Cardinals

How I felt last night during the Cardinals game:

It happened. I knew today was too good to be true. I was having TOO good of a day.

I just fell up the stairs holding a can of Diet Coke and hurt myself and spilled the soda all over my white sweater.

SON OF A BITCH!!!!

RedRoss

I'm in a bizarrely good mood today. Finger-snapping, tune-whistling, toe-tapping good. 

I'm done with the dentist (until January), got my eyeball situation figured out, the Cardinals are up 3-1 in the NLCS, the weather is spectacular, I get to carve (read: paint) pumpkins with my friend Katie tonight and then I have a dinner date with my friends tomorrow night! And to top it all off, I get to see this nugget on Friday night...

Life is pretty good right now. 

But I've got my eyes peeled, you see, because when things are going too well is when things will fall "spectacularly to shit" (Bridget Jones' phrase).

me

Be kind, universe. Just let me enjoy my Fall.

A Little Bit of Faith Restored

On my way back from Florida last month I had a layover in Nashville. 

From Florida to Nashville, I was wearing a St. Louis Cardinals t-shirt and jeans and was treated like a normal person. Nobody was rude to me, but then again nobody was overly friendly. 

When I got to Nashville's airport, it was kinda chilly in there so I put on a fleece pull-over.

Then I started noticing that people were looking at me differently than the way I'm normally looked at. It almost seemed like people were looking at me with... pity.  A guy gave me his seat in the almost-full gate seating area. A lady called me "sweetheart" in the bathroom. 

I chalked this different behavior up to being in Nashville and thinking, "Maybe people are just friendlier down here... this is so refreshing!" It wasn't until I got on the plane that I figured out what was really going on.

I was trying to put my rolling suitcase in the overhead bin above me when I started to drop it, like the jackass I am. An older gentleman in the row behind me jumped up to help me and together we wiggled the suitcase into the compartment. 

"Thank you so much - I'm such a klutz", I said with a smile and a laugh.

"Not a problem at all - feel better", he said and patted me on the arm.

"Feel better?" I thought to myself. "The hell does that mean? I mean yeah, I'm weak and uncoordinated but that's hardly a disease. Is there something on my face? Does this guy think I'm hungover? Ugh now I have to sit here and try to decipher this for the next hour."

I took my window seat and started working on my book of crossword puzzles and then I finally put it all together. The fleece jacket I had on had this stitched onto it.

My ex-boyfriend's uncle was diagnosed with cancer last year a few weeks after we had started dating. I got to be pretty close with the family and became (a very small) part of his uncle's "support team". After the stem cell transplant took place, these fleeces were made for us to wear to show our support. This was back in April, so I didn't have a chance to wear it before it got too hot outside. I brought it to Florida to wear because the forecast said it was supposed to be rainy and chilly and it looked like a good shirt to cozy up in with glass of wine and a book. When I put it on in the airport it was the first time I had gotten to wear it, so I didn't really think about what was on it, and how it would be perceived. But while I was sitting on the plane, it dawned on me. People saw it and assumed that I was the stem cell transplant patient. And why wouldn't they? If I had seen this on someone, that's the same thing I would have assumed. 

Though a somewhat bizarre experience, it did make me smile in the end. People were being nicer-than-normal to a person they thought was sick. Someday, maybe people will be this nice to everyone they meet.

every. single. person.

Eyewear

So my new eye doctor is extremely good looking... it's a good thing I'm not a mouth breather because he was all up in my personal space for what seemed like an endless exam.

"Look at the green dot. Now look at me. Now look at the green dot..."

I don't want to look at the green dot I want to look at you.

And who came up with all these nifty machines that they use? One bright flash and he could actually see the back of my eyeballs and my optic nerves. Which, he said, were larger than normal. So I've got that going for me. Which is nice.

Pretty Work

Southern Charm is a new favorite Tumblr of mine - some of the images she posts are absolutely beautiful! If you're wondering where I'm finding these gorgey things I'm pinning lately, they're most likely from her blog!

Great taste!!

More Entries

My department moved into a vacant building next door to our original building. This left me with a less-than-desirable seat for blogging (right outside of my boss' office) so that's why I've been M.I.A.* for the last few weeks. 

*Read: missing in action, not M.I.A. the sort-of-rapper.

no one on the corner has swagga like us

Anyway, I'm going to Florida with my parents on Saturday and I'll bring my laptop so I can blog while I'm down there. As it is with every family vacation of ours, clouds and rain are dominating the forecast, so I should have lots of time indoors. 

cheers.

