A Uniquely Portable Magic

I know I said I was officially an Illinois resident two weeks ago... but now it's really, really official.

I unpacked my books.

(As Mark's dad said, "I guess that means she's staying, huh?"  And, well, yes.  It does.)

It was about time, right?  We moved my books over with the first load of boxes (okay, my 20+ boxes of books were the first load of boxes) back in February.

I've been without my books since February, guys.  I don't know how I did it.

Actually, that's a lie.  I know exactly how I did it.  I bought more books, obviously.

And I got a library card.  That helped.  If, by helped, you mean that I brought home a gigantic pile of books that I can't possiby read in three weeks.

But, over this past week, I methodically unpacked my books, put them back in order (alphabetical by author's last name, as God intended) and loaded up my bookshelves.

There are truly few things I find as purely and thoroughly satisfying as organizing my books.  I know, I'm a freak.  

I don't care.

Mark called it a "ceremony," and I suppose it is, a finely honed process that I've practiced throughout the years, with every move, with every life change (and with every major book purchase).  Book by book, shelf by shelf, until everything is just right.

Books are, quite possibly, my one true love.  They've been around longer than any of my other friends, certainly longer than any of my romantic relationships.  They've been a source of comfort, of escape, and of familiarity.  I bring books with me everywhere.  I carted them back and forth to college (well, not all of them, but more than I could possibly need).  I moved them to our campus apartment at seminary.  I moved them to the old apartment in South City (and then moved them within that apartment after my ex left).

I bring them along on vacation.  I always have at least one in my purse.  I've cried with them, laughed with them, and fallen asleep with them.  I horde them and loan them out and always, always want more of them.  I pick up books like abandoned pennies on the sidewalk, tucking them away for a rainy day.

There's a great Stephen King quote that says "books are a uniquely portable magic," and I very much believe it.  They have great power, as I said, to comfort and relax me.  When I had my back surgery at age ten, I constantly asked my parents to read to me, to take me away from the hospital bed and the IVs and the sterile cacophony of the hospital itself.  Together, we worked our way through the Chronicles of Narnia, and I drifted in and out of that make-believe world on a trippy ride of morphine-fueled imagination.

Not much has changed, minus the morphine.  I still rely on books, only now I don't need them to escape.

Now? My books feel like... well, like home.  

And, even better, they make our house feel that much more like home for me.  We're still struggling to move into a place that has still not been entirely moved out of (and, honestly, it's starting to stress me out), so every little bit helps.  Seeing my books, in my bookshelves, lined up along the wall?

That helps quite a bit.

Wicked Stepmothers Day

Is there such a thing as Wicked Stepmother's Day?  Because I think there should be.

I know, in theory, that Mother's Day is supposed to encompass mothers of all kinds: birth, step, adoptive, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, aunts, godmothers, etc.  And so, according to that theory, this past Sunday was my first Mother's Day (outside of the one year when one of my foster dogs "gave" me a hand mixer).

I even got a free meal and free cheesecake at Pasta House out of the deal.

But, honestly?  I felt like some kind of imposter.

I'm not a mom.  Not really.  I happened to marry the love of my life, who happened to have a kid.  That doesn't make me a mom.

I joined this kid's life like some people join the army midway through the war.  I haven't been down in the trenches since the beginning, slogging through the muck and dirty diapers.  No, I joined up once the tides had turned and potty training battles had already been won.  I got here just in time for games and adventures and crafts.  (And the occasional meltdown.)

I'm not the first line of defense.  I'm not even the second.  I'm back there in the reserves, just in case backup is needed.

But, you say, you're there, Ashley.  You took on a role that no one forced you to take.  You Google mom questions like, "how do you a get a kid to stop sucking their thumb?"  You stand in the middle of the living room while drinking a glass of wine with a kid wrapped around your leg.  You wake up to tiny feet against your back.  You eat Fazoli's even though you loathe it.  You play Chutes and Ladders ten times in a row.

