Bless Gaga and bless the gays, part two

As promised, I'm here to share with you photos of the most recent in my line of epic Sundays: the National Equality March. Due to space constraints, I have decided to limit the photos to the most epic part of the day: standing ten feet away from Lady Gaga. Behold, marvel, gape. Looking back over these, I still sort of can't believe this shit happened.

This is her walking onto the Capitol Lawn after the march. She was actually there for most of the rally, which was over three hours long. Just because she's Gaga doesn't mean she won't sit her ass on an uncomfortable concrete wall for the gays.

















She stood behind the stage and waited for her turn to speak. I was behind her for the duration of her speech, probably because I was paralyzed by Gagamazement.

















OMG. She turned around and looked right. at. me.











































Another shot from behind (TWSS), with her rainbow flag.























Wider shot, with the Washington Monument in the background. The largest phallic symbol in the world swimming in a sea of gays. Appropo.

















Leaving with her rather large entourage.













And, lastly, I had to include this one. Right before the march started, we all looked up and saw a rainbow. It wasn't raining, people. As you know, I believe things happen for a reason, and I also believe in signs from the universe.

















Dear gays:
You are loved and deserve the same treatment as anyone else. I'm on your side.
Love,
The universe

Clearly, some things are just more epic than others.

Editor's note: I completely forgot to mention my favorite/the funniest quote of the day, which comes from friend and fellow blogger Polly Syllabick. As we explored Washington in search of much-needed grub, we were talking about the fact that the district is divided into four quadrants, and she said, "I fucking hate DC. Did I mention that? I don't trust a city where you can stand on the corner of Pennsylvania and 4th in more than one place. It's like being in Queens." So true, my foul-mouthed Jersey friend. So true.

Bless Gaga and bless the gays, part one

Yesterday I went to the National Equality March in DC. It was amazing, beautiful, emotional and life-changing. I don't know how I keep getting involved in these super-important things, basically on accident or because I am lucky. Life continues to amaze me.

Y'ALL. I promise there is a huge blowout "this is when I stood ten feet away from Lady Gaga and my face melted off" post coming up, but first I have to upload all my pictures and videos and stuff. For now, look at this. I found it on YouTube this morning. Oh, it's real. Oprah Winfrey whole segment for real.

















I'm the blurry person holding up the camera. All that separated Lady Gaga from myself was a bed of taxpayer flowers. I was a total fauxaway in the backstage area; J had a press pass and I literally held her hand as she pulled me through and if anyone asked me who I was, I just said, "I'm with her."

HOW IS THIS MY LIFE?!?!?!?!11111

Schmom B. Says

It's Friday again! I have a very busy weekend ahead of me, which includes - and I can't believe I haven't mentioned this yet - a trip down to DC early Sunday morning for the National Equality March and - oh my fucking jesus - a performance by Lady Gaga. It might just be the gayest weekend I've ever experienced, and I've had a LOT of gay weekends in my life, so that's really saying something.

I am very much looking forward to it, partially because it means I can put this shitty week behind me. I mean, I fully acknowledge that I live a charmed life and that, as such, all my so-called "problems" are charmed ones, and I am very thankful for everything in my life, but I've had a tough week, OK? And in this installment of Schmom B. Says, my mom gives me a little bit of perspective about it.




Schmom B. Says: Calm down, it's not that bad

Meghan: I'm having a really bad day. :(

Schmom B.: Sorry! I'm cleaning up cat puke! Bad is relative.






I guess Queen B. (my family cat) had a little accident. And it's true - so far this week, I haven't cleaned up anyone else's vomit, be it that of a human, cat, dog or any other creature, so really I just need to STFU and CTFD.

Happy weekend everyone!

PS. The Office wedding episode last night was perfect.

Home, times three

Normally I would start this post with an apology, because (once again) I am sucking it up in the blogosphere. Before I moved to New York and even for the first couple of months after I got here, I was all about my BtoA blog, and I updated at least once every few days. Slowly it slipped into once a week, and then shortly after that, once every ten days. Now it's been a full 13 days. Instead of apologizing, however, I'm here to say that I'm actually really happy about it. I'm not sorry, because the significant lack of blogging has been caused by a significant increase in awesome life experiences, which I will of course share with y'all now.

I went home and to Oxford last weekend. It was pretty uneventful. I ate Ajax and Taylor and went out to the new Parrish's and City Grocery. Everything seemed basically the same. It felt weird to be back in the South, riding around in cars and driving and feeling how slow everything really is compared with NY life. While I still miss my parents, going home was a nice reminder that the South is not where I want to be right now. Maybe when I'm older and want to have a family and stuff, but for now I just know NY is where I'm supposed to be.

