Yeah, that’s right.  Feast your eyes on some grade-A, 1995-era clip art.

Dudes. It happened. We’re moving.

It was a frustrating process of the real estate agent rooting for us (and the dogs) to the old, barely-speaking-English landlord. His big concern about us (I kid you not, this is verbatim) was that we would have loud parties in the back yard until 5 in the morning. I was like, “Dude, we’re moving away from exactly that.”

Our official move-in is on the 15th of July, but we’re going to get the keys before so we can clean and paint (there’s a painted blue stripe around EVERY door way and EVERY window that I just… don’t understand!) The movers are here on the 16th.

The studio is also going to move on the 15th to it’s new home downtown, and we’re moving the stuff that won’t fit into the new, smaller apartment to the basement of my grandma’s on the 21st.

This is one of the apartments that was taken away by heart-breaking circumstances, and to tell the truth I’m still not 100% on it. We said we wanted it and thought we would get it, but then the landlord’s relative needed a place and he was going to give it to them. They backed out suddenly, and we were back in the running. We met to sign the lease on Sunday and he found out we weren’t taking the apartment on the first of the month, so he was like, “I dunno about those two!” My agent told me not to worry, he’d come around by Monday, but of course I worried anyway. He took a day to “think about us” and then said, “Ok”, but he still hasn’t signed the lease (he was “busy today”) and I watch enough People’s Court to know not to bother getting excited until he does. But I was told he said yes, and my agent has a good relationship with him, so I trust her. I am thinking-as-if, I am visualizing the signed lease, (I am full of shit and I know it…)

Also! My name is legally changed as of Monday morning! The judge called me in to his chambers and made sure I was an upstanding citizen, not trying to dodge bill collectors or commit fraud, and that I wasn’t a sex offender. I’m now fine-tuning my tour of Connecticut bureaucratic offices this week, you know, while I’m packing and moving the studio and trying to clean and paint a new apartment and deciding what should come and what should go into storage and shopping for new drapes and a new rug for the bedroom floor because, by the way, did I mention that the bedroom floor of this new apartment is LINOLEUM?

This is going to be fun.

“…you’ve always tried to make choices that are right for you and the people you love. Give it some more time and a little more thought, and I’m sure the right thing for you to do will present itself without question.” – Jen

I’ve been thinking a lot about my “name” issue and reached a conclusion. But I gotta ’splain, so check it, yo.

There were a lot of you all in favor of me switching to Rob’s last name. I like the concept in a vacuum, but my point of hesitation is the one where everyone thinks: “Oh, she just took his name because she’s the woman and he’s the man.”

Also, I’m 27, and this is my third name. That’s an average of being named less than once a decade. Enough already, you know! In each case, the name was given to me because of a man handing it down, and that makes my feminist sensibilities twitch. I’ve never had my “own” name, and while that’s not the biggest deal in the world, it bothers me a tiny bit.

Najla pointed out that I could take this opportunity to switch my last name to whatever I wanted, even though I’m married. It had occurred to me, too, but I dismissed the idea as being too… something. Maybe the word is just plain “lonely”. I realized that the end of the day, I not only want a new name, I really do want to share a name with Rob, no matter how clunky the end result is. There are three options for that: he changes his name to mine, I change my name to his, or we both pick something new. Because of his family ties, he isn’t willing to change his name, and I respect that.

So that’s part one.

Part two.

This is not a photo of me.  Duh.

We do have the same name, though.  Amber Lynn came (hehe!) onto the porn scene in 1984 (I was born in ‘82), and is one of the better known porn stars, even today (partly because of her charity work). As you can imagine, my middle name doesn’t see the light of day much.

It was chosen for me because it’s my mother’s middle name, and Amber Lynn is pretty enough I suppose, porn connotation aside, but as long as I’m shedding old names, I figured, why not get rid of the moniker of this porn star and make a new name for myself? It will also be nice not to have the middle name of someone who told me I was worthless and stupid, and left scars on my body from the physical assaults.  You know?

So that’s part two.

Part three, of course, was picking a new middle name, which I narrowed down to two requirements:

1. It had to sound plausible as a last name. This clears up the whole “I’ve never had my own last name” issue, at least to my satisfaction. To get a good list to choose from I went to babynames.com and looked at the names considered gender neutral. This worked well; virtually all made great sounding family names.

I wanted it to sound like a surname so that it reads as a maiden name, sort of like Hillary Rodham Clinton (no hyphen). I like that; you can call her Hilary Clinton, but if you’re being proper, you use all three names, and that’s how I’m treating the middle name for me, too. Holly inadvertently gave me this idea, and I’m giving that my own twist.

2. The second requirement is that it just had to start with M. Here’s the part you start wondering what I’m smoking, but bear with me. The M is a sturdy letter, visually. It has two strong, wide-set feet. You pronounce it only one way as far as I know; the M knows what she’s all about. By using a lot of them, you can say “yes” in a sassy way, as in “Mmmmmhmmm!”, and the “Me and My M” song was always my favorite Sesame Street cartoon. (If you think this last bit, a one and a half minute song from Sesame Street, could not possibly have factored into my picking a name for myself, you are so wrong.)

So there it is. I go to probate court in my official hometown of Trumbull, Connecticut, turn in the papers, swear I’m not trying to commit fraud, write a check and I am newly, legally christened. (And yes, I’m a libertarian and think that having to file with the court to “officially” do ANYTHING is ridiculous, but that’s the way it is.)

The hardest part about all this is You.

Well, maybe not YOU, but someone.  Someone isn’t going to “get it”.  Someone is going to hear what I’ve done, and they’re going to roll their eyes.  Someone is going to call me silly, stupid, and over-dramatic.  Someone is going to make fun.  And I get it, because as much as I believe in this, I am fully aware that it is “weird”.  It doesn’t feel weird to me, it feels wonderful!  But it IS weird, and I’m self-conscious of that. I’m blessed with a pretty thick skin and the full knowledge that not everyone needs to approve before I do something, but it is still going to be really hard to break this news to the more judgmental people in my life who will need to know. (Though I called my grandmother and told her, and she’s pretty happy, and Rob is happy, so haters be damned!)

So! WHAT THE HELL IS IT ALREADY?! Ready?

Amber Marlow Blatt

OMG! I typed that and now I’m crying! I’m happy! Please be happy with me!

It’s a big name, I know.  A mouthful.  The name equivalent of unbuttoning my pants and letting my big old belly hang out, standing in the middle of the room with my feet planted in a wide stance (just like the letter M), stopping up the flow of traffic at the house party, I’m-in-your-way-and-I-like-it kind of name. The Marlow softens it, I think, kind of a cushion to your forehead after the Amber, and right before the Blatt knocks you, twack! like a two-by-four. It’s quiet, and warm and solid.

Everyone has to make their own path in life, I just wish that mine wasn’t so strange, sometimes. In the end, though, if I get to be here, it was worth it. Plus, hey! It’s the Amber show. I can do whatever I want.

Rock.