some fun, old (and embarrassing photos)

These are photos from my birthday scrapbook, which is very possibly my favorite gift ever.




A friend I made while I was in Ireland. This was one of the Irish isles, Innishmoore, I believe. My dad loves this photos, because he is not sure who looks more uncertain.





I have always been a mermaid (with land legs, unfortunately), so it makes sense that I would want to learn how to scuba dive and snorkel so I could spend lots of time under water. This is from a christmas morning, when I was in early high school. Photographed with me is Baby, from the short-lived show, Dinosaurs. He had a string on his back, and if you pulled it, he would say things like "Not the Mama!" and "I'm the baby, gotta love me." For some reason, he cracked me up.






Oh the pants. The humiliation of seeing this pants. And the horror of the knotted shirt. And yet I am blogging about them. What is the internet for, if not to show off embarrassing moments? This was on a nighttime party cruise in Aruba. I went there with my parents after my high school graduation. I remember thinking how great I looked in that outfit. Ah, the wisdom that comes with hindsight....

30, Flirty and Thriving

Me, at my beach after my 30th birthday party

I had so much fun turning 30, it was really perfect in just about every way. The flight home was easy-peasy (an hour and a half, how cool is that?!). It was so short we didn't feel like we had been traveling at all.

Friday night, my parents gave me the best present they have ever given me -- they made me a scrapbook with pictures from the time I was a baby on up. This is huge. My mother is not someone who does creative projects. And she is not someone who makes homemade gifts, or generally appreciates them. She made a scrapbook for my aunt that came out excellent, and I just raved about how thoughtful it was, so she listened and made me one.

I can't describe how much I love it, how much I love that they put in all this time and effort, choosing the right pictures, the right layouts, the right accent decorations. I will treasure it always.

Saturday was the party, or cookout, or gathering, as I started calling it. I hate things where I am the center of attention, and I haven't had anything for my birthday, other than just my parents, since I was 16. But this was a lot of fun. Some of my closest friends were there. My parents and some longtime family friends, family on my mom's side.

While I obviously didn't get to spend as much time with everyone as I would have liked, it was great to see everyone all in one place. Seeing my friends again only served to remind me how much I miss them, but now I can get back to see most of them on a more regular basis.

Sunday was my actual birthday, and I spent it in such a perfectly me way. We went to my beach, I got to play in the water for a long time since it was really nice and comfortable. Tim even came in with me for a while. After the beach, I went up to the scuba shop to see my second family, the family I babysat for growing up, and then stopped in at another store to say hi to Bailey, their daughter.

It was fun and special and I will now always have great memories of turning 30. Can't wait to see what this new decade will bring!

Traveling!

We will be back in Mass tomorrow night, for the first time since Christmas, and we are both more than ready. One of the many cool parts: we only have a two hour flight to get there!!

Other cool parts: My parents are flying us up

We're having a cookout at my parents on Saturday, and I will get to see almost everyone I really care about all in one place.

I get to go to my beach, one of my favorite places in the world.

And oh yeah, I turn 30 on Sunday. That's not too bad either.

Things you see while driving through Middle America

Observations from two trips across the country.


Signs for:
Come see acres of guns
The Testicle Festival (yes really)


Prairie Dog Town, featuring the world's largest prairie dog, a six-legged steer, a live 5-legged cow (I have a feeling it is a cow with an extra leg sewn onto her or something similarly awful)

The world's largest Elvis head. Yup, just the head.

The A-maize-ing Corn palace, made entirely of corn, making use of every possible Maize or corn pun ever invented and more.

Of course Wal-Drug, offering cowboy clothes, gemstone excavation, dinosaur fossils and much more

A convenience store/gas station that also sold wedding jewelry

Lots of vaguely creepy, seemingly pedophilia signs for the LIttle America Hotel, featuring lots of pictures of kids and then lovers embracing

Roads with no names, just letters, such as K or VV

A charming restaurant known as Steak N' Shake

A Jesus-friendly trucker motel

Back in the world

A lot has changed (again) since my last blog post. Now I can say with certainty that I am a North Carolina resident and a Duke employee. For a while, it wasn't looking like either would be definite.

We arrived in town after a long week in the car, driving from Portland to Durham. My skin had pretty much blown up -- whether from getting cross-contaminated with gluten from something (looking at you french fries) or sleeping on scratchy hotel sheets washed in industrial-strength detergent. Most likely a combination of both. Deciding to eat chicken ended up being the smartest (and really probably only) decision I could have made. I literally lived on salads with grilled chicken from McDonalds and Wendys -- often twice per day. This will likely be TMI, but it's my blog, so I'll say what I like. How the hell do people on the Atkin's diet go to the bathroom? I was eating virtually all protein, eggs, chicken, with some iceberg lettuce and random fruit mixed in when I could find it. Granted, my sensitive digestive track requires more care than most, but by the end, going to the bathroom or showering could reduce me to tears from pain. It's going to be a LONG time before I want to attempt any kind of long road trip again.

