This is for You Amanda
**Please press play on this song and listen to it as you read this post, and for Pete's sake please disregard the video and just listen to the song...do you have any IDEA how hard it is to find this song?**
Many moons ago when I was still a young idiot, I used to work at this place. Beer cart girl ranks at the top of The Dilettante's list of most fun jobs that make lots 'o cash. On one particular day, I was making a pit stop in the snack bar for a restocking of my candy bars when I met her.
She was describing the experience of her meet and greet with Dave Matthews...as in THE Dave Matthews Band. I made a feeble attempt to pick my sagging jaw up from the floor covered in the corpses of so many bees and just stared at her awesomeness. When I had regained enough brain matter to form a cohesive sentence, I offered to bear all of her children and serve in her place for the draft. And ever since then, we've been "like tight".
As if the job of cart girl couldn't get any more fun, Amanda had a way of bringing a light and joy into any room she entered. The days when we worked together were my favorite because we would engage in some serious celebrity oggling in any one of the hundred gossip magazines she would bring in, or entertain ourselves through a slow patch listening to music and having a dance off outside the snack bar.
I have had three musical mentors in my life and Amanda is the most recent. Her ipod was filled with strange and beautiful stuff I had never heard before, but soaked up readily. You can tell when someone really enjoys music because they see it as something to be shared with others and will gladly pass along anything new and exciting they have discovered. And that's just what Amanda Did. She made me some of my favorite mixes and even added her artistic touch to the CD cases with pictures and handwriiten song lists. Of everything I lost in the hurricane, I still have almost all of the mixes she made for me, because they were in my car.
Amanda has the kind of heart that radiates warmth and kindness and makes you want to be around her all the time because you think you might absorb some of it through osmosis. She is the kind of girl that can drop two f-bombs in one sentence and still come across as a lady who isn't capable of going "number two" or looking disheveled. Even when she claims to be disheveled, she looks more put together than me after long hours of trying.
She felll in love with my Italian Greyhound Magnum and I felt compelled to give him to her. He has found a loving home with her and Dave and even makes an appearance on their stamps...their MAILING stamps for the love 'O cheerios!
She has been my trusted confidante on many ocassions and my babysitter once at a Ray Lamontagne concert when Jillian had one too many beers and threatened to "FROW UP!" She laughs at all of my jokes and she even thinks I'm cool. But even with all those redeeming qualities, that's not the reason why Amanda is my friend.
She is my friend because she adds a richness of character and a unique and winning personality to my life, and even though I can't share her heart through osmosis, she makes me want to be a better person just by watching the way she lives. When someone asks me if I collect anything I say, "I collect people, beautiful people." And in my prized collection of beautiful people, Amanda has a very special place in my heart. For when all of our outer beauty and youth have faded from us, she will shine with that inner light that makes her so very attractive to others.
Amanda got married Saturday and now she has a new last name...yep, she's one of those girls, but then again, so am I. I'm still going to call her Coop-a-loop no matter what her name is.
So, this is for you Amanda. You can thank me later when I ask you to come and stay with me for two weeks when I have another baby and Jeremy is in school.
Many moons ago when I was still a young idiot, I used to work at this place. Beer cart girl ranks at the top of The Dilettante's list of most fun jobs that make lots 'o cash. On one particular day, I was making a pit stop in the snack bar for a restocking of my candy bars when I met her.
She was describing the experience of her meet and greet with Dave Matthews...as in THE Dave Matthews Band. I made a feeble attempt to pick my sagging jaw up from the floor covered in the corpses of so many bees and just stared at her awesomeness. When I had regained enough brain matter to form a cohesive sentence, I offered to bear all of her children and serve in her place for the draft. And ever since then, we've been "like tight".
As if the job of cart girl couldn't get any more fun, Amanda had a way of bringing a light and joy into any room she entered. The days when we worked together were my favorite because we would engage in some serious celebrity oggling in any one of the hundred gossip magazines she would bring in, or entertain ourselves through a slow patch listening to music and having a dance off outside the snack bar.
I have had three musical mentors in my life and Amanda is the most recent. Her ipod was filled with strange and beautiful stuff I had never heard before, but soaked up readily. You can tell when someone really enjoys music because they see it as something to be shared with others and will gladly pass along anything new and exciting they have discovered. And that's just what Amanda Did. She made me some of my favorite mixes and even added her artistic touch to the CD cases with pictures and handwriiten song lists. Of everything I lost in the hurricane, I still have almost all of the mixes she made for me, because they were in my car.
Amanda has the kind of heart that radiates warmth and kindness and makes you want to be around her all the time because you think you might absorb some of it through osmosis. She is the kind of girl that can drop two f-bombs in one sentence and still come across as a lady who isn't capable of going "number two" or looking disheveled. Even when she claims to be disheveled, she looks more put together than me after long hours of trying.
She felll in love with my Italian Greyhound Magnum and I felt compelled to give him to her. He has found a loving home with her and Dave and even makes an appearance on their stamps...their MAILING stamps for the love 'O cheerios!
She has been my trusted confidante on many ocassions and my babysitter once at a Ray Lamontagne concert when Jillian had one too many beers and threatened to "FROW UP!" She laughs at all of my jokes and she even thinks I'm cool. But even with all those redeeming qualities, that's not the reason why Amanda is my friend.
She is my friend because she adds a richness of character and a unique and winning personality to my life, and even though I can't share her heart through osmosis, she makes me want to be a better person just by watching the way she lives. When someone asks me if I collect anything I say, "I collect people, beautiful people." And in my prized collection of beautiful people, Amanda has a very special place in my heart. For when all of our outer beauty and youth have faded from us, she will shine with that inner light that makes her so very attractive to others.
Amanda got married Saturday and now she has a new last name...yep, she's one of those girls, but then again, so am I. I'm still going to call her Coop-a-loop no matter what her name is.
So, this is for you Amanda. You can thank me later when I ask you to come and stay with me for two weeks when I have another baby and Jeremy is in school.