by Unknown
Celebrity Girl Crush: Keira Knightley
Celebrity Guy Crush: Jason Statham
From: Kayla Lanmon
December 20, 2006
Facts
Name: Kayla
Birthday: September 3
Star Sign: Virgo
Height: 5’6”
Weight: ummm….at the moment, 118, but normally 100 when I’m not knocked up!
Shoe Size: 7.5
Favorites
Favorite Color: Grey and Pink
Favorite Singer: Jared Leto
Favorite Movie: Father of the Bride 2
Favorite TV Show: Supernatural…and Grey’s Anatomy, even though it guts me.
Favorite Play: Chicago
Favorite Food: Smithfield BBQ Sandwiches
Dreams
Dream Vacation: Paris
Dream Job: Author
Dream Pet: A llama
Dream House: Plantation style, with a giant wraparound porch
Celebrity Girl Crush: Angelina Jolie
Celebrity Guy Crush: Jensen Ackles
Kayla’s Chick Rant & Book Blog
January 5, 2007
I’m shaking. Absolutely about to come unglued. All the plans are in place. Today at work, I told Casey I’d need the week of January 25th off.
Jason Is Coming To Visit Me.
Holy shit. Holy mothereffing SHIT!
Okay, I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m sorry I haven’t been posting as much lately. I’ve been spending so much time messaging back and forth with Jason and talking to him on the phone all the time that my blog posts have been slacking. But can you blame a girl?
For Christmas, I got an unexpected package on my doorstep, along with the best note ever. It was a basket overflowing with relaxation products. There were bath bombs, lavender-scented lotion and body wash, a massage rolly-tool thingy, and even a fluffy pair of purple slippers. And now that I think about it, that MySpace questionnaire Jason sent me makes a lot more sense now.
The note read, “For my favorite girl in the world. Hope this makes you feel as beautiful as you are. Love, Jason.”
It had been perfect timing. I’d been feeling gross lately. None of my old clothes are fitting anymore, but I’m still too small to wear actual maternity clothes, so I just resorted to wearing sweats all the time.
After thanking him profusely over the phone, that’s when he dropped a bomb on me. He was going to have a week off for his birthday while he was working up in Canada, and he wanted to fly down to visit me. I didn’t take him seriously at first. I mean, why would he want to come visit a five-months-pregnant girl he used to bang? But he was for real, even had me send him names of close-by hotels so he could book one.
I’m so freaking excited I don’t know what to do with myself!
What will it be like seeing him for the first time in a year and a half?
What will it be like seeing him while I’m pregnant?
Oh, and what will it be like seeing him when I’m married to another man?
Our conversations have a different tone now. It’s more than a friendship, but not quite romantic. It’s somewhere in between. I don’t question it. I take what I can get when it comes to Jason. Anything is better than nothing at all. When I went all those months without talking to him before, it was like I wasn’t living; I was just surviving. And then the moment he called me for Thanksgiving, it’s like he breathed life back into me.
I feel like my old self again…only pregnant.
Even my mom and granny have noticed a change in my demeanor. I let them chalk it up to the second trimester being good to me. Anni, however, wasn’t buying it, and I ended up confessing everything to her. She didn’t know I had talked to Jason at all since the time she was dyeing my hair in her kitchen, when he drunk dialed me. So I had a lot of catching her up to do. Needless to say, she wasn’t very happy about the situation.
On the one hand, she very much dislikes Aiden. No amount of bribery on his part could change the fact she just doesn’t care for him in the slightest, and she has no qualms about making that known, to everyone, including Aiden. But on the other hand, she also doesn’t think it was right to be talking to Jason while I’m married to another man. I could try to feed her any line of bullshit I wanted about us being just friends, but she wasn’t eating it. That’s the one bad thing about having a best friend who knows you so well, I guess.
She knows my true feelings for Jason. She knows I’d drop everything in a heartbeat if he were to tell me he wants to be with me. Maybe that’s sad…desperate…but what else could I do when I know in my very soul he’s the one I’m meant to be with?
From: Kayla Lanmon
January 8, 2007
Oh, my gosh, I have so much I want to show you when you get here! It’s mostly food. Okay, it’s like, all food. But you have to understand, that’s all there is in Fayetteville. Restaurants, a mall, a few movie theatres, and a shitload of car dealerships. But I have to show you what real BBQ is. And I’ll take you to Chason’s Grandsons. When I was little, it was just called Chason’s, but the original restaurant burned down. They reopened it though, with all the old recipes of southern home cookin’. There’s no way you won’t love it. I’ve been eating there at least once a week since I got my appetite back.
When you get here, I’ll tell you about the name I picked out for my daughter. I hope you like it.
Am I breathing? My strength fails me. Your picture, a bitter memory
Kayla’s Chick Rant & Book Blog
Blog Post 1/23/2007
I'm a happy person, damn it! I'm happy sober; I'm a happy drunk, and I smile until my cheeks hurt. I'm so freakin' perky all the time. I always get invited to everyone's parties; I never get scrolled over when people are looking through their phones to see what's going on. Everyone loves for me to be around because I bring no drama. I'm shameless, and will make a fool of myself to make everyone laugh. I don't say these things to be conceited; I say it to show you how unlike me it is when I tell you...
