Amber L. Carter's Blog, page 34
September 4, 2013
The changing colors! That fact that I get to wear my Hunters again! Halloween! Bonfires! Cute sweaters and scarves!
I'm kind of loving all these Twitter digs on girls and their fanatic love for Pumpkin Spice Lattes.Only because, as a girl who fanatically loves Pumpkin Spice Lattes, I can say that they're funny because they're true.
Also, I am TOTALLY wearing yoga pants right now, everybody! It's like this guy sees right into my soul.
Or into my house.
Both are equally creepy.
(for him)
September 3, 2013
September 2, 2013
Committed To Sparkle Motion.
Postiljonen - ALL THAT WE HAD IS LOST from Ty Olson on Vimeo.
Checking the time on my phone, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath in, and threw the covers back. I sleep better now, now that I’ve changed around my room. “I needed a new perspective,” I told my roommate earlier this week, when he walked into the Penthouse to find my furniture in the hallway. The thing that’s always hard for me is the sleeping together. I know it’s science, that hugging and cuddling releases oxytocin and dopamine, which creates a sense of well-being and happiness, etc. etc. Which is great, until it doesn’t happen anymore, and the withdrawal sets in. So I needed a detox. And the one way I could think of to do that was to erase the environmental triggers. So I moved my bed and bought new sheets and soon I was sleeping more soundly, waking up happier, pleased by the sight of my “new” room, where no one else has been but me.
I had friends from Minneapolis who were up at their cabin for the holiday weekend, and we were meeting that morning for brunch. I slipped on a pair of skinny black jeans, cuffed them quickly, then donned a black shirt and a light black sweater. Slipping on my sandals, I threw my hair up into a ponytail and then bounded down the stairs to unlock my bike. The morning was cool and cloudy and everything that I could ever want in a Sunday morning, just on the cusp of fall. I love fall so much. It’s so easy to forget in the haze of summer sunshine, but leaves and lakes and boots and jackets and bonfires...it’s what I come here for, over and over again. An endless loop of fall in the Northwoods. Riding my bike past my old place, I smiled a little as I remembered that this was the day, two years ago, that Katy and I went to River’s Edge for River Jam and I ran into the boy who would define that early fall for me...and pretty much my new adult dating existence, if I’m honest about it. He was beautiful and smart and a great, great kisser and he had a lot of potential. And I really wanted him, but it was the first time in a long while that I let my feelings shield and protect me, instead of tossing them to the wind to see what might come back. And I am really glad for that. The lesson I was meant to learn with him is that potential doesn’t mean shit, quite frankly, and it was time to be done with boys who were super cute but just a lot of talk, and who, at the end of the day, don’t really make you feel all that great about yourself.
He was really beautiful, though...
You fall for pretty strangers and the promises they hold. The line from an Indigo Girls song felt true when I was 17, and sometimes, to my dismay, it still feels true at 34. Sometimes it can feel like I’m living in a rerun, only with different actors saying the same lines.
