My night with the bachelors and bachelorettes. "Reality" tv indeed.

Last night I did something few people actually get to do... I went to a Bachelorette viewing party with a bunch of previous Bachelors and Bachelorettes. I have to admit that I didn't know exactly what I was getting into. I'm not a big Bachelor fan. Call me crazy but I feel like searching for love by competing with 25 other (surgically enhanced) chicks for 1 guy's attention isn't my cup of tea. And the awkwardness of the show wears me out. But my beloved roommate Susan LOVES it, so I've recently started watching it with her, mostly because I love processing the most recent episode with her while we're getting ready for work in the morning.

My other beloved roommate/aunt Nikki is friends with one of the bachelors from the season of Bachelorette starring Jillian. He will remain unnamed in this blog. But if you ask me in person I'll tell you. They hung out this weekend, and he mentioned this viewing party he was going to attend, that would be taking place at a club in Hollywood, and that several other previous "contestants" would be attending. Those of you who know me are probably aware of the fact that I prefer sweatpants and my DVR to getting floozed up and heading into Hollywood. But how could I resist going with Susan who has been following this show for years and was so excited about the idea of hanging out with these people? So, wearing black skinny jeans and accessories, off we went to Hollywood.

The first good sign of the night was that we got a parking spot on the street right in front of the club. The second good sign was when we walked up to the velvet rope, and told them we were there for the Bachelorette viewing party, they unclipped that velvet rope and let us in. After that things started to get a little weird...

Susan and I walked in and went to the bar first, to get the lay of the land. I thought the bar tender was your average run of the mill martini shaker, until Susan said to him, "I know who you are. You're Robby B. You got left in the middle of the rocky mountains." Turns out our bartender was a previous bachelor contestant in the Jillian season as well! Super nice and friendly guy. I love Robby B.

Then, we proceeded to walk into the room with a small group of people (clearly reality tv "stars") sitting on couches in front of a tv, and... lights and cameras. We went and met up with the previously unnamed Bachelor. I introduced myself to a woman at the table. She told me she was Sharon from E! and asked who I'm with. I looked at her awkwardly, and said, "huh?" She then informed me that this was an E! taping of the Bachelorette viewing party for previous contestants. Whoops... Susan and I were totally crashing this taping.

At first Susan and I tried to score one of the seats near the television, until a camera guy with a boom mic started coming around to all the people sitting down and asked their name and what season they were on. At that point Susan and I promptly made ourselves scarce and sat in the back. Oh how I wish I'd made up a fake name and said I was on season 2 with Jesse Palmer!!! I feel like I could have gotten away with it.

I wish I could say that the people were super nice and that they're just like us. They're not really. These poor people are all trying so hard to put up a beautiful front, it aches with emptiness. As we watched their interactions with each other, and heard them reflecting on their time with the show, I felt like the best they can hope for is having someone decide that they want to buy into the facade. Not too much being real with each other in this context. It kind of felt like all that beauty has to be lonely.

One bachelor did bring me a shrimp taco wrapped in tin foil, which I promptly stuck in my purse.
On the way out Susan and I had a pretty jarring interaction with one of the bachelors. This was one that she'd had a crush on from the Jillian season who apparently was super sweet and caring. I can't remember his name at the moment, but he's the one that had a winery. Anyway... we went to chat with him because Susan wanted a picture. During our whole conversation he looked past us. Since we were on our way out anyway, I wanted to ask him some real questions, so I asked if it's super being awkward on the show because it doesn't seem at all like actual dating. He then proceeded to describe how "not real" it actually was. He told us that the minute he saw Jillian he knew he wasn't into her. She's 5' and 100 lbs. and he's looking for a "bombshell." I knew he'd made it pretty far into the season, so I asked if he just faked the whole thing. He then proudly said, "I liked the entire time. I just had to get to the hometown date to get publicity for my winery. I am the world's best liar."

How is one to respond to a statement like this? This guy was moderately cute. I think he is used to chicks fawning all over him, and maybe thought we were some of those chicks. Or maybe we didn't matter. But all I could do was look at him and say, "World's best liar huh? Well, everyone's gotta be good at something."

Susan and I were pretty outraged on the way out that guys like this exist in the world. Or people like this. Love, true love, is the most beautiful thing in the world. It brings out the beauty in the other person, it's self-sacrificing, it's full of hope, and joy. So this guy, who made a mockery out of love, gets his 15 minutes of fame. (Picture me flailing my arms in anger and stomping my feet).

My first response was what I thought was righteous indignation, but now I'm wondering if it was a little bit more self-righteousness. These are broken people, and the world buys into the consumption of their missing the mark about love.

I'm still processing through all of this, but I guess I was shocked by how ugly the backside of reality tv is. It's not reality at all. It's this crazy fake world, and I'm pretty sure people are missing out on the beauty of actual reality. Of letting another person seeing you as you truly are, and loving that about you.

