The Cubicle’s Backporch

When I was a freshman in High School, my parents started talking seriously about moving to another state. My mom thought it would be a good idea for me to ‘shadow’ someone at my new school and I eagerly agreed.

That person ended up being “Lisa”. Lisa was my age, and had one of those personalities that make you want to be around her. She was friendly, smiled a lot, and had these beautiful blue eyes which were magnified by her blond curly hair. In between the first and second classes that I was following Lisa around, I met her boyfriend, “Tyler”. What struck me about these two that day, and that I can still remember, was that they weren’t the typical high school couple. There was no jealousy, no neediness… just a comfortableness that I could sense after a few minutes.

Tyler was a year older than us and played basketball. They had been together for four years, she explained to me in between classes. They didn’t hang all over each other, like most couples our age. Instead they laughed about something that happened in her previous class, kissed, and then he went to go talk to his friends so that she could show me around.

During the next class, I looked over at Lisa’s textbook and noticed that she had written “I love Tyler Lee Smith. Forever.” In the spine. Right next to it, in a more male handwriting were the words “And he loves you. Forever.” Tyler was in that same class as her and I smiled when I caught him looking at her. I took their happy, blissful relationship as a sign that myself and Ex-A would be able to stay together, even if we did move.

Two years later, we had indeed moved and I had been going to the school I had visited for a couple years. Lisa and I didn’t run in the same circle of friends, although we had some mutual friends. Secretly, I still smiled when I saw them in the halls. I also learned little things about them through random conversations.

Lisa had lost her father and uncle in a plane crash when we were in 8thTyler was really there for her through that,” a friend had explained. It made sense then, I thought to myself, why they were so comfortable with each other. They had already been through more things than couples much older than us. grade. “

“One time,” another friend explained, “Lisa forgot her lunch. So Tyler called his mom and had her bring some of Lisa’s favorite food for lunch.”

“His parents love her! They think of her as a daughter.”

There are moments in my life that I’ll never forget: Where I was on 9/11. Seeing MrC for the first time. And when I heard the news that Tyler had died.

I was a junior in high school and working as a casher at a local restaurant. A coworker had came in for her shift while I was standing behind the registers.

“Did you hear?” she asked me.

“About what?”

“Tyler Smith died in a car accident.”

I know it doesn’t make sense that I could feel such a loss for someone I didn’t even know, but my heart dropped. I got sick and felt like I was going to throw up. This couldn’t happen. This couldn’t be right. It had to be someone else. I blinked back tears so I could ask what I didn’t want to know the answer to.

“How did Lisa react?”

They didn’t tell her the day it happened. She had been away in South Carolina at a soccer camp and her mom and his parents decided to wait until the following day when she got back. They told her as soon as she walked in the door. She had passed out, as soon as they told her and had been heavily sedated since.

The rest of my shift I wondered what was going through her head. I pictured her driving back home from soccer camp, unaware of the news that waited her. Maybe making plans to see him that night. Just thinking of the pain of losing the person you thought you would spend the rest of your life with, the person who was right by your side through the death of your father brought the pain back to my stomach and the tears back to my eyes.

They retired his basketball jersey. His best friend wouldn’t leave Lisa’s side. People said that Tyler had made his best friend promise to watch out for Lisa if anything were to happen to him. Some kids at school started a petition to get the road widened where Tyler had had his accident. It was now known that he had slipped off the side of the road, over-corrected and hit a tree.

And still, life went on.

She’s my facebook friend and every once in a while I look at her profile. She’s been in a relationship for a couple years now… or she was the last time I checked. She still goes to Tyler’s parents house for Christmas and Thanksgiving. They still give her birthday presents.

And I know it doesn’t make sense, but my heart still aches for her loss. I can still remember him looking at her with complete adoration those many years ago. And I hope she remembers the same thing.

Slynnro style. 

Scene From a Relationship- “He Makes Me A Better Engineer” version.

On the phone, during the drive from work back home:

 Me: Do you have any m1st c0llecting devices?

He: Yep, I have 2 on my lines.

Me: Well I don’t really understand how they work.

He: What company made yours?

Me: I’m not sure.

He: Mine are Company A and Company B.

Me: Hmm. Well, I don’t understand how they work. I saw them putting filters in them today, but I assumed that they would hang from overhead and they don’t.

He: Do you have a machine print?

Me: No, but I can draw a picture.

He: Well, sugar, you can draw us a picture and we’ll figure it out together.

 I don’t know what I’d do if I dated a non-engineer. I’d sure be a lot worse of an engineer.

I am currently pouting because I am horribly disappointed in the chocolate chip cookies that I got out of our local vending machine to snack on. In fact, I’m angry because they were a good 6 points and SO NOT WORTH IT.