I'll post some pictures if we do get pretty weather, though. Hopefully we'll get more sun than they're predicting. Which, if these meteorologists are anything like the ones in St. Louis, we won't see a rain cloud all weekend.

Here's hoping!!

f.a.l.l.

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The Achilles Heel - A Book Review

Recently I had the pleasure of reading the novel The Achilles Heel, which was written by a close friend of mine, Karyn Rae. In her first fiction novel, Karyn explores and perfectly recounts every aspect of my two favorite topics: love and mystery.

The Achilles Heel covers the full range of emotions of a woman going through a tragic loss, a man looking for his other half, and the electricity that sparks when the two meet. 

Annie's husband Jack has just died, and as time goes on, his death becomes more and more suspicious. As she's simultaneously trying to put the pieces of her life and this mystery together, she meets Kessler. Kessler is a country music superstar who has fame, success, and the lust of women around the world, but finds himself unsatisfied without the love of a good woman. The two find themselves on the luxurious island of St. Croix and the two finally find what they've been looking for in each other. 

Far from "just another love story", Rae's book also has a suspense to it that leaves the reader's heart rate elevated (the only kind of cardio I enjoy) and their eyes unable to leave the pages. The mysterious circumstances of Jack's death, paired with the odd behavior of his brother leave Annie asking questions she's not even sure she wants the answers to. Adventure, shock and deception ensue.

I was halfway through a Friday Night Lights marathon on Netflix when Karyn sent me this book, and I was more interested in finishing Annie and Kessler's story than Eric and Tami Taylor's. If that's not a testament of how engrossing this book is, I don't know what would be!

Look for The Achilles Heel in bookstores soon, and be prepared to have your mind (and your heart!) blown.

(Karyn and me in 2012)

‎Close your eyes & imagine the best version of you possible. That’s who you really are, let go of any part of you that doesn't believe it.

The Red Dress

"I always saw, I always said,

If I were grown and free,

I'd have a gown of reddest red

As fine as you could see.

To wear out walking, sleek and slow,

Upon a summer day,

And there'd be one to see me so

And flip the world away.

And he would be a gallant one, 

With stars behind his eyes,

And hair like metal in the sun,

And lips too warm for lies.

I always saw us, gay and good,

High honored in the town.

Now I am grown to womanhood....

I have the silly gown."

Dorothy Parker

This was my favorite poem in high school. Mrs. Barth, my 11th grade English teacher, taught us about Dorothy Parker during our poetry section. She said that Parker was the epitome of a "broad". I loved that. I loved that she smoked and drank and kept up with the men in her circles without feeling like she had to act like a lady. Her poetry is sarcastic and absolutely drenched with cynicism. She was my kinda gal! Some of her best quotes can be found here.

Dorothy Parker

Reddest Red

 I wrote a lot of poetry throughout high school and in my early college years, and then when I was a junior I took an actual poetry course as part of my requirement as an English major. We all had to submit poems to the entire class for them to evaluate and critique. Of course I had to go first... my first poem was bright and happy and it rhymed - my God it rhymed!!! You'd have thought I was a kindergartner the way these people looked at me. Even the professor talked down to me like I was a child.

"My dear, while this is a very cute piece of work, it's not what I'm looking for. I want you to search yourself and write the things that you think, but you're too afraid to say."

Well...

No.

I didn't know these people. I didn't like a lot of them after what they did to my bright and happy rhyming poem (red pen, EVERYWHERE!). The last thing I was going to do now was open up to them. So I sat silently through the rest of the semester not participating in the critiquing of anyone else's work. Everyone else, of course, had these dark and "meaningful" poems that didn't rhyme (but of course), and didn't make any sense to me. 

When it came time to have our one on one evaluations with the professor, he asked me to bring two poems of mine, and my favorite poem of someone else's. I brought him two poems I had written in which I had attempted to do what he wanted. I made them "prose" style, I made them deep (or as deep as I was comfortable going), and I didn't dare make them about anything positive. And then I also brought The Red Dress with me as my favorite poem of someone else's. 

He read my two pieces while we sat together at a table in our university's common area with persed lips and his hand on his chin. 

"Well these show improvement, but I still don't think they're authentic. I'm not doubting that you wrote them, I'm just doubting that you really feel these things."

