Amber L. Carter's Blog, page 35

California, here you come.

My baby brother Dan is moving to L.A. on Wednesday. He came home on Sunday night to pack and get his new vehicle in tip-top shape before he makes the cross-country road trip. On Monday we got to hang out, which culminated in Blood Marys on Angler's Patio, then lunch at the Angry Minnow, then a stroll into Backroads for coffee, and finally a little meandering down Main Street. I decided to come back with him to our parents house on the lake, where we spent the evening having dinner, going for a pontoon ride, and watching a movie together.

I am trying to concentrate on the minutiae to keep myself from crying.

I am so, so proud of him for taking a chance on himself and embarking on an epic adventure...but goddammit, you guys. My baby brother is going to be halfway across the country from me. What is it about L.A. that puts out the siren call for some of the best and most dear people in my life? First Erica, now Dan... And I get it, because fuck all if I didn't fall in love with that city myself when I was there last September, but...I used to joke to Dan when he was in college at UW-Madison that if he ever needed a sober ride home, all he had to do was call me and I would be there in five hours to pick him up. But the dumb thing is that I meant it. And I know he's smart and capable and funny and a likeable fellow and all those things that are actually pretty important when you move to a new city, but I kind of want to just burrow myself into his backpack and be a stowaway on his journey just to make sure that nobody's mean to him when he gets there.

And I don't know how to end this post except to say: I love you, Daniel. And I am so proud of you. You are going to have the time of your life, and even if you don't, you are still one step ahead of everyone else who only talked but didn't do.

Don't do heroin (EVER).

Use a condom (ALWAYS).

Carry a $20 on your person at all times in case you get into a jam.

Go after what you want. Go after what you want. Go after what you want. Every day, wake up and decide what it is you want more than anything else in life, and then go after it.

People are going to do you favors. Make a point of returning them when you can.

People are going to fuck you over. Make a point of not acknowledging their fuckery.

Everyone you meet is going to be important, someway and somehow, when it comes to getting to where you want to go. Treat them accordingly.

Call Mom. A lot.

Text me. Not a lot, but maybe just every once in a while to let me know that you're taking a cab home from a party or that you really respect women or that you're, you know, talking to Garrett Hedlund about how awesome your sister is and how you really think that the two of us would hit it off the next time I come out to visit.

The moment when you want to come home is usually right before the moment when something happens to make you want to stay.

Have a great time. Take advantage of every experience that's available to you (EXCEPT heroin), date every interesting girl who's interested in you, too, and never turn down an opportunity to meet new people (unless those people are skanky or scary or in the porn or drug industry. Then it's totally fine to be all, "Hey, guys, no thanks, I've gotta go work my ass off on a new script and maybe text my sister back and tell her how grateful I am for all of her great advice.")

The End.

(love you)

Epic Weekend

(Thanks to my mom) Katy's Bridal Shower was a super fun success. It was a gorgeous morning of catching up with old friends, gushing over brunch awesomeness, and guzzling down Mimosas. Katy looked beautiful, and it was so fun to be able to celebrate with other friends and family who love her as much as I do.


For Katy's Bachelorette Party, we were all supposed to wear black and don a wig before we headed out to the Ladies of La Femme Show at the Gay 90's. I borrowed Katy's blonde mullet wig, and my alias for the eve was Loreen, a trash-talkin', hard-partying, easy-lovin' good-time girl from your local trailer park. As you can see in this photo, Loreen might be a classy hotel suite with fancy people, but she still knows how to have a good time.

The show was super fun, but there was definitely a moment when I realized just how much I missed Minneapolis...the music, the people, the culture, the diversity. I'm making a life here in the Northwoods, but Minneapolis will always, always have my heart.



On Sunday I made it home just in time to join the Sunday Funday crew on the lake! A few weeks ago, Jeff, Phil, Jen B, and I sat down and made a Summer Bucket List of all the things we needed to do to feel like we really captured the summer. And since making that list, we have tackled the effin' SHIT out of it by making Sundays sacred Sunday Fundays amongst our particular crew. Yesterday we put the boat in at Lac Courte Orielles, made a stop at (one of my all-time favorite places) Angler's Haven, and then Trails End to catch the live music on the patio. Jeff and Jen waterskied, Phil lost his hat, and we spent about an hour marveling over the amazingness of getting to watch a spectacular sunset while on the lake on a gorgeous summer evening.

