(here's the link, read it now and come back to me or save it for later:)
http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/family/celebrity-interviews/sheryl-crow
I digged that song.... (dug?) I could relate to sitting in a bar, drinking beer at noon on a Tuesday. Hanging out with some guy i have no interest in, but we're just sitting there, shootin the breeze, watching people go in and out and on their way, while we play with matches and talk about nothing important. Reminds me of when i was in college..(here i go again, reminiscing the glory days) I had this job on campus one summer, working in the entomology lab (study of insects) of our College of Natural Resources. I worked with these two guys, labeling jars of weird dead insects floating in chemicals. On Tuesdays they had lunch specials and cheap beer at this popular hang-out just across the street, (a bar, this is Wisconsin, had a bar on every corner, pretty much) so these guys & I would walk over and share a couple pitchers of brewski with our lunch, just hangin out, then walk back and try to finish working our hours in the lab, (we cheese-heads had great tolerance, beer flows like milk in that state!) trying hard not to mistake those soggy dead insects for snacks from the vending machine down the hall. These guys both had girlfriends, it was totally platonic and fun. I love those kind of relationships. I always seem to be the most emotionally healthy when i have a few good, platonic "guy" friendships in my life.. the kind of friends that are totally just friends, without one speck of awkwardness that comes when one person is hoping to make it more than just friends. Just friends to hang, laugh, do fun, risky sports with..that's it. That's where the lines are drawn. Another example was one of my first "real" office jobs after college, where a couple guys and I would go rollerblading over the lunch hour in a nearby park and greenway. I remember one time we were racing down this concrete path through a forested area, i was in front, and we suddenly had to cross this rickety wooden bridge over a creek. At the speed i was already going at, it was impossible to slow down and take the bridge slowly, so when my wheel got stuck in one of the old wooden boards, i went catapulting through the air, spinning wildly till i hit the earth on the other side of the path (thankfully i missed the concrete) and went rolling through the scratchy bushes till i lost momentum and landed in a heap. Not wanting to look like a sissy, i quickly got up, and the guys were like, "hey, you ok?" i say "yeah" & they're like "ok let's go". perfect. now if they had been like, "oh, you poor thing, you poor delicate little thing, this is too rough for you, go rest your pretty little head, let the guys do this", i'd be soooooo angry i wouldn't be able to see straight.
ok so where was i going with this? oh yes, back to sheryl crow...
Another thing I liked about this article, and about Sheryl Crow is how she won't lose her "shine" just to change her status, as explained in this excerpt:
Since moving to Nashville, Crow has been feeling empowered in her relationships with men, too. That wasn't always the case. With her earlier relationships, there had been a pattern: "I had always gone out with guys who were highly successful, which would seem like it would put me at an equal level," says Crow, whose former boyfriends include actor Owen Wilson and musician Eric Clapton. "But what ends up happening is that one of you becomes smaller — and it was always me. It's always the woman." She pauses. "I mean, I don't know if it's always the woman, but I do think that sometimes in order for one person's light to shine, everyone else has to dim theirs."
That changed when she took a friend's words as her touchstone: "Embrace the idea of only having equals in your life, and you'll see your relationships change." (end quote)
and another example of Sheryl becoming "small" with someone else...
In 2003 she fell in love with seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong, who was a decade younger. (Armstrong's disgrace — the revelation of his doping and his being stripped of his titles — would come years after they'd broken up.) Crow moved to Austin to be with him, and they announced their engagement in the fall of 2005. The singer supported Armstrong's cancer organization (now the Livestrong Foundation) as well as his competitive cycling career and became close to his three children. She continued to write, record and tour even though, she realized later, she was making herself "really small" next to him. Without recognizing it, she had turned herself into a "self-appointed caretaker" for a wide swath of people — always making sure that "everyone else was OK, everyone else was happy."
(end quote)
That way you won't find your light being dimmed by another. like the feeling i get in the gym sometimes, when someone else is on the front row, being kind of a show-off in the way they dress and how hard they work-out (to impress the instructor? teacher pet syndrome?) ..and my response is to just get smaller and let them do their thing.
Another thing I love about Sheryl Crow is that she didn't wait around all her life for a man so she could have her dream of being a mother. now i know that sounds radical, (but no she didn't have them out of wedlock) and obviously it's not the ideal situation to be a single mom; face it, kids need a father figure in their life. but if it's something one feels strongly about, they're committed to doing their best, providing positive male role models where they can, and have the means to take care of them (obviously she does, most of us wouldn't be able to singlehandedly adopt and bring up 2 kids on a 50-acre ranch with a nanny and other household help)..then who am i to judge. again i quote:
Crow adopted Wyatt in 2007 and Levi three years after that. The decision to take on two kids as a single mom constituted an emotional leap of faith. Her own parents had then been married for more than 50 years (that "set the bar high," she says). Now she and her brood are happily ensconced on this ranch about 30 minutes from Nashville. "I've become a glorified taxi driver," she laughs with regard to the life she's living now. Though she has a nanny and her sister Kathy, who lives nearby, helps out, Crow is a hands-on mom who takes the boys shopping at Target, drives them to Sunday school and swimming and tennis lessons and helps care for their pet guinea pigs.
"Hey, I would love to get married — I'm still old-fashioned. But I don't think marriage is the be-all and end-all." She pauses, then makes a joke about her own personal history: "It's better to have three broken engagements than three divorces." Though she's laughing, Crow seems to be justifying the life she's ended up with — one that is far from the traditional family she was raised in, yet that still embodies many of its values.
(end quote)
yeah i like that. don't settle, just to change your status, your lifestyle. it's gotta be all there. i've got a lot more to say on that topic, settling, but i'll save it for another day...
and one more little ditty, one more thing in this article that made me sit up and say "eureka!!!"
The last 2 sentences in this blurb jumped off the screen at me like fleas on my cat:
Then, in 1987, at age 25, Crow landed a job as a backup singer on Michael Jackson's Bad tour — it was her baptism into rock-and-roll life. She remembers Jackson as "very professional" but also "childlike, with probably an extreme case of arrested development. His emotional maturation stopped at 14."
wow. all i can say. arrested development. ok, so that explains a few things in my own life, and that of some of my siblings. i needn't go further. close the book, fire the shrink, my work here is done. nuff said.
and what am i going to do with that piece of info? that revelation?
maybe i should be like michael and build my own never-never land...
like this...
nahh... what to do now?
i have absolutely. no. clue. whatsoever. just takin it one day at a time.
God is in control.
thanks, Sheryl.
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