Tomorrow Is Another Day...

Ich Liebe Blogging!

Well, don't I just feel like a fancy pants!  Molly from A Foreign Land has awarded me the adorably (and in my current environs, aptly) named Liebster Award!  I actually had another bloggy friend award this to me a couple months back, but it was when I was in the midst of moving insanity and I completely dropped the ball on passing it along.  So, I'm super thrilled that Molly has given me a redo!

The Liebster award is given to up and coming bloggers who have less than 200 followers. What is a Liebster? The meaning: Liebster is German and means sweetest, kindest, nicest, dearest, beloved, lovely, kind, pleasant, valued, cute, endearing, and welcome.

Here are the very strict rules for receiving this award:
1. Each person must post 11 things about themselves.
2. Answer your assigned questions and create 11 new questions for the people you tag
3. Choose 11 people/blogs and link to them in your post.
4. Go to their page and tell them.
5. No tag backs!

11 Things About Me:

1) Over the course of 29 years, I've lived in 6 states and 2 countries--Oklahoma, Virginia, Louisiana, Arkansas, Washington South Carolina, and currently, Germany.

2) I lived in Louisiana for 17 of those years, so the other 12 years of my life have consisted of moving pretty frequently.  I haven't made it to three years living in one place since I graduated from college in 2004.

3) I was an officer in the Air Force for 2 1/2 years.

4) I have a very serious chocolate addiction.  If it's in the house, I will eat it.  All of it.

5) I've been blogging for SEVEN YEARS.  I've never stuck with anything this long.

6) I never really considered myself a runner, but I ran my first 10K in 2011 and my first half marathon in 2012.  I gave up running when I got pregnant, and I find that I really, really miss it.  So, I guess I'm a runner.

7) I have two of the most adorable pups on the planet.  They've been my loyal companions for the past seven years, and help any new place feel like home.  If I ever got lost in a time vortex, they'd probably be my Constants.

8) My favorite book and movie is Gone with the Wind.  I read my grandmother's copy for the first time when I was eleven, and it was love at first read.  As I've gotten older, I've come to realize that it certainly glamorizes the antebellum South more than it deserves, but I still think Scarlett is one of the most fascinating, dynamic characters ever created.

9) I have my bachelors in English Literature and a Masters in Elementary Education... I'm sure those'll come in handy some day...

10) I have a hair color commitment problem.

11) I really hate feet.  I never, ever wear open-toe shoes unless I'm going to the beach and on a few occasions when a formal dress just wouldn't work with pumps.  One of my favorite things about Germany is how almost everyone here wears real shoes instead of the ubiquitous flip flop.

11 Questions from Molly:

What was the last movie you saw in a theater? The Dark Knight Rises

What do you want to be when you grow up? A mom

What would you do-oo-oo for a Klondike bar? Pay for it.

Superman, Batman or Iron man? Superman and Batman have way too much angst.  Ironman.

How many brothers and sisters do you have and where are you in the birth order? Two older sisters, one younger.  I'm in the middle, but my older sisters are 10 and 12 years older and didn't live with us, so I grew up feeling like the oldest most of the time.

What is your favorite season? Fall

Are you more of an early riser or a night owl? Night owl

How did you come up with the name of your blog? Gone with the Wind!  It's a very uplifting thought when times are hard.  Today might suck balls, but you'll survive and tomorrow will still come.

What's one thing you've accomplished that you want to brag about? Go ahead! Brag! Hm, well, I'm pretty proud of the Masters degree and the half marathon, but since I already talked about those, I guess getting a short story published in a literary journal was pretty awesome.

What book are you reading right now? When Christ and His Saints Slept, Sharon Kay Penman

What would you consider your signature color? Clothingwise, probably blue/teal.  Decorating, I gravitate towards yellow an awful lot.

Tag You're It:

Chelsea's Psycho Babble

Operation Pink Herring

Maiden Aunt

And Her Heart It Is In Ireland

Reinventing Erin

Quirks and Smirks

Little Mrs Married

Growing Kateastrophe

Duoly Noted

We Took The Road Less Traveled

To the Nth

Your Questions:

1. What is your dream travel destination?
2. What is your favorite place that you've traveled?
3. What is your favorite physical quality about yourself?
4. What is your favorite personality aspect of yourself?
5. Backstreet Boys or NSync?
6. Do you still keep in touch with your best friend from elementary school?
7. Would you rather watch the movie or read the book?
8. Where did you go on your first date?
9. What's your favorite board game?
10. Do you have a cooking "specialty"?
11. Phone, text or email?