I bit my tongue and nodded slowly but what I really wanted to say was, "Welp. I'm sorry I'm not Edgar Allen Poe, but this is the best you're going to get out of me. I can write you a lovey dovey poem, or a short story, or anything else really, but I'm not going to willingly bring myself down to the depths of despair for the sake of a grade. So take these two attempts, and shove them up your goatee-wearing, shower-needing, corduroy-loving keester you GD hippy."

I looked at him with glazed-over eyes thinking, "Are we done yet? I have Friends DVDs to watch and Chik-Fil-A to eat", but then he got to Parker's piece. 

"Ah. This explains a lot. You're a fan of hers."

I blinked.

"Not that that's a bad thing, not at all. She was brilliant. It was just a different style. A different approach than what is popular today."

Well ain't that a kick in the head. I didn't know I was supposed to be conforming to what was popular in language arts class. I'm pretty sure that's the opposite of what teachers had been instilling in me since the beginning. "Be yourself." "Stay true to you."

I wanted so badly to argue with him but he was so arrogant and so... above it all, that there was no point. I got a C in the class and was never so happy for a semester to end.  

Looking back I wish I would have been a little bit more like Dorothy Parker at that meeting. I wish I would have told that professor to shove it, while swilling a scotch and lighting a cigarette. 

Via

Happy Friday - 6/28/2013

Listening to Pandora this a.m. in an almost-empty office. I went with 90s country and this gem came on. 

Haven't heard this one since I owned the Come on Over cassette tape and would listen to it while trying to teach myself how to line dance in my bedroom.

Going to the Lake of the Ozarks this weekend with my momma and her sisters for some R&R! Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Can we go to the strip?

Curly Twirly

Things I hear every time I get my hair done in a salon:

Them: Oh my, you've got a lot of hair!

Me: Oh my, I had no idea!

Them: Have you had a perm lately?

Me: No, noooo I haven't.

Them: Are you sure about that?

Me: Oop, wait, maybe I did no - yep I'm sure.

Them: How early do you have to wake up to do your hair every morning?

Me: Early.

Them: Do you just love your curls?

Me: Would you?

Them: So what are we doing today?

Me: Shave it. Shave it all off.

Every. Single. Time.

woof

Bitter or Sweet?

There comes a time in everyone's life where you have to choose how you're going to act. Are you going to be an optimist, or a pessimist? 

I yo-yo back and forth between both faster than Oprah yo-yos between dress sizes. Some days I'm upbeat and positive that I'll be just fine, and others I'm certain that nothing good will ever happen to me.

What's healthier, though? Having rose-colored expectations, or having no expectations at all?

I know how dangerous it is to get your hopes up too high and then have everything fall through - get a metaphorical cream pie to the face.

"Oh everything is going to be so perfect and I'm going to get everything I want out of life, I'm going to have it all and be the happiest person in the world...."

Life says "nope".

But some people argue that going from day-to-day with a "glass half empty" mentality isn't any better. It turns you into a grump. A bitter grump, and there's no worse kind. 

Is there a difference between being negative and being realistic?

I think instead of living my life as an optimist or a pessimist, I'm going to hope for the best, and plan for the worst. Live each day as a little of both, at the same time.

via

You have a choice to be bitter or to be sweet. I'm just a bittersweet kinda gal.

Panic

It takes me about 4 minutes to drive to work (even with traffic) and I'm supposed to be in the office at 8:30.

Imagine my surprise when I looked down at my dashboard this morning and saw that it was 9:37. I broke out in an immediate sweat and slammed on the breaks. 

"What the hell?! Oh my God!"

I started thinking back to this morning and trying to figure out how many times I hit the snooze button, how long my shower really was, did I even set my alarm for the right time??

As I'm starting to hyperventilate I notice that there's something funny about the clock. There isn't a ":" between the numbers, but a "."

"Oh that's the radio... that's the station oookay. Okay. We're good."

It was 8:28 and I still had 2 full minutes to get to work on time. All was right with the world.

This isn't a new car I'm driving or anything. Same car I've had for 2 and a half years. I'm just that brilliant.

via

Well Said.

zsa-zsa-zu

via

Oh Whoopsies...

{Somewhere in my college dating carreer}

There I was, standing in his bathroom after he had cooked me a lovely dinner. 

I looked down and saw his puka shell necklace (more like PUKE-a shell necklace, amiright?) on his bathroom counter.

