The Girls.

There is a girl.

A girl who reads tiny canvas-bound novellas with the same sense of 

satisfaction you'd get from 

smoking the thinnest of Capri cigarettes in the sun. 

A girl who once whiled her time away on patios, surrounded by friends and wine and sunsets and brunches.
She'd spend her last twelve dollars til payday on a glass of wine plus tip.
Overdressed, she kissed boys, wore in her hair intricate braids, often with a flower tucked behind her ear.
These were the things, she felt, that defined her.
She knew most of those who walked past her on the patio, but paid little attention.
She knew coffee shop owners and restaurant chefs, she often felt as though she knew everyone.
She used to wonder what the person she would eventually fall in love with was doing at that exact same moment as she was sitting on a wicker chair on the sunny side of a patio.
She wanted love so badly, but knew not where to look for it.
Though, she felt like she knew exactly what she was looking for.

There were other girls; girls all dancing on the tips of the same waveless ocean, all living within a skipping distance of one another, all doing the same to some degree or another.
Wanting love, finding love, fighting love.
With carefully applied mascara, and high high heels, they all lived out their terrarium lives as satellites to one another, summer after summer.
Summer girls.
Patio girls.
Girls with Flowers in Their Hair Girls. 
Walking the same streets, knowing the same people, drinking the same wines.

The Girl, the First Girl, when she finally left the patios, when she finally found the love she was looking for, she found herself in a new world, a very different world.
No more skipping distance, no more ocean.
Though, her world was always a world of Flowers and of Books, it now included of Loved and of Home too.
No longer did it include tinny songs playing out of a tiny radio, or half hungover days off two dollar wine.
No more No Bathtub. No more No Couch. No more, I've Got To Get Out Of Here while fearing she never would.

No more, What is he doing though I don't know him yets.
Now there are far fewer patios, & none that well worn or particularly familiar. Her closet is still filled with beautiful dresses, though now she has far fewer places to wear them. Overdressed is a rarity now, but occasions to do so are usually filled with more meaning than just 'Saturday'.
A new world where she was still at the center, but with far fewer satellites.

The other girls left that Tiny Town too; some physically moved away, some just simply moved on.
One got married. One moved to the mountains. Two moved to another beach town up the way, to an ocean with waves. One dove headfirst into a job that took her off the patios and off to Chicago on a whim.

So, no longer did they all dance with their toes dipped into the same foam of their waveless ocean, no longer did they orbit the Girl; all pulled together by the gravity of a small town with one sunny main street.

Because you see, all the girls, they all grew up.

Rule No. 1.

Forever in Pacific Standard Time.

I've been thinking a lot about the idea of 'Forever'.
Like... Forever.
Not 'a couple years from now', not 'after the summer'.
Of until-you-or-I-die-Forever.

And how long that seems, for something that is not, in fact guaranteed to be any length of time at all.
My brain has trouble even conceiving what Forever is; like when I look out onto a sky, so blue, and just imagine infinite space.
Space going on out to forever.

Forever - Good, Bad, Always. 

I have a lot of fears about change, while maintaining an openness to the fluidity of life - Its weird, I know things change, good things and bad things, and usually I adapt as they come, but still, I fear change.
I fear fear Fear a day where Jim and I no longer see eye to eye, or things we used to finding endearing - like my singing voice - are just shrill irritants.

I have no model for Forever, I don't have a personal grasp of what that looks like.
The only maps I have is what falling Out of Love looks like.
Memories of my parents fighting outside the car window, of the realization that they no longer Love each other. Memories of two parallel lives being lived between the Ex and I, like a brother and sister who roll their eyes at one another and love each other only because they don't see any other alternative, until one day they just can't even do that anymore.
Of couples breaking up and hating each other afterward, of 'What was I thinkings!?'

I fear forever, because I have no idea what to expect from forever; and I can't even say with certainty that I believe it exists.
I can't imagine not being with Jim forever. 

And not just the days of 'We're both wearing Prada while hitting up the Farmer's Market and drinking locally sourced beer and eating artisinal waffles' of this new-ish partnership. While I like the 'How Perfect on The Outside' everything is right now, what I want is the Forever of him sleeping next to me while I read, of him waking me up before he goes to work, of just loving being next to one another; of the moments in between the aforementioned Prada Parade*, when we are at home or in the car and we simply just Like one another.

Oh my God, that's it: I want us to Like each other Forever.

I said that to him last night, at dinner. We were capping off a really nice do-nothing but do-quite-a-bit weekend - of nice lunches and crossiants and lazy afternoons and wandering through bookstores, and we were at dinner at this kind of bougie gastropub, and I said exactly that to him, 'I like you.' And he responded with, 'I love you, too'.* .

'That's not what I said. I said, I Like you. I like being with you. Just being.'

To which he agreed, and he understood.

*How many more times can I insert We Were Both In Prada? 

I know, I know. 

Though, honestly, there are shirts at Target that 

cost more than what I paid for my Praaaada, but still. 

We Were Both In Prada.

Forever is a long time, and the commitment of Loving someone, through good and bad and everything else that can possibly span that spectrum, I think I can scavenge up some have maps for that.
I've known what the commitment of loving someone no matter what, no matter how many eye rolls I hold in (or don't hold in) looks like.
But I want to Like one another as well. 
And you know, sometimes I have a hard enough time liking myself enough, that I guess what I'm afraid of is not being Forever Likable. Of my singing voice turning irksome, of my disdain for cleaning the kitty litter (as in: I do not do it) becoming 'An Issue.' Of the same happening to him in my eyes.