“I was totally happy being alone, and then he had to breeze in with his hot face and awesome body and smart words and fuck it all up for me,” I joked in an email to a friend earlier this week, about a boy I had been seeing this summer. Last night I deleted his phone number and text messages from my phone. Because I want to believe that I’m getting better at this, and even though I don’t always perceive my own best interests, I know enough to know when it’s time to call it quits. I learned a lot. I enjoyed myself and had a great time and I learned a lot about myself. But I also learned that, while I do really like him and I’m really grateful for the time we got to spend together, this is just not the time for us. I am no longer doing battle with ghosts of boyfriend pasts, but I am still finding myself in a hard fight with my own heart. I had a lot of things come up, while dating him...tendencies and habits that I don’t really like about myself, that I would like to change on my own instead of making someone else endure those particular brands of bullshit. The biggest thing that came up for me is that there is this sense of lack... A hallow space inside, that I keep expecting someone else to fill. It shows itself in this persistent sense of boredom and restlessness that I used to take as a sign that I was ready to meet someone and make out with someone and become excited about someone again. And then I would, and I would become confused and frustrated and disappointed by the fact that I still felt that boredom and restlessness even when I was meeting someone and making out with someone and getting excited about someone. And I realized that I felt that way because the trick isn’t about finding “someone”...it’s about finding me, and figuring out what it is that I feel is lacking inside, and what I can do, on my own, to fill it. And it’s the reason why I’m happy when no one else is around and so scattered when someone is...because they magnify it. I don’t have to think about it when I’m just concentrating on myself. When I’m sleeping next to someone, though, it becomes this dull roar, this persistent yearning to be constantly soothed and attended to, this bratty underground expectation that I should be made the center of their universe. (And who wouldn’t want to date that, right?) I have this piece I started working on at the beginning of summer that talks about self and body image and how we - I, you, ourselves - are the ones we’ve been waiting for, and it’s ironic to me, that I put that piece on hold when I met him. Because I wanted to see what would happen. Because I knew that there was a reason for him coming into my life this summer. And there was, and I am glad for it. But now it’s fall, and it feels like it’s time to pick that piece back up again. Say goodbye and wish each other well. Thanks for all the memories, have a good year at school, maybe I’ll see you next summer.
Rolling down a slight slope in the road, I felt the wind pick up my ponytail and I closed my eyes against the breeze for just a moment. Trying to remember where I was last year, I opened them again in surprise when it hit me. It's been a whole year. A year ago this weekend, I was fresh off of leaving Chris. Last Labor Day I was staying with Katy and sorting through my stuff and writing heartbroken emails to Erica and trying to figure out how I was going to tell my mom about what had happened. The idea to move back up here was one that I actually resisted from the first. “I don’t want to move back up north,” I remember telling Katy through my tears, as we sat on her deck the night I broke up with Chris. “I don’t want to move backwards, I don’t want to go back up to the place where I first met him. I just want new right now.” But then things fell suddenly - ridiculously suddenly - into place, and it started to feel like the universe was conspiring to bring me up here. So up here I came.
And what a year...I produced two new projects that I couldn’t do anywhere else, I (finally) published my second book, I met people who are now some of my closest friends, I started dating again, and I had the best summer of my entire life. I built a life here. This blogger, Andrea, once wrote a post about reading "all the things" where she talked about how many of the pages were about always leaving and never staying, always leaving and never staying. And it struck me, when I read that, that she was right and that I had barely even realized it before. A lot of my adult life has been about always leaving and never staying. And I made a decision a while ago that I would at least try to build a life here. That instead of always looking forward to the next exit sign, I would concentrate on staying and enjoying myself and look forward to the next season of here. And I have, and I've been happier for it.
Laughing as I almost biffed it on a curb, I pedaled into the packed parking lot and found myself thinking about how, after tomorrow, most of these cars will be long gone from Hayward proper. There’s a certain sadness to Labor Day Weekend, up here...the lakes and the streets get quieter, the silences get longer. But there’s also a kind of magic to it. It’s the thing I love most about fall, how it always feels like a Metaphorical New Year. New beginnings, a fresh start. The decision you have to make on the first day of school: Who will you be this year?
This year, I’m committed to sparkle motion. To throwing up my hands and making magic, just because I can. To using the lessons I’ve learned in the past few years and making something concrete out of them that I can share. To more bike rides on early Sunday mornings before I fill my day with books and coffee and writing and music. To daily adventures of exploring this place where I live now and what I want my place in it to be like, and then quiet evenings with friends to talk it all out. Because we are so blessed, to be here, in this place, all of us together. To long, gorgeously long hours of writing, because my self-imposed summer vacation is finally over, and the season of fall and winter is always where the real rhythm of my writing begins. To a pleasant, productive season of moving deeper into my own heart and getting comfortable with it - all of it - and using my time more wisely. I want to look back on this weekend next year and remember this bike ride and be able to say, once again, that it all started from there.