In a nutshell, here's the lesson from the night:
Extra dirty martini - $15
Parking ticket from that sweet spot in front of the club - $55
Being eternally grateful for the actual real love in my life - priceless.

Random updates

Okay... quick updates.
This weekend Joey and I celebrated our 4 month anniversary, which also happens to be a record for my longest relationship. Still goin' strong, he is the greatest of all time.
Lots of travels coming up...
Foursquare Convention at the beginning of June (not my favorite event of the year due to all the small talk and sitting in services)
Hawaii at the end of June with cousins and grandma. Joey is joining for the second week, which I am so excited about. Trying to prep him for the fact that I mostly like to lay around in Hawaii. This shouldn't come as too much of a shock since in all actuality, I like laying around all the time. Sweatpants anyone?
Comicon in July - time for me to really embrace my nerd self. Working on the Princess Leia slave outfit. Nothing a white bikini and bottle of gold spraypaint can't handle.
Still working on the epic trip for August. Maybe camping.
Life continues to be good. The roommates are most excellent. Unfortunately our landlord has put our house up for sale, so there is a chance we might have to move... :/ One of the downsides to this exciting life of mobility, is that I pretty much have to move every year. I've moved 9 times since I graduated high school. So, please feel free to pray that we don't have to move. At present, my roommates and I are working on sabotage strategies for the sale of the house.

Single Ladies

For those of you who don't know, my life group has been one of the most wonderful anchoring forces in my life during the past 2 years. It's been one of the most incredible, authentic expressions of what it means to experience the loving Body of Christ within community I've ever known. These are a bunch of hilarious chicks who I love dearly.
Together we've survived the business of grad school, endured tragedies, commiserated over being trundled (definition of trundled: when an older sibling has to share a bedroom with niece or nephew, sleeping on a trundle bed, while the younger sibling shares a bedroom with his or her spouse), and now the joys of seeing our friend get married!
This year we had the privilege of seeing Dan Kramer come into Julie Way's life and sweep her off her feet. At a time when many of us had started to lose hope, this reminded us of what could be around the corner. So, as a life group, we knew we had to send Julie off in a special way... :)

Epic Starts Here

"Epic starts here." - This is the newly discovered slogan of the Puma Lounge, which is the name of my house. Taylor Lautner definitely pulls Nikki, Susan, and myself into cougar territory but we haven't fully embraced the lifestyle of buying playstations for college boys yet. Yet.
Anyway, epic starts here. Ever since Susan and Nikki moved into this house, and Joey came on the scene, every weekend has been remarkably epic. But not just epic in the sense of events that merit facebook photo albums, even though those do happen regularly. A few weeks ago I went to bed at 8:00pm on a Friday night. The next morning I woke up, and was so pumped to tell my roommates about my epic night of sleep. Joey and I have donated blood twice this year - epic. We eat shells n cheese with crushed red pepper on top regularly - epic. Nikki and I have been getting up at 5:30am for morning devotions during Lent - epic.
A few weeks ago, the roomies and I walked to downtown Sierra Madre to get breakfast at a really lovely and quaint outdoor cafe. There was perfect music playing, nice clouds in the sky, hoodies on, sparklingly witty conversation, and we were feelin' it. At one point, Susan pointed out "I love that we savor things." This is a true statement, we really do savor things. In fact, as I laughingly pointed out to Susan at that point, apparently, we savor that we savor things.
I heard once that "Joy is enjoying another person enjoying you enjoying that other person." This is where I think the true epicness of the season enters in. There is this truly amazing combination in my life right now of people enjoying each other, and it really just builds on itself.
Of course, there are things worthy of enjoying right now. Joey finally came on the scene. He is quite possibly the best, most generous, funniest, all around greatest person I've ever met. More on that, but I don't want to overwhelm this "interweb" thing with too much sap. But let it suffice to say, he is sap worthy.
My roommates, Susan and Nikki, hit on all cylinders of awesomeness. I live in a house of good food, space to process the hard and real stuff (like that time I almost had a nervous breakdown after a horoscope reading), funny dogs, excellent boy talk, rock band, laughter (lots of it), raucous parties and morning devotions together.
My folks actually did get that house in Sierra Madre! After years of praying prayers that felt unanswered, God comes through in a way none of us could have dared to actually hope for. Isn't that just like Him... Epic.
Okay, I do not mean to overwhelm all 6 of my readers with talking about all the good stuff in my life. But this is my point - epic starts here. It's an internal thing. It's a choice to savor little things, like going to bed at 8pm on a Friday night. It's a choosing to invite others into your life for the hard and real and funny stuff.
Paradise is realizing what you have when you have it - Epic.

Okay okay, I'm back. For real this time.

Apparently I'm awesome at writing one post on a blog, and then abandoning it for a year. But then I'm also awesome at coming back. So here I am.