All I know is that I want Like, Happily Ever After.

And the Owl Said, 'Who?'

Time is a funny thing. Enemy or friend, time passing never ceases to shock  me.
I cam across an old picture of myself, and it saddened me.
Its only about four years old, but still, the girl in it - she's not Me.
She has a whole other set of Hopes and a different view of Happiness.
She sees things in her future that I now do not. For better or for worse, she had no idea what was coming. It was taken a year to the day that my relationship with the Ex ended, on the Fourth of July in 2009 and I don't even recognize her.
That Dori hasn't existed  for many many years. And for many reasons, and in some ways it makes me sad.
Not because I miss him, but sometimes I miss the naivete of that life.

In that moment I was so happy.

Update: I hopped in the shower right after I wrote this, and remembered something very important. Yes, in.that.moment I was so happy, but that girl - that girl right there - had her own set of doubts and unhappiness too. It was just a different set. A lot of it having to do with being unsure about her choice in partner (though, never his family) and a general feeling of stagnation in her own right. So, no, I may not look like her anymore, or celebrate the same ways, or stress about the same things, and yes, I do envy her naivete; and yes, time is a funny thing, but it is time passing that is an even funnier shaped cloud.

I imagine Kate Moss thinks the same when she sees such photographs. 
Though hers are much more glamorous.

Retrospect Ain't Just 20/20.

A new year. Twenty Thirteen.

Jeez.

Going into a new year feels good, to be leaving Twenty Twelve. 

Now that was a year of change. I remember last New Years, after having a shit night with the F, and not looking forward to closing the doors on that little shop by overlooking the ocean. Moving rapidly towards a a time of uncertainty, stagnation and unhappiness. 

In Twenty Twelve, for the better part of the beginning of the year, I was sad. Oh so sad.

Unhappy in my home, with friends who didn't quite understand, and who were already distant as a result.

Making decisions that didn't help the situation..

In Twenty Twelve, I got that kind of job I'd been wanting for a long time; the one with room to grow, with paid time off (which I still have yet to use, but whatever). In Twenty Twelve, I stopped being Token Single Girl, a title which fit neatly into my little beachside package of a life. I stopped being my Ex's crazy Ex. I stopped being a permanent fixture on patio's and porches in that Tiny Town I loved so much, but knew I had outgrown.

In Twenty Twelve, I lost friends. I still mourn the loss of those girls I love so much from my life, but change begets more change I guess, and when you no longer fit the title your friends think you deserve, whether it be 'Drinking Buddy' or 'Best Friend' or 'Charity Case', friendships are bound to be effected by it. I miss those friends, every day, and have them hidden from my newsfeed for the most part, so I don't look and feel left out, or figure out when they've lied about being 'out of town' even though we both knew that lying about being 'out of town' was what both of us wanted.

So, that's been a big change. A sad change.

But this year has also forced me to take a good look at what friends I have kept, no matter how far away or how close they live.
The ones who truly celebrate the victories and are support in the defeats. Whose pace of life allows for fluidity and change. 

And, in Twenty Twelve, I met Jim. 

Enough said.

Well, these were a hit.

In Twenty Twelve, I felt more connected to my family than I have in many many years.
My family as a whole. I feel less like the Forgotten Oldest Sister and more a part of the unit as a whole.
And, perhaps that comes from a better all around sense of 'wholeness' in myself. 

And so to end Twenty Twelve , we - Jim & I - had our party; and it was lovely. And, those who trekked all the way out to the inland suburbs of Orange County, those are my friends. Our friends. Come to the end of Twenty Twelve.

Bijou, who rarely has time to escape the back & forth from her house to her PR House, was one of the first ones through to door, with her sandy haired boyfriend in tow. In her perfect cornflower blue knee length coat, and bright red lips, she toured my new house. She, who was the first in the door way back when I moved into my Tiny Room with a Kitchen Attached in Twenty Ten, was touring my couch and my bathtub and my life with the boy, and I was happy. 
And I expect that she and I will be friends well past Twenty Twenty.

She also had the coolest handbag, of course.
A true Carpenter's Bag, structured and perfect. 

And I had all the fixings for our fete; because I decided long ago that when throwing a party, or doing anything really, if I'm going to stress, it's going to be the things I can control: the table's spread, the handmade swizzle sticks. I can control the cupcakes but I cannot make people eat them. I can try to give people something talk about a la kicky conversation cards by Chuck Klosterman laying casually on the coffee table, or holographic glasses strewn about the house courtesy of Kate Spade, or by even labeling the cheeses with their name and what type of cheese it is - Moo! Baaa! - but I cannot control whether or not people actually converse. You can bring a horse to water and all that jazz.

So that's what I focused on - on food, music, ambiance, conversation starters. 

And I think it was a success. I had fun.

So much change fit into one year. But I guess that's been every year since the big break up of Twenty Ten. 

After five years of complacency, it was bound to be a couple of years of ups and of downs.

At the start of Twenty Twelve, I had no where to go but up.

Now, come Twenty Thirteen, I'm on top of the world.

I'm going to turn Thirty One in Twenty Thirteen. Coincidence? 

I think not. Just math. 

But still. 

And I'm glad Jim's turning 31 a little before me, it'll make it easier when my birthday rolls around.

Happy New Year, everyone. 
Happy Twenty Thirteen.