I started my new job last Monday. It pays, and while for the purposes of office duties I am technically an "editorial intern," my supervisor gave me the okay to put "freelance editorial assistant" on my resume. She told me this on my first day, and it was pretty much an amazing start to a week that would prove to be equally amazing, as far as first weeks go. I got to write, and I have several writing assignments pending. Of course I also do entry level duties like shipping stuff, sorting mail, taking phone calls, and transcribing, but I am doing all these things for money in New York in the worst economy in recent memory, and thus I do them with nothing but joy.

I went to DC this weekend to see A, and it was basically a perfect weekend. The weather was uhmazing, nearly 70 degrees both days and sunny. I had brunch with all his friends, and they're hilarious and tatted up and amazing. We went to the National Museum of American History, which I found surprisingly enjoyable, aside from the nauseating number of tourists. We went to the cherry blossom festival, which was fun but also really touristy, vom. The trees are beautiful though, and we sat by the tidal basin under the blooms and watched ducks as the sun went down. I know, I know. Blablabla TMI.

So gorg

We celebrated my new job Saturday night; he bought us a bottle of champagne (nom nom nom), which we promptly consumed while we watched Twilight (yes, lolz) before heading out to the bar where he works most weekends. PS, Twilight = probs the worst movie ever made, but that didn't stop A from constantly asking questions and sitting on the edge of his seat while Bella's pathetic fate was decided. Lolz best boyf ever? Mayhaps.

I finally feel like things are coming together for me. I have a job that I already love, and even though I still look forward to the day when I'm full-time with benefits, I am learning the value of patience in a terrible economy while in the meantime just doing the best I can professionally. When I left for DC Friday evening and I watched the city disappear in the distance, it dawned on me that I am literally making my dreams come true. I'm not by any means finished with this process, but I am at least through the first and most difficult stage. Since I was a little girl I dreamed of being a writer, and since the first time I came to NYC I knew I was meant to live here. And here I am, getting paid to write and taking the 6 train to work everyday and living in a brownstone walk-up in Harlem. How many people can say they've even attempted what they always dreamed of doing? Not many. I'm in love with my life right now, and I can only be gratious and humbly accept the amazing things I am lucky enough to experience.

Until next time.

So sorry

I just realized it's been nearly a week since I posted. This is criminal. But I have a good reason! I came to DC for a 3-day weekend and it turned into a 5-day one when it started snowing/sleeting on Sunday night and all the buses out of the district were cancelled. Mmmmmboo. It's Tuesday now and I'm sitting in A's apartment getting ready to go.

I had a bunch of stress dreams this morning about getting a job and my iPhone breaking and all this other random ish. Ugh. I didn't tell y'all but a few weeks ago I interviewed for a paid full-time internship with another national magazine's web site; I didn't hear back until last Thursday. They told me I was their top candidate, but they had some management shifts and decided to put the internship on hold until at least April, if they decide to hire anyone at all. Of course I was disappointed, because it seemed like it would actually be a great internship for me. But now I got another unpaid internship, which I start tomorrow. So I'll basically be working full-time for free. Is that even legal? Who knows. I just need to get as much experience as I can before someone will hire me for realz.

PS, things are great with A right now. I don't know what the future holds but I don't feel bad for wanting to do what makes me happy. And he makes me happy. So that's what I want to do. Twss?

Until next time.

My life was a movie

For a moment, at least. Normally y'all know how I feel about relationship blogging: I do it, but I keep it to a minimum, because no one gives a shit about my personal wees and woes, LBO. But I have talked about it before, just because it certainly is a part of my life, and sometimes I feel really affected (effected?), and that leaving it out would be leaving out a part of myself . This is def one of those times.

As I told you, A and I decided to take some time apart (OK, we broke up) after I went to DC for the inauguration. A lot of shit went down (again, nonnayobiz) and it was dramatic and exhausting and I was pretty much over it. We didn't talk for a week or so, then I started to feel really angry toward him for the hurt he had caused, and I decided I wanted to tell him about it, for the sake of getting it off my chest and making sure he understood just what he had done wrong and just how badly I was hurt. So we talked on the phone Sunday night, and I told him everything. One of the things I told him was that when I left DC, his behavior showed me he didn't care enough to fight for me: he pretty much put me in a cab and sent me off, and he barely spoke to me that morning, and he wouldn't touch me. He knew he was losing me, and instead of fighting, he just sent me away. That's when something clicked in my head and I was ready to say goodbye to him.

Anywayz I told him all of this and more of the reasons he hurt me, and he said, "If I knew it meant you would give me another chance, I would pack some stuff into a bag and start walking to New York right now." I was like OMGZ, first of all, that's the most dramatic thing I've ever heard, and, second of all, it's bullshit because it's really easy to say something like that when you know I would never ask you to do it. Ever the skeptic, I denied in my brain that he would ever do something like that. So we left that phone conversation right where we had started.

