Finally, a few minutes

Right now I'm in between my practice studio time and my shift at Brews Bros, and should probably still be at the studio. I can only take so much singing at one time, though, especially if I'm going to be working all night long. Now that school has started back up, the place is busy again, all those kids who didn't do as well as they had hoped for in their first semester classes are already hitting the books. And already cranky. Luckily, I don't spend much time thinking about that, because my mind is usually elsewhere.

I've been rushing around, getting things all in a row, so I can be prepared for my audition for Juilliard!!! I'm so excited about the idea of going to grad school there, I can't even really fathom how huge of a deal this could be! I'm not getting my hopes up too much for going there, it would be amazing, but I know that it's a stretch for anyone to get in. Just being considered has been an honor, one that's boosted my confidence infinitely. Of course I have a few other schools that I'm looking into, you know, the whole "safety net" type thing, but you gotta shoot for the stars, right? Now if I could only have a minute to relax. Chad and I are going out to NYC in March, but I have SO MUCH stuff to do before then. I hope he understands that I'm not purposely trying to neglect him, but I have a lot of other things on my mind right now. He seems to be a trooper so far, I just hope that he's not brooding inside.

The last time that I was able to really relax was Christmas. I spent a couple of weeks at home with my family, not doing anything. That was amazing. Something else that was amazing was the necklace that Chad got for me! I love it! He better not have spent much on it, though, because I just got him a couple of the books he wanted and a decent sweater. I'm not sure if it lives up to the necklace I got.

Happy new year

Heather and I weathered the Christmas storm and I went against all my better instincts and the advice of friends and bought her jewelry. I really think Brett made a bigger deal of it than it was. Buying your girlfriend of a few months jewelry for Christmas is not exactly the same as running off to Vegas and eloping, nor is it like being engaged. I didn’t even put a ring of any kind on her finger, since I didn’t want her to get too many ideas. Instead, I got her a necklace – the pendant is an open gold circle with diamonds all around it on a gold chain. I’m sure she likes it because she gushed about it to everybody after we exchanged gifts and I have actually seen her wear it, and not just on days when she knows she’s going to see me. I think I did well.

She spent Christmas with her family and I spent Christmas with mine, although my family bugged me the entire time I was home to meet her, and evidently her family was doing the same to her. I guess meeting the parents is inevitable, and I’m sure hers are great and I know mine are too, it can just add unnecessary stress.

School started Monday – T minus five months to go before I graduate. As much as I disliked my internship last semester, it’s going to be really weird having all that free time. Heather is starting to think about what happens for her after graduation and apparently that is going to be grad school. Not just any grad school...Juilliard. It's not a done deal, but she sent in her application with a demo CD at the end of November and is going to be going to New York for a live audition. She asked me to go with her, so we’re going to take a few days off school and work and head out to NYC at the beginning of March. I’m sure it will be nerve-racking for her, but she is so excited about it. She’s worked really hard and she definitely deserves something like this. It’s evidently an honor even to get a live audition, so she’s already cleared one big hurdle. It’s an incredible opportunity for her, and it really makes me wonder what the hell I’m going to do with my life. And, what's going to happen to us in the future.

I would imagine, though, that the next few weeks are going to be pretty busy for her. She really thrives on that, whereas when I get that busy I just get frustrated and want to hide out in my living room with a bottle of Jack Daniels and my PS2.

A no-win situation

Well, somehow I managed to survive November (National Novel Writing Month, or National “My Girlfriend is Kind of Acting Like a Self-Centered Bitch” Month as I came to fondly think of it) Thanksgiving, my internship and the semester, and have arrived at finals week. I’m not too concerned about finals, but Heather is naturally stressed to the max. She spent all of dead week studying and rehearsing for her recital, which is going to be Wednesday night, and I spent it all working, drinking and eating too much.

Speaking of eating too much, my mom was feeling pretty good around Thanksgiving so she decided to go all out with Thanksgiving dinner. And I mean all out. I kept eating far beyond the point I first felt like I was going to explode, then spent the rest of the day on the couch, miserable and unable to move. A few hours later I got up and ate some leftovers, then returned to the couch. My brother and I were in such a food coma that we were too exhausted to even play video games. It was good to be home, though. I left Sheffield after work on Wednesday (Heather went home on Monday, saying she needed to get out of town to clear her mind and work on her manuscript) and got hammered with my high school friends, then stayed through the weekend. It was nice, and tough to come back, but the little break really refreshed me for the last couple weeks of my internship, which is officially over as of last Friday. I officially learned nothing, but my supervisor gave me rave reviews and it will look good on my resume, so rock on. Now I have just one semester to go before graduation and the real world.