Checking the time on my phone, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath in, and threw the covers back. I sleep better now, now that I’ve changed around my room. “I needed a new perspective,” I told my roommate earlier this week, when he walked into the Penthouse to find my furniture in the hallway. The thing that’s always hard for me is the sleeping together. I know it’s science, that hugging and cuddling releases oxytocin and dopamine, which creates a sense of well-being and happiness, etc. etc. Which is great, until it doesn’t happen anymore, and the withdrawal sets in. So I needed a detox. And the one way I could think of to do that was to erase the environmental triggers. So I moved my bed and bought new sheets and soon I was sleeping more soundly, waking up happier, pleased by the sight of my “new” room, where no one else has been but me.
I had friends from Minneapolis who were up at their cabin for the holiday weekend, and we were meeting that morning for brunch. I slipped on a pair of skinny black jeans, cuffed them quickly, then donned a black shirt and a light black sweater. Slipping on my sandals, I threw my hair up into a ponytail and then bounded down the stairs to unlock my bike. The morning was cool and cloudy and everything that I could ever want in a Sunday morning, just on the cusp of fall. I love fall so much. It’s so easy to forget in the haze of summer sunshine, but leaves and lakes and boots and jackets and bonfires...it’s what I come here for, over and over again. An endless loop of fall in the Northwoods. Riding my bike past my old place, I smiled a little as I remembered that this was the day, two years ago, that Katy and I went to River’s Edge for River Jam and I ran into the boy who would define that early fall for me...and pretty much my new adult dating existence, if I’m honest about it. He was beautiful and smart and a great, great kisser and he had a lot of potential. And I really wanted him, but it was the first time in a long while that I let my feelings shield and protect me, instead of tossing them to the wind to see what might come back. And I am really glad for that. The lesson I was meant to learn with him is that potential doesn’t mean shit, quite frankly, and it was time to be done with boys who were super cute but just a lot of talk, and who, at the end of the day, don’t really make you feel all that great about yourself.
He was really beautiful, though...
You fall for pretty strangers and the promises they hold. The line from an Indigo Girls song felt true when I was 17, and sometimes, to my dismay, it still feels true at 34. Sometimes it can feel like I’m living in a rerun, only with different actors saying the same lines.
“I was totally happy being alone, and then he had to breeze in with his hot face and awesome body and smart words and fuck it all up for me,” I joked in an email to a friend earlier this week, about a boy I had been seeing this summer. Last night I deleted his phone number and text messages from my phone. Because I want to believe that I’m getting better at this, and even though I don’t always perceive my own best interests, I know enough to know when it’s time to call it quits. I learned a lot. I enjoyed myself and had a great time and I learned a lot about myself. But I also learned that, while I do really like him and I’m really grateful for the time we got to spend together, this is just not the time for us. I am no longer doing battle with ghosts of boyfriend pasts, but I am still finding myself in a hard fight with my own heart. I had a lot of things come up, while dating him...tendencies and habits that I don’t really like about myself, that I would like to change on my own instead of making someone else endure those particular brands of bullshit. The biggest thing that came up for me is that there is this sense of lack... A hallow space inside, that I keep expecting someone else to fill. It shows itself in this persistent sense of boredom and restlessness that I used to take as a sign that I was ready to meet someone and make out with someone and become excited about someone again. And then I would, and I would become confused and frustrated and disappointed by the fact that I still felt that boredom and restlessness even when I was meeting someone and making out with someone and getting excited about someone. And I realized that I felt that way because the trick isn’t about finding “someone”...it’s about finding me, and figuring out what it is that I feel is lacking inside, and what I can do, on my own, to fill it. And it’s the reason why I’m happy when no one else is around and so scattered when someone is...because they magnify it. I don’t have to think about it when I’m just concentrating on myself. When I’m sleeping next to someone, though, it becomes this dull roar, this persistent yearning to be constantly soothed and attended to, this bratty underground expectation that I should be made the center of their universe. (And who wouldn’t want to date that, right?) I have this piece I started working on at the beginning of summer that talks about self and body image and how we - I, you, ourselves - are the ones we’ve been waiting for, and it’s ironic to me, that I put that piece on hold when I met him. Because I wanted to see what would happen. Because I knew that there was a reason for him coming into my life this summer. And there was, and I am glad for it. But now it’s fall, and it feels like it’s time to pick that piece back up again. Say goodbye and wish each other well. Thanks for all the memories, have a good year at school, maybe I’ll see you next summer.