I hated that he wore this and desperately wanted to tell him that the mid-seventies were over, therefore all shell accessories had to go... but we'd only been out on two dates. Couldn't do that quite yet.

So I had two choices here: I could just write it off as an inconsequential part of who he was and realize it didn't matter............

Or I could knock it off the counter, into the trashcan, then strew some toilet paper over it so it wouldn't be seen. 

ick

Guess which one I did...

My Old Man

Father's Day is approaching!

Sometimes I catch myself saying, "Oh my God - I'm turning into my dad."

More often than not, though, it's, "I'm so lucky to be like my dad."

So here's to the coolest dad in any room... love you K-E-double-N!

z.o.m.g.

Betsy, one of my besties, who also goes by Butsy, is officially a St. Louisan! 

We have a full summer of laying out, baseball games and beer drinking ahead of us...

gifs from

Now if we could only get that pesky little Lacy to move back...

Shitzu

ahahaha

Coupon

When you purchase a home, or a car (or anything that you have to make monthly payments on), the collection agency will send you a book of payment coupons that look like this:

payment coooooupon

When I bought my condo in 2010, I was presented with a booklet of coupons that look just like these, but nobody told me how to use them. In my world, a coupon was something you clipped out of a newspaper for a discount on a 10 inch pizza. Puzzled, I brought the booklet into work and asked my co-worker and friend, Helane, what these were for.

"There are only 12 in here, so does that mean I get like... a discount or something on 12 payments throughout the entire time I own the condo?"

At the time, Helane didn't know me well enough to laugh directly in my face (something she has no trouble doing now), so she stopped for a moment to gather herself.

"No, sweetheart", she said. "These are just the little slips of paper you turn in with each monthly payment that show your address and account numbers so they can keep track of who is paying for which condo... Does that make sense at all?"

"Oh... so why are they called 'coupons' then? That's not what a real 'coupon' is at all. How are people like me supposed to know this?"

Seriously, though! Call them something else! Coupon is already taken! They're the things that bored housewives collect in binders to bring to the grocery store and get 125 dollars worth of food for 77 cents... 

It's things like this that make people think I'm stupid, when really, I'm just a special thinker. 

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

huh?!

New Obsession

Blowin' Smoke - Kacey Musgraves

An Unforeseen Problem

I have a gift certificate to Target for $25 that I can only use online. 

I have never been so stressed out about anything in my life.

It just sits there in my Inbox taunting me. 

Why is it when I'm physically in a Target store I can't leave without spending $100, but when I have money to blow I can't find anything I want to buy...

This is what always happens with gift certificates. I save them because I want to use them for something special or something I really need, and then I just end up shoving them in my wallet and forgetting they're there.

What's wrong with me?! Does anyone else save their G.C.'s??

le sigh

The Time My Mom Tried to Kill Me

When I was 19 years old, my mom tried to kill me.

I had just finished my freshman year at Mizzou, and was coming home to spend the summer with my folks. A recent dentist appointment had told me that my wisdom teeth were coming in and that I needed to have those removed pronto. So we scheduled the appointment for a random Wednesday afternoon that month.

At that time, mom worked in a doctor's office for an ophthalmologist who did Lasik eye surgery. I had always had mediocre eyes and was interested in the procedure (mainly because I knew Jessica Simpson had done it).

oh muh gaw

So I went into mom's office and had them do the four hours worth of testing (let's get some perspective here, people... In four hours you could watch Titanic start to finish and then watch a full episode of Friends) and by the time the testing was done they had determined that I was indeed a candidate for Lasik. Cool. Thanks. I knew that already.

So mom, being the sweetheart-ed gal she is, thought it would be wise to get all of my misery out of the way all at once. She scheduled my eye surgery for the day after my wisdom teeth extraction.

 "This way, you won't have to heal two separate times over the summer! Plus your eyes will feel so much better by the next day that you'll just be glad it's all over at once!"

Sounds good, right? Sounds like a well thought out plan. 

So we thought.

The morning of my wisdom teeth extraction came and I tried every trick in the book to get out of it to no avail. I got strapped down in the chair and the kind nurse came over to me to run me through the drill (ew, drill, teeth, shudder, blih). I started crying immediately because I hate teeth and I was afraid of the giant needle she was about to stick in my arm and I'm a huge pansy-ass. She tried to warn me, "Sweetie if you're crying when you go under anesthesia, odds are you'll be crying when you wake up... that will scare you! You need to really try to calm down..." 

