The Predictable Me by MFD

This extremely attractive photo was taken during a hurricane in Wildwood in September 2008. It always makes me laugh. 

This weekend, Dirty Dancing was on twice. Naturally, I watched it both times even though I a) own it and can see it without commercials whenever I want, and b) have seen it eleventy billion times. If it's on, I'm watching it, and you can take that to the bank. When it comes to certain things, we're all creatures of habit. To myself, I am a very predictable person because hello I live this shit, I know what I do all the time.

On our way to dinner Sunday night, I said to MFD, "Can you think of some ways I'm predictable?"

He burst out laughing and said, "You are so predictable in every way." We've been together for 11 years this September. I certainly hope I'm predictable to him in some ways, otherwise he'd be caught asleep at the wheel, you know what I'm saying? Of course, he's predictable to me in a lot of ways too. Cohabitation breeds familiarity.

I was curious what he'd come up with at a moment's notice since he doesn't like to be put on the spot about anything. Here is his minute and a half list of ways in which I'm predictable:

• You are going to write a blog every day or every other day.
• You want me to do chores right away, and you yell at me because I never do them right away.
• You will prepare food for the week on Sunday. 
• You will wake up at the last possible minute you can and still get to work on time.
• You love water with lemon and a lot of ice. You use three glasses in one day and never finish any of them.
• You leave those glasses in bizarre spots where glasses don't go, like on the entertainment center or on the front table by the door.
• You go to Target and get the same things there all the time. You go to Redner's for certain things as opposed to Giant, which you never go to.
• At bars you ask for ice in a glass for your beer.
• When you're going somewhere, you will pack four days in advance at least.
• You will have a very long and lengthy reading list for every vacation and you will finish all the books. 
• You will look for shells on the beach.
• You will always ask me to put lotion on your back and say, "Make sure you get under the straps" like I don't know to do that. 
• Your birthday will be celebrated in grand fashion for a month. 

All of those things are true. The glasses thing cracked me up. I never noticed that I did that, but now that I think about it...

Here's something else predictable: Tuesday sucks. 

The End.

In what ways are you predictable?

Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air...

One of my best most favorite things in life is when everyone is leaving the beach on Sunday and my ass is still planted in my chair because I'm not leaving until Monday.

I hope you all had a great weekend. I'll be heading home from a four day-er spent with the girls at the beach today and will share the weekend that was tomorrow.

Monday. Get down on it.

**Title quote is Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you don't cry at these movies, you have no soul

I know, I know, some of you are not criers. Amanda suggested a blog about having your girl card revoked if you don't cry at certain movies, an idea which I loved. I didn't want to limit it to the ladies, so there are some male friendly movies below. Marley and Me is not on this list, because the mere thought of my dogs dying brings me to tears, so I don't need to watch a movie about it.

These are in no particular order, but number one on my list has to be

My Girl - We saw this on vacation in Ocean City, NJ, on a rainy day. Laura was at one end of the row and I was at the other. In the death scene, someone in the theater was sobbing so loudly, Laura was looking around to see who it was. She looked to the end of the row, and it was me. Loud sobbing in public. Damn you bees.

Terms of Endearment - We were in MFD's parents' basement and it came on. I had never seen it. MFD was like oh, you should watch, it's good. He promptly fell asleep, only to be woken up later by my loud wracking sobs shaking the futon. 

Stepmom - I can't even. I don't even know what to say.

Beaches - A movie about losing your best friend, your female soulmate. Pass the tissues, all of them.

Out of Africa - Just so much loss, of friends, of the farm, of love, of Africa itself. Disregard the colonialism.

Steel Magnolias - Ugly crying at the cemetery scene. Ugly ugly ugly.

Heartburn - This is a punch to the stomach for me, tears of anguish and anger.

The Notebook - I shed tears in multiple places, for multiple reasons. Some may have been because my eyes were burning over Ryan Gosling's hotness, but most were over the story itself.

Dead Poet's Society - O Captain My Captain. Just as they jumped up spontaneously, my tears burst forth spontaneously.

Amageddon - Why can't they all live? Sacrificial death = fat tears.

Rudy - Tell me you did not shed tears when the entire Notre Dame football stadium was on its feet chanting Rudy. I am tearing up just thinking about it. Perseverance and hard work paying off in triumph triggers tears.

What movies turn on your waterworks?

Linking up for Random Wednesday and Whatever Wednesday

I didn't marry my best friend

I always hear, see, and read, "I'm married to my best friend."  It's all over wedding stuff, like it is a given that that's what's happening - you're marrying your best friend. If your spouse  is your best friend, that is wonderful - I'm not bagging on you in the slightest so don't get your knickers in a knot. I do think in some respects it's become cliche - people feel like they're supposed to say it. Enter moi. I decided it was time to come out of the closet - there are marriages in which the wife does not consider the husband her best friend, and the husband does not consider the wife his best friend. Marriages like mine.