Rolling down a slight slope in the road, I felt the wind pick up my ponytail and I closed my eyes against the breeze for just a moment. Trying to remember where I was last year, I opened them again in surprise when it hit me. It's been a whole year. A year ago this weekend, I was fresh off of leaving Chris. Last Labor Day I was staying with Katy and sorting through my stuff and writing heartbroken emails to Erica and trying to figure out how I was going to tell my mom about what had happened. The idea to move back up here was one that I actually resisted from the first. “I don’t want to move back up north,” I remember telling Katy through my tears, as we sat on her deck the night I broke up with Chris. “I don’t want to move backwards, I don’t want to go back up to the place where I first met him. I just want new right now.” But then things fell suddenly - ridiculously suddenly - into place, and it started to feel like the universe was conspiring to bring me up here. So up here I came.
And what a year...I produced two new projects that I couldn’t do anywhere else, I (finally) published my second book, I met people who are now some of my closest friends, I started dating again, and I had the best summer of my entire life. I built a life here. This blogger, Andrea, once wrote a post about reading "all the things" where she talked about how many of the pages were about always leaving and never staying, always leaving and never staying. And it struck me, when I read that, that she was right and that I had barely even realized it before. A lot of my adult life has been about always leaving and never staying. And I made a decision a while ago that I would at least try to build a life here. That instead of always looking forward to the next exit sign, I would concentrate on staying and enjoying myself and look forward to the next season of here. And I have, and I've been happier for it.
Laughing as I almost biffed it on a curb, I pedaled into the packed parking lot and found myself thinking about how, after tomorrow, most of these cars will be long gone from Hayward proper. There’s a certain sadness to Labor Day Weekend, up here...the lakes and the streets get quieter, the silences get longer. But there’s also a kind of magic to it. It’s the thing I love most about fall, how it always feels like a Metaphorical New Year. New beginnings, a fresh start. The decision you have to make on the first day of school: Who will you be this year?
This year, I’m committed to sparkle motion. To throwing up my hands and making magic, just because I can. To using the lessons I’ve learned in the past few years and making something concrete out of them that I can share. To more bike rides on early Sunday mornings before I fill my day with books and coffee and writing and music. To daily adventures of exploring this place where I live now and what I want my place in it to be like, and then quiet evenings with friends to talk it all out. Because we are so blessed, to be here, in this place, all of us together. To long, gorgeously long hours of writing, because my self-imposed summer vacation is finally over, and the season of fall and winter is always where the real rhythm of my writing begins. To a pleasant, productive season of moving deeper into my own heart and getting comfortable with it - all of it - and using my time more wisely. I want to look back on this weekend next year and remember this bike ride and be able to say, once again, that it all started from there.
August 21, 2013
365 Project/8.17: Northwoods Music & Arts Festival at Boulder Lodge
On Saturday evening, I dragged my friend Lacy out to Boulder Lodge with me for their Northwoods Music and Art Festival. I love Boulder Lodge, and Lacy had never been, so I figured it was the perfect opportunity to marry her youth and innocence with my worldly knowledge of totally rad places. The music was great, there were plenty of new and familiar faces in attendance, and (later in the evening) they also had one of the most amazing bonfires known to man.
