30 Days of Photographs. Day 3

Day 3: The person you do the most messed up things with.

I met this girl working at a girls camp in the summer of 2006. 

Fact: There COULD NOT be a funnier girl.

We ruled the school with our obnoxiousness and most random everythingness. We did impressions, we did accents, we pretended to know how to dance, we got dirty, we dressed up in elaborate costumes, we had friendly competitions that I clearly dominated. We were unstoppable. I have never. ever. ever. in my life laughed as hard in my life as I did that summer. Here are just of the few shenanigans we got ourselves into. 

She invented "High Pants Tuesday" that caught on like wildfire. Everyone hiked their pants as high as possible, every Tuesday. {She is the one on the far right.}

We got in a marker fight. I clearly won.

We got in several water fights.

              

We used to get each other laughing so hard that we couldn't stop. Nor could we breathe. We were literally dying  from laughter. So, when we would reach that state of har-de-har-har-ing, where we just couldn't laugh any more we used to do this thing, this signal. We would pretend as though we were laying in a grave with our hands crossed across our chest. {See below} 

That was the signal that we absolutely could not go on laughing without dying. 

Just one of probably 30 elaborate costumes.

 We had lots of good times around a fire...

Complete with Fire Dances:
{and High Pants Tuesdays}

And air guitar concerts:
{and High pants Tuesdays}

She was {and is} one of my life long besties. I miss her with every ounce of heart I've got in me, but we don't get to see much of each other anymore these days. 

Danger, I want you to know that you forever hold a piece of my heart. And I wish there was something more I could do for you. I miss you. I miss us. I would re-live this entire summer in a heartbeat. 

Embracing the Camera. And flashback 1990.

Today I am embracing the camera with my sisters.... All 5 of them. (Technically one is adopted, but we are sisters regardless of DNA... Ya'll have one of those too right?)

I want to participate in Embrace the camera even though I don't have kids. That is allowed. {I checked.}

These are my sisters and I last summer at Cherry Hills. I highly recommend that little hot spot. 

L to R. Adopted sis. Ten year old Sis. Sports sis. Soccer Sis. Music sis. Me

Like how we all have nick-names like the Spice girls? Well, that's how I refer to the sisters mostly on this blog.

L to R. Soccer Sis. Adopted Sis. Ten year old sis. Sports sis. Music sis. Me

And someday when I have kiddos I will embrace the camera with them. 

Do you know why? Because some of my most cherished photographs from my childhood are the ones where mom and dad were in. I love seeing them in their younger years, thin and energetic. I love mother sporting all the hair-do's and fashions of the 80's. I love seeing dad's big guns and his retro suits from the 70's that he was still wearing in the 80's. He was cute. {Still is.}

I want my kids to see me sporting the good ol fashions of my time and seeing me in my younger years too. I am fully ready to embrace that camera! 

Check out these beauts... parents embracing the camera.

3.15.87

 This one could be, could be my favorite of mother. Besides the fabulous Hair, makeup and nails check out the pants? Oh, is my brother blocking them? Don't worry... Here you go:

I seriously, no kidding aside, wish she still had these pants. I would be all over them. 

First complete family picture. Probably Nov. 1990

Easter Sunday. Probably 1993.Maybe 1992.

And I totally just took a picture of these pictures. Cause I am way too lazy to figure out how to use a scanner. Ya I know. Don't Judge.

75 Today... Who knows how many next month

Once again I am putting something on the blog so that I will commit to it. I have this huge list of books I want to read see... And I sort of made a goal to read {or re-read} them all by the time I was 30. Tooooatally doable right? I know. I just need to get on it. I can easily tackle this. I just keep putting it off, thinking that the list is so big I don't even know where to start. You know what? I take that back. I know exactly where I am going to start. I am going to start here:

 (I am going go to the library today!)

