There's sand in my bra and this old man won't stop calling me 'baby.'

So I have this box in my closet, under the now empty coffee can, thats full of things. Its a skate shoe box bursting with letters, pictures, mixes and ticket stubs. Sometimes when I'm in a bad mood I'll revisit those things. There are letters from old clients and pictures they drew for me, letters and poems from ex-boyfriends, favorite pictures and letters from my grandma. I look back on all of those things fondly. Those things remind me of where I was and where I am now and a lot of those things are the things that helped me get to where I am. I have no desire to go back to those places though. Funny thing about ex-boyfriends, they are an 'ex' for a reason. I like knowing that I have grown and changed throughout those relationships and will still continue to in my current relationship however I feel like there's something very different about this one. Another time for that though.

So I'm out of my funk, it was short-lived which I am thankful for because I'm nearly intolerable when I'm like that. I think I just needed that release that I got this weekend and some very patient and understanding people helped that along as well. After a relatively productive but long work week I left at 12 on Friday and got a much needed haircut. The entire time the girl told me I needed to come to the Paul Mitchell school with her because she loved the dye job I did on myself. Years of practice on that one hah though I'd probably make more money cutting and dyeing hair. I went swimming with Jill, Jason and the kids before getting ready to go out for the night. The boys and I ended up downtown at the Flying Saucer (I would marry that place if I could) and I tried a few different beers that were amazing and effective. By the time we left there I was feeling ok with going to the stupid trailer park bar on Broadway. We sang along to Journey and got rubbed up against way more times than I'd ever be comfortable with, ever. A pitcher of disgusting, cheap beer later and I found myself dancing around. We then stopped by a friend's apartment and I didn't get home til almost 4. I'm still sleeping with a lamp on which is kind of sad and frustrating but every time I go to bed I think about a stranger being in my bedroom. However, after much cleaning on Saturday for HOURS I realized that my utility knife is missing from my coat closet. Weird….Now if someone came in the window why would they need a utility knife? Unless maybe they had keys and then decided to cut the screen to make it look like a break-in. My spidey senses are telling me it was maintenance. That and they were in my apartment when I was in South Carolina to fix the running toilet. Odd. The detective will be receiving a phone call first thing tomorrow. Anyway, after spending nearly the entire day in my apartment I was getting stir crazy and needed to go be around normal human beings. Normal is obviously relative, I don’t know if any of my friends are ‘normal.’ I went over a friend’s to play games and not drink since I was in kind of rough shape that morning. We spent a few hours playing games and wrapped it up because everyone had to get up for church the next morning. All of my Nashville friends are now church-goers. Talk about odd man out. I wasn’t quite ready to go home so I met some friends at the redneck hang out in Hermitage. The Rusty Nail. The cool thing about this bar is though is that during the summer they have sand volleyball outside off the back deck. Being sober and ready for fun we roped in some people to go play. There was this insanely drunk 40 something man that was on my team that insisted on calling me baby, or baby girl after every play. It looked like high school gym class volleyball though a few of the guys were pretty good. It was still really warm outside for 1 a.m. so I was sweating and running around and diving for the ball resulting in sand settling on every part of my body. I even found sand in my back pockets when I changed after getting home. We played til the bar closed and Brandon and I insisted we get slushies at the gas station. We ended up going to two separate gas stations until we could find a working machine and hung out in the parking lot and chatted for quite some time. I got home again at 4 a.m. and slept like a champ. I slept in and it felt amazing. I spent the earlier part of the day scrubbing floors on my hands and knees and taking Roxy (my sister’s pup) for a walk. I don’t know which one of us were more sweaty or tired by the end of it, I wasn’t panting quite as heavily as she was though. Now I’m sitting at Café CoCo still sweating (so much for showering) and eavesdropping on a conversation between two girls. The part I heard was ridiculous.

Girl One: “People say pretty girls get a lot of shit for free, and we do, but there’s a lot of shit we put up with too.”

Girl two: “uh huh”
Girl One: “I mean, it’s harder than people think, I mean ugly girls just need to know how to cook and they are fine. I can’t do that.”

Now this girl wasn’t ugly (so maybe cooking isn’t a skill she needs apparently) but I don’t know if I would describe her as pretty. You didn’t need to turn away when you looked at her face at least. Maybe that’s what she meant by pretty. Or maybe I better get in the kitchen. Ha.

I am very super extremely excited for next weekend. Four day work week, field placement interview and then freedom for 3 days with amazing people.

Have a wonderful week, I know I will J