And that's pretty much all I can say about that, because as you can probably tell from this photo that I bombed -
I was...also pretty bombed.
From Communion wine, of course, after going to church earlier that evening...
It's the Summer of Fun, everybody! And sometimes, that means you have a few cocktails at an arts and music festival in the Northwoods. To, you know, support their beer commerce and thus the business community at large...
Don't judge me.
August 20, 2013
365 Project / 8.16.13
Sometimes life gives you just what you need. Waking up early on a sunny morning, I took my coffee out to the sunroom and intended to meditate and do my morning yoga routine, but ended up sitting at the computer first and writing some stuff out. It's funny, how it all flows when you least expect it. Three hours of writing, a lot of inner honesty, and a lot of learning.
Friends who support the idea that your hair turning silver might be the best thing ever: The Best.
(Me, in a text to Erica): "So this morning I found not ONE, but MANY silver strands in my hair. BUT...they're like, shiny silver...so what if I let them grow in and I end up with the shiny mane of a magical unicorn?!?!?"
(Erica to me): "YES!!! I am so for shiny beautiful silver hair!! Unicorns! Emmy Lou Harris! Nothing bad comes from magical hair."
TRUTH.
(Erica to me): "YES!!! I am so for shiny beautiful silver hair!! Unicorns! Emmy Lou Harris! Nothing bad comes from magical hair."
TRUTH.
August 19, 2013
Becoming.
I was talking to my friend Lacy the other night about what I felt the difference was between my twenties and thirties. My twenties, in a large way, was about solving the puzzle of who I was going to be...and a lot of that required fixing or covering up what I didn’t like about myself. Figuring out what kind of career I wanted and how I felt about dating and where my place in the world was...it was a blur of uncertainty and sometimes insecurity. Then the lesson would come through and I would maybe learn it and move onto the next, or I wouldn’t and would have to have it presented to me again five minutes later. And my twenties were tough. There were moments of magic, and always, at every point, in some form, I was having a great time, but wow. Looking back and realizing how much indecision and anxiety and angst I felt all the time...I am grateful for that period of life, but I’m also grateful that it’s over. My thirties are about learning more about what I like about myself, and then becoming more of it. I like who I am when I have adventurous and insightful friends, so let’s give me more of that. I like who I am when I’m writing every day, so let’s work to arrange my life around this. And I'm kind of loving those small little discoveries...those underground preferences that I probably always had, but have just finally come to that point in my life where I can recognize and then happily accept that about myself. Like, I know this might sound kind of dumb (and sorry, parents...go watch The Voice or something and then skip down to the next paragraph), but I had this moment a few weeks ago where I realized that I love morning sex. And that all this time, I've been dating a string of fellows who don't love it, or at least don't really think about it, and that clash in preferences would result in a whole mess of questions of desirability and feelings of rejection and basically all the stuff you don't want when you're thinking and talking and doing of the sex thing. So this realization was like putting a big fat roll of hundred dollar bills into the savings account of Things I Know About Myself That Will Keep Me Happier In The Future. I love that sleepy, slow, waking-up-together-in-the-best-way-possible sex of the morning, and that I always have, and so it's not going to be the best fit for me to date someone who does not also enjoy that particular form of daily rhythm.
(I just used "rhythm" when talking about sex. I AM A MASTER OF WORDS)
And this is exactly what I love about life right now: the fact that I'm still learning new things about myself, but that they're the fun lessons. They're the kind of things that are only going to make me happier. That are only going to make relationships easier. That are only going to make life better.
And if I feel that way right now, at 34? Holy shit, you guys. I can't even hardly wait for my forties to begin. (I have big plans for the super hot forties. Believe it.)
Tuesday Night on Round Lake with Lacy and The Three Fellows.
"Did you get me in that photo, Amber?" Matt asked."Yeah, I did."