When we arrived in Durham, things rapidly headed downhill -- our house we were so excited about was not ready to move in, it was disgusting, with an overgrown lawn, and tons of trash the previous tenants had left. The landlord was less than responsive. We had to stay in more hotels, virtually homeless. Working-class homeless as I called it. We would stay as long as we could until check out, then live in our car for the day, trying to keep Myrapup out of the heat, trying to find a new place to live, trying to take care of paying for all the deposits for utilities, all while not really sure where everything was located. It was stressful for all of us.

When it looked like we would have to make a hard decision (go stay with my parents, have Tim drive up to Mass while Myra and I stayed in an extended stay place, etc), when we really needed to find a place to live where we could get in immediately, we found a new home. And the tide turned again. The house is perfect for all of us. Really quiet (for Tim). Huge yard for Myra. Clean and well-maintained (for me). We have great landlords. We were able to move into the house a day after looking at it. It's furnished, which helps, because it is a lot bigger than what we had before. The stuff we don't want/need, we are putting in a storage shed, but for the most part, it complements our stuff well.

I found out from Campbell that it is a no -- for now. They really like me and want to talk to me if another position opens up, they said it's just not the best fit for this particular consulting group, and honestly, I had got that feeling from the consultant who heads up that group. So I am a Duke girl now. I might keep job searching, who knows. But at least I have a job, and our life can settle and we can find a new normal now. Trust me, just sitting here, blogging, with my boy and my pup in the next room, knowing we don't have to be anywhere, is a most welcome slice of heaven right now.

Kansas...better than what you expect

So today was Eastern Colorado, Kansas and just into Missouri. All along, we had been expecting brown and never-ending flat when we drove through Kansas. And parts of it were like that, as was Eastern Colorado....flat and green and brown for as far as you can see -- which out there, is about 20 miles in any direction. There is quite literally nothing there.

But then Kansas started to improve. Rolling hills. Lots of green. More varied than we had anticipated. Also, their rest areas are great. Free wi-fi, clean bathrooms, and huge green grassy areas for Myrawonderpup to play or walk and go out. So, we were pleasantly surprised today.

However. We are still 16-17 hours away from Durham. I really, really don't want to go into a 5+ hour interview on Wednesday coming off an 8-hour drive. So, tomorrow is going to be our one really long day. We have the alarm set for 6:15, with plans to be on the road no later than 7. Our route -- drive from Kansas City, MO to Asheville, NC. Go on and map it on google. Actually, I'll save you the trouble. It's about 13 hours, but it means that Tuesday we'll have less than a four-hour drive which is much better.

Getting really excited for our house now, I can't believe our new life there is starting in just two days. And I don't really mind the 13 hour drive so terribly much, we are driving in 3-hour shifts tomorrow. It is just a LONG time to be in the car.

Halfway there...

Good morning from Aurora, Colorado, where the mountains are beautiful, but there was more flat farmland than we were anticipating. I think I somehow expected the entire state to be mountains lol.

We have driven for three days, we have three more to go. We aren't quite halfway there with miles, we will hit the halfway mile marker this morning.

Yesterday was Wyoming and Colorado. Wyoming, at least southern Wyoming...SUCKS. Big. Flat. Not that pretty or interesting. Nothing to look at. No stops for hundreds of miles. We stopped at a rest area to let Myra go out -- it didn't go well. Poor pup apparently has sensitive feet, and since that part of Wyoming is mostly desert, she didn't want to be on the grass at all, she kept picking up one of her feet like it hurt her, but really, she just didn't want to be walking on dry prickly desert grass. Because there wasn't really any grass, she was having a really hard time going out, she's always gone on grass. We finally just walked her down a gravel road off the rest area for a little bit, until her body overrode her desire to not go the bathroom in this strange place. After that, she was great for the rest of the day.

We passed an exit with a McDonald's and Wendy's right after we stopped at the rest area for Myra, and we weren't quite hungry for lunch, so we decided to keep driving till the next exit. Big mistake. We drove for more than two hours after that (doing 85-90 for most of it) until we finally found another exit. Not just another exit with food, another exit. There were maybe five other exits in between, with two advertising food. But it is so flat and empty out there, you can see for miles in either direction, and there was nothing there, not even houses. The two exits that proudly proclaimed they had food -- they had old gas stations and that was it. That does not count as food. We couldn't eat and get out of Wyoming fast enough.

