Chapter 285: La La Lie

Okay, so today wasn’t exactly an interesting day. There isn’t a whole lot to be said about it, which works out well because tonight’s blog should really be dedicated to yesterday, anyway. Last night was one of the best nights I have had in an extremely long time. It all began on Sunday afternoon when I got a phone call from my BFF, Rachel, asking me if I would go with her to see her long-time favorite band, Something Corporate, on their reunion tour. This band had broken up something like 5 or 6 years ago and Rachel had thought that she would never get the chance to see them live again. I likened the whole situation to one of my absolute favorite memories of my life, seeing the Return Of The Spice Girls tour, so I could immediately relate to the situation. She had a friend who had agreed to go with her to the show but cancelled at the last minute because she was moving to Tallahassee or something and she didn’t want to go to the show alone. In spite of my initial reaction to say no, as I discussed in Sunday night’s blog, I decided to go ahead and do the opposite of my initial reactive response and said yes. So, yesterday morning I woke up at 5:45am with my alarm and got myself dressed and ready for the day. My Mom was out of town, so I had to ask my sister to come pick me up for work. I would be lying if I said that a part of me was hoping that she would forget and I would be forced to call in sick for the day. It would have been really convenient if things had happened that way because that would have meant that Rachel and I wouldn’t have had to wait until 6pm, when I got off work, to head to Orlando for the concert, and I would have had more time to prepare for the show. Still, my sister did not forget and I got to work on time. Work was really boring yesterday, honestly. Nothing really substantial happened the whole day. I was trying really hard to write a song all day but nothing ever wound up coming out. Seriously, I spent almost the entire day at work starting songs then deciding that they weren’t very good and scratching them off. It kind of sucked. I was a little concerned all day about my makeup getting funky from being worn all day because I wouldn’t have a chance to go back home and reapply it or anything. All I brought with me to work was an eyeliner pencil and lip-gloss. As is always going to be the case with the law of attraction, because I spent much of the day worrying that my makeup would wear off and such, by the end of the day I found that my eye shadow had worn off quite a bit, so I had to come up with a different plan. While still at work, I took my Urban Decay 24/7 Glide On Eye Pencil in black and kind of smeared it around on my eye and smudged it out so that it looked like I was just wearing black eye shadow. It wasn’t my best makeup look but I was pretty proud of myself for managing this look with nothing but an eyeliner pencil.

After work, Rachel was waiting for me and we immediately hit the interstate to head up to Orlando. Along the way, she played me a bunch of music from Something Corporate, since I was barely familiar with any of their music. The thing I knew about Something Corporate, though, was that their lead singer, Andrew McMahon, was the man behind one of my very favorite albums of all-time, “Everything In Transit,” by Jack’s Mannequin. Jack’s Mannequin was a side project that he did on his own, kind of like Chris Carrabba did with Dashboard Confessional, and I found on the way to the concert that Jack’s Mannequin’s sound is very similar to Something Corporate’s music. It is basically that Jack’s Mannequin is a little more poppy and a LOT more polished. Still, I really enjoyed what I heard from Something Corporate on our way and was getting pretty excited to actually see them in concert. Rachel told me on the way that she really wanted to get a spot on the main floor for the concert. Having to wait until 6pm to leave didn’t really help our chances of managing that but I remained positive about the whole idea of it. Not really knowing the band or anything, I wasn’t all that invested in the whole concept of the show or anything but, once again, I likened it to my Spice Girls experience and recalled how entirely amazing that was for me, so I really tried my best to remain as positive about the whole evening and really focused my energies on having this night be as special for Rachel as the Spice Girls was for me.

