Part I
(Part II here)
What a busy, crazy, fast, slow, sad, happy, terrifying, emotional month October was. I've never spent so many consecutive days spontaneously bursting into tears, nor have I ever kept myself so mentally occupied so as to try avoiding a situation until it was too close to ignore. I've known for a while it was going to be a ridiculous month so it didn't come as too awful much of a surprise, and in the end, I'm happy to have things be too busy than not be busy at all. There was a lot of dread coming into it but when it wrapped... just a steady determination that I continue to find as comforting as hugging an old friend. How did October start though?
By watching Scream.
I like to break up this month (and the following couple) with movies that get me in the mood for the resulting event. With this being the time of year to start watching horror movies with such reckless abandon, why not that one? It was after all the first horror movie I ever saw in the theater (more on that in the next Random Things blog), and is just as good as any to kick off the festivities.
But the first big event of the month (of which there were three big "events") was the wedding of a certain miss @caitcd. I was honored to be asked to be an attendant to her on the big day and accepted the position enthusiastically. Even more so because she asked if I would give a speech. WOULD I? Of course I would. Any chance I get to stand in front of a crowd with a microphone and this guy is in!
Now as had been custom to all of the festivities involving the wedding (bachelorette party, bridal shower, etc.), the weather on the day was absolutely perfect. I drove out to a gal's house that lived maybe 15 minutes away with @joleneelizabeth and picked up all of the botanicals involved in the day. We went to Riverview Gardens to then set up and had a pretty good time doing it. Lot's of burlap, dried wheat, sliced tree stumps and several dozen green and brown glass bottles later, the stage was set for what would become one of the best weddings I've ever been to.
Weddings of best friends are difficult for me. They always have been. It's not a question of whether or not I am happy for them because I always am. Astoundingly happy, actually. The difficult thing for me is accepting that things are going to change between us a smidgen. Sometimes a lot, sometimes hardly at all. But there have been friends in the past that completely vanished in their marital bliss and never ended up returning to a good friendship in any way shape or form. And that hurts.
It could also be because I'm single and rolling my eyes a lot, Janeane Garofolo style in "Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion" (spilling beer down my chin and all). Of course I'm not bitter.
But really it was a beautiful evening and my ONLY regret is that I did not remember to ask someone to record the speech. Hindsight is such a bitch sometimes! So I'd like to take the opportunity to write it out here, and you can of course skip it if you'd like but that's your choice. And it's my blog. Boom.
~ * ~
I like to go last at these things... then nobody can one up me. That being said, hello! My name is Sean Parker and I am a very close friend to our bride Caitlin, and I suppose through osmosis our groom Joe as well.
Caitlin and I did not actually used to be friends, believe it or not. And though at one point in time a couple years ago the waiter at a Mexican restaurant thought we were twins DESPITE just checking out I.D.'s, it is a true statement. We always knew each other, and maybe we chatted casually every now and then, but there is a subtle difference between the two. We shared a fair amount of time together in our senior year of high school in a ceramics class and I suppose you could say we... tolerated each other. It was time spent mostly insulting each other. And no, not in a truly mean way, it was solely to award ourselves points based on how harsh the criticism was. We even signed one another's yearbooks that way.
Caitlin probably never thought I'd bring that up on her wedding day, but... here we are. 10 years later and 10 points to me! All that being said, five years went by after graduation before Caitlin and I actually spoke again (thanks Facebook!) and we hit it off remarkably. And over the next couple years we became best friends. Comrades in arms because we were both unlucky in love and came to bond over it.
And I have a point to all of this... stick with me.
We spent all kinds of time together, hanging out and watching Harry Potter, going for drinks and bike rides, having cooking parties, you name it. One day Caitlin's mom Phil told her that if she was ever going to find a man, she had to stop going out on the town with me because no guy was going to approach her while I was around. And we chuckled and "ha-ha'd" about it and went about our lives. Now, almost two years ago I went on this awesome cruise of the Caribbean and Caitlin was gracious enough to come and pick me up in the middle of the night from the Milwaukee airport. We chatted through the drive home, me telling her about the trip and her filling me in on life in Appleton, and admittedly I was delirious from exhaustion and a little land sickness. Then Caitlin broke down and told me something.
"I met someone," she said.
"You did?" I asked, half surprised and half complacent as she nodded.
