BBB Topics for Monday and Tuesday

Yesterday I woke up with a very sore and irritated ear :( It's bothered me all day. I'm not sure what is wrong with me because I don't feel sick. My ear just really hurts. I think it may be a bug bite or something right inside the ear canal. I also spent almost all day in the car yesterday practicing for my driver's test which is tomorrow!! Rick and I drove to the DMV and spied on people doing their tests. We wore dark glasses and hats and followed them so I'm pretty comfortable with the route now and know what to expect tomorrow. I was pretty wiped out after we got home and my ear was hurting so I didn't get online to blog. I'm going to stay on top of it from now on though so I hope I'm not completely out of the game!

Monday's topic had to do with luxury and shopping in SL I love the shopping in SL. In my RL I don't really like shopping. It makes me nervous and I start to sweat. I usually like to go with someone who is fashion savvy and will just pick things out for me. My sisters are good for this. And Rick is good at it too. I just stay in the changeroom and try on the things they bring me.

But in SL it's so different. I can find anything I want. Totally extravagant ballgowns and bikinis I would never wear in RL. I can change my hairstyle with the touch of a button. Hair color too! It's heaven. My favorite experiences shopping were when Rick and I set up our home in SL. I loved shopping for furniture and plants and trees. I have so much stuff and I rotate it according to mood and season. I also liked shopping for my wedding dress in SL. Wedding dresses in general are so princess-like and magical. My favorite shops for clothes in SL are Nyte n' Day. I can always find something I like in there. I also like Casa del Shai. She designs really beautiful and unique items. For hair I like ETD and Sirena hair and fashion. I like being a blonde and a redhead. Sorcha was a blonde. Astrid was a redhead. Now I just go with whatever I feel like being that particular day.

As I said before, I'm not that into shopping in RL. However, I do love buying toiletries. I love nice lotions and bath products and shampoos. And makeup is always fun. I also like going to the used book store that sells books for 1 or 2 dollars. I can go with ten or twenty and come out with an armload of books to read. Those are my weaknesses. Books and beauty products. :)

The BBB question for today is about relationships. Within SL and online relationships in RL.

Rick and I met in SL when his avatar was a month old and mine was two weeks into it. I was still very noob. I even remember what we were wearing. Sorcha had a particular horrendous hairstyle from Lashed. And she was wearing black capri pants and a pink and white wrap top. And huge platform heels with lots of bling. It wasn't pretty! But I was quite proud of it. And I still like the pants and shirt. I did a search for "irish pubs" and found one called The Blarney Stone. It's quite an established place in SL. It's been around for awhile. I tp'd over there and started dancing. I was chatting to several people when I saw this guy sitting at the bar. He was wearing board shorts and sandals and had messy surfer style hair. He was also smoking a pipe in the shape of a little fox and it gave off colorful puffs of smoke. I liked that pipe a lot. It was the first time I'd seen anything like that. He sent me an IM that said I was very pretty. I said I loved his pipe. He gave me the landmark for the shop where he'd bought it. I went shopping! lol. When I got back to the bar I sat beside him at the bar but I couldn't stop dancing. I still wasn't very good with dance balls. It usually took me about half and hour to figure out how to work them. He helped me figure it out and we started talking. I'd talked to a few guys in SL. I had some male friends but I always thought the guys who threw out pick-up lines were dumb. I thought the whole concept of having a boyfriend in SL was dumb. But I didn't think I'd meet someone who I clicked with right away. I had no shyness because he weren't face to face. So I was my truest self with him right from the beginning. And it was so easy. And so much fun. We were inseparable after that. We'd go exploring, we'd go on silly adventures, we'd go dancing or we would just sit on the bottom of his fishpond and talk for hours.

The thing is, it started to feel so real. It WAS real. We were both being ourselves and loving each other and it felt more real than anything else ever had. Which was a bit scary because SL is a virtual world. But gradually, we'd brought it out of SL. I knew who he was, where he lived, I'd seen pictures of him. I'd talked with him on the phone. And he knew me. And we both wanted more. I wanted to touch him for real and be with him for real and he wanted the same. But this was scary to us too. We broke it off because it got too intense. That time apart was awful. I couldn't talk to anyone about it because they wouldn't understand. They would think I was crazy. So I poured it all out in my old blog. And I eventually deleted that. In the hopes that it would all go away and I could forget. But I couldn't. And life just seemed so empty. I knew what love was like and now it was gone.

We ended up getting back together . Both of us had our own issues to work through and we did. We decided to meet. I was so excited. I had one moment on the plane where I thought to myself "WHAT AM I DOING??" But then we landed and I saw him there and I ran to him and kissed him and that was it. It felt completely natural and wonderful and it felt like home. We had an amazing ten days together and not one moment was awkward or uncomfortable. Except for the countdown of days until I'd need to fly back again away from him. That was always hanging in the background.

There were obstacles. Life circumstances, distance, there is quite an age difference. My parents thought I'd gone crazy. My friends didn't understand. But I had to be with him. None of that mattered to me. He was just my soulmate and I knew it from the beginning. Everything worked itself out because we wanted it to. And we're together now and I don't regret a moment of it. People have said that it's impossible to find love in a virtual world, it's just a game, it's not real. But it can be. For me and Rick, the medium through which we met enabled us to be ourselves and see the other person clearly. I could see his soul and he could see mine. Without SL, we probably never would have met because of geography. Even if we had met we probably never would have talked because of barriers that we put up and preconceptions people have about people and age. I'm eternally grateful to SL for teaching me how to open myself up to love and to be able to look at people and see who they are inside. I realize not everyone is themselves on SL but I think it's wonderful when you connect with people on that level and you always feel it when it happens too. It's a great thing.

Here are some pictures of me and Rick. We're working on putting pictures of us in SL with photoshop. I think that would be fun!