When we got to the concert, we found that the place was extremely crowded. It was one of the most crowded shows I have ever seen at the House Of Blues in Orlando, which I have seen many extremely crowded shows at. We immediately headed towards the main floor area but found ourselves stuck near a staircase on a higher level – a staircase which led down to the main floor and was extremely crammed full of people, making it seem impossible to get down there. We stood there for a while before the show started, trying to figure out a way to get from there to the floor. It seemed like we had almost resigned ourselves to the idea of spending the show up in this area when Rachel saw an opportunity and had a stroke of genius. There was a House Of Blues employee selling beer who was heading down the stairs right by us and we noticed a guy following him, so we went ahead and followed them. Of course, being that this guy was selling beer, everybody cleared a path for him and we were able to just follow along. Once we got down to the floor area, we immediately found ourselves amidst this group of kids who were all freaking out about the show, except for one who was just kind of dragged along. He became my “I don’t know this song” buddy for the evening, and Rachel immediately bonded with the rest of the group. So, these became our new concert buddies for the evening. We also made plans before the show started to all go out for food after the show, which is one of those things you always talk about when going to these types of shows but never actually do, I think. So, the show began and, in spite of my not really knowing the music, my mind was pretty blown by the whole thing. It was amazing. These guys do a really cool type of piano rock, and Andrew McMahon does things with a piano that I never imagined. One of my issues with the piano has always been that when you play piano on stage you don’t really get to put on a show. I mean, playing the piano is kind of constricting, much more than a guitar. This guy completely proved me wrong, though. He did all kinds of stuff with his piano – he stood up and danced while playing. At a couple points, he even jumped up on top of the piano and stomped on the keys. It was insane and brilliant and completely amazing. I left this concert feeling extremely inspired. In fact, it kind of made me reconsider my idea for quitting piano lessons. I’m not entirely sure about that yet, though. I am very back and forth on the whole concept of that.

After the show ended, we had agreed to wait outside for the other people in our little group we met so we could all go out to eat. One guy stayed back inside the venue to buy a t-shirt in this big, crazy line, so we were waiting outside for a really long time. Everyone was starving but we were all talking, doing the whole “getting to know you” thing while we waited, which was fun. These kids were all a bit younger than Rachel, who is already a bit younger than I am. I definitely felt a little bit like the “old guy” in this group but they were all really fun, interesting offbeat kids and we all clicked pretty well. So, after a little googling on cell phones, we managed to all agree upon going to an IHOP that was just a short way away from Downtown Disney and headed over there. Our little group of 8 kind of took over this restaurant, which was surprisingly crowded for being around midnight on a Monday night. We were all really loud and swearing up a storm and being generally rowdy and probably obnoxious. Still, it was such a fun time. Rachel and I both agreed after the fact that it was something different and odd to have done but we were both extremely happy with the outcome of it. These kids were all really cool and we were both really happy to have met them and hung out with them for an evening. They were also all really funny and we spent a long time at the IHOP sharing all of our favorite inappropriate jokes, including these kids opening my eyes to a whole new world of jokes that I was never aware of before – Princess Diana jokes. There are all these jokes out there about Princess Diana’s death that are incredibly tasteless and morbid and generally horrible but HILARIOUS. Like I said, it was just a really great night. Somewhere around 12:45am or so, we bid farewell to all of our random new friends and headed back towards Sarasota.

I got home around 2:30am and was feeling really exhausted, having been awake for about 21 hours, but I wasn’t able to go to sleep right away. In fact, I wound up staying awake until I had been awake for 23 hours. This wasn’t the best plan in the world because I had initially hoped to be awake when my Mom got home from her boyfriend’s this morning. You see, one thing I forgot to mention about yesterday during the day is that I got a text message from my Mom telling me that she had just scheduled an interview for a job with some company here in town that would pay her much better than she makes right now and give her much better hours. So, I wanted to be awake when she got home so I could wish her luck and kind of give her a pep talk before the interview. Unfortunately, I didn’t wind up waking up in time for that. In fact, I didn’t wake up until about noon. I text messaged her asking how it went and she said that she felt like it went really well, which I was very glad to hear. I think this job would be really great for her and I really think that she will get it. It is kind of perfect. This company is very similar to the one that she worked for before but considerably more professional. Her schedule, should she get the job, will be 8am-4:30pm, which is perfect because she can drop me off on her way to work, which will have me arriving at work a little early but not enough to make it an issue. Plus, getting off at 4:30pm she would be off in time to pick me up from work at 6pm. That would be kind of perfect. Plus, with that kind of schedule, she would have more opportunity to go to the gym, and if she held out until a little later, more opportunity for me to go with her, which I really need. Plus, it would put her on a much more regular schedule where we wouldn’t have to eat dinner at 8:30-9pm every night, which I know is something that really bothers her. There are several different factors that would make this job kind of perfect for her, so I think it kind of has to happen. So, I am going to make it a point to focus on that moving forward until we find out that she actually has the job! That will take a lot of financial burden off of both of us, which is much needed right now and would be a huge help. It is going to happen.

