Days Weeks Months, and the Years Go By

It’s difficult to know where to even start. I’ve been absent for days, weeks, (it feels like months) and so much has happened that it almost feels like too much time has transpired to report back on it. But I’m going to do my best because in the last few weeks life has thrown out a rollercoaster ride of emotions and I’ve been lucky enough to be able to go along for the ride.

There have been some good times, some bummer times and some amazing moments that could never be fully captured in words no matter how good a writer I am. Sometimes you really just ‘had to be there’.

And if you were here for any of them I need to say a HUGE thank you!

June marked an entirely new chapter in my life and sharing it with (you know who you are) you was AH-mazing!

Let’s start with the ugly & work our way to the awesome shall we?

Abrupt Ending

By now anyone who’s even a moderate sports fan (or friends with me) knows that the Bruins lost in their quest for the Cup against the Chicago Blackhawks. It was a tough fought series and I think the B’s really held their own despite losing four games to two. And they lost on home ice. Which of course stings a little bit.

But as exciting as it was to watch my hometown team play some of their best hockey all the way up to game 6 (and as nice as it would’ve been to watch them lift the Cup) I have to admit that I’m secretly glad hockey is over for this season.

The temperatures were getting a little warm and with the shortened season I think this is the latest into the summer I’ve ever seen the boys in black and gold play. I mean, the season starts again in about two months. Plus watching upwards of four games a week was getting a little tough to manage. But I love hockey and especially hard-hitting hockey like the playoffs. But being in Phoenix means 115+ temps and now I just want to be in my pool for a couple months.

Speaking of hockey, some of the off-season changes have me reeling a little bit:

• Andy Ference, my second favorite player on the Bruins and my number one favorite environmental activist is being let go in favor of cheaper defensemen because of the lowered cap. This sucks in so many ways I can’t even begin to say how much it sucks. A Bruin and Boston community activist for seven years, Andy’s commitment to his team and teammates will be sorely missed next season.
• Nathan Horton didn’t entertain any offers from the Bruins before electing to go with his Free Agency status. Which basically just sucks because if ever there was a line that had chemistry it was the Lucic-Krejci-Horton line. We’ll see what this Friday brings during the free agency deadline.
• Pretty much every single core player with the exception of only a few will need surgery for something or other this off season. Bergeron played the last game with multiple issues (hole in lung, broken rib) and others like Horton, Seidenberg, Chara, all have injuries that probably had them playing at less than their optimal selves. I commend them for a job well done under the circumstances!

In hockey years I’d be about 172

In human years I just turned the big 4-0. Yup, I’ve actually entered the period of life where it’s all uphill from here. Yeah I know most people say downhill but that always felt wrong to me. I mean downhill is easier, you can toss her in neutral and just coast. Uphill seems like much more of a battle.

But I digress…

I made a promise to one of my very dear friends, Keith, that I’d write all about the party. Regardless of the fact that I’ve sat down to do just that a few days in a row now, I can’t seem to find any words to do that day any justice. I really think you just had to be here.

Perhaps when I’m looking back in a few years and thinking of the top five parties of my entire life I’ll have the distance from it to write it all out, but not right now. For now I’m going to leave you all with a word cloud that pretty much sums up the overall celebration that started with a big secret Matt concocted months ago, culminates with my crazy party on Saturday June 22, and ends the following weekend when my vacation ended and I finally was able to recover from the enormity of it all.

I love you all!

It’s Official…

I’m finally a paid Writer! I started pursuing my freelance career a few months ago with full force and since then I’ve had five articles published on Yahoo! Voices, three of which I’ve made money from and just last week I was offered a writing position as a blogger for a company that reports on socially responsible companies. Not sure when that starts but I can’t wait!

In the meantime I’m going to finish up my classes and books on how-to write various forms of content and just keep applying for writing gigs as well as submitting articles. My goal is to be self-sustaining from my writing in the next year and I can clearly see that path starting to materialize now.

Cha-ching

At the end of June we refinanced our home into a fifteen year mortgage, something we’ve both been looking forward to doing since we first got the place last year. With the increase in values in Phoenix (it’s a great time to own property here, things are climbing again, steadily but not out of control) we were able to cash-out refi and roll our car payment in plus take a little cash to make some improvements to the efficiency and functionality (plus the beautification) of our home.

In the next couple months we’re planning to replace all of our single-pane aluminum windows with Low-E double (or triple) pane, replace all the exterior doors to prevent gaps where ac sneaks out, spray additional insulation into the attic, replace the pressure valve for our house water, open up the wall from living room to kitchen for an open concept plan and remove the fireplace that takes over the living room, rip out the very poorly installed tile/carpet and put hardwood bamboo throughout, and complete a few other minor things that no one would notice but will make a huge overall impact on efficiency/uniformity (vent covers, doorknobs, etc.).