Anyways, 

I knew if I put it on the blog I would not make any more excuses. So, in no particular order here is the list of books I want to read before I am 30:

{And don't judge that I didn't capitalize properly. If the computer didn't do it for me it didn't get done}

1.       Alan Bradley: The sweetness at the bottom of the pie

2.       Anita Diamant: Day after Night

3.       Beth Hoffman: Saving Cee Cee Honeycut

4.       Betty Friedan: The Feminine Mystique

5.       Chris Cleave: Little Bee

6.       Christian Moerk: Darling Jim

7.       Christina Baker Kline: The way life should be

8.       Cleon Skousen: The Naked Communist

9.       Cleon Skousen: The 5000 year leap

10.   Cleon Skousen: The making of America

11.   Cleon Skousen: The Cleansing of America

12.   Colm Toibin: Brooklyn

13.   Cornelia Nixon: Jarrettsville  

14.   CS Lewis: The Great Divorce

15.   CS Richardson: The end of the alphabet

16.   Dan Chaon: Await your reply

17.   Dave Barry: The shepherd, the angel and walter the Christmas miracle dog  

18.   David Cristofano: The girl she used to be

19.   Dolen Perkins-Valdez: Wench

20.   Eileen Goudge: Woman in red

21.   Elizabeth Berg: The last time I saw you  

22.   Elizabeth berg: The year of pleasures

23.   Elizabeth berg: What we keep

24.   Elizabeth berg: Talk before sleep

25.   Elizabeth Berg: Dream when you’re feeling blue

26.   Elizabeth Strout: Olive Kitteridge  

27.   Emma Donoghue: Room

28.   Gary Vaynerchuk: Crush it

29.   George Orwell: Animal Farm

30.   Harry Bernstein: The invisible wall: A love story that broke barriers

31.   Heather Gudenkauf: The weight of silence

32.   Helen Simonson: Major Pettigrew’s last stand

33.   Jane Hamilton: Laura Rider’s Masterpiece

34.   Janice Holly Booth: Only pack what you can carry  

35.   Jeanette Walls: The Glass Castle

36.   Jonathan Tropper: This is where I leave you

37.   John Grisham: The Last Juror

38.   John Grisham: The Client

39.   Kate Braestrup: Marriage and other acts of charity

40.   Kathleen George: The odds

41.   Kathryn Stockett: The help

42.   Kim Michele Richardson: The Unbreakable Child: A story about forgiving the unforgivable

43.   Kristin Hannah: Firefly lane

44.   Laura Hillenbrand: Unbroken: a WWII story of survival, resilience and redemption

45.   Laura Moriarty: The rest of her life

46.   Lisa Grunwald: The irresistible Henry House  

47.   Marisa De Los Santos: Belong to me

48.   Michelle Hoover: The Quickening

49.   Mildred Armstrong Kalish: Little Heathens: hard times and high spirits on an Iowa farm during the great depression

50.   Murial Barbery: The elegance of the Hedgehog

51.   Neil Gairman: Anansi Boys

52.   Nick Hornby: Slam

53.   Nick Hornby: Juliet Naked

54.   Nick Hornby: Fever Pitch

55.   Nick Hornby: An Education

56.   Nora Ephron: I remember nothing and other reflections

57.   Patricia Reilly Giff: Pictures of Hollis Woods

58.   Paul Harding: Tinkers

59.   Ree Drummond: Black Heals to tractor wheels

60.   Rick Braggs: The prince of Frogtown

61.   Robert Goolrick: A reliable wife

62.   Saul Alinsky: Rules for Radicals

63.   Sophie Hannah: The wrong mother

64.   Stephen Chbosky: The perks of being a wallflower

65.   Susan Gregg Gilmore: Looking for salvation at the dairy queen

66.   Susan Richards: Chosen by a horse

67.   Suzan Colon: Cherries in Winter: My family’s recipe for hope in hard times

68.   Tess Callahan: April and Oliver

69.   Todd Johnson: The Sweet By and By

70.   Tom Franklin: Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

71.   Torey L. Hayden: Ghost Girl: The True Story of a Child in Peril and the Teacher Who Saved Her

72.   Willo Davis Roberts: The view from the cherry tree  

73.   Yoko Ogawa: The housekeeper and the professor
74. Jacqueline Tobin and Raymond G. Dobard: Hidden In Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and The Underground Railroad
75. Catherine Clinton: Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

Our own Strength.

