The day where Emily takes being a fan to another level. And becomes a fanatic.
But d*mn, was it worth it!
Let me paint the picture. As I’m busy at work earlier in the morning, preparing for a day chalk-ful of meetings and more meetings, I receive a phone call from Hubby.
“I know where you need to be later tonite,” Hubby tells me. And as I question him why, he tells me, “You need to be at the AMC River East tonite.”
“Because … ??”
“Because it’s the premiere of ‘Public Enemies‘ and Johnny Depp and Christian Bale are supposed to be there.”
“Really?!,” I just about screamed, as my cubicle neighbor looked up from shuffling songs on his iPod.
“Really,” Hubby confirms.
And so that’s all I needed to hear. Hubby, the awesome husband that he is, met me after work and accompanied me to the downtown movie theatre off of Illinois Street in Chicago. And there, on the barricaded street, we waited along with the thousands of other fans.
Patience finally paid off as we started to see unmarked black SUV’s pull into the street. And a few moments later, we began to hear screams from the crowd. First Christian Bale came out to the crowd to sign some autographs. Then, after more screaming and a walk down the red carpet to the media tent … my man, Johnny Depp hit the street. And walked down to greet his fans.
Lucky me, happened to be towards the very end of the street where Johnny decided to begin his trip. And also lucky for me, I managed to be up against the barricade.
Oh yes, girls. I got face-to-face, up close and personal to the one celebrity my awesome husband once gave me permission to leave him for.
As Johnny was about three fans away from me, I tried to help this tween-age girl move up to see Johnny and get his autograph. But then the crowd around us pushed us up against the barricade. Johnny happened to notice that and paused in front of us long enough to make sure she was okay before signing her book. Then as he looked at me through those blue-tinted sunglasses, he reached out and squeezed my arm.
Seriously, people. If Johnny asked me to run off with him to a faraway island at that very moment, I wouldn’t have given a second thought. (Sorry, Hubby. But you did give me permission … )
But of course, we all know Johnny wouldn’t have done that. And in reality, I could never leave the incredible man that is my husband. Because even though he doesn’t own a Caribbean island and make millions of dollars like Johnny does … I am absolutely in love with my Hubby; the one man who allows me to go all Stalkerazzi and still loves me for who I am.
There’s a radio show on the Detroit airwaves that I love listening to on any given Sunday morning. It’s a show on a station that, back in the late 80’s/early 90’s, was the first major station to play alternative music. (And when I talk about alternative music … I’m not referring to the mainstream alterna-sh*t that gets played over and over again. I’m referring to music that was only played on college radio stations or late late night on local public radio.)
Unfortunately, since a certain company took over management of commercial airwaves, we’ve been relegated to a snippet of time on Sunday Mornings where this particular station can play that kind of classic alternative music. This show, of all things, is called Time Warp.
Sunday mornings have got to be one of my most favorite times during the week. It’s the time where I can either sleep in or wake up early and relish the absolute peace and quiet of the day. It’s the moment during the week where Hubby & I can go out for an early breakfast or a leisurely brunch. And well, having the ability to listen to “my kind” of alternative music during that moment in time? Well, it caps off what I could consider a perfect morning.
Why am I bringing this all up late on a Thursday night? Well, it’s because I’m resurrecting an old post from my other blog. And I’m doing that … well, quite frankly because I haven’t had time to sit down and write a proper post since last week.
But I promise … a new one sometime this weekend.
Without further ado … here is my “Time Warp”:
***
As You Wish …
Also known as the “Not-So-Funny Thought of the Day“
Okay, so on one of the blogs I read there was discussion of favorite movies to watch. One of them mentioned that “The Princess Bride” was one of their favorite movies.
I totally agree. That movie probably ranks as one of my top movies of all time. If it’s ever on TV and I’m randomly flipping through channels, I would always settle on watching it again.
But then I thought (again, always a bad thing) of one of the most famous lines in that movie. Yes, you know … the one that Vizzini always says when he is utterly shocked, suprised and dismayed …
INCONCEIVABLE!
Wow. In the infertile world that I live in, that’s a pretty appropriate saying …
In the Catholic-Filipino tradition, a 9-day novena is held immediately after the death of a loved one. On the 40th day, a mass is held in commemoration of this loved one as it is believed that this is the day they’ve ascended into the heavens. It’s also the day where the act of “mourning” (wearing black, for example) officially concludes. It’s supposed to be the time where a person is supposed to outwardly “show” that they’ve began to “move on” with everyday life.
