Study Break

I've been studying since mid-afternoon.  After my weekly work meeting, I sat down to tackle my one online course for the semester, AAS 101, Afro-American Studies.  As I watched my video lectures, I found myself thinking about my sweet, darling Uruites and our forced migrations...but after two video lectures, five loads of laundry, two chapters out of my books and a test tonight at midnight, I decided it was a good time for a study break.

After putting up piles of folded laundry, I turned on the TV. What did I find?  Sex and the City 2 playing on HBO.  Like Julie and Julia, it always reminds me that I need to write and get to the goods as to what has been happening.

I've been struggling getting to my 8:30 a.m. Electronic Media Production class.  As we all know, in the immortal words of my high school band director, Wayne Tucker, I'm a walking tardy.  Last week, the Las Vegas roadways were filled with orange traffic cones, and while they might have been a stark reminder of Uru, well, it was quite the headache as three lanes of traffic were squeezed into one.  Last Monday I left my apartment at 7:45 a.m.  I finally reached the classroom at 9 a.m.  The word "frustrated" didn't even cover what I was feeling, but lucky enough for me, Doc L. just looked at me and said, "Shit happens."  I was grateful for his latitude with me, he really does look over me with care.

This week with Scorsese was its normal fantastic stream of information that I soaked up, reveled in and made a part of my consciousness.  While I might not be crazy about getting pimped out to sell underwriting for the public radio station, he's at least making it palatable and not so terrible to deal with.

Then, there's Ace.  SJP and crew on Sex in the City 2 reminded me how grateful I need to be for him.  While I might not be thrilled with the character of Carrie (on so many levels) it still reminded me that Ace has been not only incredible, but like I said before, he's my knight in shining armor charging up on his jacked-up, diesel-driven steed.

As I've talked about with him before, he's totally in the business of taking all of my old painful memories and turning them into fresh, new, wonderful ones instead.  Yesterday was an amazing example.  Let's go over the backstory, then you can judge for yourself if I've scored one heck of a keeper or not...

As we know, the Ex moved his girlfriend not but a mile and a half from my apartment complex back in the day when he was still living here.  Well, the corner of Rainbow and Vegas Drive has not been the easiest intersection to deal with for me over the last two and a half years and it's because that was her corner.  The Ex could literally drive out of the apartment complex, take a left, drive a half mile, take a left and drive another mile and he'd be at her apartment.  Horrible, right?  Personally I think a guy that would do such a thing as moving his girlfriend not but a mile and a half from his wife should be taken out behind the barn and had the crap kicked out of him, if not worse, but alas, that is what I've been saddled with for a while.  I've allowed his poor judgement and lack of taste have power over me.  Every time I had to deal with that intersection I went around it, tried an alternate route or flat out just didn't go that way.  Well, this is where Ace stepped in last night.

Making bad memories into good ones seems to be Ace's specialty.  He's taken quite a few thus far and made a conscious effort to change my attitude or re-write my memories of specific things.  He's replacing bad things with good and I don't see where there is anything at all wrong with it, in fact, I think it's quite right what he's doing.  On top of all of the memory enhancements or mood gearshifts, he's making me be more active and I can't thank him enough for that.

Almost every day after school for the last week I've been going out to his house and helping him with what he needs to do there, whether it be going through bags of vintage clothes that his father wants to get rid of, then taking them to the various vintage stores around town (a huge shout out to the awesome folks at The Attic in the arts district, go to The Attic if you're ever in Vegas, it's awesome...), to cooking meals so Ace can essentially cool his jets for a minute and catch his breath, even down to just making sure he's had a great foot rub (he loves those and he has the world's most beautiful feet so it's a pleasure to rub them).  I kind of figure that every day I go out and help him, it's helping him create his own safe-haven and his own little bubble of solace much like my apartment is for me.

Yesterday my day was pretty packed.  I had been busy ever since he had cooked me lunch at his house (an awesome, super-healthy turkey burrito) and I had gone to the stylist to get my roots covered (the grey is getting sooooo bad...*cringe*).  What I came back with after two and a half hours with the stylist was a head full of curls that threatened to make me nuts (I stopped doing curls after my last perm back in the very early 90's).  He laughed heartily as I went into a really funny, cynical tirade about crack whores and Tammy Wynette wannabes.  But as I ranted and raved, he sat there with this huge smile on his face, complimenting the country/western, crack-induced 'do on my head.  He liked it and well, I just couldn't do it.  He laughed heartily as a stray curl decided to enrage me by landing squarely between my eyes, then he chuckled harder as I gave it a nasty glare and blew it out of my face like an angry quail.  His laughing made me laugh, and he truly made a nightmare hair day into one to laugh about.  The funnier part of all is that my tirade came one day after the hanging basket incident where a front yard stumble over a set of empty hanging baskets next to his garage saw him punt a couple of not-very-pristine baskets (minus the flowers) and go into an angry, cynical tirade of his own.  Sufficed to say, I came home and put my head under the faucet after my "hair-raising" afternoon and we now have a great example of two birds definitely flocking together.

Sufficed to say, after the week we both had, we agreed we needed to get out and have a honest to goodness date.  Well, as we were trying to figure out what to do, he asked me if I had eaten, and well, I hadn't and he had been munching all day, so he took me over to my favorite sushi place and watched me as I devoured an order of ebi (shrimp), a cucumber roll and a California roll.  After that, we couldn't decide what to do, so we ended up unintentionally at the corner of Rainbow and Vegas Drive at a bar that a friend of his manages.  As we approached it, I started getting a little anxious and since he knows the story with me and that corner, and as he realized what he unintentionally did, he offered to stop, go around it, reverse course, go somewhere else or do whatever it took to make me comfortable again.  As I looked into his panic-stricken eyes, I made an executive decision, I was going to get through it, just like he had helped me get through quite a few really bad PTSD episodes and triggers before.  I looked at him and my voice shook as I said, "Hey, we're replacing bad memories with good ones right?  So, I'm going to try my best not to let it rule me."  We pulled into the parking lot of the bar and went in.  Not so surprisingly, as the evening wore on, the drinks started to flow and the laughter just didn't seem to want to stop. I forgot all about where I was and the stupid corner that the bar was located at that had traumatized me for so long. By the time the really bad karaoke singers drove us out of the joint, I could have cared less where we were, and as we pulled out of the parking lot, I looked at the street signs on the corner, then looked into the beautiful blue eyes of Ace and effectively said goodbye to another bad memory.  I can now drive past that corner, think of Ace and realize one simple fact...

Everything is as it should be.

Is he a keeper?  You decide.

But enough of my study break, it's time to go back to the books, hurry up, finish my studying, and take my test so that I can have the whole day with Ace tomorrow without a care in the world.  Every day with Ace is a very good thing and each day is filled with tons nutritional value that has me leaping over old wreckage and replacing it with happy memories.

*sigh*

Yeah.  Isn't life supposed to be that way?

By the way all you single gals, if you get a chance, find a guy like Ace...you should see him in the kitchen...OMG, he so rocks with a chef's knife, he's teaching me things about cooking, kitchen organization and all sorts of other things that would make any woman swoon.  He's such an awesome cook.  He even grows his own tomatoes that are so floral in taste that he could seduce whole nations with them.  *swoon*  *faint*  But you can't have my Ace, so go find your own, I highly recommend it.

For Ace, I'll post a great song of the day, one I think he needs to hear just as moral support for all the times he's put up with me being moody, Sting's "All Four Seasons."