 “I do not think we know our own strength until we see how strong love makes us.” 

I don't know what has possessed me to pick this topic to write about today but I suppose I just want to document how strong I have become because of love, which has become a mile marker in my journey to happiness.

Earlier today I found some quotes that I jotted down about 18 months ago. The funny thing was that at the time I was just coming out of a nasty breakup. My little heart was just shattered. I was reading a book by one of my favorite authors Jodi Picoult, a book called The Tenth Circle. {The title, if I remember right, was referring to the tenth level of Dante’s Inferno and it was heartache.} The book was about a young girl who had just broken up with a boyfriend. Ironic considering my current state. I did not pick this book up with any prior knowledge on the subject matter but it obviously spoke to me. All the quotes had jotted down some 18 months ago were quotes from this book that struck me. The heartache I was then experiencing was a pain I was feeling all too strongly. 

Heartbreak is tragic in the moment. Life shattering even. Yet small and seemingly insignificant in the scheme of things, as we all must know from experience.  When I had read the book, these few sentences that I'd jotted down were truly powerful to me. I remember very clearly being in awe because of how accurately Jodi, through the experience of her young character was able to capture my specific emotions and feelings.

I am not going to get too into the whole emotional journey, because actually I already did that in another blog I had at the time... but I do want to share a few of the more powerful emotions and lessons learned so that I may document my journey of overcoming these strong and powerful, painful and depressing emotions. A journey that I am quite thankful to be on this end of. 

 

I have shared with many of you before details about this breakup. I have only had one difficult breakup in my life, it was a period in my life that I have learned mountains from. It is a period in my life that I don't think I would ever choose to experience again, yet it is a time I would not trade for anything because of who it made me and what I was able to learn.   

The good news? I am past this stage. I have found sincere and genuine happiness since this time period. Looking back, I can do so with gratitude. I can be proud of what I survived. I can honestly say that I had no idea about my own strength, not until I was able to see what love did to me.

Now, let me share with you words that touched me from The Tenth Circle.

This one, I could have spoken myself:

” He must have known that if he’d asked me to drop everything and follow him across the earth, I’d have done it. And if the roles were reversed, he wouldn’t. We were at different places in the same relationship, and like anything that is out of alignment, we were destined to crash sooner or later. I just wish that he would have done it differently to keep from breaking my heart even harder.”

What a fool I was to have been willing to sacrifice literally everything for a man whom I knew would not reciprocate. All because I wanted to prove to myself that I could be loved. What a sad con I allowed myself to become. I know we were not right for each other and that we would not end up together but he could have spared me quite a lot of heartache if he approached the breakup differently. He knowingly chose to break my heart harder than necessary. What a heartless quality.

I also remember lying awake at night, crying... and thinking:

“How do people do it? How does he do it? Get up and go to work, make it through the day and act like none of it mattered. There is no way to drain the pool of memories that pool like acid in my stomach because my heart doesn’t know what to do with them anymore. It’s not like I can totally blame him for breaking up with me when he did, I didn’t like myself like that either. But I can’t just go back to being the person I was before I’d met him. That person is gone, so where does that leave me?”

The memories were TORMENT. I couldn’t get them out of my head and all I wanted was to relive them. I can't tell you how happy that I am to have overcome that mental anguish.

“He said he wanted us to stay friends. Even thought deep down I knew it was impossible. How was I supposed to smile when I saw him and hung out with him, and listened to him talk about his latest woman, when all I wanted to do was collapse? How was I supposed to unhear the words that he loved me?”

I remember all too well the “friend” stage that he insisted on. And me, being willing to do anything for him, to my own destruction, agreed. That month of “staying friends” almost consumed me. It was just like she says. Trying to unhear the words I love you, trying to smile when I listened to him talk about his new woman. To subject yourself to that kind of torture. Stupid stupid stupid.

“The only thing worse than not feeling anything is feeling everything.”

The pain wouldn’t cease up. Not even when I was sleeping. My dreams even betrayed me.

