they would be okay. I told you that I knew you weren't just there, that you were everywhere I went, because that is true, although I guessed you'd know better than me where you were? I don't know.

I thanked you, again, to the air where I hoped it mattered, for giving me so much of whatever it is that makes it possible to carry this on, responsibility, faith, family, whatever, I don't know. I asked for your help. I did. I need it, not knowing where it will come from, but asking anyway. 

I miss you every day. I will, in some way conscious or not, until I die, because you were one of the indelible prints upon my life. We were buddies since I was born. You taught me to read, and to regulate myself in certain situations, and to ease into someone loving me for no reason. You made me sugar bread and beat me at Yatzhee almost every time and took down the clothes while I walked round and round the oak tree with the dogs.

You also taught me to fight back, to (maybe ill-advisedly) say the thing not quite appreciated in mixed company. You walked with me hand in hand down the street to Nanny's and you were the only person in the world who could always, always remind me in a way that didn't piss me off but instead felt like a Valentine that Jesus and Mary would always love me even if I didn't see it right then. 

You were to me like breathing, and no matter how old you were when you died, which seems to be what people use to measure the impact of a death, it was still the worst thing I've had yet to endure . And I wish I believed what you always taught me to, the part where we are together, but I'm not so sure about that. I just know that every thank you, every memory, every action that happens in my life as a result of what it meant to be your granddaughter for 38 years matters enough to me to create some kind of secular heaven, even if I'm the only one who ever sees it. That is enough for me, and I am grateful, for you, so much, the most.