Love, actually.

It's been a little while, as you can see, since last I put proverbial pen to paper - or fingers to keys....

The Christmas Season has passed for the Anonymous Household. My Family has made me feel more loved and special than I have in recent years this Christmas. I can't remember the last time I felt so good. This year has brought each of us closer together, we're each trying to stay connected through our busy schedules and being together this year has just been so rewarding and nice.

I think one thing that hasn't hurt how I've been feeling is Gem. We've been texting pretty consistently everyday!!!!!! I feel like I am floating above the ground when I am with him... I like him SO much and I am exceptionally excited about having him around.

Recent Travels

Last weekend I went to visit my marvelously talented and fantastic friend in Atlanta and got to hear the beautiful concert at Spivey Hall of the world famous Spivey Hall Children's Choir. If you should ever have the chance while in Atlanta to go and hear them or if you happen to be in an area they are touring in, please support them and their fantastic artistry.

on a slightly different artistic note,

I also got to see a show by Barry Brandon supporting his organization The Heart Foundation at the Village Theatre in downtown ATL. The show was very good, with musical selections written for Barry by a long-time friend Jose as well as little snippets of his life story and personal interest in helping the families of young children struggling with cardiac problems. Recently in the documentary the Tin Man Project, Barry is a man that has experienced 8 heart surgeries himself since his youth. It was a very touching and interesting show worth seeing!!!

<3 AA

Christmas time is here.

My very good friend started her blog today, which made me think, "why the hell am I not saying anything in my blog!?" True, my posts are intermittent at best, but I recently have had "a lot of feelings" a la Mean Girls school therapy session.

I suppose divulging all should happen more organically than just ...diving in, I am feeling a little bit of mental mold growing, my brain seems to be wrapped in fuzz lately. What I can say is that some things have happened recently, both good and bad that have shown me, more than ever that life is worth living and God is real.

I was enrolled in 21 hours this semester and very nearly crashed and burned, but grades posted Wednesday and I managed to make several A's, A-'s and only one B. I made the Dean's List for the first time in ages. The last month of school would not have been possible without the provision of God. The last two weeks were especially tough, with tests, papers and presentations in each of my seven classes, plus the beginning of things for some projects in the spring made for hectic and stressful time. Around every corner God was there to soften the blow of what otherwise could have been a brutal end to the semester, deadlines were extended, grades liberally adjusted, etc etc. Truly kindness and understanding was in the hearts of all people involved.

I have met someone, someone different, special and new.... that I am, in fact, very excited about. We'll call him... oh, I don't know... Gem, and yes, it's a guy. My life has been full of struggling with sexuality and trying to reconcile the strong feelings I have for my Lord and Savior and being attracted to men. Most people find it very strange that I believe in God at all, but since I was young I found myself being very aware of the presence of God and His love and simultaneously aware at puberty of my extreme attraction to men. We'll have that God convo some time soon, promise. In recent years I have kind of put the pieces together in a creative and personally functional way that may or may not be supported in the least by theology but for not it seems to work for me. (Tangents pervade posts without sufficient previous literature... ) So Back to Gem, so named for his perfection and value as a person.

BACK STORY:
Gem is a few months older than I am, a thin wisp of a man who is unassuming, kind, quiet pensive and truly beautiful. We met several months ago at a bar, he asked if I was dating a specific person and I, living the perpetual life of a bachelor, of course said no. By the end of the night I got up the courage, possibly inspired by the amount of Red wine I had, to ask him why he was so interested in whether I was with so-and-so. He said something about how so-and-so wasn't "on my level" which sounded odd but I think it was a compliment, I probed a little more for what I really wanted to hear him say..."okay, I think you're attractive and I was just wondering why you'd be dating someone like that" - to this I had already mentally constructed a reply that would consist of ten digits on the back of an old receipt out of my wallet. I executed the plan, smiled and parted. I left the bar having given my number to someone for the first time, and so I began to wait. After he didn't call for several days I thought I should go by, but ended up busy in other projects and when I finally did go back he was off for the evening. I counted it as a draw and went on with life.

The Twist:
Just a few weeks ago I had just gotten to my parent's for Thanksgiving with cats in toe (that's another good story worth telling) to get a text later that evening from one of the guys that I went out with the fateful night I dropped my digits on Gem. They said he has gotten a new phone and lost all his contacts and wanted my number again. I gave the go ahead and on Thanksgiving day got a text from Gem and from there it grew rather quickly into something a bit serious. (Apparently he had a boyfriend and that's why there was no phone call, though they were on the rocks and I stuck in his brain the last few weeks of their relationship...whoops, sorry ;) ) We hung out after T.G'ving only to plan another hang out later that week.... which lead to another and another until we were spending pretty much all of our free time together. We kissed for the first time on the ninth, and other than making out have kept it pretty low key for which I am patting myself on the back. He makes it very hard for me to keep my hands off of him.

I like him a lot, that sounds like such a childish and immature thing to say but it's true. We haven't known each other for very long but he just feels ...right. Not only is he insanely nice but he's sexy and he's someone that I am not only attracted to physically and emotionally but intellectually, he covers all the bases with his quiet elegance. All of my previous relationships have been made up of me being the "giver" that I am and trying to find the feelings that the other person had for me. As I have gotten older I realize the complete inaccuracy of that mentality and see that it only hurts everyone involved, but it is my past and I embrace it. I, for the first time, feel totally invested and excited about Gem and I making something together.

Merry Christmas to me?? :) I think so.

(P.s. This is freakishly similar to my parent's story... they met in their twenties, my mom just graduated from college, my dad lost her number and they ran into each other again a few weeks later and really hit it off and now have been married for almost 30 years... hmm... omen? I'll just go with I am excited and am celebrating Christmas with a little extra zip in my skip because of this very excellent creature in my life, Gem.)