Once we got into Colorado, things improved. We stopped in a real town (after Wyoming, it was like the Mecca), got real coffee and drove out towards Rocky Mountain National Park. Wow. Just wow. HUGE mountains and rocks, driving alongside a river, winding up the mountains, watching the clouds and light change. We intended to drive to one of the parks and go on a nice little walk, but we were driving up the mountain for over half an hour with no idea of when we were going to hit the park, and it looked like it was going to rain, so we stopped along the side of the road, and let Myra have fun sniffing around at new things. It made us all feel better.

I actually got to have a real dinner last night, and not more McDonald's or Wendy's salad. It's weird that after 9 years of not eating chicken, I've eaten it twice a day for the past four or five days. But if I wasn't, I would either be starving or very malnourished at this point. At least I'm eating fairly healthy this trip, on the first drive across the country, I lived off veggie burgers. Now I'm living off chicken salads, but at least there are some vegetables.

Today is Kansas and Missouri, and we are planning to have a really long day today, since obviously there won't be any scenery. Now that we are officially at the halfway point and are past all the pretty states I wanted to see, I just want to be there, and see our new yellow house. Few more days...

Day One

Yesterday we began packing up the truck and our life, trying to make it all fit into a space no longer than 8' long (we would get charged extra for going over 8'). Tim, poor boy, had to load the truck virtually by himself. Our friend Steve was great about coming by, helping with the couch and boxes we had already packed, but he had to go home to get ready for his class. I had to run around doing last minute errands for a good part of the day. That meant Tim was the only one moving boxes into the truck.

And why is it that it seems that no matter how much you have packed, you always have more to do, and it seems like you will never possibly be done? We were packing and cleaning past midnight then got up bright and early to finish up.

At the end of day one, we are safely in a La Quinta in Caldwell, Idaho, near Boise. (If you have pets, and travel, stay at La Quinta. They are really great). I now love Myra more than ever, because she was a complete angel today and last night, even when she had no reason to be. Her whole world has turned upside down and inside out, and then had an 8-hour car ride. She was flat and quiet for most of the trip, and she was annoying us initially because she was refusing to go poo, but then we realized she would let us know when it was urgent, and she did. The only real side effect to all this change is that she seems more clingy with both of us. If one of us leaves her sight, she gets whiny and pacy and wants to come with us. But I'm sure she will get back to normal when her world normalizes.

It's weird to know that we have left Portland and Oregon only this morning. It seems longer and further away from when we got in the car this morning. The drive proved exactly how changeable Oregon is. We went from city to lush green fertileness in the Gorge, to flat desert area to an area with mountains and evergreens that looked like Idaho, to these really cool hills in shades of brown, red and green that were really pretty to drive through.

Myra asleep now, and we are one day closer to our new life.

Roadtrip!!

So, I have booked a flight to NC in a few weeks, to check out what it is like there, see if it is a place we could comfortably live, check out what it's like to drive around, trail access for running, all that sort of thing.

I will be there from Tuesday morning through Friday evening, and I'm going without Tim because it would be that much more expensive for both of us to fly out and board myrapup.

But then I was talking to Slunt (my best friend), and she said she would love to go with me. Tim and I talked and said how not only would it be really cool, but it would give us more than just my opinion, I would have more fun, etc. After some back and forthing, and some pleading and cajoling on my end, she will fly down to meet me!

I'll be there Tuesday and Wednesday by myself, and then will pick her up Wed. night and she flies home Fri morning.

I am SO excited. I haven't seen her since Christmas, and we've both been missing each other. Plus, whenever I go back east, I usually only have one evening to spend with her, so it will be nice to get more time with her. And other than when I traveled in Europe, I've never been on a girlfriend road trip, so it just made the trip a lot more fun.

Hooray!!

Trees!

I love trees, I feel a connection to them. I say hello to trees. I will stop and put my hand on them and say a silent greeting. I will hug trees. In some of the trees around here, I can see faces, especially in the forests, and I instantly make up stories about tree people and fairies and the lives they lead. I will stop and stare at trees that I think are particularly lovely.

So, when I found this, you can imagine how thrilled I was (found via Magpie and Cake and Neatorama.com).

I don't like the circus trees as much, because it looks like it would have hurt the trees to grow like that (and I'm sure the tree designer didn't think of that), but the other ones. Just wow. The aspens in Utah that are all one organism is really impressive. The tree in Monterey looks lonely and proud. The mexican Tule Tree. Swoon.

You have probably seen the book, places to see before you die? Well, I've looked at it, and I don't really need to see all the places in there, but I have decided my list of places to see includes meeting all these trees.