“An insult doesn’t have to be shouted at you to make you bleed.”

His insults were ever so subtle. So subtle that only I knew they were intended to stab me. Everyone else never picked up on them. I was even attacked by others because of my reaction to these stabbings. The ultimate betrayal and double the setback.  

“After he broke up with me I found myself losing any appearance of emotional control. I’d find myself sobbing when a certain song came on the car radio. I would drive by his place of work and hope to accidentally cross paths with him at the store or something. It was like I was swimming in tar, when the rest of the world, including him, had so seamlessly moved on.” 

I devoted an entire blog to overcoming this breakup. So many posts were about driving by his work. Crying to songs on the radio. Hoping to run into him and have him tell me he wanted me back.

“I had to face the startling fact that the love of my life might not actually be someone with whom I could spend a lifetime. “

I couldn’t help but wonder if I would ever be loved again. Or if I would ever be able to love as much. 

“Relationships always sound so painful. You FALL in love, you BREAK your heart, and you LOOSE your head. Is it any wonder that people come through that experience with battle scars?”

The positive thing about a battle is that even thought you come out with scars, you grow a whole hell of a lot, fighting beyond any human strength.

“You never know what you are capable of, the good and the bad, until you arrive at that given moment.”

How immature, stupid and weak I was. How strong, wise and mature I have become. How thankful I am for the lessons that love has taught me. For getting through something I never thought I could. My life will never be the same. My capacity to endure exceeds what I ever could have known any other way. I am prepared for round two, whatever heartache round two will bring to me. I am ready for battle. I cannot tell you how safe I feel now knowing my strength. I can do hard things because of this experience.

And there you have some of mine and Jodi’s thoughts on the pain of love. One thing I will say, I am not scared to love again. I was hurt the first time around only because of my own mistakes.

I guess I chose this topic today because it was such a monumental stage in my life that I grew a great deal from.

I admit that I do pat myself on the back for growth I make. I acknowledge my steps in the right direction, no matter how small they are. Chronicling my past efforts at growth is just as important as chronicling my current efforts to grow. I would definitely label love, and the things I have learned about it to be one of life’s greatest lessons. 

Oh, and Jodi Picoult is a brilliant writer isn’t she?

And a little PS letter to him:

Dear B.R. Piano Man,

I know I just spent some time publicly smacking you around, metaphorically speaking, but I just want you to know that dumb as I was, I truly did love you. I loved so much about you. And while it was not the healthy part of me loving you, it was love none the less. But I am so over you now. Buy I want you to know that as unhealthy as you are, you are someone I admire. You have a big heart and so much potential that you don't live up to. I just want you to know that if no one else see’s your potential I do. If no one else thinks happy thoughts about you, I do. It was rough there for a little while when you first cut me off but I am doing great now. I am healthier, I am smarter and I am damn stronger. For that I will always love you. Much gratitude and admiration,

The red Russian {whom I know you truly loved back}

30 Days of Photographs. Day 2

Day 2: A picture of you and the friend you have been closest with the longest.

Me and Julie Kay in February of 2009. 

We have been friends since 4^th grade. We had some good times. We still have good times.

Because goals are important.

It is May 1st kiddos. And you know what that means. It's 3 in 30 time. 

Because goals are important.
 

First a quick review of last month’s progress:

Now, last month I chose to wash my face every night {a 3 step process, 1: Eye makeup remover, 2: Cleanser and 3:Toner} I also chose to stay on a budget {$75 dollars a week can be spent on non-necessities} and the third one I chose to keep to myself. 

Goal #1 I was for sure the most successful on. I only didn’t wash my face 2 nights the whole month because I was soooo tired, and I washed my face the next morning to make up for it. This one I really think turned into a habit. Even on those nights when I didn’t want to do it, 2 things kept me going. The fact that I put it on my blog which turned it into a commitment and the fact that I have no idea what my face would look like with a clear complexion and I am curious to know. I have no memories of my face looking clear. (Only like 10 more days according to mother.)