I spent my fair share of time at Brews Brothers last week, trying to see as much of Heather as I could since she was pretty busy when she wasn't working. Wendell and Wyatt have developed what they said was a ‘groundbreaking’ new flavor of latte – egg nog. I was delighted to be the one to tell them that Starbucks thought of it first. Heather told me that Brews Brothers’ is way better and I believe her, but even though I love egg nog I still don’t love latte and I won’t be trying it anytime soon.

Since I’m not stressing out about finals and I have a lot of free time this week because I requested this week off from the credit union months ago, I finally have the chance to get Christmas shopping done. My brother is taking care of gifts for our parents, which is nice, but I still have to buy something for Heather. Brett keeps pestering me about what kind of gift I’m going to get her, but I haven’t really decided. I asked her to make me a list and she wrote down some pretty generic stuff, like DVDs and whatnot, but I’d like to get her something a little more meaningful. At the same time, if I get her something too meaningful it could change the entire dynamic of our relationship. For instance, I really like to pick out jewelry, but if I get her jewelry this soon what does that say? Does a necklace mean more than earrings? What about a bracelet? I could play it safe and just stick to the list, but if I do that then I look like an inconsiderate asshole.

Women. You just can't win.

It's the most something something time of the year

It's getting to be that frustrating time of the year. Midterms, cold weather, and the wonderful stress of holidays and family. This is the busy season for us at Brews Brothers, people walking past our store always stop in for some sort of coffee drink, or, our biggest seller, our specialty peppermint hot chocolate. I don't know how the W's came up with it, but people freaking love that drink. I'm not going to lie, it's a delicious drink. But some of these people act like it's Manna from the Gods. I guess it's kind of like me and the Shamrock Shake. (hmm, I wonder if it's a coincidence that these are both mint-inspired drinks. . .)

To add on to everything, I've decided to do NaNoWriMo. Yes, I've decided to write 50,000 words in one month. Maybe a few of them will make sense. Most likely, though, it'll be a bunch of crap. Why do I do it? Because, it's something that I've wanted to try to finish for a while, and maybe something to kick-start my creative juices. No one is going to read it, I'll be sure of that. Even though that's becoming a point of contention between me and Chad. He thinks I'm wasting my time, that he should have a right to read it, blah blah blah. What makes him think he has a right to read MY crap? I know it's not good. I don't need him to try to give me reassurance that it doesn't suck so hard. And I sure as hell don't need him to tell me that it sucks. Either way for him, it's a lose/lose situation, so really, I'm helping him out by not allowing him to read. But, we'll get into our usual fight about it, once he sees me pecking away at my laptop.

Aside from that, though, everything is going well for us. We're officially "boyfriend/girlfriend" now. I wasn't really planning on asking him in the manner that I did, but it was a really emotional moment that I don't need to get into right now. I think the main reason that I did it was to make it easier for both of us for Christmas. This way, neither of us is confused about if we should get the other a gift. Now we have to.

It's about bed time for me. I'm fighting a cold, I've had a headache for the past week, and my throat is constantly sore. I don't get sick that often, but when I do, my body goes all out. Of course it has to happen this time of the year. It couldn't wait for when I have 3 weeks off next month.

The daily grind

Well, November has been a busy month here in Sheffield. I'm busy getting the life sucked out of me at my "internship," and Heather is participating in National Novel Writing Month, or "NaNoWriMo" as the insiders call it. I had no idea Heather was even interested in writing until she informed me that she would be spending the month of November forcing out a 50,000 word novel. It's about quantity and not quality, so it's not like she's been asking me to edit it, and I've been told that I'll "never be able to read it" because she says it's so terrible, which makes me wonder why she's continuing to write the thing at all, and she says the whole point is to make it to 50,000 words, not write the next War and Peace, and then we stop talking about it.

We're both starting to get sick, too, which is so pleasant.

In news totally unrelated to Chad and Heather...is there any news totally unrelated to Chad and Heather, or "Cheather" as Brett has taken to calling us? Dana refers to us as the "Brangelina of Sheffield." I'm not sure whether that's a good or a bad thing.

My mom is doing well, still doing the chemo thing, but hopefully kicking some cancer ass. I can't imagine how she manages to be so upbeat about the whole thing, but she is. It's like, "Cancer? What?" She's still working full-time. I don't even want to work full-time now when I'm completely healthy.

Back to the grind now - I'm closing at the credit union tonight and my break is almost over. Nothing like going to work after you get off work.

It's official

Last night Heather came over for beers, pizza and Monday Night Football. She hates football, but she’s a fan of beer and pizza and decided that two out of three ain’t bad. She worked until 9, which gave me a little time to study! and take care of some stuff outside. The weather was gorgeous yesterday, so I took the opportunity to rake some leaves and sweep off the patio downstairs. This weekend my roommates are helping me take out the dock, something that should have been done a month ago. I think we’re the only house left on the lake with the dock still in, so we’re going to wet suit up and take care of it on Saturday morning.