It's been quite a year. We're coming up on the year anniversary of my dad's heart attack, which was sort of the moment in time where things shifted. Thankfully he survived it just fine, but it still felt like a loss of innocence. It left me with the same feeling I had when we lost my grandpa to pancreatic cancer in 2006, like the rules changed on us without anyone letting us know this was going to happen. For a pretty complete chronicling of that journey, visit http://www.tomhardeman.blogspot.com/. Anyway, now here I stand on the other side of it, with a new worldview in which joy and sorrow are two sides of the same coin. Each influences the other; without each we we wouldn't have the other.

These are happy days I live in now though. Still praying for things to get easier on my folks, hoping that they can find a new version of their dream house and move out to Sierra Madre. But my life is filled with lots of laughter, and joy, beautiful friendships and love. Things I'd given up on, showed up at my door, with flowers, delicious snacks, and my favorite video game.

I'm still not sure about this blog business, or if I'll be able to come up with interesting things to write, or if anyone will ever read it, but I feel like I have stories, and I want to tell them. So, wide world of the interweb (and probably mostly my parents and the occasional friend), hello.

New Kids on the Block... a second chance at love

Last night a lifelong dream of mine came true. I went to a New Kids on the Block concert. Now, leading up to the concert most people laughed when I told them what I was going to do. I have to admit that I was a little embarrassed myself, but this was a chance I could not miss. However, nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to experience.

You see The New Kids on the Block marked a very important period in my life. They hit it big in 1989. My obsession with NKOTB (as Tiger Beat affectionately referred to them) triggered the movement from little awareness of the fact that I was female to an obsession poured into five boys from Boston (Joey, Jordan, Donny, Danny, and Jonathan). We are talking about the wholehearted devotion of a 7-year-old girl, not a thing to be taken lightly. The fact that I had all five dolls, the sleeping bag, and posters covering my walls was only a symbol of the sheer unadulterated love that my heart held for them. I would give anything to find the diary I kept where I described what would happen when Jordan and I finally met. I’m pretty sure it involved him agreeing with the fact that I was prettier than Brooke Murawski, my on-again off-again BFF at the time.

Sadly, my love affair with the New Kids was to be short lived. As they gained in popularity their music grew more and more risqué. While I had no idea what any of it meant (and maybe still don’t), my mom sure did. She gently told me to ask Jesus what he would think of me listening to those songs. I still feel fairly convinced that even Jesus loves the song Hangin’ Tough, but mom managed to successfully guard the purity if my ears for a little while longer. I can’t remember it very clearly (probably repressed painful memories), but shortly afterward, the New Kids broke up. A world that was once painted with colorful oversized t-shirts and rattails suddenly went grey. And it stayed gray for 15 years.

Six months ago I heard the news I’d been waiting 15 years to hear. New Kids on the Block were reuniting and going on tour. I kid you not, I marked the day that tickets were going on sale on my calendar, and logged into Ticketmaster first thing in the morning. With a defiant nod to my scorned 7-year-old self I purchased two tickets.

If you think the power that emanates from a stadium full of adolescent girls toward a pop star is powerful, you cannot begin to imagine the sexually charged energy of 20,000 women (not girls) who put their love on hold 15 years ago and suddenly have a second chance. A sold out stadium full of 25-40 year olds who dusted off their club clothes and busted out the Wonder Bras (which THIS time, unlike in 1989, they can actually fill) is a powerful thing.

I am not pointing fingers. I place myself squarely in the midst of the frenzy, except I was wearing a vintage New Kids t-shirt borrowed from a friend. When those five middle-aged men rose from the floor on stage I jumped, screamed, and waved my hands fully regressing into the obsession. It tapped into something powerful for me. Last time these guys were on my radar, I was a young girl without any ability to actually get to a concert, much less convince Jordan or Joey what a good girlfriend I could be to them. I was powerless to do anything about my love but ache. But THIS time was different. I am a grown woman. I have a job and can buy my own tickets. I go to seminary and pick up Masters degrees. Sometimes I stay out really late with my friends and nobody can tells me not to. If I bumped into them, and didn’t fall down from shock, I might actually be able to carry on some form of witty conversation with them. At least I like to think so. I believe there was something in that for all of us there. It’s as if we got to travel back into time, but with more power.

I’m not quite sure what to do with New Kids on the Block now. The years have been good to them. I’ll always love them for what they gave me: oversized t-shirts to wear to pool parties, pages upon pages of diary fodder, and baby steps into womanhood. But just like them, I’ve grown up too. New men have come into my life. Justin Timberlake. Zac Efron. Jim from The Office. A girl can’t wait around forever. I experienced the thrill of seeing my first love again, and for that I will forever be grateful. Now I move forward, Step by Step. But this time, it’s on my terms. Thanks for the memories boys!