MFD and I have been friends since we were 13 years old, which is 23 years now. We've been together for 11 years. We have literally grown up together. He has always been and continues to be a very good friend of mine, but MFD is not my best friend and he never will be. He's my husband. I think that title bears enough weight by itself. My best friends? They were the people standing behind me in the bridal party line.

I do not want to tie the same person into the role of husband and best friend for a whole host of reasons, one being what if something happened? Then I'd lose both my husband and my best friend in one fell swoop? And myself and my mind in the process, obviously. I got married with the intention of it being forever. Forever is a long time, and if something happens to him before me, leaning on some close friends isn't going to cut it. I will need my best friends for that.

I also need my best friends to

• See movies like The Notebook or Bridesmaids
• Discuss the 50 Shades Phenomenon 
• Consult on female body issues
• Agree to take care of my chin hair if I should become comatose
• Take my facebook page down immediately if I die so it doesn't become a morbid visiting place
• Sound off to someone without them wanting to fix it
• Sit next to in pedicure chairs
• Drink wine and let loose with in the afternoon
• Let my mean girl out to roam around without fear of judgement
• Just be unguarded with people who see me for me and not me as a wife 
• Tell me when the dress looks bad
• Bitch to when my husband is driving me fucking nuts and know they're not going to hold it against him when I get over whatever it is

Let's face it...some things are just better done or discussed with your girlfriends. Especially those WTF is it with men in general situations.

My best friends have comforted me through many things, talked me down from many ledges, had so many serious and frivolous conversations with me, made me laugh until I snort, and just been a source of a criminal amount of fun and tomfoolery in my life. They are the sisters of my heart. I don't always need to explain how I feel to them because they just know.

Sure, MFD makes me laugh, and we have fun, and he's there for me. He is the most important person in my life, but he is not the be all and end all. I don't think that makes our relationship any weaker. Sometimes I feel like there's a WHAT? He's your spouse but not your best friend too? stigma, and to that I say that this is a choice for me. As my life goes on, I will continue to cultivate my relationship with my husband, and my relationship with my friends. Both roles are critical and integral to my happiness.

I don't want one person to be my everything unless that person is myself. At the end of the day, I stand on my own. On the rough days, I'll be propped up by my husband on one side and my best friends on the other. It's what works best for me, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I am a Patriot.

As Americans, we can argue until we're blue in the face over political hot button issues that divide us socially and economically. On the eve of the Fourth, let's step away from the lines that partition us and move towards the middle. Let's agree to stop letting the government define what America is for the weekend.What makes you an American has nothing to do with who's calling the shots on Capital Hill. What makes you an American comes from inside of you. It's a way of being, an outlook on life.

Whatever echoes in the beat of your heart, the thing that makes it hard to swallow and runs through your blood when you hear the national anthem makes you an American. The drive to work hard and be the best makes you an American. The willingness to help someone in need regardless of who they are makes you an American. The desire to DO instead of watch makes you an American.

When unthinkable catastrophes happen, Americans come together regardless of tremendous individual differences to stand united against whatever it is, be it people who fly planes into buildings, super storms that wipe out towns along the northeast coast, people who place bombs at finish lines, tornadoes that level towns in Oklahoma, or a man who shoots up a school in Connecticut in a fit of madness. The American people will not be defeated regardless of what other nations, mother nature, religious extremists, or even individual citizens do on our soil.

You can't break us, we murmur. We are Americans, we declare. We will get through this together, we say. What can we do to help, we ask.

That is America. Don't let elected officials, your beef with them, their actions or inaction turn you against your own country, because they are not what this country is about.

This song is one of my favorites, and it always makes the hair on my arms stand up a little. It does a good job of saying even if you aren't always happy with who's running your country, some of the things happening here, or some of the people living in it; you can still really love the shit out of it and think it's the greatest country in the world.

And I ain't no communist 

And I ain't no socialist 

And I ain't no capitalist 

And I ain't no imperialist 

And I ain't no democrat 

Sure as fuck ain't no republican either 

I only know one party 

And that is freedom 

I love my country. I'm thankful to live here in the birthplace of the nation every day, but especially during this most patriotic week of the summer.

Enjoy celebrating our independence this weekend. Say thank you to those on our borders and on the ground in foreign lands protecting our way of life. Don't blow anything up with fireworks and don't drive drunk.

I'll see you back here on Monday. Four day weekend, holler at me.

Happy Fourth, 'Merica. From sea to shining sea.

Linking up for Wednesday Gratitude, Random Wednesday and Whatever Wednesday