More Memories

I keep having these memory flashes, and I want to get them down for keeps.

Saturday mornings after staying overnight at Cherie's house: frozen Red Baron pepperoni pizza, brownies we made that morning, and Dr. Pepper. I have no idea how we survived so many years on that diet, but that was the tradition. Then we'd plop down in front of the TV with something like "Hunt for Red October" that was almost impossible to see, because the movie was so dark, and because the sunshine glared through the back living room windows in the morning.

The music of our youth:

• Waking Up the Neighbours by Bryan Adams (this has been in my dashboard player for months now, retro-rockin' out)
• Top Gun soundtrack (dude: you know you love The Danger Zone)
• Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves soundtrack (Cherie's favorite movie at the time)
• Three Musketeers soundtrack
• Footloose soundtrack
• Shout soundtrack
• Amy Grant's Heart in Motion

It was because of Cherie saying how Christian Slater's line in Robin Hood POT was the only time she'd ever found the F-word funny, that I discovered both that word and what it meant. Um, not that I lent on that I had been clueless. Heh.

Cherie had a photo of a cop pointing a gun at the camera--the barrel was the only part in-focus. She absolutely loved that--at the time, she and Beth wanted to be FBI agents.

It's funny that, although I was a really vain and sensitive kid, I loved hanging out with Cherie. She was so frank--she told you exactly how it was. But when she said an outfit looked ridiculous or I was being silly, it didn't hurt like it would have with others--I valued her words because they were spoken in absolute honesty, without malice. And when she said you looked great, or--even mor importantly--that the story you wrote was incredible--you knew it was absolutely true, that there was no bias in it. Her honest opinion was a gift.

I find it hilarious and ironic that one of my favorite photos of Cherie is her cheerleading portrait. The non-conformist, non-girly, sarcastic pal of mine was a cheerleader for exactly one year. Yep, it baffled me, too.

The next-to-last time I saw Cherie, she was up in Dallas visiting her sister. She, her sister, her mom, my mom, and I all went out to Chili's and had a great gabfest--and wow, was it. I think we are about five of the talk-i-est gals I know. We left Chili's and were going to say goodbye, but ended up gabbing a long time on the steps, Cherie regaling us with her hilarious take on what the cancer and drugs were doing to her body. She made us scream with laughter as she showed off the absolute lack of a butt, and as she described how square the steroid had made her face. Although her body was distorted to the point where it made me sad to see how different she looked, she was completely herself with her dry sense of humor. After six years of hell with that disease and its nearly-as-bad cure, she had an immensely upbeat attitude.

We used to write together a lot--sometimes trading off paragraphs or sentences in short stories. We wanted to write a novel that way together called "It Was a Dark and Stormy Knight." I think we only got one or two chapters written. My favorite thing we wrote together was a story-poem (our term) called "The Tree Way Up in the Sky All Alone and Bill the Canary." It is awesome.

I am immensely sad that the only person I ever planned on writing collaboratively with is gone.

We both loved fairy tales, and my bookcases (well, okay now my many many boxes of books in storage) are filled with the fruits of our long weekends spent at used book stores. Many fairy tale rewrites, original volumes of them, reference works about them. Our favorite bookstore, which is now closed, was in San Antonio near the Shepherd's Shoppe, and was about the size of a closet with bookcases nearly to the ceiling. We thought it was about the coolest place on earth (but then, I hadn't seen Recycled Books in Denton yet). I think we must have spent half our weekends there.

The other passion we shared was movies--to be honest, Cherie got me far more into movies. My husband has her to thank for that, and for getting me even more into Star Wars than I was. (Sidebar: it's odd now that my interest in Star Wars is due to three women: my mom, Jayne, and Cherie. I didn't realize how odd that was until I got to college. And became popular with boys. Er, geeky boys.) I did not know how Boba Fett was until Cherie told me--I didn't pay attention to the names of secondary characters until college, for some reason.

We spent almost as many weekends at the theater as we did at bookstores. I remember watching so many of the movies of the '90s with her, good and bad... The Bodyguard (heh), French Kiss, While You Were Sleeping, Only You, Crimson Tide, Circle of Friends, Batman Forever (slight cringe), Batman and Robin (shudder), Johnny Neumonic (shudder), Waterworld (biggest shudder ever)... Cherie saved the poster images from the newspaper ads and had them pinned to a bulletin board in her room. The one I always remember looking at was the one for Beauty and the Beast, because it was my favorite movie and it was an awesome silhouetted image.

