In my inbox this morning, courtesy of my lovely neighbor Andrew who tries very hard to avoid public forums, and will now probably hate me:

Exterior establishing shot.  A hot, dry sunny day on (the street I live on).
3of3 runs with a little soccer ball towards a tall, bald man watering his dahlias.

3of3: Anjou! I want to play with you!  We can chase the ball.  Don’t touch it.

Andrew: Okay, I won’t touch it. I swear.

3of3: Let’s go, Anjou.

The intrepid duo run up (said street).

Andrew: You must miss your mom.

3of3: No.  She’s in Chicago.

Andrew: So, if she were in another city would you miss her?  Like New York?

3of3: No, she’s coming back in two minutes.

Andrew: In a few days?  Next week?

3of3: Two minutes.  Next week.

Andrew: I don’t think you understand time, 3of3.

3of3: Oh my god!  Two minutes, Anjou.

Dear Jim,

I wanted to have this posted for you at midnight, but I was busy being a psychopathic manic at midnight, so you’re welcome.

I tried to remember how long I’ve known you, and I can’t quite put my finger on it. Two years? One?  I honestly can’t imagine eve not knowing you, kind of like we all get with our kids after they’re born and finally start sleeping regularly.  You know, after the “What the holy fuck were we thinking?” months.

I know it sounds grossly chicky to say that I think fate brought us together, but that’s exactly what I think.  I think that the fact that you and The Donor are damn near the same human being completely, the fact that your wife and I are also so very similar, except in the waistline of course, and that our children already know and dig each other, even though they’ve never once met,well…I just don’t think that type of across-the-board friendship can just be written of to chance, or worse, to mommy blogs.

The last time I saw you, you picked me up from the airport and as you drove towards my hotel room to drop me off, before I even thought about what I was doing I had your iPod cranked up with Stone TemplePilots on and the windows open and my feet on your dashboard.  That is going to be, by far, my favorite moment with you, just because I was comfortable like I never am with anyone and you didn’t yell at me and then grab an Armor-all wipette. I mean, seriously; I’ve slept with people upon who’s dash I wouldn’t dare put my feet.  But you let me, and you didn’t even say anything; you just smirked at me the way I’ve seen you towards your sister, and there aren’t words for how happy it makes me that you can see me that way.

Just as fate saw fit to bring us together, it’s seen fit to keep us across international borders from each other. I was due to have shots with you tomorrow at BlogHer, and I even got so lucky as to get offered one whole overnight with my whole family, your whole family, and s’mores.  And though this should be a no-brainer, CIC has had a happy fun time yanking me around by my work permits for a few months now, and until they give up my visa, I can’t leave the country. Which is really making working for you a bitch, by the way. What you do, what I have to learn, is way harder than you told me, jerk.  I so totally need an in-house training day, oh my sweet pink baby lord. Lucky for me, you’re a sucker for blondes, and I know this about you, and I will use this to as many people’s advantage as I can before it all betrays me and goes gray.  Then I’ll have to get a skill or something, huh?

I was so sad yesterday when I told you that I for sure wasn’t coming to Chicago, that I wouldn’t see you on your panel, that you’d have to get Tanis extraordinarily drunk to make her answer to Mr Lady, but mostly that I wouldn’t be able to wish you a happy birthday, in person, with shots.  Which actually turned out to be alright, because yeah, I so totally didn’t get you anything for your birthday.  There’s no way I’m encouraging your Lego fetish, and I already gave you the coolest Star Wars gift ever devised by man, and I completely forgot to ask The Donor to make you the mixtape I was planning on asking him to make for you.  So at least I don’t have to show up empty handed, right?

Or, I could say that I’m not going to see you and then my lawyer could work a miracle the likes of which we haven’t seen since Jesus turned a bunch of people into alcoholics that one day and I could manage to get the visa that will ensure me s’mores with your family and the work training I need to have before you fire me, and this could happen at 8:30 in the morning on the morning that my non-refundable, one day only stand-by plane ticket to Chicago is good for and The Donor might be willing to be righteously late for work to rush me to the airport and the guy behind the counter could be super-helpful because I leaned so far over his counter by boobs damn near choked him I used my nice manners and said please, a lot, and I could board a plane at 2 pm on your birthday that will put me in the same city you’re going to be in tomorrow and I could call that your present, from me, The Donor, Canada and Unite Airlines.

Or I could get you a tie. Your call.

Happy birthday, my friend. I am blessed to know you. And that’s a fact.

56 years ago today, a baby girl was born. That fact bears no relevance at all to this story, but for reasons probably only two of us will understand, I have to mention it. Rest in peace, love; may you always rest in peace.

36 years ago today, a baby boy was born. Seven months later, his parents realized he was going to be a bit more than they could handle, so they did was any two reasonable human beings would do; they got him a toy. As it was, they were to broke to afford a new toy, so they got busy making him a new one.

16 months after that boy was born, his new plaything was ready. They brought it into the living room to show him, set it down on the brown shag carpet, and he reached down into the seat they had it perched in, grabbed its bottle, whacked it over the head with that bottle, and so began life with Eddie and Shannon.

My brother and I have very different strengths and, as it turns out, the exact same weaknesses. Maybe it’s because those weaknesses were beaten into us, whereas our strengths were merely exploited to be used against each other. What a person can only learn through time, however, is that when you play up the strengths of two children for your own amusement in an attempt to pit them against each other on the basis of those strengths, you may bend them a little and you may even slightly break them, but in the end what you’ll be left with is two adults keenly aware of just how awesome the other one is. Talk about your classic back-fires, Batman.