Really, who the hell does that work on? When does telling someone they need to calm down actually ever result in the hyper person calming down? That is an instant pressure-raiser. An immediate heart-rate-speeder-upper. Didn't work in this instance.

They put me under and I guess they pulled out my teeth (I don't really even know what they were doing in there during those 3 hours) and then the woke me back up. And they were right - I was hysterical when I woke up. They wheeled me in a wheelchair out into the lobby where I'm sure I terrified all of the people waiting their turn for oral surgery. Put yourself in their shoes for a minute. I was literally wailing at the top of my lungs, choking on my gauze and trying to fight my way out of the chair. 

Anyway. Mom gets me home and puts me in my bed with an ice pack over my mouth and as many pain-killers as the law would allow. She even slept on my floor that night so she could help me whenever I woke up, like the angel she is!

The next morning my mouth was sore, but not too terrible. We had done a pretty good job of changing out the gauze when we were supposed to and keeping the affected areas as clean as possible. I was feeling pretty good so I decided I would be brave and venture on with the Lasik, even though I looked like a squirrel storing nuts for the winter.

mumble mumble mumble

We get to the "surgery suite", I'm strapped into another chair and they give me the necessary amount of Valium it takes to let someone slice into your eyeball with a scalpel. My mom was standing in the gallery watching the whole thing go down (covering her own laser-enhanced eyes whenever anything got too gross). They get about 5 minutes into the surgery and mom hears the surgeon say, "Welp that's a problem", and set his tools down. 

Turns out my corneas were too thin for the procedure. That's right. They managed to somehow miss this tidbit of information during the four hours of testing they did on me a couple of weeks prior. They conversed about this for what seemed like hours even in my Valium-induced state. My eyes were being held open by clamps and they kept having to water them with a little hose to keep them moist. Just heaven.

 Finally, conversation ends, and they tell me they're going to proceed, but with a different type of surgery.

An Ophthalmology Lesson:

Lasik (what I was supposed to have): Where they slice your eyeball open, laser, and then your eye heals itself within about 12 hours

Lasek (what I ended up getting): Where they scratch a layer of your cornea off, laser, and that layer grows back over 4-5 days

(I have the whole thing on a VHS tape if anyone is interested in watching, but I assure you, it's quite disgusting.) 

Surgery took about 45 minutes and then they turned me loose. I had a new pair of goggles and a giant pair of sunglasses for the ride home. 

stylin and profilin

So I've got my old-lady sunglasses, my superhero goggles, and my fat cheeks with cotton gauze hanging out of them, in a lime green Juicy Couture terry-cloth track suit. I was a sight to see if I may say so myself.

I couldn't do anything by myself because I was BLIND. For DAYS. I couldn't feed myself. I couldn't watch tv. I couldn't bathe myself. I had to finagle myself into a bathing suit and have my mom help me. I remember blindly putting my swimsuit on and meandering my way into the bathroom only to hear her snickering at me. 

"What's so funny?" I muttered, pissed-offedly.

"Nothing honey. Your swimsuits is just on inside out (giggle giggle giggle). You poor sweet thing."

My sister has a photo of me while I'm lying in bed with an ice pack made for shoulder/back pain over my mouth and my goggles taped (with that sticky ass medical tape) to my head like a God damn invalid. I haven't seen this picture in years and I'm 110% positive that she's saving this for the next time I really piss her off so she can put it on Facebook for the world to see and mock. 

So thank you, my dear* mother, for not only muting me but for blinding me as well. Sometimes I think this was all part of your master plan to dull my senses one by one until I had to stay home and have you take care of me forever. Kathy Bates style. 

"It's for the best."

*My mom really is the best person in the world - I don't know what I would do without her! 

Lana Del Cray

Will someone please let Lana Del Ray know that everything is going to be okay? She's really starting to worry me over here...

"I know if I go, I'll die happy tonight."

"I'm like a child who belongs to nobody."

"Will you still love me when I'm no longer beautiful?"

"Everything is fine, but I wish I was dead."

"You don't want to be like me, don't want to see all the things I've seen."

"If I get a little prettier can I be your baby?"

Easy does it, lady! Can a girl get an uplifting ballad please?

I used to think that someone had kidnapped her, forced her to do a whole bunch of drugs, and then left her literally dazed and confused with a pen and pad of paper...

cray cray

But now I just think she's a lunatic with a record label.