I cried myself to sleep again last night. I cradled my swollen belly in my hands and rocked myself back and forth praying in a whisper, "Please, God, make him love me. I know you put us here to be together. Just make him realize it. Please!" The last word came out on a sob. I swear I'm not a horrible person, as I laid there crying over another man while I'm six months pregnant with my husband's baby.
I will never say what happened was a mistake. I believe everything happens for a reason. I also believe in soul mates. But what if one person finds their soul mate and the other one just refuses to acknowledge it? Can you be happy with anyone else? Or if once your soul finds its other half, are you doomed to long for them?
These are all questions I've asked myself since I left Texas a year and a half ago, since I left the man I know I'm supposed to share my life with. No, I didn't leave him. He told me to go. He told me there was no reason for me to stay since my semester of school ended. That's when happy, perky, shameless Kayla snapped.
The first time.
The second time I lost myself was the week of Jason’s twenty-third birthday, on the day I couldn’t deny any longer that he really wasn’t coming to see me. I had held out, thinking maybe it was a trick. Maybe he was trying to surprise me by just showing up at my doorstep.
He’d told me he booked his flight…his hotel…everything. He had my home address. That had to be it, right?
That’s why I hadn’t heard from him in the past two weeks, right?
Not a single phone call.
Not a single message.
Nothing.
His phone went unanswered, most of the time going straight to voicemail.
He was in Canada. Maybe he had to turn his phone off because it was too expensive to call internationally.
Maybe he lost Internet access. Was there a big snowstorm where he was up there?
No, that wasn’t it. Because I could see his new pictures and stuff he’d post on MySpace. Which meant nothing had happened
to him.
It’s now a couple days after he was supposed to come. No surprise arrival. No reservation under that name at the hotel he said he was staying at. Not even a response to the happy early birthday message I’d sent him through tear-filled eyes on MySpace. It could only mean one thing.
He was disappearing from my life yet again.
Taking the breath he’d given back to me with him..
March 20, 2007
Oh, third trimester. You will be the death of me.
As I sit in the middle of my parents’ living room on the hardwood floor next to Granny’s feet, I toss another few peas into the bucket and throw away the hull. We’ve been shelling butter beans and peas for the past hour as I watch a rerun of Grey’s Anatomy.
I’d made sure to fair-warn Granny that tonight I had to watch it, interrupting her constant view of QVC, because this was the only episode I’ve ever missed of my favorite show. I watch it religiously, and I had been absolutely devastated when the power had gone out during a thunderstorm, making me miss my weekly fix of the doctor soap opera when it originally aired.
“Into You Like a Train,” the episode from season two, might send me into labor. Which I wouldn’t complain about one bit. I sit Indian-style, riveted to the screen, completely forgetting about the peas in my hand until Granny lightly nudges my thigh with her toe to get me back on track. I am the one, after all, who begged her for a bowl of her butter beans and peas and some rutabagas with pork. Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing in this world, is better than my granny’s southern cooking.
On TV, there is an old man and a young woman on a table in the hospital who have just been through a train accident. They have a huge metal pole that has impaled both of them, skewering them together. One wrong move, and either one of them could bleed out. There is a severely risky surgery they have to undergo in order to remove the pole.
The young woman is engaged to be married, and even in excruciating pain, you can’t help but fall for her sweet personality. When it is determined that only one of them will live because of the angle of the pole, which will have to be slid out to be removed, the old man wants to give his life in order to save hers, saying he had already lived a long, fulfilling life, when she still has her whole journey ahead of her. She wants to wait to have the surgery until her fiancé arrives at the hospital, but there isn’t enough time.
And then it happens. We discover the woman’s injuries are more substantial than the old man’s, and so she will be the one moved off the pole first, with the promise they will do everything they can to save both of the passengers. But as soon as she’s off the metal tube, she crashes. After a short period of them trying to save her, all the attention is turned to the old man, who has more of a chance of living.
And I lose it.
With Meredith screaming, “What about her? We can’t just abandon her!” I crush the peas in my fists and bawl as I watch the drama unfold.
“KD, you better calm down. You’re gonna get yourself too upset and send yourself into labor,” Granny scolds, tossing more shelled peas into the bucket.
“It’s just so sad! He was giving up his life so she could live, and then she dies! They don’t have enough doctors to work on both of them, so they just give up on her,” I sniffle out.
“It’s just a TV show, baby. It ain’t real,” she tries to soothe me.
“It’s not just a TV show, Granny. They’re my friends!” I wail.
I hear my mom burst out laughing from the couch on the other side of me, and I turn a death glare on her with my tear-filled eyes. “Oh, my poor little doll. May fifth can’t get here soon enough. You need to have that baby so you’ll have less time on your hands to obsess over fictional characters,” she says, leaning forward and reaching out to rub my back.
“I’ve spent every single week with these people for the past three years,” I explain.
“I get it, KD. Granny and I have watched our stories every day since the seventies. You don’t have to try to get me to understand feeling like these people are real,” Mom tells me, referring to The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful.
