twenty eight and 11/12 years old

i will be 29 in exactly one month.  29!  this means i'm going to enter the last year of my twenties.  i mean, actually, i'm going to enter my 30th year, if you wanna be technical. 

there is going to be a party.  a theme party!!

i find it very strange, because i feel so young.  i mean, i'm married and have a job.  but there are plenty of immature married people out there, so this alone does not make me a grown up. but i don't feel ready to be 29.  i still need advice all the time, mostly from my mom and dad! there's something about it that's just weird to me--have i really crossed the great divide into "grownup" world?

those of you that are older than i am, i realize, will say, "wah wah wah".  but let me be clear on one thing: this post is not about getting older.  each year, often around new year's or my birthday, i think about the past year and what i have done.  now that i'm close to entering a new decade, i'm thinking back about how much i have changed in the past 10 years.  how much about my life has changed.  does every decade bring about this many changes, or is the 10 years from 19 to 29 the most dramatic?  

at 19, i was a sophomore in college.  i was roommates with my bestie kristin, and our weekends were filled with house parties and strip twister.  yes, strip twister.  as i've gotten older, i have found that no one wants to play strip twister anymore.  whats the fugging problem, people?  so that's one big change.  no strip twister. my mother is going to die when she reads this.

i was dating someone completely wrong for me.  i believe this is something EVERYONE must do.  there should be no regrets, but it really makes you appreciate the right one when he/she comes along.

then came 21, when i got my bellybutton pierced.  that lasted until i was 27, when it fell out and i was too lazy to put it back in.  i started teaching yoga, which i still do! at 22 i graduated college, moved to birmingham, and started graduate school.  until age 25 or so, i was convinced that graduate school was the single worst decision i had made in my entire life.  at 24 i met the man i was to marry. wow. sometime in this time frame i started running 1/2 marathons.

at 26 i got engaged.  2nd happiest day ever.  at 27 i got married.  first happiest day ever.  at 28 i became a doctor and landed a great job doing exactly what i want to do, thus making graduate school somewhat worth the suffering.  

what will the next decade bring?  hopefully a full marathon.  rob will be a doctor soon, and hopefully will find a job doing exactly what he wants to do.  we plan to leave birmingham and settle somewhere we truly want to be.  we'll probably have children--i mean if we are going to have them, i guess it should happen in the next 10 years or so.  

i'm almost 29.  god help me when i turn 30.

HairDO!

I impulsively cut my hair after teaching yoga class last night!  I had an appointment with a new person at a new place and was really only going to get my luxurious blond locks shaped up.  But walked in, met Scott (my new hair guy), and said, "just cut it".  So it's a layered bob, which I hope doesn't look too mom-ish, that was my biggest fear in getting a shorter cut was that people will think I'm having a kid.  But here's the thing.  It's just another excuse to drink, which means I'm:

a) not pregnant

or

b) a terrible person. 

So anyway here are the pics.  My face looks real stoopid because I took pictures of myself with my camera phone, which is always a bad idea.  But anyway, you can tell I let go of a bunch of hair :)

Paging Lily Tomlin...

This weekend on a routine trip to Sam's (I mean, a trip to anywhere in Birmingham is never QUITE routine, but I digress...), we found these lovely giant chairs.  I subsequently became obsessed and can't decide if I'd rather have the red one or the black one, but really I wish they came in green or even pink.

We took a picture:

Anyway, the chairs and the pictures remind me very much of Lily Tomlin and her "Edith Ann" skits.

Check out this video posted for your convenience if you've got no idea who in hell Edith Anne is.

Happy Monday!

Holy Metal Mexican Mariachi!

On Wednesdays I spend my days in Tuscaloosa doing various teaching activities at Stillman College.  Christine and I usually try to ride together.  It saves UAB money in reimbursement, and we have fun and go out for lunch.  Today we went to a Mexican restaurant.  I can't really remember the name, but they had a mariachi band made completely from metal.  Including moustaches! 

Fall has Fallen!

For Labor Day weekend we went to a place best described as "the southern midwest":  Louisville, KY.   Rob and I deliberated all the way home yesterday and decided on this, since it's not really the north and not really the south.  Gary says it's the south, Beth says it is not because you can see Indiana. Kentucky, I heard from the internets, is technically a "border" state. Anyway, I'm not going to argue, because everyone seems pretty dead set in their opinions. Either way, it's delightfully charming.

We've certainly been missing Rob's uncle Gary, aunt Beth and their 3 girls (Ally, 8; Jaimie, 12; and Kaitlin, 14) since they moved from Helena, AL to Louisville sometime last year.  They were in limbo and an apartment for a while, but they are all moved in and settling into their beautiful new home!  So it was high time for a visit, and we were certainly happy to impose ourselves on them for a weekend.

We tailgated for the University of Louisville v. University of Kentucky football game on Saturday, Rob and Gary went to the game, and I got to hang out with Beth and the girls.  They showed me lots of their cool city, even though I'm pretty sure the older girls thought it was lame.  We spent lots of time walking in the gorgeous pre-fall weather and gazing across the river at Indiana.  Sunday Beth and I went running together (I'm ALWAYS happy for a running buddy!), showed me around the neighborhood, then we went back to the waterfront and saw the fountain that kids like to swim in and the vast number of parks.  We also got to spend some time by the waterfront.  Both Saturday and Sunday were filled with simply gorgeous weather. A very busy weekend indeed, but so much fun.  Lots of captioned photos below!