For the first time in our adult lives we made a good choice when it came to a housing purchase. But it wouldn’t matter if values tanked again tomorrow. We’re not going anywhere and now that we can start personalizing our place I’m even more excited to stay.

Overall June was a pretty kick-ass month around here full of old and new friends and family I wouldn’t have expected to see in my house anytime soon. It really seems like the last three weeks have been a constant party and cause to smile, laugh, and have fun.

And I don’t see any signs of that stopping anytime soon.

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Published in multiple print and online sources, Author, Blogger and Freelance Writer Jenn Flynn-Shon has been writing for publication since 2001. Follow her antics on twitter @jennshon

Sir Matt

There are days when I feel like my husband should be knighted for his awesomeness. Or maybe proclaimed to be a saint. Because most of the time he just can’t help doing the right thing without a single moment of hesitation. Saturday August 18 was one of those times.

Normally this knee-jerk reaction to him needing high fives for being a good-person-overachiever has to do more with the fact that he’s somehow managed to put up with my ass for the past thirteen or so years. But on Saturday Matt just jumped into action like there wasn’t a question about it.

Late afternoon on Friday my Mom came up and planned to spend the weekend. We hung around for a couple hours and chatted before Matt got home. While we were hanging out the movie “It Could Happen to You” came on and we ended up watching the whole thing sitting there in our bathing suits. We were getting in the pool but that movie is so dang cute neither of us wanted to stop watching.

So what does any of that have to do with Matt’s newly bestowed title? Well Nicholas Cage plays the leading man, Charlie Lang, a cop in NYC who never fails to do the right thing when it comes to being a decent human being. His wife in the flick (Rosie Perez) can’t understand how he could have promised half of their lottery winnings to some random waitress (Bridget Fonda). But Charlie doesn’t back down on his promise. He never stops being a kind, generous and wonderful person despite all the crap that gets thrown at him.

The movie came out in 1994. I promised myself after watching it that I would find a guy just like Charlie as the leading man in my own life. Maybe he screws up occasionally, maybe he isn’t perfect, but somewhere deep down in the depths of his soul he’s just a decent and kind human being.

Well by some miracle of fate, I happened to find the real life Charlie and even more odd, they’re both from New York!

On Saturday morning we all discussed taking a road trip to somewhere none of us had ever been before. With Sunset Crater chosen as our destination, we hit the open road and headed north toward Flagstaff. The place was pretty cool, lots and lots of lava flow rocks from the volcano that erupted only about 1000 years ago. But the place we really wanted to see was up the road – an 800 year old pueblo that was mostly still standing. Um, cool!

We made it there about an hour before sunset and headed up the short path to this former house on top of a rock. There were two other groups there at the same time as us (which was weird because it was in the middle of nowhere. On our way up the path the couple with the fancy-pants camera set-up made their way back to the parking lot with a scowl. I wanted to say ‘gee, sorry to interrupt your photo op in this public state park’ but kept my mouth shut. The other group was a mom and what looked to be her two teenage children.

Mom, Matt and I explored the various rooms and the last three people eventually left. We had the place to ourselves so we acted a little dorky and took a whole bunch of pictures. Like this one taken earlier:

We headed back out to see that we weren’t alone in the parking lot. The minivan with the small family was still sitting there. Which I thought was strange because they’d taken off at least fifteen minutes before we made our way back to our car. The daughter was walking towards us. All of a sudden I hear “Excuse me, can you help us with a tire? We have a flat.”

Oh no.

Here’s what it looks like out there:

Um…

Luckily they had a jack and a spare. But this was a minivan, not a car with a trunk or a Jeep with a tire mounted to the back. Take a wild guess where the tire was located? Give up? Yeah, it’s under the vehicle. You have to use this weird contraption that forms the shape of a T and release some cable – done from the inside the vehicle - in order to drop the thing down so you can access the donut.

Now my phone chose this exact moment to die so the most important pictures weren’t even captured. Stupid roaming killing my battery too quickly!

But here’s a free piece of advice for everyone out there – NEVER approach a writer who is currently working on a suspense novel when she and her family are in the middle of nothingness, without another soul around, the Ranger’s station approximately two miles away, and a situation that is way too obvious as a trap because she won’t actually believe all you need is help changing a tire until you’ve already driven away with a donut attached to your car.

Here’s how the situation went in my head – the teenage boy takes the contraption shaped like a T, knocks Matt over the head with it and then kidnaps Mum & me to sell us into some kind of underground slavery ring while Matt lies bleeding out at the end of a dead end street in the middle of the desert.