"Really? That's surprising, since I purposefully made sure my head was directly behind Phil when you took it."
"That's why I've been taking photos of you this whole time that you've been talking to me, jerk."
August 16, 2013
Goodwill Tour of Main Street
Yesterday my friend and fellow Girl from the Nothwoods chick Meg and I went on a little stroll down and up Main Street, telling local businesses about the Dapper Dozen Calendar and giving them some handy information on how they can be a part of it (HELP US GET THIS THANG PRINTED, YOU GUYS, SO WE CAN HELP FEED SOME KIDS!). When we were done with our Goodwill Tour of Mainstreet, we decided to stop in at Riverbrook Bike & Ski to say hi to our January Calendar Man, Tim, and to do a little research on bikes and helmets (for further reasons for doing this, you can check out this post).And then we saw this helmet.WITH UNICORNS ON IT.It did not fit me.
(We know this because we tried, many times, to make it fit)Maybe Tim can order one for me in Adult Lady Size…And then I can forever be known around town as That Totally Rad Lady Riding Around In A Unicorn Helmet.Which basically means that all of my dreams will then have come true.
August 14, 2013
My other ride is your mom. Wait...
Yesterday I said goodbye to the Russian Barracuda.
For a long time I've been saying that I'd like to try out a carless existence. I've had this car for about 5 years now, and while I love being able to hop in and just go anywhere I want, it's caused me more grief than it has joy - endless repairs, a summer of ticket nightmares, inconvenient parking situations, and damages that I did not incur.
On Monday my baby brother brought his new vehicle into a local repair shop to get it ready for the cross-country trip to California. When I arrived to pick him up for our hang-out that we were having while they worked on his vehicle, I decided to schedule an oil change and an estimate for some repairs that I knew it was going to need. About three hours after dropping it off, I got a call from the mechanic telling me the news that I knew, deep down, I was probably going to get: That it would take $1,000+ just to make it safe to drive again, and that I would probably be better off taking it to the salvage yard where I could get maybe $300 for it.
So yesterday, I did just that. I cleaned out my car - apparently I'm a pen hoarder? I had A BILLION PENS stored in that damn vehicle. I also found a porn DVD in the glove compartment. Which is hilarious, because apparently someone out there is still waiting for me to discover a practical joke they must have played on me, like, three years ago or something - and then took it to the salvage yard, praying all the way that it wouldn't break down on the way (because that would just be my life, to have to pay for a tow truck to haul my car to the salvage yard to collect the exact amount of money from it that it would take to pay said tow truck). Luckily for me, that didn't happen...they weighed it, cut me a check, and off I went to embark on a carless existence.
Like I said, I've been wanting to try it out for a while, and I'm at that point in my life where, if I'm going to spend money on something, I want it to be worth it. So instead of tracking down a used car that can simply get me from A to B, I'd rather wait and sock away a bit more money so I can buy a vehicle that I'll really dig.
I *did* had a bit of separation anxiety yesterday: It's hard to change that mental habit of knowing that you can just hop in your car and go anywhere you want to, at any time, to knowing that now you actually have to plan your life around the fact that your mobility is restricted. But I'm also kind of excited about it? Living in the middle of town, I've made a point to walk everywhere I can, and to use my car as seldom as possible, so it's not going to be *that* big of a change. I can walk to work, I can walk to the store, I can even walk to my friend's places. I'll probably get a bike for those longer hauls, and there's a place here where I can rent a car if I need to get out of town. It won't be as easy as it would be if I still lived in Minneapolis (public transportation, cab systems, lots and lots of bike lanes and greenways), but that's kind of the point of a carless existence, right?
Also, I'm really excited to post a bunch of self-righteous, smug tweets and Facebook updates about how I'm so much better than all of you because I'm not contributing to the oil crisis / being an active part of America's gas dependency / hating on the earth by using a car.
High-Fives to me for being part of the SOLUTION instead of the PROBLEM, you guys!