While sitting under the steps at Bracken Christian School (it was an awesome hideout after school), we planned out an entire Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves-themed bedroom. I remember the bunkbeds were treehouses, and the carpet was green with a curving blue section for the river... I don't remember the rest.

Cherie is the only person I've known with naturally orange hair.

I kept thinking about that first time she was at my house, with the black and white outfit, and I couldn't remember what necklace she was wearing, just that it was special. This afternoon at the service, Rynae came in wearing Cherie's hourglass necklace, which she wore every waking moment in high school--and beyond. When she ran up to Carolyn today and said "this was my Mommy's necklace" and asked her what it was, it about broke my heart.

Had dinner with my parents, Jayne & Tony, and Martha & Brandon (with their kids Zachary and Lydia). We went out to Adobe Cafe, in honor of Cherie, and at first I couldn't decide what to eat. But then I remembered that not only had Cherie ordered tortilla soup at every Mexican restaurant I've ever eaten with her at, and she ate it last August when we went to Alamo Cafe, but she's also the person who got me to try it for the first time in high school. So that's what I had, and it was very very good.

I've uploaded some photos I took when visiting Cherie last August up on Flickr.

Hey Cherie:
Yep, I wore the outfit--fittingly enough purchased at your favorite place, Kohl's--and will wear it again at the second service tomorrow. I've found a Princess Leia shirt for Rynae--it's even pink--so yes, your princess-loving kid will finally get a shirt that encourages her geek side. It's even the exact graphic of the shirt I wore three weeks ago that you liked so much. And yeah, I remember that third promise--don't you worry. It's taken care of, and I've enlisted help. And stop rolling your eyes at me from up there--I know you think we're all putting up such a fuss. I hope you got a good chuckle out of me walking through Half Price Books like a loon with tears streaming down my face--yes, I honestly didn't realize how much every single book I looked at would remind me of you. And yes, now you know exactly how the Wheel of Time Series ends--I know you finangled it out of God or RJ himself.

But I'm going to miss not seeing your reaction to the last seasons of Stargate: SG-1, and to the new Indiana Jones movie, and so many other things. I'm wearing my half of that silly black ying-yang friendship ring we bought as our RJ rings, believe it or not. I wanted so bad to send this to your email address, as if somehow it would be forwarded, to cherie.tamar@heaven.org, or something. But I didn't want your family to read this and be sad, if they cleaned out your inbox--so I'll just post it here, teary-eyed, yet smiling to myself because I know you're definitely up there shaking your head and rolling your eyes, with your own awesome smile.

Can't wait to meet you again, girl. I love you.
*Jen

Promises to Keep

Last night, my mom called to say that my good friend Cherie had finally escaped cancer. She passed away at noon yesterday.

L to R: Jayne, me, and Cherie in 1995, senior year

My emotions are kind of running a wild course at the moment, although I think I've cried harder for Cherie's family than anything else. It's particularly awful that Mother's Day is this weekend--both for Cherie's mom, and for the fact that she's leaving her six-year-old daughter and three-year-old son behind. Please, keep her whole family in your prayers.

But when my mom related the news, I was driving home from work, and instead of continuing on, I made a detour. I wasn't ready yet to face family--Alex wasn't home yet, but we're temporarily living with his parents, and loving sympathy wasn't something I was strong enough to face at the moment. I'm one of those prickly private types, especially in emotional moments.

So I drove south to Old Navy. It wasn't so much retail therapy, although it was partially a distraction--I went with a mission.

When Cherie and I were about fifteen or so, in high school, we made this pact. It was especially silly and dramatic, because that's the kid of gals we were (even more so back then, yeah). I think our favorite article of clothing at that point were our black jeans. Yeah... that was a bit of an unfortunate mid-1990's thing, and we bought it hard. I remember hanging around North Star Mall many, many weekends in those black jeans, feeling cool while probably looking like the biggest dork on the planet.