Yeah, I really gotta find a way to separate fantasy from reality.

Because the actual scene looked a lot more like this:

Yeah, yeah. Perhaps I’m just slightly biased as to the inherent sexiness of my husband in a crisis situation but I think all five of us who were standing there watching him jack up that minivan to replace the tire would agree that he’s pretty kick-ass.

And nary a tire iron swung at anyone’s head during the entire experience. Imagine that!

They thanked us profusely and said “can we give you anything for your trouble?” Now don’t get me wrong, I certainly wouldn’t accept a dime from someone in this situation, we were all just lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, but I thought it was kind of them to offer anyway.

Matt said “all you can give me is the knowledge that you get home safely tonight.” Seriously, who’s in charge of the sword on the shoulder thing? I’ve got your candidate right here.

Happy VD!

Two weeks ago...

What we said out loud

Me: I think we should do Valentine's Day this year.

Matt: Okay.

What was really said

Me: Even after thirteen years together I like to keep you guessing.  Good luck with pulling this one off, buddy!

Matt: She can't be serious???  Well, that's great.  Guess I'm screwed...and I actually enjoyed being married for a while...

There have been a few reasons for not really celebrating holidays like Valentine's Day or our anniversary before.  And they're all my reasons.  As most of you know by now our inner personalities reflect very stereotypical dude/chick qualities.  Only I'm the dude.  Matt is definitely the more romantical one. 

He's the one who used to leave little notes saying how much he loves me for no real reason other than it was a day that ends in a 'y'.  He wants to hug me in the middle of the living room for absolutely no reason whatsoever on a Tuesday at 8:46 PM.  Whereas I rarely remember our anniversary or little things like wearing my wedding ring out in public sometimes.  He wanted "Into the Mystic" as the last song at our wedding, I wanted to be introduced to "Welcome to the Jungle".  Yeah, it’s like that.

I truly felt that if he wanted to give me a present he didn't need the freaking Hallmark Corporation telling him what day I was supposed to get it.  We're supposed to love each other enough to give fattening, expensive, high-pressure gifts all year long right?  It probably sounds like a cop out but I love him every day, he loves me every day.  We don't need to participate in the world's biggest "I don't know what to do but I have to do something so here's this heart shaped locket you've never mentioned you like" holiday to prove our love. 

So what the hell was going on with me two weeks ago?

Well, all kinds of stuff lately has just been swimming around and I caught a little bit of a romantic bug.  It kind of hit me how I used to be super gooey and squishy back in high school when I started pulling out old journals to work on my current zine series.  Jenn ♥'s ________ is all over the place.  No, seriously, like ALL over the place.  Sometimes I even crossed out the first guy and just re-wrote a new guy's name when I fell in love the next time.

"Yes its true what you have heard about me, I fall in love every time..." - Melissa Ferrick

To be fair, I'm not some cold bitch or anything.  No way I'm about to be evil to someone so openhearted, that's not my style!  I'm the one who grabs for his hand when we’re walking down the street; I like to surprise him too.

And surprise him I did two weeks ago with one little phrase about one little holiday.

I knew I wanted to do something kind of gag-gift related for him, but I wanted super squishy cards.  Our relationship isn't all about lace and frills (seriously, even he has limits, he's still a guy for goodness sake!) so there wouldn't be any of that going on.  I went out and picked up a bunch of hilarious stuff while he was in Texas at a work thing last week.

Not hilarious to the whole world type stuff though, everything was an in-joke between him and me type of gift.  I got him an Angry Birds fluffy pig, a pack of playing cards with trivia that have an image from "Saturday Night Fever" on them, and a travel mug that actually plays "Free Bird" through a tiny speaker in the bottom (among other stuff).  I knew he’d love everything because that’s just Matt. 

He cracked up at every single one of them.

Oh, yeah, and we exchanged last night.  Because that's another thing about me, I don't ever wait to open gifts.  Who knows what could happen in 5 minutes, 5 days, 5 months...if there's a gift in front of you why on Earth wouldn't you just go for it?!?

Matt waited until yesterday to go & buy my gift.  He couldn’t exactly be subtle about it or anything, as of this moment we only have a joint bank account and one car.  What was killing me though was that he wouldn’t even give a teeny hint what it was going to be.  On the way out the door we exchanged:

“It’s something you’d never expect from me.”

“Divorce papers?”

*Eye roll, kiss goodbye* “I love you, see you in a bit.”

“Drive safely, love you too.”