Yet another "borrowed" picture from another cousin
Except … anyone that has ever mourned the loss a love one (or heck, even the loss of anything in life — like the ability to have children, for instance) knows that grief doesn’t last for a set moment in time. Life doesn’t just miraculously get better after 40 days, several months or even years. If anything, grief is a process that must be worked through completely before a person can successfully move on.
Sometime last week was the 40th day anniversary of my Grandma Rose‘s passing. In all honestly, the date escaped me. It wasn’t until I saw pictures of a celebration at my Uncle’s house on my cousin‘s Facebook page that I remembered. And if the rest of my Mom’s family in the U.S. didn’t live on the East Coast, I might have been there celebrating with them. Instead, I celebrated with them in spirit; once again reflecting back on the incredible life my 99-year old Grandmother.
This past Monday, on Memorial Day of all days, I happened to get the first part of an incredible gift in my email inbox. This same cousin, who posted pictures of the 40th day celebration, sent me … along with the rest of my cousins and Aunts/Uncles in her email address book … a scanned copy of a notebook written by Grandma Rose.
About 32 pages in length and written about twenty years ago, this handwritten notebook told the most basic lifestory of my grandmother in her own words. She had left it to my cousin, who took it upon herself to scan in each page and send it to all of us.
It was absolutely wonderful to read these pages and physically see it my Grandma’s own handwriting. Many of the accounts she documented were stories that I can remember her telling me. Other stories were ones that were passed down to me from my own Mom. But reading them now … well, they brought back such warm memories of listening to my Grandma Rose tell these stories and being fascinated on how life in the Philippines was so different than my own.
For years, we had told Grandma that she should write all these stories down … that she had lived such an interesting life. While many of these stories never made it into writing, I still feel incredibly blessed that Grandma left her own legacy behind and in her own words.
Last night, after I finished reading these pages I, once again, felt this incredible closeness with my Grandma Rose. It felt as if she was right there next to me, telling me these stories like she did when I was little. It felt as if I could put my arms around her and hug her, while she read aloud to me what she wrote.
And just like that, the tears sprung up again. Because then I realized how much I missed her and still miss her. Even after these 40-plus days.
***
And because the number 40 always reminds me of this song … I have to pay homage to one of my favorite bands of all time. I have this vivid memory of being home sick one day in high school and watching “Live at Red Rocks: Under a Blood Red Sky” … so it’s this clip I had to post.
For those that don’t know, this song is based on the Bible’s Psalm 40. Which … given how spiritual my Grandma Rose was … is incredibly appropriate. Enjoy.
So I’ve been in the workforce for … well, what seems like forever. Seriously. I started babysitting at the age of 12 years old and spent many a summers watching over the younger neighborhood kids. Or the kids of my parents’ friends
And then at the age of 16, I got my first “official” job as a burger-slinger at the local fast food establishment. (Think of the recent “King-On” commercials on TV. Yeah, it was that restauraunt …) I had a manager who was the spittin’ image of Tim Curry and thought that all Asian girls looked like Conn.ie Chung. He also had a habit of sticking any non-Caucasian employee in the back either making the sandwiches or washing dishes. Amongst other nasty comments he made, the naive person in me took a few years to I recognize what a bigot this man was. So yeah, I lasted about 3 months on that job.
Hubby & I try to take "Foot Fotos" every time we go on vacation. This was taken at Cannon Beach, OR
The next summer I managed to land a job at the local mall working at a music store. No, it wasn’t an independent record store … although I always wished I could have worked at one. Yes, it was one of those retail chain stores that sold mostly Top 40 crap. But the job had its perks, which included a decent discount, first dibs on any “alternative” stuff that managed to come into the store, and a crap load of freebies that the label reps would hand out any time they came into the store. Oh … and we also got a lot of “heads up” on tour dates and album releases before the general public new. Of course pre-internet … that was a pretty d*mn cool perk. It was definitely a fun job to have, and the people that I worked with and interacted with on a daily basis definitely made the mundane more interesting.
I managed to keep the music store job for the next three years; lasting through the summer after my first year in college. And, if you can believe it … I also managed to hold a second job at one of the department stores within the same mall. That one wasn’t as fun, as I managed to get stuck in the men’s clothing department. However, to this day I know exactly how to fold a man’s dress shirt back into the original packaging it may have come in. Ain’t it amazing how we retain the stupidest things?