Bella (found out her whole name is Bella Blue) helps Rob navigate Nashville rush hour.  Brutal.

Gary and Beth have now have their own piece of the world on Tavener Drive. 

Now you know and you can go see them!

Neighbors' flowers in bloom, probably some of the last of this season:

We went to the Zachary Taylor Cemetery and played "Who's been dead the longest?".  

It was Zachary Taylor.

 Goofing off in front of the OH river and Indiana:

Kaitlin and Ally

Beth and Girls

A beautiful Sunday afternoon, pre-housewarming

Belle of Louisville, the boat, not me.  

Gary and Rob work hard on their brisket competition.  

Gary won this one, so now they need a tiebreaker!

My husband, the homemade grill-maker.

The party gets in full swing. 

See the guy in the light-blue button-down?  

There will be a post solely dedicated to him later this week.

Ms. Marie is 97!

Relay spent the evening really wishing for some brisket. 

Two of my favorite people from the weekend are in this pic.  

One told me I looked like a high schooler, which I realize is untrue, but shut up.

The other told me that I have smooth glamorous hair.  I'm sure they were both paid!

If you go visit Gary and Beth over on Tavener Drive, you must bring either bourbon or coffee.

You have been warned.

Surely they are making an instructional video.  

And surely they are all sober.

We all ate way too much!  Delish food!

We thought we would stop on the way home for some BBQ, it being Labor Day and all.  We went to TWO BBQ restaurants that were, much to our dismay, CLOSED!  This was a major fail:

SO:

Thanks again to the Louisville Mans Clan for a lovely time! Hope everyone had an eventful Labor Day weekend.  

Happy Tuesday!

5 Year Plan

In January of 2005, my mother made a New Year's Resolution.  "I'm going to purge all of my stuff and get rid of everything I don't need", she said.  Never think that God doesn't have a sense of humor.

I can't believe it's been that long since the world turned upside down.  Katrina devastated so much of a region, and so many families, including mine.  I was, of course, living in Birmingham at the time and still had the comfort of my worldly possessions. My parents home, a sanctuary to all us kids, was left filled with logs and water from a 30 foot storm surge. My godparents' home was effectively turned into a duplex. Nothing was salvageable, but that didn't stop us from trying. I still have water-damaged photos from a scrapbook that was left behind.  No one thought it would or could be so bad, but it was. So much of what happened is still unfathomable as I watch the news reports this morning, the 5-year anniversary.

The weekend before Katrina hit, I went home to visit.  Looking back, I'm so happy I was able to visit one last time. I went for selfish reasons-I was looking to my mom and dad for courage and resilience to dump my live-in boyfriend.  This was a LONG time coming, and I certainly should have done it years before.  Anyway, I got home on Friday night, and my mom mentioned, "You know, they say there's going to be a hurricane".  We've been through a million hurricanes, and no one was worried.  Just reinforce the windows and find somewhere dry to go.

My sister had made the homecoming court that year, soon Saturday we went to the mall to buy some clothes and shoes for homecoming week.  I was so excited to help her shop, and we had a great time.  The mall was packed, and only a murmur of "gotta go board up the windows" was heard. After shopping, we went back to the house and helped to reinforce the privacy fence.  I got blisters, but that fence was still standing after the storm.  By Saturday night the storm had strengthened and was heading straight for Bay St. Louis, MS. 

That night, I had Grey Goose with cranberry juice and drowned my sorrows.  My mom told me that no matter what, I had to be happy.  I knew my relationship was toast, and knew I had to do something about it.  That night, Katrina strengthened to a Category 5 storm.

Click here for the scariest weather report I have ever seen. (It's Wikipedia, so you'll have to scroll down to "bulletin".)

Sunday morning I got up, turned on the weather, and evacuated with the rest of south Mississippi.  Dad and Rikki went to my grandmother's house in Philadelphia, MS. My mom headed into the hospital, being a nurse, because she was required to stay there in case of medical emergencies.  At the last minute she was sent home, and almost went to our house.  She most likely would have died there, or at the very best ended up being rescued from the roof.  Ultimately, she evacuated to my grandmother's house.

When I got back to Birmingham, I broke up with my live-in boyfriend within 1 minute of walking in the door.  By Monday, everything was gone.  

The power had gone out at my grandmother's house, so it was a day or so before my parents knew the extent of the devastation.  For several days, there were many family members that were unaccounted for.  They all survived.  

I cleaned out all the clothes and shoes from my closet that I thought anyone could use. I bought and filled up gas can after gas can so I could go to MS to see my family. My sister moved in with me for a month, a welcome reprieve from the loneliness I was feeling.  I took her shopping for clothes, but this time because she really didn't have any. My parents (and pretty much everyone else too) moved into a FEMA camper for a long year-I can't even imagine how difficult it was for them.  They filed their insurance (flood insurance bought only 2 months before the storm), sold their condemned house and property, and made their plans.

Mom & Dad and Tommy & Donna rebuilt their lives and began a new life in new homes-- with very different priorities than before. We made new memories.  I started dating Rob, then we were engaged and then married.  I defended my dissertation and earned my Ph.D. My little sister had a baby and got married. My dad took stock of his health and became a bodybuilder -- thus winning the prize of biggest physical transformation.Our family grew together, and I hope that we always will remember what's most important. We've all had multiple challenges along the way, and we have all dealt with them with the same brute force that was used for the Katrina aftermath. And here we are, stronger than before.

Best Sushi Ever

Dear Surin West:

Please add the following to your sushi menu.  This would greatly increase the LOL's at lunch.