We had this theory, that if you paired a black turtleneck with black jeans, it would be the coolest outfit ever. However, in this completely irrational twist, we thought it breached some major kind of fashion faux pas, so we thought we could never actually wear this awesome outfit. (This flabbergasts me now--we prided ourselves of being non-conformists, and yet wouldn't wear something we thought was awesome? Chalk it up to the insanity of being a teenager, I guess.)

Hence the pact: whichever of us died first, no matter how old, the other would wear that outfit--black turtleneck and black jeans--to their funeral.

I have no idea if Cherie still remembered this. I've been thinking about it a lot, off and on, for that past six years that she's battled cancer. I've done a lot of praying that I'd be wearing that outfit--or she would--at the ripe of age of 103. I've thought a lot about buying the outfit, just in case, and thought that it was morbid, or superstitiously that it would bring about the end, or that it was a sensible move because it might be hard to find black jeans on short notice. In the end, I waited.

I got rid of my last black turtleneck a few years ago, and I don't think I've owned black jeans since 1997. In fact, to be honest I'm such a fashion low-lier that I had no idea if that was even an item you could find anymore, or if it had gone the way of ripped stone-wash jeans... er, but since the 1980's are back, maybe that's a bad example.

I hunted through Old Navy desperately, to no avail. They indeed had black jeans, but these are apparently--to my amazed discovery--a "winter" item. The ones left were all on sale, and in sizes 12+. Not quite a perfect fit.

I figured I'd look elsewhere, but I didn't see any other clothing stores nearby, and when I get upset like that I can't think, so I couldn't even remember where any other store was in McKinney at that point, to be honest. But I couldn't go home yet, I just needed to be alone in a crowd. Luckily, I managed to remember that there was a Half-Price Books close by.

I just went as a distraction, but it was the best thing I could have done. Yes, I found some books--but what I didn't count on was running into memories of Cherie at every turn. She was my reading and writing friend, my fellow fiction devotee, compelled not only to read it but to write crazy stories that ran away from us and turned into things we didn't expect.

I went to fantasy--well, there you are. Robert Jordan, the reason that we used to guide each other down the hall, while one was reading and walking simultaneously. (RJ passed away last year before finishing the last book--so I guess now he can tell her how it ends.) L. E. Modesitt, Robin McKinley, Patricia McKillip. Star Wars books, that's a whole other story. Since my eyes started overflowing, I quickly went to check out the clearance aisle--Clive Cussler. That really did it--Sahara, the book she loaned to me that started my obsession with Dirk Pitt. I turned to the YA section... Madeleine L'Engle (who also died last year). The only place without memories in the whole store was the comics section.

It made me overwhelmingly sad, but also wonderfully happy, remembering. It was a fitting farewell, one that I wouldn't have thought of myself. I'm glad I was there.

Then I --slightly-- came to my senses and remembered that there was a Kohl's nearby. Off again to hunt for the funeral outfit.

I was in luck: they were clearing out their winter stock. It took me two hours of hunting in every form of women's department they had, but I finally located a pair of black jeans, a black turtleneck, and a black and white bracelet.

I was rushing past jewelry on my way to the absolute last area that might have black jeans, when I saw the bracelet out of the corner of my eye. It was chunky plastic black and white beads, and I had a sudden flash of the first time Cherie ever came over to my house, freshman year of high school, 1990. She was wearing black jeans (naturally!), a white shirt, black and white dangly dice earrings, and a plastic black-and-white bracelet. She was heavily in her "black and white phase" that year, as it's now referred to. I thought that she was the Pinnacle of Cool, devoting herself to a limited palate for the sake of fashion. My mom thought it was amusing, my dad thought it was unbelieveably ridiculous. Anytime I brought up Cherie's name, for years, he'd bring up the Black and White Phase with an amused expression, as I rolled my eyes.

So, yeah, naturally I got the bracelet. It will totally go with those rad black jeans and black turtleneck, I laugh to myself, and it will remind me of the girl I met eighteen years ago. As she was--vibrant, hilarious, frank, creative--and as she remained to the end, despite the cancer consuming her body.