Some people have things to say that are worth listening to :

I really like this guy and what he has to say and not only is he smart but he's nice to look at!!!

check out his most recent post here

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Speaking of nice things to look at, last night I watched the movie Trick for the first time with Christian Campbell wow, what a nice looking guy. Can I have one please?

best to you all,

-AA

Long time no talk

So, this past few weeks has been extremely busy with school and other things but I thought that this story was worth recording for myself and others:

The weekend before school started I came back to town from visiting my parents and was getting settled when, as it often does, it began to rain. Well, I thought that everything would be okay because I had surge protectors on all things important enough to need them so I waited out the storm, checking email and playing on the computer and then I started watching television.

Well not long after the transition over to the boob-tube the lightening seemed to get ever closer to my house. (Mind you my house was built God only knows when... and has no central heat or air... you know... THOSE kind of houses) So the lightening strikes, literally in my front yard, the rain is pummeling my poor decrepit little house and the electricity goes off for 30 seconds or so, then comes back on. MY television comes on and the picture appears but no sound comes out of the speakers... two summers ago I lost my laptop to a thunderstorm... my LCD tv surely couldn't have met the same fate!? I put in a DVD, just to see if it might be the cable, and the DVD picture and sound came out just fine. So I decided to call the cable company, I stayed on the line listening to the same awful looped 30 second piano music clip for almost a half hour then finally I got a representative. We worked on the problem from every angle until finally he gave up and scheduled an appointment with the technician for the following day. I check everything else out while I'm on the phone with the awesome hold music and make sure I unplug my computer and other things, juuuust in case. Not too long after the stellar conversation with the cable guy another bolt of lightening comes desperately close to my house and again I am in darkness. I waited for a little while and the power didn't come back on... I realized then that I had nothing that resembled a flash light in my house... so I fumbled for a vanilla scented candle I have in my room and used that as a light source until I remembered that dear old Grandmother had given me a battery powered Coleman lantern.... where it was, I had no idea. It's not often that one needs such things as a Coleman lantern, even in a city like Tallahassee. I finally found it in the upper most corner of a closet that I rarely go to and I prayed that it would light up. No luck... I jostled it around a bit and finally it came to life, casting a dim but helpful light. By this time it was beginning to get hot and I thought it would be intelligent to open a window to let the humid hot air from outside blow through the house.... Sauna City in no time, my friends. I sought out my electricity bill to call the help line and inform the kind computer receptionist of my plight. after about 15 minutes of menus I finally got it to understand I was experiencing an "outage." I texted a few friends to see if they wanted to eat something or just hang out because my power was out, by this time I had roped my friend D.P. into going to Fridays with me, they roll the streets up early here in Tallahassee... especially on sundays and it was 930 or so, so I went to see him for a little while and then we ate until about 1:00 and I came home to find my power back on but my router and modem were fried, cool! Just in time for classes. I made plans to get a new modem the next day and just limp along without a router.

I go to class and I am supposed to have my books already because there is homework due the next day. hooray. I get through class and hit work for a few hours and then walk home to find that there is a giant leak in my front yard. I turn off the emergency valve and call the city, I get to talk to the electronic receptionist for yet another hour until I finally get a real person, who then transfers me to a department that says I need to call my land lord because it isn't the reponsibility of the city. cool. call the landlord, no answer leave a message. head to the book store and find out that I have just enough money in my account to buy the books but I can't access it via debit card, I have to withdraw it from an ATM or I'll get an overdraft fee... even better... I go outside of the bookstore and find that the atm is out of order, they close in 15 mins so I can't go somewhere else to get money and come back. I ask the girl at the counter if she'll hold them for me and she says they will, so I leave and make arrangements for life without water... I get my friend JB to let me shower at his place the next morning and then I went to wal-mart and big lots to buy a few things my room mate decided to use and not replace before fleeing the country for the summer... good guy, bad room mate. I got a new modem and a new surge protector as well as an hdmi cable to see if that'll fix the silent tv. I fix all the electronic equipment issues the hdmi cable resolved the perma-mute tv, and yet another call to the crazy cable company who was "experiencing waits of an hour or more" to ask them to connect my modem to their network and to cancel the appointment the following day.

Got up at 7 the next morning to go shower, go to the bank, buy my books, and make it to class on time, none of which happened like I planned. I showered when I wanted to be at the bookstore and ended up having 15 mins before class to buy the books and park my truck.

I get to the book store and walk at a pretty good clip to the front of the store where my books are supposed to be. There are about 5 people standing behind a counter doing little to nothing and one register that is open. A girl manages to make it to the register right before me and commences to pull out 10 books from her bag, she says to the attendant "I wanna know how much y'all buy these back fur" the young lady at the counter seems unimpressed and lazily scans all the items telling the girl what each one is worth to the store. After scanning all of them and taking a grand total of 12 minutes, the girl on my side of the counter decides she "don't wanna do dis" so she takes the books back. I kindly ask the attendant for my books and she says they are in the book department. I think I almost flipped out then, but breathed a little and began to walk away when I thought... best to check before I walk all the way upstairs to the book dept to wait in another line and be told they don't have them. I nicely ask the girl if there might be a possibility that they are behind the counter in a bag marked for me... she thinks a second and asks my name and then says... "oh, yeah, they're back here..." {....really!?} She asks if I have already paid for the books and I think about saying yes... and then fold and say that I haven't and pay every cent from my bank account to buy them only to run out to my car and think that I can park in a metered spot but wait, I gave all my change to charity when I was at Wal-mart... coool. I drive home and walk to school arriving 5 minutes into class where everyone is taking a quiz. It was an awesome couple of days, but I made it!