Resistance is (not) futile!

It's been several hours since I kicked Facebook to the curb and it feels good. Also, I'm still alive. I'm sure of it because I checked to see if my breath showed up on a mirror. All good. I thought I would feel worse about it than I actually do right now. Facebook is ok, even if I don't have warm and fuzzy feelings for it's creator (or thief posing as creator?) but it had started to take up way too much of my time and I couldn't control myself after a while. I was on it pretty much constantly and consider that pretty sick. Now I feel as good as I do when I get over a cold.

Last night I did more in a few hours than I've done in a week, sadly. This is why Facebook had to go. Cooking, cleaning, dishes from dinner all done. I also fell asleep faster because I wasn't thinking about News Feeds and Status Updates. Unfortunately the bad dreams about Paul were still there... I'm working on it. Last night's dream was particularly wicked but at least he's a nice guy when we're awake.

It's probably a nice time to write about Paulie. A lot has changed since I got back to Pennsylvania from France and he is one of the most important topics (next to my outrageously adorable baby nephew godson who was born in December 2010, I'll get to him!).

So I returned to American soil permanently in August of 2009. It was bittersweet for sure. I was starting to have a ridiculously difficult time in France and not having my family around was hard. I scraped together whatever money I had, shipped my boxes back here, had some particularly wild evenings in Nice and then shipped myself back. I certainly miss the good times and there were a lot of good times... Not much has changed here which is comforting and also pretty boring. I enjoyed the beautiful scenery of the South of France and the always changing cast of characters. In the States it's the people that I love. Where I live in particular is not so interesting!

In any case, back to my Paul. We have known each other for maybe 24 years now and in all that time, before December of 2009, we might have said 2 words to each other. Maybe. We met in first grade as little six year olds. I remember him as a very brazen, brash, smiley, cute little boy. He was certainly one of the troublemakers. Paul got yelled at ALL of the time and still I rarely saw him without a smile. He couldn't be contained and I watched him with a little bit of fear and I think some reverence. Even to this day I could never be as bold as he was as a kid and I admired it. I was insanely shy and quiet. When you are easily embarrassed you stay away from people like Paul was for fear of being verbally torn to shreds... even though he wasn't that mean to the other kids in the class, he just liked to buck the system... but when you are like I was, anything terrible is possible. Anyway, we went on like this until seventh grade. Paul stuck with his crew and I with my nice lady friends. In seventh grade Paul was tossed out of school and it was actually supremely unfair. He went off school grounds to chase after a kid who stole his friend's bike. I think our very awful teacher and principal at the time were just looking for an excuse to get rid of him. So that was the last time I saw him, which is definitely not to say the last time I thought about him! His family runs an auto body shop in our area. One of the shops is very close to my parents' house and I mistakenly thought he worked at that one. Every single time I passed by it I would look for him. Of course I never saw him but he was never too far from my thoughts. Obviously I never thought anything would happen between us either. In my mind he was still the adorable bad little boy that I knew in school and in reality he still was, for a while anyway. I have to say it's thanks to Facebook, yes, that we reconnected. It's also thanks to that habit of becoming friends with people that you are not actually friends with in real life! So Paul and I became "friends" on Facebook in June of 2009 and didn't talk to each other. Again. I came back to the States and I started to stalk Paul's page and pics a bit. Finally, I summoned some courage from wherever and inboxed him in the early evening of December 8th.

"I don't know why I feel compelled to tell you this... but after commenting on that group you joined, I got to thinking about grade school again... and I was laughing because I think I was a little afraid of you when we were kids. lol Just something funny... and I wanted to say hi too. Hope you are doing really well."

I assumed I would not hear anything from him. Seriously. However, that message started a barrage of emails that ended a little after midnight. Then text messages the next day because of course we exchanged phone numbers. Then more emails the next evening. We went on a date two days later and the rest is history. We have our ups and downs but at the end of the day he is one of the most positive, resourceful, strongest, bravest, kindest, most handsome, funniest, craziest men I've ever known and life is a lot of fun when we're together. The thing that is so awesome to me is that the growing up that we did brought us to similar places at the same exact time. I feel so blessed and so lucky.

On to my other handsome man! My nephew Ronan was born a few months ago and I love him more than anything! I was there for the delivery and I saw little man being born. It was unbelievable... indescribable! I'm so glad I was there and I'm so proud of my sister and her little guy. He is the sweetest baby ever and so darn cute.

I love holding him... I love when I can get him to stop crying. I love cuddling him and I kiss him way too much. I wish I could spoil him as much as I want to but that's not working out right now! Still I love him so much. He's the best. He's such a good baby and he started to smile and laugh a little bit which is probably the cutest and most amazing thing I have ever seen in my life. He is my little godson and he will be baptized on Sunday. I will admit I'm not the most religious person... at all... but I will be there for my little guy.

It's funny when you are with a baby or holding a baby all these things that seemed innocuous before are suddenly possible dangers. It's like you see the world with different eyes... not necessarily to become a paranoid freak, just to rule out any potentially bad situations. I guess maybe it's my worrying nature but it's an interesting thing to experience.

Anyway, there are a million things I could talk about but I'm going to quiet down for a bit and get some stuff done around here.

Today is Harry Houdini's birthday and there's an interesting related news article today - Dorothy Young, the last surviving stage assistant of illusionist Harry Houdini and an accomplished dancer, has died at 103. Farewell Dorothy. :) Tell Harry we said hi and he's still a big hit!

I guess we can consider this blog resurrected.