"Yeah, you know him. We met up at a bar and hung out a few times and he came over and played guitar..." and she keeps talking and all I'm thinking in my head is "who do I know that plays guitar? Not the fact that she's dating someone, no, just "well who plays guitar?"
So I said "Well who is it?" And she chuckled in the way that she does and then spills.
"Joey Kiley." And she says it in this 'tone' as if I'm going to have some sort of dramatic reaction. As if to say I'm a dramatic person.
So I said "WHAT!?" And I remember laughing with her and then proclaiming "So it wasn't enough to just skip hanging out for a week like your mom said, I had to leave the country for you to meet someone?"
Right away I was skeptical. I went in to brother mode, because she is like a sister to me. He's not good enough for you, and I don't know who is but it's not him! But after a few weeks went by, that eroded away. The smiles that were so slight began to grow bigger, the stories about him were filled with sweet things he did or said. Like grew to love and then her eyes would sparkle whenever she talked about him. It got me to thinking about how random it really is to meet up with someone you knew in what was essentially another life. If a relationship didn't work 10 years ago, why would it now?
But then I realized that's what happened with Caitlin and I. Maybe at one point in time, you're just not ready to be close to a person. Maybe when they come around the second time, and you've both experienced some more happiness and maybe some more pain, everything's perfect. It's chemical. Some people are meant to be together in one regard or another and I cannot tell you how happy it makes me that you two came around after so long to make it work. Things like this, like love, have a way of coming full circle. Whether it's karma, fate, divine intervention, a combination of one or a couple or maybe just a little luck and better timing... whatever it is, it's magical. It's contagious. And it's inspirational to those of us still waiting to feel it.
So let us raise our glasses for one final toast. To the people who made it out today, to those that are no longer with us, and most importantly to Caitlin and Joe. May the spark of your love endure to become the brightest of our guiding stars. Cheers.
~ * ~
After the wedding was wrapped I had a week or so to let life continue in however normal of a way as I could muster. I worked on my costume, continued the hard copy edit of my second book (pictured below, yikes), and of course kept the fact that another best was getting ready to move across the country firmly out of my mind. Like I said I was a busy boy in October and Halloween prep was the least of my concerns.
Some big news was dropped on me at work and it was something that caused me to start thinking about the possibility of changing my plans in the future. I kept telling myself I would move to Austin before I was 30 (which seems a hell of a lot closer when I say it now compared to saying it at 27 last summer) to work for West Elm. For those not in the know, West Elm is the more "urban" side of Pottery Barn (we are both owned by Williams Sonoma, Inc.) and is primarily located in larger cities.
The company is expanding at a super fast rate though and the big news that fell on my shoulders is that they're opening a West Elm in Milwaukee. This spring. And suddenly I had a big fat wrench thrown into my plans. It was never in my life goal to move to Milwaukee (no offense to anyone that lives there), but if I interview for the store and get the job? I don't know. Big choices ahead I suppose.
I did get the pleasure of joining Miss T and Mr J for her first haunted house experience. And I must say it was quite the experience for a multitude of reasons. Chief among them being that since the owner of the haunted house we chose out in Manitowoc personally knew members of our group, that gave the people INSIDE said haunted house the go-ahead to touch us. And if you've never been to a haunted house where they actually touch you, it's a whole new level of fuckin' creepy, lemme tell ya.
Other highlights included: me screaming at the tops of my lungs at leatherface, Miss T falling up the stairs and then hitting her head on some wall thing, Amy saying she wanted to pull down the underwear and spank the ass of the guy at the end of the human centipede, and of course hanging out behind the scenes when all was said and done.
Oh, and on the drive home Mr J requested we stop at a Kwik Trip so he could use the restroom, whenever we saw one. A good five minutes later I randomly said "I really like Kwik Trip, now that I'm thinking about it." You may have had to have been there, but apparently it was hysterical and those two couldn't stop laughing at me.
As the end of October drew closer, so did the second big "event" of the month, that being @klreynol moving to Arizona. I won't rehash all of that right now but if you are so inclined, you can read about it here. It was difficult to face the final week of the month with that hanging over me, but I did. And as any good Doctor should, Dr. Frank'n'furter made me feel much better.
And that's what you really want to hear about, isn't it? I won't delay you any longer. Enjoy (c:
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