Love, Sweet Love

My Valentine's Day Tribute to Love:

First, some videos.

Jackie DeShannon "What the World Needs Now, Is Love, Sweet Love"

Tom T. Hall "I Love"

And the master of Love, Mr. Barry White "Can't Get Enough of Your Love"

And a random assortment of Valentine related images I found.

You know who you are.

If you need a pick-up line, try this one.

For anyone sad because you don't have a date.

True Love.

Happy Valentine's Day to ALL my Bitches out there! Love you, crazy people!!!!

The Great Car Run

Have you ever tried to push a 4,000-ish lb. Ford LTD up a hill? I have. I was probably fourteen at the time and weighed all of 90 lbs. soaking wet. But I had help. My even slightly smaller friend, *Marie, was with me at the time.

Mom was out of town and Dad was at work. Marie and I were at my parent's house, bored. There sat the LTD. It was a late 70's/early 80's model. My parent's had driven it in years past, but hadn't driven in at least a few years. It just sat there, parked, waiting for an adventure. So we decided to take her out for a test drive.

After some groaning, the engine finally roared to life. For those of you who remember, these cars were not the tiny, compact plastic cars we drive today. No, this was a tank with wheels. Anyway, off we go. We started by heading up the driveway and then down to my aunt and uncle's house down the road. So far, so good.

Headed back, we start making the climb up the long hill back toward my parent's house. Engine stalls. Car goes dead. I throw it in park, and try to turn the key a few more times. No luck. Well, okay, then. When the car dies, what do you do? You push it.

We devise a plan. Marie will stand at the driver's side door, with her hand on the wheel to steer it. I will get in the back and push. It made sense at the time. I had seen it done a couple of times. I get in ready to push position, with hands on the back bumper and legs braced. I yell to Marie, "put it in neutral". Um, Houston, we have a problem. I barely managed to clear being crushed to death by jumping into a nearby ditch as the behemoth started rolling backward rather impressively fast. Marie was only dragged down the hill for a short while, before giving up and letting go, also somehow managing not to be run over.

There she goes. Rolling in the wrong direction, back down the hill, ending up in a ditch at approximately a 70 degree angle. Thanks to a few friends, (and their Dads), we managed to get the car pulled out of the ditch, with the only real damage being that we ripped the front bumper halfway off in the process. One of the guys hammered the bumper back to it's original-looking shape. Car was parked in the exact place it had been. No one was ever the wiser.

Several months later, my uncle bought the car, for parts I assume. He shows up, they attach a chain or some device to the bumper to hoist it up to be hauled off. Imagine their surprise when the bumper immediately flies off the car.

"Jennifer, any idea why the bumper just fell off the car?"

"No, Mother, I have no clue." "Geez."

Time for a Cool Change

Whoever said people don't change, obviously didn't meet very many people. People change all the time. I think what they meant to say was that people don't change just because you want them to. That part seems to have been lost in translation. People change because they get older, wiser, and more experienced. People change because they see an attribute within themselves they are no longer satisfied with and decide to do something about it. People change because life deals them an unexpected hand that they must now face. Or they change because they have learned from past mistakes what works and what doesn't. But they do not, and will not change because they don't fit into some ideal image you yourself have created for them. And they never will. So stop expecting it.

A lot of relationships fail for this reason. Romantic, platonic, and familial relationships fail because of some unrealistic expectation of how we think someone should behave, and when they don't fit into the mold we have created for them, we feel let down.

Look, it's really this simple. You have two choices in any relationship. Either accept it for what it is, and that means accepting them exactly as they are at that time in their lives, or move on. If your boyfriend doesn't bring you flowers, and you want one that does, then find yourself the romantic type. There are plenty of flower-bearing men in this world. If your girlfriend doesn't enjoy World of Warcraft, and you can't live without a gaming partner, then find someone who shares your passion for video games. If you can no longer stand another minute listening to your bff's never ending drama, stop answering the phone. If you are unhappy with your relationship with someone, then get out of it. Otherwise, shut the hell up about it.