“Well, Aiden comes home next week, and you’ll be busy with him. No more moping around here like your puppy died,” Granny orders.
The thought only depresses me more.
They don’t know the reason the episode really hit home is because Dr. Derek Shepard just left Meredith for his cheating estranged wife, essentially abandoning her, the way I feel Jason abandoned me. It’s been over two months, and I still haven’t heard anything from him. No explanation of why he didn’t come to see me, or even one for just falling completely off the grid. He hasn’t even been updating his MySpace, so I have no way of knowing if he’s okay.
Now, Aiden will soon be home, and I’ll have to put up with his shit. I’ve gotten so used to doing things my way, doing whatever the hell I want, when I want. No one telling me I can’t do something. This deployment has been way better than the last one, in the fact I talk to him maybe once a week, and he doesn’t seem to give a crap what I’m up to. No more psycho controlling asshole this time.
The conversations are usually short and to the point. He asks me how I’m feeling and how the baby is doing. He calls when he knows I’ve had a doctor’s appointment, and sometimes when he’s just bored. Maybe he thinks he has nothing to worry about since I’m huge and pregnant. But in all actuality, I’ve gotten more compliments and flirtatious looks from gorgeous soldiers than I ever did before.
Even though I feel like absolute hell, with my sore hips and aching back, insomnia, and acid reflux like a motherfucker, I also have never felt more beautiful. I have a soft look about me now. No more boniness. My breasts are full and heavy, my hips are rounded, and I have an ass for days. My thighs even touch! Barely, but still. I wish I could keep all this extra meat on my bones after Josalyn arrives. But if I’m anything like my mom, I’ll walk out of the hospital back in my skinny jeans.
Having this belly brings out the best in other people, I’ve discovered. I can’t remember the last time I had to open a door for myself, or had to carry anything heavy. I can’t go out into public without someone complimenting me on how “adorable” my baby bump is. Sure, it’s also brought out people’s annoying side too—unwanted advice, unwanted touches to my belly, unwanted birthing horror stories—but all in all, it’s been nice. If it weren’t for the physical aches and pains, I’d probably have a million kids.
Well, I say that now. Ask me again after I have her.
Kayla’s Chick Rant & Book Blog
April 2, 2007
Aiden and I went to Womack today to take the tour of Labor & Delivery and a birthing class. That was…interesting. Looking around at all the other couples, you could see the love they had for one another, the excitement in the fathers’ eyes when they helped their wives practice breathing techniques, the gentleness in their touches when helping them keep their balance on the exercise balls when we were learning different ways to ease labor pains.
I did my best to shake off the uneasy feeling inside me, making an effort not to flinch when Aiden’s hands would touch me.
At the end of the class, I decided I wanted to make an appointment with the doula, learning during the two-hour course that a doula is a birthing coach, or companion. She explained she’s there from the very first labor pains, through the entire birth, and even there afterwards to help with learning to breastfeed. I truly feel like I’ll need her. Sure, I’ll have my mom there, and my granny, but the way I feel about Aiden, I won’t be like most women with husbands there for the delivery. I won’t want to depend on him for support. I’d rather pay a doula, who I know will be there for me, because it’s her job, and from talking with her, I can tell it’s a job she absolutely loves.
I didn’t hesitate for a second. I paid the woman and booked her as my labor companion. I want to have my baby as naturally as possible. I’m not against the drugs, but I want to see if I can physically do it myself, see h
ow strong I can be. I’ve always been seen as this weak little fragile thing. How badass would I feel about myself if I could give birth naturally? Pretty damn badass. So that’s my birth plan!
Hospital tour—check.
Labor class—check.
Doula—check.
Hospital bag packed—check.
All that’s left now is to have my baby shower and then wait for little Josalyn to make her big debut!
Sleep brings release, and the hope of a new day
April 29, 2007
Not two weeks after Aiden got home from deployment, he got the news he’d be going back soon after I have Josalyn. They will soon be closing Pope Air Force Base, turning it into an Army airfield, and have been relocating a bunch of the airmen. We requested we stay here in Fayetteville as long as possible, since my family is here, instead of being one of the families to leave as soon as possible. Seems like most everyone jumped at the opportunity to get out of Fayettenam, so they seemed grateful we wanted to stay.
With the low number of airmen at the base now, though, that means the turnaround time for deployments is much quicker than before. I’m not complaining. Since Aiden’s been back, I already broke one of his Playstation remotes, and cussed him out on several occasions. Nothing had changed since before he deployed—hell, since before I got pregnant. If anything, it’s gotten even worse. Looking at us together, you’d never be able to tell we are a couple, much less married with a baby on the way. We look more like two strangers tolerating each other’s existence.
My baby shower was a couple weeks ago. A bunch of my old friends from high school came, like the beautiful Katie and Barbara, who bought me the most adorable outfits for the baby, along with Brittany, and Anni of course. I became good friends with Sara, the girl I trained at work to replace me, and she made Josalyn the most amazing quilt, plus the cutest diaper bag for me, by hand. But who has turned out to be my lifesaver? My friend since freshman year, Katrina. Oh, thank the heavens for Katrina.