Goal #2 the budget is a work in progress. I am not perfect with this one but I am doing tons better. I can now distinguish between wants and needs and my wants are being limited and I am being held accountable. I feel that in no time, I will tackle my overspending problem and maybe grow up just a little.

Goal #3 was for sure the worst because I didn’t publicize it. I now know that my goals are better accomplished when I hold myself accountable to someone {my readers, whomever you are} thanks for holding me accountable.

This month, having learned something from this experience, I will be choosing my goals very carefully. I have found that when it is something that can be done every day it is more likely to get done. Those goals are easier turned into habits. So, without further adieu the goals I have for the month of May:

 Goal #1 to implement a bed time.

I already know this one is going to be HARD for me. As I have previously mentioned I am a night owl. Actually as we speak as I type this up it is 2:51 AM and I have to get up at 7:30. I do this all too often. I get my sleep way out of whack and way inconsistent all too often. This leads to lots of groggy problems and naps at really bad times. So, I am going to make it a goal to be in bed, lights out at 11:00 PM on Sunday through Thursday. This will help me get up for work with a better nights sleep than I am currently getting and have a plethora of healthy results. This will be super difficult for me but I am up for the challenge. When we work hard to better ourselves we can best respect ourselves. That makes me happy. My weekends will allow for a later bedtime. I am thinking 1:00 AM.

Goal #2 is to read for at least an hour every day Monday through Friday. I totally have time to do this and the current pile of books I have that I want to read might actually get read after all. Weekends I am not going to force, but I more than likely still will read on the weekends because of my third goal.

Goal #3 is that I am going to minimize the television watching significantly. I have decided that I am only going to allow myself to watch television or movies on Sundays. {And knowing my typical Sunday routine, I bet that I will probably be taking naps over watching the tube.}

So there you have it ladies and gents. Starting today my 3 goals. Wish me luck, I am going to need it. But I feel ready for the challenges I have chosen and know that they will result in good things for me.
I will keep you all up to date on my progress.

What are your 3 in 30’s?

"All I know is Memphis lives in me."

“There’s a town where I call home. Where all the streets are paved with soul.” –Huey Calhoun

 

Very rarely will a piece of artwork bring me to tears. This weekend alone, Memphis brought me to tears, twice.

I have a deep love for music. Possibly an even deeper love for musicals. Something about the music, the dancing, the raw talent, the entire production of a well done musical just speaks to me. Cheesy as it sounds, I have unique experiences when I watch musicals. It is some kind of spiritual. 

 I first saw Memphis about a year ago on Broadway. It was the twelfth show I’d seen on Broadway and it instantly became one of my favorites. There are only 3 shows that I can say that about. I found out that they had done a recording of a live performance of the original cast {whom I had already seen and fell in love with} and were showing that performance it in movie theatres this weekend only. I instantly bought some tickets. I went to it and instantly fell in love with the show again. I was so moved that I did start to cry in Huey’s final number: “Memphis Lives in Me” My poor date probably thought I was a little bit crazy. {I was not sobbing, just want to clear that up.}

I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see it just one more time this weekend so I went the following day. I again was brought to tears with the brilliance that is Chad Kimball. I do not think I have ever believed a performance in my life as strongly as I believed his performance. You could just see it in his eyes. Memphis, Felicia, the music truly did live in his soul. Chad’s soul, not just Huey’s.  

This musical meant so much more to me this time seeing it than it did a year ago. I know it is because of the stage of my life I am in. I saw it in his eyes. It is the most powerful love story I have ever seen. I related to the music of his soul. I related to the unrequited love. There is just something about this particular story of unrequited love that speaks to me. There is no pain quite like unrequited love. Huey and I both get that.

Not only the love he has for her but for the music. I must have been born with different DNA than most people I know because music seems to speak to me deeper than anyone else I have ever met in my life. But I think Huey really has that in common with me. She gave up love for her career. He gave up love for the music. I am not sure that I would ever give up love for the music, but the mere fact that he did says something about the music in his soul.

Musicals are such a surreal part of my life. I find a passion that I was born to have.

The music lives in me too Huey. Memphis lives in me too.

Huckadoo.