So then I was left alone to consider just what in the world he was going to get me.  Left alone for close to an hour.  Torture much?  I thought, maybe it would be a Kinect because we’ve been saying for a couple weeks how we should get one. 

But that just isn’t Matt’s style. 

But he said I wouldn’t expect it from him.

But even still, he wouldn’t get me electronics on VD.

When he got back my mind was spinning but also I couldn’t wait for him to open his gift.  Like I said, he loved them, and I was so happy he did.  And to be honest I was relieved that I’d suggested it then pulled off a totally successful Valentine’s Day for the first time in probably 8 or more years.  Again, like I said, I am in touch with my inner-guy-ness.  I was nervous.

Then it was time to open mine.  He handed me an envelope with “I love you :-)” on the front and I could feel it was a couple pieces of paper.

“Wow.  It really is divorce papers.”

*eye roll* “You’ll like it I promise.”

He didn’t get me a card but hand wrote me a super cute note that will go in my Matt’s notes over the years scrapbook and I unfolded the other piece of paper; the one that matched the cloudy looking yellow envelope.  All I saw was Divinity Tattoo.

My jaw dropped to the ground.  Suddenly, him saying in his note that there’s something I’ve been talking about doing for a long time but haven’t yet, made complete sense.  It was the best damn Valentine’s Day gift this girl ever could have received!

For a while now I’ve been carrying around a drawing that encompasses some very important stuff to me personally.  It is super rough and all but absolutely exactly what I want an actual Artist to recreate into something out of this world good for my first ever piece of body art.

“Wow buddy, you’re brave.  Cause really, nothing says Valentine’s Day like buying your wife some pain.” – Chick in the tattoo shop

I can’t freaking wait.

My Life Would Suck Without You

Today I’m supposed to post ‘a picture of someone you could never imagine your life without’. There is no question that person is Matt. We’ve known each other for twelve years now, (almost to the day in fact!) and it feels like five minutes ago that we met out on that smoking patio at Flagstar.

My life has been forever changed because you’re in it, I really couldn’t imagine slipping on a banana peel and roller-blading into a Sasquatch with anyone but you.

I’ve dedicated a whole lot of time and stories galore to my husband on this blog over the years, so today I’m going to leave you with a link to the post I wrote on our anniversary in September of 2008.

Easier

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Catch up on anything you missed  30 Photos, 30 Days
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Sibling Rivalry

Immediately after posting yesterday’s blog I thought to myself ‘what in the hell have I gotten myself into?!?’ because I read through the list and there are some things in there I have no clue how I’ll make it work.  But screw it, “I’m in the mood to kick a little ass.”

Today’s requested photographic interpretation is:

A picture of you and the person you have been closest with the longest.

This is really tough because there are a couple different people I could pick for this particular category but in the end I really have to go with, my sister.

No matter where we’ve lived or how many months, weeks, days go by in between times we talk to or see each other, we can still share, literally, anything.  We started out, as most siblings do, in bitter rivalry -- mostly prompted by me who didn’t understand what the hell was going on and why there was another kid in the house after I’d had it to myself for so long.  As a young (like, really young) girl she was quiet to my loud, shy to my outgoing, sweet to my rebellion and I called her the “perfect child” in an effort to annoy the crap out of her and my mom. 

Most of the time it worked; but damn if she didn’t have one hell of an uppercut.  My early memories in our first apartment in Arlington certainly involve standing on the black and white, ‘70’s diamond printed sofa, ready to throw down and promptly getting my sorry ass kicked right onto the pea green carpet.  I knew just how to cut you down with my mouth, she perfected how to sucker-punch that mouth to shut it the hell up.

But as time went on we both came to realize we kind of didn’t have a choice but to be related, we were “in it together” so to speak, and suddenly we noticed that we were reading the same books and magazines, watching the same shows and movies, liked the same music, both loved to make up goofy dances and ate the same food.  We both came to appreciate the other for who we were and all of that pent up crap just kind of fell away.

It wasn’t like a switch got thrown and I can pinpoint the exact moment we stopped beating each other up, in our own ways, it just kind of happened.  One day I was watching the bulbous yellow lamp with its 24” shade whiz past my line of sight as I took a dive onto the floor while uttering something about hating perfect things, and the next we were building a fort, that spanned across our entire bedroom, out of all our blankets and listening to a Culture Club record while laughing.

And although maybe there have been some tears and major disagreements over the years, we stopped the verbal and physical hate that young siblings tend to experience and traded it in for a lot of love and common ground.  I’m looking forward to sharing even more with each other during the rest of our years here on this planet and now, as Matt and I make our way to the southwest where she has called home for well over a decade, we'll have more opportunity to do it face to face.