And that's true.

It is.

All of it.

But, I don't know.  I still don't know if I feel like a "stepmom."  Maybe it's that I've already been around for a few years, just as "Ashley" and nothing more.  The transition into living in the same house on the weekends even happened before I was officially her stepmom.  So there's been very little major shifting of roles or expectations.  I'm still Ashley.  I just also happen to now be legally bound to her dad.

I want her to be happy.  I want her to enjoy our time together, and to like me, and to make good choices.  I want her to be as well-adjusted as humanly possible.  I want to figure out the best way to make all that happen (hence the Googling).

I also love that she writes notes for "Daddy Ashley," and draws us pictures, and wants to hang out with me and play games and read books.  I love that she loves when we match.  I love that she picks out what pin I'm wearing on the weekends.

I guess that's the important part.  It's not the name that matters, it's the intention and the actions.  I would tell anyone else that, except when it comes to myself.

So, I guess I am a stepmom.  If you insist.

And maybe, just maybe, I'm not that wicked of one.

Come On and Feel the Illinoise

It's completely official: I'm once again an Illinoisian.  An Illinioisan?  An Illinosan?

(Fun fact: all of those terms are technically correct, though I think my preference is Illinoisian, for the sheer fact that there are a ridiculous number of I's involved.)

To be fair, my citizenship transfer was mostly official a few weeks ago, when I got my new driver's license.  But now it's really really official, since my car is now an Illinoisian as well.

All this after a very unfortunate incident on Tuesday involving my getting pulled over in East St Louis, discovering my Missouri plates were actually expired, getting a ticket, and the police officer then driving off while still in possession of my drivers license and insurance card.

Yeah.  It was a great day.

... Not really.

So.  Yesterday I left early, went to the DMV, and got new Illinois license plates (for the low low cost of $200 plus that pesky expired plates ticket).  I even put them on my car myself.

I admit, it was a weird feeling.  After all, it's been ten years since I had Illinois plates.  The drivers license was one thing, but the license plates seem somehow more official.  I don't know if it's because I had to physically remove the very old and very battered plates and replace them with ones so new they practically sparkle.  The whole car looks different and unfamiliar with them on.

For years, I called myself an Illinois ex-pat.  Even though I was born in Germany, Illinois had always been my home.  I grew up in Collinsville (notable only for the World's Largest Catsup Bottle and a remarkable absence of anything interesting to do besides hang out at Denny's).  I went to college in Chicago.

I didn't grow up with dreams of leaving home for the great unknown.  I'm a solidly Midwestern girl.  I like the slower pace.  I like the smaller towns.  I like that traffic isn't a complete nightmare (at least... not all the time?).

Even though I've been all over the country, I've never once wanted to move outside of the Midwest.  I don't even want to move outside the St Louis area, which is, thus far, as far as I've wandered from home.

A lot of people seem to have a lot of disdain for St. Louis.  I've never understood that.  It's a great town, not too big and not too small, filled with tons of things to do.  It's not quite bustling, but certainly not pokey.  There are a multitude of different neighborhoods, ethnic food galore, and we even have an IKEA now (like anything else matters?).  There's a free zoo, free museums, festivals, great parks, an awesome baseball team, and highways that are continually under construction (and often all at the same time!).

Okay, maybe that last one isn't exactly a plus, but it is strangely endearing all the same.

It's all so very Midwestern-y, isn't it?  There's gooey butter cake and toasted ravioli (which I actually despise).  There's the World's Largest Catsup Bottle.  There's farmland and county fairs and random French names that no one pronounces correctly.  You can have every single season all in the same week.

It is, in a word, home.  For all it's quirks and annoyances (Why are there no left turns on Gravois?  Why are Illinois drivers so terrible?  When will Kingshighway reopen?), I've never wanted to be anywhere else for very long.