Tag, I'm It

Two lovely ladies have tagged me in that eleven questions meme that's been wending its way about the blogosphere.  Given that I have a million things going on in my life and no idea how to begin putting them into words, it seems the perfect timing to just sit back and let other people come up with the topics.  I'm changing the rules a bit, but here's how it's supposed to go:

1) You must post the rules.
2) Post eleven fun facts about yourself on the blog post.
3) Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post, and then create eleven new questions to ask the people you’ve tagged.
4) Tag eleven people and link them on your post
5) Let them know you’ve tagged them!

There, rules are posted, but in lieu of posting eleven things about myself, then answering eleven questions twice over, I'll just answer the two sets of questions.  And I'm not tagging anyone.  I'm in a rebellious mood.

First up from Kate who is 34 weeks pregnant and could probably still beat me in a race:

1. Where do you sit when you blog?
On my sofa with my feet propped up on our storage ottoman/coffee table.  I have a well worn corner of the sofa that necessitates flipping cushions around to disperse my butt prints.

 

2. What's your hot drink of choice?
Hot tea, preferably of the breakfast or chai variety, with a healthy dose of cream.

3. When did you get your driver's license?
Nineteen.  I chose to be chauffeured around by family and friends for as long as possible.

4. Which toiletries are you "brand loyal" in relation to?
I have a favorite brand or type for most everything.  I'm pretty particular about my beautification process. 

5. What accounts for the biggest proportion of your grocery budget?
Hmm... I actually have no idea.  Probably meat since it's so expensive, but I don't really eat it that often, especially when Colby is away.  Maybe cheese, actually.

6. Are there any authors whose books you will automatically buy?  If so, who?

I don't know that I would automatically buy them, but I would certainly automatically read anything by Carol Goodman, Kate Morton, Philippa Gregory, and Elizabeth Kostova.

7. Do you still read the paper newspaper?
No.  But to be fair, I never did.

8. Be honest- do you like McDonalds?

Yes.  I hang my head in shame.  I do love me a two cheeseburger or quarter pounder with cheese meal a couple times a year.  Those french fries, man.  I don't care if there's formaldehyde in there, they are fantastic.

 

9. Do you prefer crosswords or sudoku? Or do you hate 'em both?
I love doing crosswords, but I mainly do them when I'm at Colby's parents' house.  It's my morning ritual there.  Tea and a crossword puzzle at the kitchen table.  I have never been able to get the hang of sudoku.

 

10. What is your least favourite household chore?
Cleaning the bathrooms.  Loathe.

 

11. If I told you my birthday, could you tell me my star sign?
Not a clue.

And secondly, Melissa, who is adorable and never fails to make me smile when she posts.  If it is possible for perkiness to seep through a computer screen, she pulls it off. 

1. What are your biggest pet peeves, not including traffic issues? (We all have traffic issues.)
People talking in movie theaters.  Good LORD, I hate that.  Other than road ragey moments, this is one of the few times when I will openly glare at you without reservation.

2. If you could go on an all-expense paid vacation & take one person, who would you take & where would you go?
I would absolutely love to go to Russia, and of course I'd take my charming husband along.

 3. If you could do anything you wanted for your next birthday, what would you do? (Money is no object & everything is okay to eat!)

Dinner on Ile St. Louis in Paris, ice cream at Berthillion followed up by a midnight ascent of the Eiffel Tower with the twinkly lights on.

 

4. What is your favorite play or musical? If you do not have one, how are we friends? (Totally kidding. I don't watch football, it all evens out!)
Hmmm, this is difficult.  Wicked is a pretty strong front runner.  But Phantom is a much longer time love.

 

4. What are some of your favorite girl names? Favorite boy names?
My lips are sealed!  (There are two number fours!  Bonus points.)