As we said about a billion times that day..."And this is why we live here."

It's about time.

Dating is really hard, you guys. It’s mostly not fun. It’s mostly disappointing and discouraging and it makes me want to get a hysterectomy and go live in my friend’s basement in Canada until I wake up one day when it finally feels okay to be old enough to just stop trying.
But sometimes when you least expect it, you’ll meet someone who says all the right things and for the first time, you realize this isn’t a cliche. That men truly exist who say all the right things because all of his words are the right things when you meet an honest man. And the part of your brain that used to worry about angles and motives and plausible excuses is free to focus and feel other important things. That space you used to reserve for questioning and doubt is replaced with relief and resignation that you might possibly be happy again someday.And in this context, when you give yourself permission to jump impulsively into the complete unknown, you do more than Just Land. You find yourself on new soil, with more sure footing and you remember all these years later what it feels like to be wanted. ------ HollyFor almost a year, it was hard for me to forget that late August evening...of sitting outside Cafe Maude in South Minneapolis, when the wrong questions asked in the right order led me out to the bench on the sidewalk, with Karah trailing behind. She sat with me for a long time, nodding and listening as my voice broke and tears streamed down my face. "I wonder about that, too, Amber," she said to me, in that soft tone that she has when she is at her most gentle and understanding, when she is being the big sister I never had but always, always wanted. "How are you ever going to trust love ever again if this ends?" I nodded and brushed tears off my cheeks and thought about how that was the one thing that kept me where I was: If this ends...if this could end...then what the fuck would ever not? Two weeks later at The Otter, the bartender tried to flirt while I stood at the bar with my friend and ordered a beer from him. My friend nudged me and I rubbed my earlobe between my two fingers and looked away. "I think I'm probably done," I told her. "I think if this ends, I think I'm going to be done for a really long time." And then it ended. And I was done for a really long time. I packed up my stuff and moved out and went to LA and then came back to northern Wisconsin and I kept my head down and I worked really hard. I wrote a lot and practiced meditation daily and started new projects and figured out what I wanted my life to be like, now that I was starting all over again. And the only time I thought about dating was when it came up in conversation, like the way it did one early summer evening while having a glass of wine with two girls I've become close to up here. One of them asked how long it had been since I had been on a date. I gave my answer, saw her meet the other girl's eyes, and then, as if it had been rehearsed, they both nodded and told me it was time. "It's time," the one said. "It's time," the other repeated. "It's time," they both said again, this time in unison. "It is not time," I replied, bringing my wine glass back up to my lips. And it wasn't so much that my heart had been broken...it was that I felt like I couldn't trust myself anymore. To know what love really is and what can make a relationship go the distance and how to keep my head on my shoulders. We were perfect for each other until one day we weren't. We were really happy being together, until being apart made us happier. And none of that was predictable in the beginning. Or even right before the end, actually. And I kept wanting to see my way through it, to suddenly discover the golden lesson that could then be applied to all Next Times. And there just wasn't one, which frankly scared the shit out of me. So I decided to take some time and patch up all the pieces that had been torn away in the storm and work on being happy with my life and myself as it and I was, right at that moment. I healed up and moved on and got over it and was still okay with my total lack of desire to date, because, frankly, it was refreshing. I didn't lust for anyone, I didn't feel lonely, and I didn't long for more than I already had. And after a while, when it came to that particular part of my life, it wasn't that I didn't feel ready...it was that I just didn't want it enough, the dating thing, to actively do anything about it. Until one summer weekend turned my head around.

And it was time, it really was time, but I learned that, this time, it could be different. That the year I took to be by myself had made me different. I read Holly's post above and sort of nodded my head at the "Dating is really hard, you guys" part. Holly and Erica and I...I always think of us as being in this sort of same weird camp, when it comes to dating and relationships, in that it's always been a particularly painful process for us. We've had happy hours and emails and walks around the lake where we've talked about that very thing...dating has always been a hallowing out of those hidden vulnerabilities and buried insecurities and that torture chamber of taking everything so goddamn personally that you feel oddly hurt when he doesn't kiss you right away in the morning and who the fuck wants any of that, yeah?