Miranda

I could never tell my story without including my friends. Names have been changed for all the typical reasons, innocence or guilt notwithstanding . This is *Miranda's story.

What you should know about Miranda: She has one of the best laughs I've ever heard on a human being, the contagious kind. And she literally gets a sparkle in her eyes when she's truly happy, an honest-to-God, twinkle. Her smile is her best feature. Her boobs are pretty awesome too, but I'm still going with the smile. I'm not a guy, so I can.

She is the Claree to my Ouiser. She is my, hopefully, one day, we will be those two old Southern women sitting on the front porch drinking sweet tea spiked with Jack Daniels, friend. She is also one of my best champions. She is my strength and courage, when I have none. When I doubt myself, she kicks my ass in gear. She probably knows as much, if not more, about my love life and relationships than the men who have actually been involved in them.

My best Miranda story? There's so many. Nothing, however, could top the epic and legendary story of her 29th birthday:


Two things you need to know before I proceed.


1. Miranda loves Jack Daniels. It is her drink of choice. And she is no lightweight, on the rocks with a lime, please.

2. A few months prior to this event I performed my version of the Tawny Kitaen stripper crawl at a girls' only night at a friend's house, much to the amusement of my girlfriends, and that crawl became, well, somewhat legendary in its own right. 

So let's begin.

We started the birthday night having dinner, and Miranda had a few JD drinks to celebrate. Now, in no way, am I blaming what happened later on the whiskey. But, I will say, where whiskey is concerned, it does make a pretty good scapegoat. After dinner, we decided to take the party to a nearby club, where they had a band playing and we could enjoy some dancing. Naturally, someone alerted the band it was Miranda's birthday. So they call Miranda to the center of the dance floor and she is instructed to sit in a bar chair while her friends "dance" for her.  A friend of ours pushes me out into the dance floor and says "Do your stripper crawl!". Now, under normal circumstances I would not be caught dead doing a stripper crawl, on a dance floor, in a club, in public. But, it was Miranda's birthday, several birthday shots had been consumed, and I was basically being double dog dared. So, off I crawled. And crawl I did, all the way to Miranda's chair where I stood up in front of her; we hug each other, laugh, I wish her a happy birthday, and, well, this is where things went downhill. What happened next is subject to debate and depends on who you ask. All that is certain, is the next thing I know, I am lying flat on my back on the dance floor and Miranda is face down on top of me. I get up, shrug it off, and go about finding my drink. Miranda heads to the ladies' room. She exits the bathroom, walking toward our table with her hand over her mouth, shaking her head. Naturally, we assumed she must have bitten her lip in the crash, but she refuses to show us the damage. We persist, out of genuine concern and morbid curiosity. Miranda slowly pulls her hand away and smiles. HOLYSHITBALLSBATMAN, Miranda's two front teeth have been knocked out!!! I mean, gone. For real. I can not in any effective way, explain to you the complex emotion of the complete shock and horror I felt while simultaneously laughing harder than I may ever have before or since. But let me try to explain, that on the one hand there are few times that I have ever felt worse for a friend of mine but at the same time I have rarely seen anything as hilarious as my best friend smiling at me with no front teeth - on her birthday! To make matters worse, it wasn't a clean break, so there were in fact, two tiny slivers on both the outside edges that gave the appearance of small vampire fangs. I tried hard to get a photograph, but she refused to smile for the camera. And right now, I bet you wish I had that photo to share. I know I certainly do.

Bless her heart, she was trying hard not to cry and all we could do was tell her how sorry we were while simultaneously wiping away our own tears of laughter. We bought her shots as condolences and sang a boisterous rendition of "All I Want For Christmas" all the way home that night. 

Thanks to the miracle of dental procedures, her teeth were soon thereafter restored, using whatever technology allows dentists to provide fake teeth, and none who ever see her would ever be the wiser. As I said before, her smile was and still is one of her best features. It is also the source of one of my very best memories of her, and certainly one of the funniest. If I live to be a hundred and am completely senile, I don't think I will forget that night or the image of my toothless friend. It, like so many other great stories is one of both tragedy and comedy. 

As Truvy Jones said, "Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion."