*If you don’t care about reliving my high school days in excruciating detail, please stop reading. I may be channeling Sweet Valley High.*

I was talking to a friend on the phone the other day and she told me that she had a funny story for me. Here it is:

“So you know that I lead an Alpha group for my church right? Well, the other day was one of our first meetings and this guy came who I hadn’t met before. He was looking at the pictures in our hallway and said, ‘That’s Jenny Burn. I dated her in high school.’ So I asked him what his name was and he said Skip. Anyways, I showed him all the more recent pictures I have of you and Justin and Andrew. Isn’t that great that he is interested in Alpha?”

I don’t really remember much of what she said after that. I know she told me what he was up to and asked me about some of the people that he and I had known in high school. I know she asked me more about him, since she didn’t know him when we were dating. I know we arranged the time for me to pick her daughter up from school on Monday. And I know I haven’t stopped thinking about it since then.

Skip. Wow.

Skip was my last “real” boyfriend, in the sense that we were officially “going out”, for whatever that’s worth. We met on a camping trip in the spring of 1995, my sophomore year in high school. He went to another school in the district but lived pretty close to my parents house. My best friend, Christy, also went to his school and she organized this trip with Skip, myself and another couple, Jeff and Melissa.

Background information on Christy. She was the pretty friend. She was the popular friend. She was the friend who always had a boy or two along for the ride. I loved hanging out with her because she always knew where the party was and always made it clear to the boys involved that I was just as willing as she was to have some fun. I was crazy with jealousy most of the time. I hated being the third wheel and, since I had been the third wheel quite a few times in the months preceding that camping trip, I decided to take matters in to my own hands.

Christy explained the plan to me that week on the phone. Jeff and Melissa would have one tent and Skip, Christy and I would sleep in the other. She mentioned that I might want to think about bringing my own tent (wink, wink) and that she was so sorry they couldn’t find another boy to go along. I made up my mind that I was not going to spend my weekend watching other people make out.

Christy and I maneuvered for position throughout the afternoon and I pulled out my tried and true tricks when night came. I was cold. I was scared. Was that a noise? Can I sit just a little closer to you? I can’t see in the dark can I hold your hand? Well, they worked. I ended up watching the sunrise with his jeans on for extra warmth. We sat at Denny’s a few days later and when someone said, “I heard you guys are together now” we agreed that, in fact, we were. I was thrilled. I had a boyfriend with a car (I was 15). I had a boyfriend from another school (always a plus in the cool factor). I hadn’t been the third wheel, along for the ride on another one of Christy’s adventures. I was the cool one now.

But then two things happened that I hadn’t planned on. The first was that I finally and completely blew my chances with Scott, a boy that had been my best friend for three years. It’s a long story that I’m sure will come up in another overly detailed post, suffice it to say that one day, when Skip and I had skipped off of 6th period, Scott showed up at my house to make sure everything was okay. I hadn’t told him about Skip and he didn’t say anything, just told me he was glad I was okay and that he would talk to me later. We didn’t really talk again after that. The second thing was that Skip actually liked me, a lot more than I liked him, and as the days and weeks went by I found it harder and harder to think about breaking up with him. We did have fun together, he was a nice guy and I convinced myself that it didn’t really matter anyway because I was going to leave for my job as a camp counselor in a few weeks. So I stayed with him and wrote him love letters from camp and let him bring my favorite stuffed animal to Utah with him to visit his dad and tried to hide the relationship from all my good “church” friends at camp while I taught Bible stories to little kids.

When we finally did break up, it was more because I was embarrassed about our relationship than anything else. To cover my embarrassment I told some terrible lies about him. I told my parents that he had threatened me and that was why I had come in all sweaty and disheveled after my curfew from his car last week. I told my camp friends that I had broken up with him because he didn’t want to become a Christian and I had only stayed with him that long in hopes of converting him and I told our mutual friends at school the next year that I had never really liked him at all and that I don’t know what possessed me to date such a dork. And so, in the end, I was again the good daughter, the slightly misdirected but kindhearted Christian, and the cool girl that went slumming one Memorial Day weekend.

Rationally, I know that, while high school matters, it doesn’t really matter. And that the things that I did then probably didn’t have a major effect on the way that either of our lives turned out, but I wonder how things would have been different if I had not been ruled by my jealousy and, subsequently, my need to be cool.

Sometimes when I am away from Andrew, I actually start remembering that he is my Little Buggy and that I am rather fond of the little villain. Justin and I were going over some of the best moments of the past year and here are a few that brought tears to my eyes:

1) The Irate Bear - Andrew had a shirt that said “Pirate Bear” in rainbow colored letters. The ‘P’ was a light yellow and once, when he was shrieking for no apparent reason, I looked down and thought it said “Irate Bear”. It diffused a stressful situation at the time and gave us a new nickname in the process.

2) Going to the pumpkin patch - Andrew had such a good time at the pumpkin patch. He spent almost 20 minutes pounding on the pumpkins and squealing.

3) Swimming - This summer I took Andrew swimming in a friend’s indoor pool. He was so happy and not scared at all in the water. Even when I slipped and dropped him in, he just laughed and splashed some more.

4) Library Visits - Andrew loves to read and every time we go to the library he crawls over to the box of board books and starts cathauling through them looking for new ones or old favorites. Right now his favorite books are Brown Bear, Brown Bear, Tails, My First Truck Board Book, and Goodnight Moon.

5) Wheels - Andrew loves to spin wheels and once, at the library, he tried to tip an umbrella stroller over to spin the wheels, unfortunately that stroller was occupied at the time.

He’s a funny kid and a difficult kid. I need to remember more of the funny when things get difficult.

Well, Andrew just fell asleep so I can concentrate on writing something more serious concerning the Great Bra Shop.

As we were driving home from the aforementioned mall trip, I started thinking about rewards and the role that they play in my life. I wonder if my theories on rewards are good, but the rewards I choose are bad, or if the whole reward system that I have set up is wrong.

The things I know are wrong about the reward system that I have currently are:
1) I always look to food as my first choice for a reward. Even when I am rewarding myself for losing weight or being healthier. The problems here are self-explanatory
2) I prefer to enjoy my rewards alone. I don’t know if this is because they usually involve food or if it is just because I am most comfortable when I am alone.
3) I believe that I deserve a reward, celebratory treat or compensation for pretty much everything that happens in my life - good or bad.

But here is the thing; the food reward is never, ever good enough. I am never satisfied. I am not able to have a treat and know that it will keep me for any given amount of time. Unless I feel sick from the food reward, I often forget that I even had it (or what I was rewarding myself for) by the end of the day.

I am coming to the conclusion that I can no longer reward myself with food. Not that I don’t want to, just that I shouldn’t.

So what do I do with the concept of rewards?

This shopping trip and some of the conversations we had during that time made me wonder - is there a healthy way to reward yourself? Is there a way to do something nice for yourself without having it become a compulsion? What is the appropriate way to take care of yourself? Everything I can think of that I might substitute for food in my reward system has major financial drawbacks and the definite potential to become compulsive.

I don’t like the knowledge that I feel like I need something as a reward. Even writing this helps me to see how stupid that is and I imagine how dumb it would sound coming out of my mouth. Why can’t I just take things as they come and be happy, or sad, or angry, or disappointed, or bored, or ambivalent about them? Why do I have to work so hard to make myself comfortable in every situation or to make sure that I feel like things are fair? Because that is what it is really about; I feel like something isn’t going my way and I deserve better. So I need to devise a reward.

Again and always, my true goal is balance. I want to be able to buy things that are pretty and of good quality and enjoy them, thanking God for His provision in my life. Not to wonder about what other people will think or if the money that is set aside for clothing and cosmetics couldn’t be used somewhere else. I want to be able to take care of my body for myself and my family, to look in the mirror and see that I can be attractive, to make my husband proud to take me places and introduce me to colleagues. Not to see myself and think that I will never be pretty enough, or thin enough, or clever enough and give up altogether. I want to have self-esteem without arrogance, to enjoy life and the gifts that we are given with responsibility and with freedom, to be thankful, generous and humble with the abundance that we have. I believe that there is an appropriate way to enjoy the life, the money, the body, the food, and everything else that we have been given and that way does not include deception or shame.

Who knew that a morning at the mall could be so enlightening?

I just got back from the most “girly” thing I have participated in these many years. I went to the mall with a friend and we got fitted for a bra at Nordstrom, ate lunch at the Nordstrom cafe and then had a makeup consultation at the Clinique counter. Besides the fact that I came away with some new kick-ass bras and some skin care stuff that I could actually see myself using, I also heard one of the funnier statements to ever come out of said friend’s mouth:

I’m a D! Are you sure I’m a D?! How can I be a D? This one seems big, it feels like I am wearing the breastplate of righteousness.

So funny. What a great morning. I may have more to say on this subject but I am practicing the art of the vignette.

I just finished reading A Million Little Pieces by James Frey a few days ago and (as with most things in my life right now) I am of two minds about the whole controversy. I might work out my arguments here at a later time, maybe before February book club. But for right now, I will just share two of the quotes that really impacted me and say that, regardless of the truth of his account, there is truth to be found in the story.

Page 46-

I look around me. There is blackness, there is alcohol, there are drugs. There is an abundance of all of them. I know I’m alone and there is no one to stop me. I know I can do as much as I want of whatever I want. As I reach for one of the bottles, something inside of me tells me to stop, that what I’m doing is wrong, that I can’t do it anymore, that I’m killing myself. I reach anyway. I grip the bottle, bring it to my lips and take a long deep draw that burns my mouth, my throat and my stomach. For the briefest instant I feel complete. The pain I carry with me disappears. I feel comfortable and at rest, confident and secure, calm and composed. I feel good. Goddamn it, I feel fucking good.

The feelings are gone as quickly as they came and I want them back. I don’t care what I have to do, what I have to take, what I have to endure. I’ll do anything. I just want them to come back.

Everything I felt that was good has become bad and it has been magnified beyond any point of reference or comprehension. My only option is to try and kill. Kill what hurts. Kill it.

Page 178-

An Addict is an Addict. It doesn’t matter whether the Addict is white, black, yellow or green, rich or poor or somewhere in the middle, the most famous Person on the Planet or the most unknown. It doesn’t matter whether the addiction is drugs, alcohol, crime, sex, shopping, food, gambling, television, or the fucking Flintstones. The life of the Addict is always the same. There is no excitement, no glamour, no fun. There are no good times, there is no joy. There is no happiness. There is no future and no escape. There is only an obsession.

I was talking to Jen last night about the importance of naming things in our lives. That Biblically, Adam was given the job of naming the animals and that we are called to imitate that and properly identify and name the things that surround us. While I still seek to justify and rationalize my behavior, I must name myself an addict. I am addicted to food. I use it to numb myself, I plan my days around it, I cry when I read James Frey because he accuratly expresses my feelings.

I know that the truth does matter - isn’t that the point of this blog? But I am not sorry that Frey has had so much success with his book. Even if the events are not true, the story still is.