But it's different now...kind of on purpose, and kind of not in that way where it's nice to know that we can still surprise ourselves with maturity and perspective and all that other good stuff that we didn't seem to have before. I'm a bit gun shy, admittedly cautious, but I'm enjoying myself. Dating, you guys...it can actually be kind of fun, yeah? There's a lot of new things I'm applying to my life right now, but the biggest one is that I don't actually know what's going to happen, and I know now that trying to predict that stuff is what makes one neurotic and sensitive and weirdly emotional, so I'm just not doing it. I repeat Paulson's "LIVE IN THE NOW!" voice inside my head and determine to enjoy this other person as much as I can for as long as they happen to be in my life, and I concentrate on having fun exactly where I'm at right now. And then I do.

(Everyone else reading this figured this all out about ten years ago, right? I finally caught up, everybody!)

And it just feels...nice. To be in a place where I don't have to try to get over anything or work so hard for something or worry about what may or may not happen. There are still those same questions that I don't have answers to yet, and for which I suspect those answers might always change, all the time...like how do you know what love really is and what can make a relationship go the distance...but the one thing I do know, now, is how to keep my head on my shoulders. And that makes me feel like I'm finally coming into myself.

About time. 

Project 365 /A Weekend of Katykins

I've pretty much been having the best summer of my life up here in the Northwoods...but I've been having so much fun that I haven't really had time to write about it or document it. So in an effort to capture the moments - even if it's just for my own remembrance - I've decided to try to do the Project 365 again (where you make an commitment to take a photo every day of the year). I'll try to post them all up on here, so those who care - like, friends who are waaaaaaaay across the country - can keep up on the goings-on of your crazy pal Amber and her life in the Northwoods.

Like this one:


Today - right this moment, actually...I'm procrastinating by writing this post, which my mom will be suuuuuper happy about, I bet, when she picks me up and I'm still not ready - I'm packing for a weekend of festivities in the TC. My best friend Katy is getting married in September, and this weekend we're throwing her a little Bridal Shower and Bachelorette party. It's going to be a full weekend of brunches, champagne, catching up with friends, and celebrating Katykins, and I cannot WAIT.

It hasn't really quite hit me yet, that Katy's getting married...it's kind of like when Chelsea was pregnant with Mae, and it took me until the 8th month to look at Chelsea and go, "So wait...you're going to have a BABY. Like, a real live person is going to come out of you and you guys are going to be parents and stuff." I think it's mostly because I've spent so much of this year up here, and haven't really been able to do all of that small, fun little wedding stuff that you usually do with your best friend...which has sucked pretty hard, to miss out on that with her. But this weekend? We're making up for it. 

Notice that you can never just say "Juan." It must be "Juan Pablo." And it must be whispered, for ultimate sexiness...

So, when it came to this season of the Bachelor, I just couldn't do it, you guys. I missed one episode due to the Electronic Holocaust, and I just didn't have the motivation to try and catch up. This is how much I couldn't stand Des...I couldn't even stand to watch her long enough to make fun of her.

In the scheme of Bachelor recaps, that's some serious shit.

BUT! Next season? IT'S ALL GOING TO BE DIFFERENT, EVERYBODY!

Because I don't know if you've heard, but this is our new Bachelor:




It's Juaaaaanannn Paaaaablllloooooooo!

Mmmmmmmmm....Juan Pablo. Juan Pablo the soccer player, who cites "good size breasts" as one of the qualities he looks for in a woman. Juan Pablo, who fights cowboys in Spanish. Juan Pablo, whose favorite book? Doesn't matter, BECAUSE JUAN PABLO DOESN'T READ! Juan Pablooooooo, the all-night dancer (and you know what they say about guys who are good on the dancefloor, don't you? It means they're good at SEX, too!). Juan Pablo, who has made me rethink my whole stance of not really needing to travel to that whole South America continent because I'm just not attracted to Spanish guys. Juan Pablo, who also has a daughter and talks about her in a way that makes you go "awww!" instead of "snooooooore."

Juan Pablo.

Juan Pablo is our next Bachelor.

It's going to be the best season EVER, everybody!

Gala.

This past Saturday was the culmination almost a year's worth of social media and PR work for The Gala Picnic at The Uhrenholdt Farmstead: A Step Back In Time, the annual auction dinner fundraiser for the Cable Natural History Museum.

Two weeks ago my friend Lacy and I went to Duluth to find a dress for this thing - the theme was the golden age of the Uhrenholdt Farmstead, which was between 1900-1920. I thought finding a dress would be a snap, and had this vision of a white cotton dress, maybe something a little lacy, but overall simple and comfortable and pretty. I tried on probably over a hundred white dresses that day. By the end of it I was so tired and disheartened that Lacy took one look at me as I shuffled out of the dressing room of the fifty billionth store we had gone to and then said in her most soothing voice, "Okaaaaay....we're gonna go get you a coffee, and then we're going to go to one more store, and then we're going to go home, okay? Sound good?" All I could do was silently nod and sigh.