It probably doesn’t help that I am heading to Michigan for a good three days. My boss and I are leaving today after a late meeting and heading up to the Land of the Cold. Then it’s meetings for two and a half days before I will be released to come back home to Mr. C. Friday night is also the Reba/Kelly Clarkson concert with JFriend and her mom. So I will be driving home from Land of the Cold, stopping at home to kiss (wink wink) Mr. C and then head to Louisville to get my country-music fill on. I will be exhausted. JFriend offered to sell my ticket to someone else… but hello! It’s Reba and Kelly! (Oh, and getting to spend time with JFriend, blah blah blah) I hate kissing Mr. C goodbye when I’m leaving for out of town. I just want to call in sick, cuddle up next to him and hide from the world. (Okay, mushiness is over, you can quit gagging) It figures that now that I’m not being overly-bitchy, I will be out of town so that he cannot even appreciate it. (Put it this way… I was checking our phone bill for, ahem, charges and found a weird number from a night he drank. So I called him out and ends up it was a friend of his. I do this randomly about every couple of months. I get all drama-crazy and my imagination goes wild.)Did I mention that Mr. C’s ex sent him another text message last week? She says that she misses talking to him. I’ve handled this pretty calmly up until now, but it’s getting old. We’ve been together for 1 and 1/2 years and she’s still trying to talk to him?!

Mr. C got his cost-of-living raise, so he is officially making more money than me now. I wrote him and whined that while his paycheck went up, mine went down $20.00 (because I chose a different insurance plan) and he responded with a “Don’t worry baby, I’ll support you financially.” He’s so funny. I thought he would have problems just giving his paycheck to me (I handle our finances… how very grown-up of me!) because I KNOW I would have issues if it was the other way around, but he takes his bi-weekly allotment and goes about his merry little way. He didn’t even yell at me when I miscalculated and over-drafted us twice (and hadn’t moved money into that savings account yet) so we got charged TWO $26.00 courtesy payment charges (sheesh, I suck at being a grown-up!)

Off to Land of the Cold I go.

I got tagged by Amber. I have to write 10 weird, random things about myself. And then all who are reading this must do the same. *Evil laugh* (I’m saying all b/c I don’t know 10 people who will re-post this, so I’m being lazy) 

     1.) I wanted to be a veterinarian for a long, long time. Then I realized if I became a vet, I would probably become desensitized to animals… and I didn’t want that. So I decided to be anything BUT a veterinarian and just have a lot of animals.      2.) I was in the hospital for a long time when I was in 1rst grade. My teacher called my mom because I couldn’t straighten my head. (It was cocked to one side) They thought it had to do with my spinal fluid. I don’t remember what was really wrong, but I do remember the nurse coming in and pricking my finger every morning. And my mom sleeping next to me the whole time.

     3.) I was a Girl Scout. My dad was my basketball coach in elementary school.

     4.) I won 2nd runner-up in the Washington County teen pageant. My mom made me be in it. No really, she threatened me. I’m glad I did it… it was something I never would have done normally.

     5.) We had internet when it was really expensive. My friends would come over and we would talk to boys in the chat rooms. We thought we were so cool.

     6.) When I was younger, my friends used to make me show them my muscles. I used to lift feed sacks all the time and I had some well-defined (but not gross) muscles. I was really strong back in the day. AND I was intimidating. My mom used to always say “If you ever get in a fight, you better make it a good one because you’re getting in trouble when you get home.”

     7.) I used to tell people I was from Indiana (where we lived until I was 15). Now I tell people I am from Kentucky (where I lived until I graduated college).

     8.) I once woke up after a night of drinking to my siblings telling me someone was at the door for me. I went down and opened the door and hugged the person and told him it was “SOOOO good to see you!” I thought it was my ex from Indiana. It wasn’t.

     9.) Engineering is all about the math. My calculus grades were as follows: C, C, D, C. I wasn’t dumb, Engineering Calculus (very different from regular calculus) is hard. Luckily I still graduated.

     10.) I was President of my freshman high school class. I think the only reason I won was because I was dating the quarterback on the football team, and his friends voted for me by association. I sooo used him!!

 Last night seemed like a normal day. Wake up, go to work, blah blah blah, get off work, come home, let chickens out for a little bit, play with dog, kiss Mr. C hello. All normal. I even did a load of laundry because according to flylady.net: “There are 5 steps to doing laundry, sort-wash-dry-fold-put away. If you do just one load a day, it will dramatically reduce your huge amounts of laundry.” We don’t have HUGE amounts of laundry, but enough to annoy me.

So I was on step 5 of this program and putting laundry away. I walked into the bathroom to put the towels in their proper place when I saw it. For a minute, I couldn’t figure out how it happened. The cover makes it difficult for this particular position to remain so blatantly open. Hasn’t Mr. C complained many, MANY times because of that darn cover? My mind raced to replay ‘what could have happened’ in my head. What if I hadn’t noticed and went about my business as usual?! The result was enough to make me wince. Had Mr. C and I been together long enough for this issue to arise? Honestly, I had expected it sooner, but hoped it would never happen. I stared at it for a while, holding my clean (and folded!) towels. I thought about calling Mr. C in to see what he had did; to see how horrible this mis-step could have been. Instead, I put it back in its correct position and put the towels away, all the while congratulating myself for being so alert. I still don’t see how it happened. Mr. C has complained many times about how it won’t stay up like he needs it to… how he has to work extra hard when doing his business.

Oh yes. Mr. C had left the toilet seat up. We are going to have a serious talk tonight.

Just kidding. Like I care about the toilet seat being up. After having two younger brothers, I’m just excited that Mr. C doesn’t pee on the seat.

Happy Friday everyone!!