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Catch up on anything you missed  30 Photos, 30 Days
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This Is Serious So I’m Compelled to Post it Twice

A lot of you don’t know but I write another blog, its one I share with a very select number of people and is where I vent about all the shit that really irritates me.

This morning I read an email that seriously touched a nerve and it forced me to write a post that came together in about thirty minutes. After I posted it I reread the words I had put out there and suddenly had wished I had posted it here so more people would know how I feel.

But because it was so perfectly suited to the theme of my other blog I decided not to delete it. Instead I apologize to the few of you who will see this twice but I feel compelled to share it with all of you.

“Chapter Eight -- Outsourcing All the Men with Women?

This morning I tucked in to read my email and opened one from my sister with the subject line “FW: The End of Men”. I assumed it was an internet joke. I was wrong and it turns out, the real joke is going to be on all of us women if we don’t slow this train of alleged progress way down.

As women, we have fought with dignity and pride to claim our equal rights in this world and nothing makes me happier that I am just as likely as a man now to get fired, hold office, go bankrupt or make a million dollars. I personally, in conjunction with my entire gender, am smart, funny, ambitious and headstrong; going after everything I want.

But have I left the men in my life behind as a result?

The article she sent put it out there plainly -- what people are looking for, as far as qualities go, is the ability to communicate and openness, not to mention stillness and focus. Apparently men do not possess these qualities as it further went on to share that, not only are women the predominant gender in the working world now, but that scientists are working on a way to sort sperm for gender selection.

Everyone get out your paint, we’re coloring the world pink. Either that or we're turning it into Gattaca. There really is a fine line and I think we've started to cross it.

I started seeing this trend take hold years ago when a friend and I noticed how many women treated their men like dogs. They assumed he would cheat, so she beat him to the punch. They presumed he would lie, so she lied better. They were tired of being treated as a “lesser” gender, so she dumped his sorry ass, got a job making six figures, a sperm donor, a big house, and a full time nanny to raise her kid.

Can someone please explain to me what the men of this generation did so wrong? I have seen them embrace our ambition and encourage us to make the most of ourselves. I have seen them stay home with the children and be full time dads when their women have gone back to work. I have watched them hold a purse in a store, cook dinner, clean the house, work hard, prioritize the women in their life beyond anything else.

And we somehow find fault in that? Fault enough to all but tell them they are useless? Um, yeah.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not a traitor to progress or anything and I am fully grateful for the right to vote, work, plus all the other stuff that men tried to hold us back from for so long, and we were able to finally take control of our own lives just a few short decades ago. But I think we are letting the power that comes with that very control go right to our heads and using it for evil, not good.

I get it. Men did it too. Way back in the day it was generally men who were screaming ‘Witch!’, ‘Off with her head!’, ‘Woman, go make me a chicken pot pie!’. We were, according to the powers that be (mostly men at the time) inferior and not much more than common help and a baby machine. So believe me, I get why some of us would be a little bit, let’s just say, anxious to put our own needs first.

But I think we missed the point of balance and now everything is tipping way too far over the edge.

There are machines to do heavy lifting, which women can drive. Vibrators for pleasure, which are so realistic these days it is almost scary. Exterminators can kill the bugs, which women are taking on as a career more frequently than ever. The local sperm bank or adoption agency will be more than happy to provide a gal with a baby. Self betterment books teach all of us how to treat ourselves with the utmost respect.

Wow. The more I think about it, the more I realize we are just a gender full of promise. A gender full of possibility for what the future could hold. If women could not only run the home but industry as well, we could surely run the planet, and since we wouldn’t even need men to procreate anymore, we could go right ahead and phase them out completely. And in such a short span of time.

A world full of nothing but women. Just the thought scares the ever loving shit out of me. Women in power? Right on. Women in prominent roles and industries? Absolutely. But women as the only necessary gender? I’m not sorry to say an emphatic no.

There is nothing, not even the love of myself, that can take the place of my husband’s arms around me when he says I love you. I respect men both in and out of power because when it all boils down to it, each of us is just human, regardless of the body parts.

And humans should all be afforded the same rights. Isn’t that what we women spouted back then? Now we are taking back everything we supposedly stood for by rolling right over the other gender that we fought to take it back from.

We are no better than they were back then. Shame on us.

I am an ambitious woman who is trying to make a place and name for myself in this big world and perhaps there are times when I will be doing a lot of that on my own, but to think that means I don’t need the man I married, my male relatives, friends and acquaintances along my journey is just lunacy.

Be careful what you wish for ladies or some day all of us will be sitting around a lonely table, wondering where all the “good” men went, very likely blaming them for their own disappearance.”