And then of course, we walk into that one more store and find the perfect dress, which just so happened to be pink and not simple at all...

However, much to many of the costumed attendees dismay, Saturday turned out to be unseasonably chilly. And rainy. And windy. Those of us on the planning committee had this amazing vision of the Gala that we had been promoting for most of the year...a beautiful sunny summer evening on this gorgeous farmstead, fiddles playing, people laughing and dancing and exploring the grounds...but instead, most of us ended up huddled in the silent auction tent, trying to keep warm and spirits up as the rain started to fall. I wore my boots, brought a scarf to use as a shawl, and put my hair up to keep it from going to Fro Town. My parents joined me at the event, and I later complimented my mom on her foresight to bring blankets to put over our legs during dinner. IT WAS JULY, KIDS. WE NEEDED BLANKETS ON OUR LEGS FOR AN OUTSIDE DINNER IN FREAKING JULY.

I'm just...not a fan of Mother Nature this year, you know? Our friendship is suffering.

But tons of friends came to the event and we had the same "We're all in this together" mentality, and in the end we all had fun. The Museum raised a lot of money that night, too, which is really all that matters. And I got this fun picture taken with my mom and dad in front of the Uhrenholdt farmhouse! It reminds me of that madcap family in movies from the twenties and thirties that speed along in roadsters and races each other across the bridge and has dances around the piano with their friends and neighbors, and then their fun-loving daughter decides, "Gee, I'm going to college! It's not something that all girls do, but I'm a Thoroughly Modern Girl who wears short dresses and has a keen sense of well-adjustment! I'll go to football games and fraternity mixers and learn all the great new dances! And then I'll meet a swell guy that I'll write letters to when I'm home for the summer, but will end up turning down his marriage proposal when I decide to move to the city to become a career girl!" and her parents are all like, "Great! We support you in everything you do! Here, take this car with you to school, and don't forget to open the trunk when you get there because we filled it with cash for you! Have a great time and be sure to learn all the nifty new songs on the piano so we can all dance to them when you come back home again!"

Yeah. It reminds me of that.

Also, Helen Mirren is the straight-up shiz.