In an attempt to rip the two of us apart, they ultimately had handed us a rope with which to tie our hearts together. It was a long, hard road we both walked, very much so alone, to get to the place we are today, and as time marches on we’re coming to learn that we actually walked pretty much the same path, just at different intervals. We both picked up different tricks along the way, found varying joys, making the two of us, today, to be each other’s yin and yang. We complete each other from a distance, we’re learning to try to understand and to accept and to share this life with each other.

I, who am damn near incapable of forgiveness, could forgive my big brother anything. He, who is damn near incapable of holding a grudge, can feel just enough indignation on my behalf to validate my nightmares. And sometimes, I think, we really near our nightmares to be validated, and we sometimes really just have to learn how to let shit go. I think we’re learning that from each other. I think our cups can be so filled with pride for each other that all the pride can spill over into our own laps, and for small moments in time, we can realize how far we, personally, have come.

36 years ago today, my mirror was born. I look into it’s reflection all the time, searching for my face behind his, hoping to chart my growth in the shadow of his. They say I was made for him, because of him, but what they don’t know is that he was something they gave to me and no matter what they did wrong, giving us to each other made all of those wrongs right in the end.

I loved you this day

And I love you today. And I always will, forever and ever, amen.

But first, old business:
Someone named Matt at Redsparks.com emailed me with a BOMB ASS design for my back, so he got to pick one prize and he went with the necklace, for his wife, because he’s awesome like that, and do you want to see what he came up with? Too bad. Sneak peeks are all you get today.

And then I spent more time on Randomizer tonight than Janis Joplin spent on heroin, and I came up with two lists…one for jewelry entries and one for tattoo gift certificate entires. I deleted all the multiple entries, because tsk tsk, and in the end it spit these names back at me, which you can click to make bigger if you must.

And then I did it again, because someone was winning a $50 gc to Tattoo Factory, and this is what it gave me.

So, Janet, Matt and Island Mummy, email Lu at Below 14th and let her know what you’d like and Schmutzie, you’ve got $50 to play with at Tattoo Factory, and Lu and Amy from My Ladybug Picnic, you each have $25 to blow. Email Paul at Tattoo Factory to set up your appointments; he’ll be expecting you. For everyone else, we all still get 20% off tattoos and piercings, and a shitload of other fun stuff. I’ll be there for what looks like, um, forever, so I’ll probably see you. And I may need vicodin. Also, my mommy.

And now, new business:

I really like to fish, and I always have. There’s something about the mixture of me, sunshine, a fine line, total silence and all the time in the world that makes me truly, perfectly happy. I could do nothing but fish all day long, and I could catch absolutely nothing, and I’d live happily ever after. I don’t need the best equipment, or the biggest boat, I just need a stick and some string and a little jar of powerbait and I’m good to go. Because nothing works better than powerbait, nothing.

I’ve always wanted to try fly fishing, but there’s something about it that strikes me as overly-romantic, and though I’ve had one solid offer in my life to go learn how to do it with someone, that someone failed in every way to come through on that offer and I really don’t want to do it myself, so I’ve given up on that idea. I’ve also wanted to try ice-fishing, maybe just once, but good lord it’s so complicated and time-consuming and, well, cold. I hate being left out in the cold, especially by my own doing. So I don’t.

I did, once, wander out onto a frozen lake with an auger in my hand just to see what a little tap on the ice would do. I knelt on a sheet of ice that I wasn’t entirely sure would hold my own weight and I looked down through the ice to the waters below. I kept seeing this fish darting past me, under and back around and under again, almost like it was daring me to catch it. I watched that fish for a long time before I realized I was just in way over my head and that I needed some help if I was going to do it right.

And on my way home, someone stopped and offered to help me. Without me asking or anything, just like it was fate that we met. And I haven’t taken that person up on the offer just yet, but I’ve been thinking about it. A lot.

The longer I wait, the more clearly I can see exactly how I’m going to crack that ice open and get my rod in there and catch that son-of-a-bitch. I think I know how to catch him, I just need to try. I want to try. I’m ready to try. And so, I’m going to try. 

It’s something new, something out of the comfort zone I’ve created for myself with my little hobby I’ve developed over the entire course of my life. The way I like to fish, it’s easy. It’s brainless. It’s as comforting as my evening tea and as safe as my favorite blanket, the one my grandmother left to me when she died, the one that I can hide away from the world in when I have to. I’ve come to rely on my trips to the lake, all by myself, away from the things of man, and I’m starting to let the ease of what I know I can do so effortlessly rob me of the chance to do something a little bigger, a little harder and a little more satisfying in the end. And it’s not like I’m getting any younger or anything. My knees don’t bend like they used to and my fingers get all stiff in the cold and if I don’t do this now, I don’t know if I ever will.

And so, I’m going to do it now. I’m going to run away for the month of July, because really…if I’m going to hack away at a bunch of old, frozen water, July sounds like the most agreeable time to attempt it. I’m going to run away and I’m going to take a whack at that ice. I’m not taking my eye off that fucking fish under that sheet of ice for an entire month, and with a little help and a lot of encouragement, I’m either going to come back with dinner or frostbite.

But at least I’ll know. At least I will have tried.

Until August, my friends; until August.