Dundas Square, Toronto
I finally quit both retail jobs after my first year in Nursing school. And that’s because I managed to get my first job in a hospital as a Nursing Assistant. Which turned in to a Nurse Technician position another year later. Which eventually turned into my first post-college job. Of course, I moved over to the bigger “sister” hospital at that time. Which meant more interesting patients and definitely more Residents (“Doctors-In-Training” … not to be confused with Med School students). Those first couple years post-graduation in my first job had to be one of the most exciting times of my career. Lots of new things to learn, lots of interesting co-worker dynamics, etc.
After about two years, the “glamour” and excitement of working on “the floors” started to wear down on me. Things suddenly became routine. And since by then I was married, working the afternoon shift and every other weekend grated on me because, as a newlywed, I just wanted to spend time with my Hubby. It’s about that time when I started to feel the “burn out” of working on the floors. And looking back now, I have a feeling that the reason I was burning out was more because of the way our unit was being managed* and not by the people I worked with or the actual work I was responsible.
In any case, my “break” literally came when I injured my back on the job. How, may you ask, did that happen? Well, it’s not that a patient fell on me … rather it was me that fell on a patient. Yep. As a fellow RN and I were lifting a patient who slipped off of her chair onto the floor, this patient began to lose her balance. Now … in Nursing School, you’re taught to “ease” a patient that is falling down onto the floor. In otherwords, you don’t let go of the patient; you guide them slowly onto a chair or back down on the floor. Well … while I attempted to “ease” this patient onto the floor, my fellow RN decided to just let the patient go.
At the Bow of a Caribbean Cruise Ship
And down the patient went. With me right on top of her shortly afterwards. And … ouch, what was that sharp pain I felt in my lower back?
I happened to be off that weekend and when I couldn’t sleep comfortably for the next two days, I decided it was time to fill out paperwork. So after a couple of Employee Health appointments and an MRI to my lower back, I found out I had a herniated disk. And despite the months of physical therapy and cortisone shots (which, by the way, I think may have been one of the reasons for my IF issues … ), the pain to my back and it’s associated numbness and tingling down my left leg persisted. So that’s when I decided to have surgery to correct the herniated disk. (What can I say? I was only 25 at the time and I didn’t want to be in pain for the rest of my life!)
And that’s when I met my disability RN Case Manager for the first time. She’s the one who showed me that there were other areas of Nursing that I could get in to with my degree. So armed with that information, when I returned to work I was lucky enough to have a fellow RN who was doing Case Management for the hospital I worked for. She’s the one that got me my first position in Case Management and I haven’t turned back to floor nursing since.
On the beach at Labadee, Haiti
So I guess you can say that I literally “fell” into Case Management. Ha!
Okay, so that long diatribe wasn’t what I was getting at when I first started this post. What I’m really getting at is that since I was a young’in I worked. And once I graduated from college and joined the career workforce, I’ve worked. Full time, mind you. The only time I ever took a break between jobs (besides when I went for my back surgery) was when I left the hospital to work for a health insurance company. And even then, it was less than a week. And when I left that job to come here to Chicago, I took absolutely no time off in between.
Oh sure, I’ve had time off during the year. I mean, we Full-Time folk do accrue vacation time that we are entitled to. And trust me, Hubby & I make it a point to take a vacation because that’s a priority for us in life. I mean really, it’s our time to recharge our batteries and refuel our energy so that we can delve headfirst into our careers with new purpose. We need that time because, unlike others that have different priorities than us, our childless (or child-free, still deciding) life consists of little more than our careers.
At Lake Louise, Banff, Alberta (Canadian Rockies)
Okay, so I’m overexagerating here (or as Hubby says I’m “V.H.1 Storytelling”). I mean, I wouldn’t be writing / blogging and Hubby wouldn’t be sketching if I didn’t do anything more than wake up and go to work every day. But I think you readers may get the point.
It’s been just over five months since I moved to Chicago and started this new job, without taking more than 2 days off (strictly for the NYE holiday) inbetween. And before that, it’s been since July last year that Hubby & I have taken any sort of vacation together. Needless to say, I’m ripe for some time off.