Heather showed up about 9:30 and we ate and drank and watched football…during commercial breaks on CSI. She’s crafty, that one. I finally gave up the football dream and we watched the news and Letterman. Then during a commercial Heather turned to me and said there was something she needed to talk to me about.

I panicked. I don’t know what I was panicking about, but I definitely was. My mind was racing, thinking of anything I could possibly have done that would have pissed her off, and I couldn’t think of anything. I’ve been very careful to not do anything stupid lately so as not to ruin the good thing we have going on. I haven’t been to any strip clubs, haven’t gotten so hammered that I ended up walking into my next door neighbor’s house and passing out on their couch (that really happened), haven’t gotten kicked out of any bars for getting in some guy’s face about playing Nickelback on the jukebox…

“It’s none of my business, and you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but I was just wondering if you needed someone to talk to about your family stuff.”

I felt like such a jackass at that point. And instead of being all strong and taking the “I am a rock” approach, as I had planned to do, I broke down. Complete, utter, sobbing, big baby breakdown. I told Heather that my mom had breast cancer, that she was going through chemotherapy and radiation and that she was doing well but it sucks. I told her that it’s really scary because even though my mom annoys the hell out of me on a fairly regular basis she’s also pretty damn important to me, and I don’t want anything bad to happen to her. I told Heather that I was sorry I didn’t tell her sooner, but I didn’t know how to bring it up and I didn’t want her to feel sorry for me and I knew she was busy and had her own things going on and I didn’t want to dump on her emotionally. I told her I really liked her and didn’t want to screw anything up by asking too much of her too soon, especially since she isn’t my girlfriend.

She was patient, and just listened to me. She didn’t seem weirded out by the fact that I was crying. In fact, when I told her my mom had cancer, even she teared up a little bit. She went on and on saying all of the supportive things that I totally needed to hear and then she said, “Do you want me to be your girlfriend?”

I paused. Was this some kind of trick question where she would say, "Haha, you big crying loser? See ya!" But I decided to risk it. “Yes,” I said. “I have wanted you to be my girlfriend for a really long time.” Then I added, “I’ve wanted you to be my girlfriend for a long time but I didn’t know if you felt the same way.”

Heather just looked at me. Then she kissed me. Then she said, “Chad, I would love to be your girlfriend.”

So, Heather and I had one of those adult conversations where we talked about our feelings and were all sappy and got all sorts of things figured out. I feel better knowing that I can open up to her.

And now we’re official. So official, in fact, that before we went to bed we both logged into our respective Facebook accounts and changed our relationship status to “In a Relationship with…” It feels great to finally be able to say that. Officially.

Family stuff

Finally, a weekend off…sort of. I had taken Sunday off from the credit union and only worked from 8 to 11 Saturday morning thinking I could take the rest of the weekend to relax a little, maybe spend some time on the lakeside enjoying what was possibly the last nice warm day until June, and hang out with Heather. That got interrupted when I found out my mom was having a pretty bad day Saturday, and I ended up leaving after lunch to spend the night at home with my family.

I felt really bad bailing on Heather, especially since I gave no real explanation as to what I was doing. “Family stuff” is what I told her, which is the most generic explanation. I hope she didn’t take it to mean “I’m seeing other people.” I want to tell her what’s really going on, but it’s a hard thing to bring up. Everyone I’ve told so far has done the pity thing – “Oh, I’m so sorry” – which I find to be unnecessary; it is what it is. I mean, it’s cancer, and it sucks, but unless you gave my mom cancer, there’s no need to apologize. I know people are just being polite, but I would almost rather they say nothing at all.

I know Heather will be understanding and compassionate and will say all the right things just because that’s who she is, but I’m not sure I want to drag her into it. She isn’t even officially my girlfriend, and I don’t want her to feel like I’m dumping too much emotional baggage on her too soon.

Maybe I’ll tell her, maybe I won’t. But I know I have to say something more than just “family stuff” if I want her to stick around at all.

This week should be hectic at the radio station. There’s a new afternoon DJ (a.k.a. someone new to harass me) starting, and a contest going on where they’re giving away ten coupons every hour between 8 and 5 all week long for a free meal for two at the new sub shop in town. I’m hoping to steal a couple of the coupons for myself, especially after Heather and I ate there on Saturday and I found out that it’s delicious. Since I don’t get paid, I think it’s the least they can do. Since I’m the one actually ID’ing the winners and handing coupons out when people come to pick them up, it should be easy enough to snag a couple.

So, I’m sure I’ll be glad when this week is over, as usual. I’m hoping to make up for this weekend’s abandonment of Heather by taking her to the Architecture in Helsinki show on Sunday night. We’re both pretty obsessed with them at the moment, and Heather seemed excited when I brought it up. Maybe I’ll have figured out how to tell her about my “family stuff” by then.