Getting Over It

So while my um..  level 7* was away on a musical tour of the northeast the last two weeks, I had some extra time to think about things and what I thought about was how much I really love him. Just knowing he was more than forty miles away made my heart hurt.

Bear with me. This is not going to be a completely lovelorn sappy post. Promise.

I also had time to do a few things I don’t do as often as I’d like. 

Things like writing, and practicing the guitar. Not things like cleaning bathrooms or dusting. God forbid.

So what I wrote was a song about how being apart made me realize how much I loved him. 

Songs aren’t much use on paper though, and the problem, you see, is that I’m a horrible singer. “No,” you say, “you do just fine.” Well….  I don’t do just fine. I have two degrees in music and I know a bad singer when I hear one and I hear one when I hear me. Too bad I can’t just play the guitar (at which I don’t suck) and pass out the lyrics to the audience to read to themselves.

Level 7 and I go out to open mics on a regular basis where he champions great folk music and also sings lots of lovely original songs. He’s written a few with me in mind and I’ll tell you there is nothing more touching than having your love on stage singing a song he wrote for you. 

Seems like I could do the same for him but it terrifies me. So I sing the song in my living room where nobody hears my awful voice.

Also, while he was gone, I had extra time to spend with my kids. It’s summer, you know, and they wanted to go to the big water park. 

Side note: I’ve had a rather stressful year and put on some weight that I’m not terribly happy about. 

Going to the water park with them meant I would be walking around in a swimsuit all day amidst untold numbers of people in bright sunshine. 

Terrifying.

But I did it.

I spent the day with my kids and we had a blast. We went on a ride that was like being flushed down a giant toilet. 

Awesome. 

Of course there were gorgeous young girls with flat abs in bikinis and tan men with chiseled six-packs, but there were a lot of older moms and dads like me who have possibly reached the I-don’t-care-what-people-think phase of their lives. Some looked better than me and some looked worse and they were just there to have fun with their kids and I quit caring about what I looked like.  

So that's what I thought about last night when I got behind the microphone and sang the song I wrote. It started off pretty awful, but I think it got slightly better, and really there was only one person in the audience whose opinion mattered. 

Hope he liked it.

*See previous blog post: Relationship Status

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