They say home is where the heart is, and if I'm being honest, mine has always been here.  It is most definitely here now, as the main reason why I moved back across the river to join the other Illinoisians in our ridiculously corrupt and broke state.

And so the ex-pat has come home.  It wasn't a long way to travel, even though it took me 10 years to get here.

Not surprised?  Neither am I.

After all, there's no place like home.

The Pretty Vintage Nerd

I've been a nerd for most of my life.

I'm not sure if I could have helped it if I tried.  I grew up watching Star Trek and Star Wars with my dad (an equal-opportunity nerd, like myself).  We watched X-Files.  I read the Star Wars books that my dad owned and dragged home countless more from the library.  I had a Star Wars birthday party when Episode I came out.  I also wore a Padawan braid for part of that same year as well.  (I know, I know, it's positively shocking that I was single for so long.)  I wrote fanfiction.

Honestly, I think I was part of the last generation of kids where being a nerd wasn't cool.  And really, even if it had been cool, I probably still wouldn't have qualified.  Because... well, you read that last paragraph, right?

Along with being an introvert, being a fairly obsessive and fangirlish nerd is part of my very being.  It's practically in my blood.  When I like something, I really, really like it.  I write about it.  I watch it repeatedly.  I collect items from it.  I learn trivia about it.  

And I really like Star Wars.  I love everything about it, with the notable exceptions of Jake Lloyd, Hayden Christiansen, Jar Jar Binks, and most of George Lucas' poor decisions.  I love the lore of it.  I love the improbability of it.  I love the music and the characters (see above exceptions).  I love the books.  I love the (up-to-now) strictly maintained canon.  I love the pure nerdiness of it, and of all my fellow Star Wars nerds.  I love that rare fellowship when you recognize a fellow (probably equally awkward) nerd out in the wild.

I do appreciate that that being a nerd is "cool" now.  I'm not jealous of all the young nerds out there who essentially get a free pass to skip the uncool label.  I love that it's perfectly acceptable for us all to come out, blinking, into the sun (for short, well-sunscreened, periods of time) and to shyly complement each other's badges of nerd-dom.  It doesn't actually make me cool, by any means, but it's nice to have the nerdy company.

And lately, I've been more in touch with my nerdy roots.  I read a Star Wars book for the first time since high school.  And I haven't been content with merely buying geeky T-shirts for my equally geeky husband.  Instead, I've been incorporating my nerdiness into my vintage style.

As it turns out, "nerd" and "vintage" are not mutually exclusive.  And why should they be?  After all, many sub- and counter-cultures tend to find each other and band together for warmth.  As I've learned, dressing vintage is a way of expressing myself.  Expressing what I love with what what I wear is really just the next step.

My pin/jewelry obsession is to blame thank, really.  It's such a subtle, stylish way to declare to the world that yes, I am a huge geek because yes, that is an AT-AT necklace.  Thanks for noticing.

  

I also have a few nerdy T-shirts of my own when I really can't resist.

It's not just Star Wars, of course.  It's Harry Potter and Firefly and Doctor Who and Game of Thrones and Pirate of the Caribbean, and... I could go on, but I think you get the point.

The point is: it's a whole new world for nerds now.  We're popular.  We're cool.  We're stylish.  We're even (gasp!) attractive.  We're fetishized and idolized.

There are burlesque shows specifically catered to geeks. There are dresses covered in the TARDIS, or in Daleks.   There are conventions all over the country, for every imaginable fandom.

Yes, we geeks and nerds are still awkward as hell and can bore you in no time with obscure facts and fan theories, but gosh darn it, we can look good while we do it.

It's safe to say that I've grown up quite a bit from being the teenage girl skulking through the hallways with a Padawan braid.  I'm the slightly-self-proclaimed Pretty Vintage Girl, after all, and hopefully will be for the foreseeable future.

But fandoms were my first love, and you never forget your first love.

And because of that love I know I will always be a nerd, be it pretty, vintage, or otherwise.