So I'll be keeping that promise, silly as it is. And hot as it's destined to be, in Texas in May, in long sleeves and black. Because yes, it's silly--but that's the kid of gals we are. That's how I loved her, and that's how I'm seeing her off.

(And thanks for the line, Robert Frost.)

Yet Another "I'mToo Busy to Post" Excuse

...Yeah, as of 7pm Friday I should be done with school for the semester, leaving me to enjoy:

• MarioKart Wii
• Iron Man, heck yeah, finally!!!
  
• um, no, I did not rent "27 Dresses..."
• all those ARCs from TLA
  
• Un Lun Dun
• Eclipse
  
• Free Comic Book Day this Saturday!!

I actually don't have many comics on my "I am now free to enjoy" list, but that's primarily because I'm waiting for several of them to be released: Y the Last Man vol. 10, Fables vol. 10, Jack of Fables vol. 3... Not that I'm a Vertigo girl* or anything, but... yeah, I'm a Vertigo girl. So sue my little goth self, okay?

*As defined by many, but most memorably in the book "The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl," which is awesome and hilarious and probably entirely too true.

Leaving Home

Oh, the emotional investment in the place in which you live. This afternoon, I looked at the key my mother-in-law had made for me to use while we live in their upstairs addition for the next eight months, while we're building The New House. The key is blue with yellow happy faces all over it, in a cheesy fake-hippie style that makes me laugh, and she said she picked it so that when it gets hard living there, not in our own home, I can look at it and know she loves me. So very, very sweet.

I immediately, with my blogger-and-photographer hat on, thought I ought to take a photo to post here. And half a second later, got a sick feeling in my gut, realizing that I couldn't take a photo my house-key, the key to our Old House that we left for the last time this morning at 2am, because it was on the counter in that house we no longer own. Or more likely, by this point, it's on someone else's keyring. It made me want to cry, then and there, but I cried so much last night/this morning that I'm in the brush-it-off stage. After all, I've got tons of homework to do, all of it due this Friday.

But let us have a small moment of mourning for the passing of this age, the age of Our Very First Home together, the house in which our marriage survived four flooring projects, a 30' by 40' building project, thirteen fireworks parties, and innumerable amounts of painting. The house in which we kind of grew up together, dreamed together, and even planned The New House together. The house in which we spent 6 and a half out of over 7 years together, the house in which we did not raise any children--a house they will never know. Truly the end of an era.

Eesh, I don't even know how or where to end this post. Looking forward to the next house? Still more reminiscing about the old one? Talk about the past three days of moving and the pain and the tired and the wonderful family help? Obsessing about the last week of homework? Looking forward to summer? Gratefulness for a place to live while simultaneously mourning the loss of space and privacy?

Hmm, yes, total and utter confusion of emotions, I think that about sums it up.

P.S. Have lots of old-house photos to get up later. Probably will be a post-homework project, so look for them in May.

P.P.S. Bonus points for anyone who noticed that the label of this post is also the title of a Garrison Keillor book. There is a reason you and I are friends. (And now I know that an appropriate gift for you is a NPR mug.)

The 30-Second Update

So, here's what I've been up to:

• blogging at the TLA Conference
• meeting Gene Luen Yang
• reading Cory Doctorow's Little Brother
• finishing homework (everything's due by May 2nd)
• dreaming of May 2nd
• planning to go see Iron Man on May 3rd
• packing our house; we close on Thursday!! This week! Aack!
• very successfully not reading Eclipse (until May 3rd)
• getting some photos uploaded
  
• Robin and Barney made out?! ZOMG!!!
  
• dreaming of all the things I can finally get to this summer... like having a life.
  

Big Storm

Um... wow.

So, that was interesting. We woke up instantly last night to the oddest, loudest sound--wind, bashing the south and east sides of our house, alternating what must have been ever 5 - 10 seconds. It was so loud, it didn't sound like wind--I've never heard a storm like that. I was terrified--Alex and I leapt out of bed, he managed to grab our pillows and our phones, and we slept (badly) on the floor in the master closet, which we reinforced against storms when we built the house. It didn't seem like that was going to be enough last night.

We woke up in the morning--me groaning about my lack of sleep--to no power. Which I proceeded to moan about how hard it was to find clothes and put on makeup, etc., without power.