H*ll. I don’t even care if it’s a Stay-cation. I don’t care if I don’t do more than read, write or blog for a week. I just want to have the time dedicated to ourselves. To be together. To fully relish in the big move that the two of us made together. To explore our new local surroundings. (Hmm … I guess you could call that a “Play-cation” then. Not to be confused with “placate” though … ) All without the pressure to keep working. To make deadlines. To set new goals. To maintain the current goals.
Seriously, I’d be happy to just be in bed with Hubby, imagining we’re back in Hawaii lying in a hammock on the beach at sunset. Perhaps we can bring in some fake plastic trees, too.
Cannon Beach, OR again ... Recognize the rock from "Goonies"?
As it is, the next long weekend we have planned will be Memorial Day. (But then, is it a vacation if the rest of your company is off too?!) And the next one would be Independence Day … which is followed closely by my birthday that following Monday. And d*mn it … you know I’ll be taking that day off. I mean, I’ll at least have accrued one or two vacation days by then …
I mean if I can’t take time off to find a new career path or even take time off to take my imaginary kids to a fun vacation spot during their imaginary summer vacation … let alone to take a maternity leave for that imaginary pregnancy, too … I should be entitiled to have my own birthday off. Don’t you think?
~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~
* I know that now, only because being in a leadership position … I know that a person never leaves a job because of the people or because of the actual work. Nope. In my experience, most people that go willingly on to “greener pastures” (or maybe not so “greener” …) leave because of who they report to.
Ha. Yes, I realize it’s the end of that fine May Day where every person living celebrates the woman who gave birth to them. And believe me … I am most grateful for all that Hubby’s Mom and my Mom have done for us for our entire lifetime. We are truly lucky to have been given these beautiful women as our mothers.
And then there’s the other aspect of today. The day that emphasizes how much I am not part of that group of women who (rightly) receive such lavish attention today. The aspect that makes me feel like a wallflower at a high school dance … er, maybe more like some “Spring Mother/Daughter Event.” Basically, the one that feels a bit left out.
Truth be told, I *am* getting a little bit used to it … the feeling that I’m different from the rest of the world. Or maybe it’s because this year … well, it wasn’t exactly spent planning on how we would celebrate with our Mom’s. (Because, truthfully … that “chore” ironically ends up with the infertile couple every year. Pshaw!) And that’s because this year Hubby & I stayed in Chicago for the weekend.
Found this on a tshirt at Shedd Aquarium and just HAD to snap a photo. I thought it was SO hilarious!*
Okay, so we actually did plan on going home to Detroit this past weekend. But well, work has been kickin’ a$$ (and taking names, too!) lately. And some of my “duties” just happen to overflow into Saturday. So yeah, there was no way I was going to have us drive back for one day and one day only.
Now next week … different story. Double duty. But that’s okay. Because the rest of the world won’t be celebrating it with us!
So instead … today I labored and gave “birth” to something else. Yep … another blog. Which truly has absolutely nothing to do with infertility, daily work or life woes, or even just plain old thoughts or observations. Nope. This new blog has everything to do with Superheros. And comics.
“Wha?!,” I can hear you saying. Yes; you read it right. Superheroes and comics. Oh, and I should add that it’s a “collective” blog … with me (that’s right, *ME*) as the administrator and commissioner. But rather than writing about it here … go over and check out the “About” section.
Hey … if I had to spend Mother’s Day without either of our Moms and without children of my own … better to do something that will keep me from “thinking” too much.
And we all know what happens when those awful thoughts start creeping up from the back of my mind …
Anyhoo … for all of my female friends (in real life or in bloggie world) that are blessed with children … Happy Mother’s Day to y’all!
~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~
* The other reason I love this picture so much is because May in Detroit typically means “Open Octopus” season during Red Wings Playoff!
Oh yes. The day has come.
“Really,” Hubby confirms.
As Johnny was about three fans away from me, I tried to help this tween-age girl move up to see Johnny and get his autograph. But then the crowd around us pushed us up against the barricade. Johnny happened to notice that and paused in front of us long enough to make sure she was okay before signing her book. Then as he looked at me through those blue-tinted sunglasses, he reached out and squeezed my arm. 
I totally agree. That movie probably ranks as one of my top movies of all time. If it’s ever on TV and I’m randomly flipping through channels, I would always settle on watching it again.
About 32 pages in length and written about twenty years ago, this handwritten notebook told the most basic lifestory of my grandmother in her own words. She had left it to my cousin, who took it upon herself to scan in each page and send it to all of us.