Aside from waking up at noon, I didn’t do a whole lot today. Around 5:30pm, I received a call from my sister saying that she needed to buy some curtains and random crap like that and asking if I wanted to come along. Once again, something as simple as this, my automatic instinct was to say no because she was ready to come at that moment and I hadn’t gotten dressed or done makeup for the day or anything. So, once again, I said yes. I quickly threw myself together, (although I didn’t put on any makeup and kind of felt like my face was looking a mess,) and emerged from the bathroom to find her hiding in my house trying to scare me. It was nice to see my sister doing some of that random, playful, dumb shit that she used to do back when we were younger. I’m not going to lie, though, our little outing this afternoon made me feel kind of ghetto. First of all, I wasn’t wearing any makeup and I wondered if I didn’t look like some plain white trash or something without it. Normally, I wouldn’t worry about looking like white trash because I don’t have a white trash sort of look, in general, but I was not just going without makeup – I was going without makeup in places like Big Lots and K-Mart. These are two of the last places in the world you would normally ever catch me and I did have thoughts of being concerned about being spotted by people that I know there without makeup. Fortunately, the law of attraction did not come through on that one, thankfully. I will admit that I feel like kind of an asshole not wanting to be seen in K-Mart or Big Lots and it isn’t necessarily because I don’t want to be seen as poor or white trash, per se, but because I feel like I have an “image” of not being the type of person you would spot in those types of places. I don’t honestly believe that I have this type of image so much as that I have this type of image of myself and try to project that image to others. This image is accurate 99% of the time, I commented to my sister, because it had actually been years since I had been to either of these places. In more small evidence of “The Secret” at work in my life, though, while we were at K-Mart, something completely random and perfect popped out at me. Just shortly before this I had been telling my sister about having watched “Rebel Without A Cause” and how I am using “The Secret” to find a boyfriend who reminds me of James Dean. Well, while walking through K-Mart, shoved in a completely random spot near bedding and bath towels and such, she spotted this very large poster of James Dean on one of those cardboard background things that they often package posters in. It is a gorgeous image of him standing beside one of those old school silver trailers, with his shirt all open and a cigarette in his mouth, looking like the perfect image of gorgeous masculinity. We also happened to notice that the price was marked down from $9 to $3, so I snatched it up immediately and took it home with me. It was perfect. I decided that the Universe sent this random poster to me for a specific reason because, after all, if you are trying to attract something into your life you need to have a clear picture of it in your head and different things to remind you of it frequently. So, if I am looking to attract a man like James Dean into my life, having a VERY large image of him staring me in the face when I wake up in the morning and go to bed at night is probably a helpful tool. Plus, I just love the picture. Speaking of James Dean, though, I found out some information about the person I codenamed Mr. James Dean today that makes him seem like a much less plausible option for me to be crushing on. So, I don’t know what to make of that. I think, really, I need to stop focusing on this specific person, or any specific person, and just focus on finding that person who is perfect for me. I will simply focus on James Dean and finding a guy like him – if it winds up being this person I am thinking of I will be happy with it, but I will be just as happy if it winds up being somebody I have yet to meet. I just want to find my perfect partner. I just want to find MY James Dean.

I do have to say, though, that these past couple of days, (going to the concert with Rachel, hanging out with the random people we met, running errands with my sister, wishing well for my Mom, etc.,) have really served to remind me that, regardless of who may not be around right now, (like my James Dean,) or who may be in my life but may not be consummately there for me like I want them to, there absolutely ARE people in my life who are there for me no matter what, who make the effort to see the very best in me and who I can always turn to. There are people who are supportive of me, regardless of whether or not they think I am right or believe in what I am doing. There are people who recognize the greatness that I already have and who are willing to push me to be even greater. There are people who love me. I am so indescribably grateful for this knowledge. I couldn’t imagine anything better to be reminded of in this world. I couldn’t imagine anything greater to incite the feeling of gratitude in me. I am a happy guy, and I’ve got no reason to be anything less. So, with this thought in mind, I am going to bed. Goodnight.