Then I heard Alex at the front door talking to a neighbor. The neighbor said something about his trampoline flying into our yard, over our cars, and into the next backyard. This neighbor being a joker, Alex laughed. But the neighbor didn't.

(More photos on Flickr.)
Yeah. This was the guy across the street, two doors down--at least a hundred feet away. There were long divots in our yard, several of them with trampoline springs in them. And then--yeah, it didn't exactly sail over the Edge. It banged into the frame, on top of the passenger side front and rear doors, leaving dents and missing paint, and a few plastic pieces came off the luggage rack (looks like it was just the wind that ripped off my rear wiper blade). And then it didn't just end up in the neighbor's backyard--it took a huge section of their shingles first.

We were lucky--being just two weeks from closing today, there was no more damage to the house than an uprooted bush. And we have comprehensive on my Edge--aka the Magnet for Disaster, this being its third incident in less than a year. And there's no damage at all to our property in Cross Roads--the storm didn't hit Denton nearly as hard.

But on the way in, we saw the transformers down--ripped from their platform, actually. So it looks like it will be awhile before the power's back on.

Dallas news about the storm:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/yahoolatestnews/stories/041108dnmetweather.4d53e357.html?npc

Winds of up to 75 mph, and they're still trying to determine where some tornados in the DFW area touched down. Yowza.

We've Got Two New Nephews!

...Don't know names yet, but the twins each weighed in around 5 1/2 pounds today. That makes for a grand total of five nephews for us--the Hoffman genes run strong to the male tendency, apparently. ;)

Alex is in Vegas for a work trip through Thursday, so I'm trying to be good and get homework done while he's gone. And am crossing my fingers about our current contract on the house during this 10-day options period.

Had a blast last night finally hanging out with my old pal Amy and her man Jaime. Had quite a nice chat--I miss how we all used to hang out once a week--but alas, my schedule won't allow that for awhile. Was good to see the ol' Amos Moses and remember the old times while dishing about the new times. And dude, she hooked me up with some pants--I do love me some hand-me-downs, cheap gal that I am.

Also, I am wearing AWESOME shoes. That is all.

So This is What a Weekend Feels Like

...So, after a lot of cumulative work on the house and my academics, Friday resulted in a contract on our house and a 98 on my third statistics test (a class in which previous ridiculous amounts of studying had only resulted in a 78 and a 84 on earlier tests). W00t!!

Yesterday was refreshingly weekend-ish, as Alex and I unwound for the first time since January:

• watched 3 episodes of "Lost," which we've been DVR-ing and not watching all season
• decided that we actually care about "Lost" again, and are intrigued by time-travel-ish storylines (don't reveal anything--we're not very far into the season yet)
• had yummy leftovers from the previous night's Chinese-delivery celebration meal (we'll miss Chopsticks on 380 when we move)... btw spicy orange beef is awesome.
• shocked ourselves by laughing out loud together... and didn't recognize the sound of it
• ignored the lawn in need of mowing (ha! take that, adult responsiblity!!)
• ran errands at Wally-World... and bought Star Wars toys
• visited our gorgeous 1.25 acres in Cross Roads (near Denton)
• measured the spot for the new house... and perhaps a work building?
• looked at theater-room seating
• had yummy drinks at Sonic
• Alex got to hear his happy Feist song, aka "the Macbook Air song"
• perused Best Buy--but refrained from buying either Wii Star Wars Lego Complete Saga, Wii Smash Bros. Brawl, or even a blu-ray movie
• got oil-based trim paint at Home Depot (meh)
• did not spend over $100 at Half-Price Books... must be your imagination
• (dude, I finally have Watchmen!! and Birds of Prey! and Penny Arcade!)
• rented Stargate SG-1: The Ark of Truth
• decided that it worked really well as an extended episode of the show... but I'm still waiting for Carter and O'Neil to hook up. (Come on, already, it's been a decade and the show's over--give me what I've been waiting for!)

Today, I'm involved in more responsible pursuits--writing/editing a collaborative book chapter and working on some of that ever-present homework. Ah, the joys of academic pursuits... but y'know, when I'm not also running about working on house stuff and what have you, I do love this. It's actually refreshing to have the time on a weekend to do homework... (shakes head).