The next day at work I started thinking about things and getting pissed off again, because how dare he say something like that to me when he had no intention of carrying it out? So I IMed him (never a good idea, PS), and confronted him about it. His response was to e-mail me a confirmation for a bus ticket that he had bought earlier that morning to come to NYC Tuesday night. He had bought a ticket without telling me, and was going to show up at my house without telling me; part of me resented the intrusion, but more of me was overwhelmed by the sweetness of the gesture.

I came home from work/happy hour Tuesday night and he was waiting for me on my steps. Of course he was sort of awkward and acting unsure of himself, because he's just sort of that way all the time, and some of my friends still disapprove of my letting him come see me, but I've always wished in my heart that someone would care enough about me to do something like that, and now he's done it.

The human heart is amazing and ridiculous and stupid.

Until next time.

Hello from NYC(home)

Hi faithful readers. I am coming to you tonight from the delicious comfort of my king-size bed in Manhattan/East Harlem. I started an unpaid internship at a .com yesterday; it was a very busy day! My supervisor kept me busy from 10 to 6:15--I posted content to the site, wrote a post, and put together a couple of blog entries. I am really excited to get some Web experience, even if it's unpaid. Some of you may know, but most of you don't, that one of my dream jobs is to work for Jezebel. It's a snarky feminist blog that comments on news, politics, and pop culture. Basically, loves it.

So the inauguration was insane. All in all, I am glad to say that I was there for such an historical event, but there's a reason it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity--because most people in their right minds would never do it more than once. As some of you may have heard (there are groups on Facebook too!), lots of people with purple, blue, and silver tickets were left out in the cold (literally) that day. The whole event was so poorly organized that some ticketholders could not find their way inside the gate.

A and I were among the purple ticket holders who were confused and angry; when we got off the metro to walk to the gate/entry point, we found that a bus was blocking the way in. A police officer told us that someone had been injured/gotten stuck under the bus (probs a lie), so they couldn't move it yet. Anyway, eventually the mass of people in which we were standing started moving forward, and we went along. When we got closer to the bus, however, it was clear we had two directions we could go, and neither was toward the gate. We asked some police officers which way to go, and each one gave us a different anwer. None of the cops had megaphones or bullhorns or any method of being loud at all. We eventually wound our way around to another purple gate, and by sheer force of will, found our way in. Now I know we were among the lucky few. Had we walked a different way, we probably would not have made our way in.

The event itself was great. At first we were standing behind a group of really tall people who also happened to be on an incline, so I literally could not see anything except the backs of their heads. I was so frustrated at this point that I almost started crying. I was cold, hungry (we didn't eat breakfast that morning), distraught, frustrated, and I couldn't see. So we moved back a little bit, away from the Capitol, and it was like opening a window or something. I could see everything, and it was officially amazing. His speech was great, I actually really liked Rick Warren's prayer, and the music was beautiful (though pre-recorded).

The whole (really long) weekend was kind of overshadowed, however, by some major drama that went down with A and me. I won't go into details here, because frankly it's nonnayobiz, but I will say that he and I are taking some time apart. I mean, we're always apart because of distance, but like apart-apart. I just got to a point where I felt more unhappy than happy, and that is never a good sign. So now I'm alone, living in New York City, unemployed, and feeling kind of low. I mean, my life is great; I have a warm bed, a place to call home, great friends, a supportive family. But everything is still not settled. My room still feels bare and empty. It's also kind of dirty from the girl who lived here before me, so I need to remedy that. I still don't have a microwave. It's hot in herr and my window is stuck shut. In all honesty, I'm terrified of being alone in this city. I know it's what's right for me right now, but it's still scary, you know?

Ah well, I need to go do some shopping for apt stuff.
Majorly yours.

Hello from DC

So tomorrow is the big day. A and I went to The Mall yesterday -- just in time to see the very end of Beyonce's performance in the big concert honoring Obama's inauguration -- to check out where we will be standing on Tuesday. We didn't have the seating/standing map with us and our iPhones were failing us, so we just kind of walked the length of The Mall, up to the reflecting pool, and around the side of the Capitol, taking notes of the cross streets for later reference. The reflecting pool is, like, really close to the Capitol, and my exact words to him were: "If we are standing in front of this pool, I will probably shit myself." To which he responded, "I'm not sure how I feel about that. Maybe we should stand farther back."

Anyway A sent me a text from work this morning (I am at home allegedly working on an edit test for a freelance position I applied for last week) that said: "We are on the Capitol side of the reflecting pool." I had a small heart attack. Here is a map, for your reference:

I had to crop the map down for blogging purposes, but you get the idea: the reflecting pool is right behind the west standing section, where we will be. Right in front of us is the seated center section, then a couple staircases, and then the Capitol. Holy shiiiiiiit.

Possibly the best birthday gift ever.

Majorly yours.