Methinks a prescription for Zoloft might go a long way.

sadz

Eureka!

Dude I totally get it now - I'm still single because I haven't met one of these fellas yet...

Prince Harry

Ian Somerhalder

Adam Levine

John Krasinski

So I just need to meet one of these handsome fellas and then I'll be all set....

Wishing

Did you believe in wishes as a kid?

Do you still now?

via

I can honestly say that I'm glad a lot of my wishes didn't come true. Silly thoughts that pop into your head as you're leaning over your birthday cake, blowing an eyelash off your fingertip or at 11:11. Makes me look back and realize how true the old adage, "be careful what you wish for" really is.

27

What I feared was going to be a perfectly lousy birthday turned into the most amazing one I've ever had. I honestly have the best friends and family a girl could ever ask for, and I thank God for each and every one of you every night.

 

Thank you to all who made 27 the best birthday yet! And as I say each year, "I think this year is going to be my year". And each year, I'm right!

 

Much love.

 

thanks

Certain Songs

There are a handful of songs on my iTunes that I will never get tired of:

Guster: Careful

Eric Hutchinson: Oh!

Chuck Berry: You Never Can Tell

Dr. Dog: The Breeze

O.A.R.: Dareh Meyod

Harry Chapin: Sunday Morning Sunshine

Pete Townshend: Let My Love Open The Door

Jack Johnson: Banana Pancakes

The Cardigans: Love Fool

Sublime: Santeria

Pearl Jame: Come Back

Kings of Leon: Knocked Up

Old Crowe Medicne Show: Wagon Wheel

Simple Minds: Don't You Forget About Me

The Doors: People Are Strange

Dr. Dog: The Rabbit, The Bat & The Reindeer

Chris Isaak: Beautiful Homes

The Who: Eminence Front

Girl Talk: Let It Out

Ludo: Love Me Dead

Jane's Addiction: Jane Says

Mink DeVille: Spanish Stroll

What are your "can't-skip" songs?

1, 2, cha cha cha

Memorial Day Weekend

3 day (holiday! birthday!) weekend ahead. 

Have you ever been so excited for anything in your life?!

eh-eh. eh-eh.

I didn't think so.

This Woman's Work

 

I know you have a little life in you yet

I know you have a lot of strength left

I know you have a little life in you yet

I know you have a lot of strength left

 

Duck Update

I think I found the little ducks that took off while I was out of town...

quackquackquack

I guess they look pretty happy. 

Thank God it's Donald Duck and not Daffy Duck. I hear that guy's a real a-hole.

Teeth

I have a weird thing about teeth. I always have.

Some people are weird about eyes, I'm weird about teeth.

I dream probably twice a week that I have a tooth fall out in a social setting, in the middle of a crowd when I'm telling a story. I've asked professionals (well, okay, the interwebz) about this and their answers always vary. Some say it's anxiety, some say it's depression, some even say it's sexual frustration. My old man says it's because I'm a freaked out whack-job and I'm inclined to believe him. 

So teeth have always been a hot-button issue of sorts for me. So when I came across this quote last week, it really resonated with me. Whether or not you're going through a breakup like I am, this quote surely will apply to something at some point in your life. 

"My dentist once told me that letting go is like pulling a tooth. When it was pulled out, you're relieved, but how many times does your tongue run itself over the spot where the tooth once was? Probably a hundred times a day. Just because it wasn't hurting you doesn't mean you didn't notice it. It leaves a gap and sometimes you find yourself missing it terribly. It's going to take awhile - it takes time. Should you have kept the tooth? No, because it was causing you so much pain. Therefore, move on and let go."

(Found this on a Tumblr - not sure who or how to credit it.)

Call me crazy, but this might be one of the simplest yet most poignant comparisons I've ever read. 

Your mind really does wander down a comfortable and familiar route of, "He and I should go here together - we both love live music". And then just as your tongue would be shocked to find that there's no tooth there anymore, your heart is shocked to remember that there's no "we" anymore.  Over and over. 

Soon enough though, you stop running your tongue over that spot because you just know it's gone. The same way that your mind eventually stops thinking of him as yours. 

Luckily, for me, the hard part should be over soon. I should be getting back into a comfortable groove on my own, and learning to make myself my number one priority again.

Until then you'll catch me smiling. Just with one less tooth!

gross