"If I’d had children and had a girl, the first words I would have taught her would have been “f*** off” because we weren’t brought up ever to say that to anyone, were we?
And it’s quite valuable to have the courage and the confidence to say, “No, f*** off, leave me alone, thank you very much.You see, I couldn’t help saying, “Thank you very much.” I just couldn’t help myself."— Helen Mirren’s advice to girls: Don’t Take Shit from Men  (viadesperateconversations)My friend Lacy likes to joke that I get mouthy and violent when I drink...and I don't, not really, but if you ever want to see me get super salty with someone at the bar, then I invite you to be that guy who interrupts a private conversation between me and a friend to make an untoward remark. Last night - as part of a greater arc in conversation about legs and the happy fact that I don't have to shave mine for at least a month at a time because my leg hair still grows in mostly blonde and fine - I told Lacy and Barrett to feel my thigh. This bald-shaven, tattooed, black-rimmed emo glasses wearing guy down the bar made a remark, and I narrowed my eyes at him and asked him to repeat himself. "You can bring that thigh down here," he sneered. My response to him...let's say that I made it crystal clear that if he continued to say things like that to me, I would react in a way that did not require words to explain how I felt about his mouth and the things that came out of it. Lacy and I have a lot of conversations about this, and I know sometimes she's taken aback by my reaction to guys like that. And I'm very aware that there are two main responses that women choose to take when guys are bothering them - ignoring it completely, or responding in a polite, nice manner, hoping that they'll just stop and go away. And feeling that you have to suffer someone's remarks and unwelcome presence because you don't want to look rude or mean? Fucking bullshit. The moment a man I don't know says something about my body or my friend's body or tries to make us feel uncomfortable in any way, that is the moment when he has thus lost the opportunity to receive any politeness from me. I tell the story a lot, about Karah finally yelling at a pack of dudes who kept interrupting our conversation at the bar, and   then, after seeing how taken aback I was by it, explained that this is how women get raped - they keep trying to be polite to guys who are bothering them because they don't want to be rude, or they don't want to confront the guy following them to their car because they're afraid of looking like a bitch, and that's how women get attacked. And it's true: We learn as little girls that it's not okay to vocalize our discomfort or dismay when an adult or another kid is bugging us - instead, we're literally lectured that that we need to be nice and polite to everyone - and then we grow up to be women who feel uncomfortable saying no or stop or get the fuck away, because we don't want to make a scene or be called a bitch or look like an irrational drama queen. I know this, because I used to be that girl, and I used to be that woman. And then too many times, a guy would do or say something to make me uncomfortable and I would walk away from the experience feeling mad and upset and embarrassed, because I tried to be nice and that didn't work, and then I tried to ignore him and that didn't work, and then my boundaries got crossed and always, always, I would leave feeling embarrassed or ashamed, feeling like I had somehow let something happen that I really hadn't wanted to happen. And then that would wash away into fury - how dare that person try and do stuff like that? How dare that person completely disregard another person's state of comfort? How dare they make me feel like I'm the one who did something wrong just because I'm a girl and I was there? And then after enough of that fury, I just started getting tired. Tired of going to the bar to hang out with my friends, only to be constantly interrupted by guys who didn't know how to take the hint. Tired of having to change position or move to another part of the party to get away from the man who gets just a little too handsy when he's talking to you. Tired of having to come up with creative dances to both dodge and confuse the guy who thinks that a girl dancing is an open invitation to rub up on her. So one night, after getting annoyed because a guy kept trying to bug my friend at the bar, I simply turned to him and said, "Hey. YOU. She obviously doesn't like you, so get the fuck out of here." AND IT WORKED! He went away, you guys! Literally turned and just walked away, leaving my friend and I free to have a conversation betweenst ourselves once again. So I started using that tactic more... When a guy kept trying to grind up on me on the dance floor, I pushed him away and told him to never fucking touch me again. When a guy tried to follow me into the bathroom at a bar a week or two ago, I whirled around and asked him what the fuck he thought he was doing. And you know what happened when I did that stuff? THEY ALL WENT THE FUCK AWAY. And did I look like a bitch? Sure did! I looked like a bitch who got to have a great time with her friends without having stupid guys interrupt our conversation with their dumb jokes or try to cop a feel while we were dancing or just generally ruin our night by skeezing us out. And I will gladly look like that bitch all the damn time. 

This is why Kubis' FB status updates are always my favorites.

The best times of our lives.

I think about that night often...before any of the kids were born, before any of our parents could die…of dancing in Matt and Chelsea's old living room with the crowd of friends I still hadn't known a full year, but somehow simply knew I would have the rest of my life. There was a certain sort of breathlessness to that night... If I could tie it up in a string, I would bundle it with the night we all danced at the W before I took everyone to that awful party in the penthouse suite, and then also the freezing winter night we decided that walking from the Uptown Green Mill to the Country Bar was a GREAT idea (and somehow ended up taking the long way there). 
The best part of each of those nights - and our lives, really - were that they were perfect in their imperfection. Nothing was carefully orchestrated and not everyone was happy. People wanted to ditch the W party early, and I couldn't because I knew it would look rude. Walking all the way up Hennepin and then across Lake and then up Lyndale on a night with a ridiculously high windchill factor wasn't the smartest thing we had ever done. Dancing in the middle of that dark living room with Matt, Chels, Karah, Jeff, Keith, and Kevin, I remember raising my arms over my head and closing my eyes as we danced and sang along....the thing you do to be alone in a roomful of people. I was so darkly and secretly sad, still, and I didn't yet know who to talk to about it. But somehow…the low moments made the high ones better. Richer, hipper, heart soaring, older eyes taking all of it in. Don't forget this, I remember telling myself, on each of those nights. You're going to want to remember. "Would we have known that these were the best times of our lives..." Sometimes I feel like we did. On the inside, without wanting or having to say it out loud, sometimes I feel like we just did. 

Slow Dance Philosophies.

You would think that "Kiss You All Over" by Exile might not be a great song to have your first slow dance to.

And you would be right.

But.

We made it work.

Also, I had been yelling all night for the band to play a slow jam, and when the band agrees to play a slow jam, YOU FUCKING SLOW DANCE TO THAT JAM.



It's also okay that this song is featured in Happy Gilmore, one of the best movies ever made in the history of America. #fact