 

5. What is the biggest lesson you have learned in life?
Never give up.

 

6. What is your favorite recipe? (Link please!)
My mom's spaghetti sauce... I'd tell you, but I'd have to kill you.

 

7. What is the last book you read? Did you enjoy it?
I just finished Philippa Gregory's The Lady of the Rivers, and I'm almost finished Pat Conroy's Prince of Tides.  Both are highly recommended!

 

8. Who is your favorite author or speaker?
Favorite author is either Margaret Mitchell or L.M. Montgomery.  I don't really follow any speakers closely.

 

9. Which bloggie friends do you hope to meet in real life?
There are so many.  I'd love to meet Melissa and think there's a pretty good chance of it happening some day since she's real life friends with my little sis. 

10. What is your nervous habit?
I bite my lips, fold my hands really tightly.

11. What do you hope will happen (that could happen!) in 2012?
Well, I guess the most obvious is a run in with a stork of the baby delivering type.  But other than that, I just really hope we find a wonderful house in Germany and that the move goes as smoothly as possible.

Elusive Sleep

Last night I was in bed before 10 o'clock.  I read a chapter of my book just to help wind down, but I was abnormally exhausted and I'd been fighting off a bad headache since the afternoon, so I was really looking forward to sleeping.  At about 10 after 10, I turned off the light, rolled over and closed my eyes, prepared to drift off into dreamland.

I proceeded to toss and turn for the next two hours, and then woke up five or six times during the night before my alarm went off at 8 o'clock.  I wish that this wasn't the norm, but unfortunately, this is just how sleeping is and always has been for me.  It's part of the reason I typically wait until around midnight to finally begin the falling asleep process, hoping that I'll be so tired that maybe I'll drift off quickly and naturally.  I used to take my precious 3 mg melatonin about 30 minutes before going to bed, but I've read some research that has shown it can be detrimental to conception, so I no longer have even that crutch.  It's just me, the bed, and the stupid clock.

To add insult to injury, I happen to be married to a man who could easily compete in falling asleep races.  His head touches the pillow and he is instantaneously unconscious.  If he happens to stay awake for five or ten minutes, he flops around like a dying fish, cursing the heavens for the tragedy of beng unable to asleep.  So, on the few nights that he is home, sleeping beside me, not only do I have the frustration of insomnia, but I'm also fuming over the snoring emanating from the other side of the bed.

I have a theory that the kind of sleeper we are as a baby is indicative of the kind of sleeper we will be our whole lives.  When I was an infant, evidently the one drawback to my perfect baby self was my complete lack of interest in sleeping.  This continued into my childhood, when I would sneak under my comforter with a flashlight and some books, or play with my stuffed animals, or sit by the door of my bedroom, listening to whatever it was my parents were watching on tv.  I couldn't fall asleep easily, even then.  I remember, laying in bed, counting the cycles of the ceiling fan, attempting to hypnotize myself into sleep.

On the other hand, a part of the lore pertaining to my little sister's perfection is that she was an amazing sleeper.  To this day, it's shocking to me how quickly she falls asleep and how hard she sleeps.  When we travel together or are home together, we usually sleep in the same bed or bedroom, and I'm constantly waking up to her cellphone buzzing or her alarm going off while she sleeps tranquilly through the cacophony of noise.  

So, mothers, take heart, maybe your anti-sleeping baby isn't an asshole, maybe they're just an insomniac in the making!  I recommend a little bit of melatonin crumbled up into their pre-bedtime meal.  Nothing about that could possibly go wrong.

Reaffirming My Neuroses

It's kind of a running joke between Colby and me--how he's a daring, adventury type and I'm the scared little mouse, keeping back from cliff edges, paralyzed by fear at great heights, terrified of pretty much anything and everything.

I've tried to explain to him that the rest of the human population seems to have a "yeah, but it won't happen to me" mindset, whereas my take on things is more along the lines of "terrible things have to happen to someone, why wouldn't it be me?"  So while most people seem to live life with a sanity preserving expectation of near immortality, I'm pretty much expecting death and destruction at every turn.

And my cautious nature has kept me pretty safe throughout most of my life.  My most extreme injuries have been a broken foot, a sprained wrist, and a twisted ankle.  I credit a healthy dose of fear with getting me to the ripe old age of 28, and I'm hoping that prescription lasts well into my old age.  

Every now and then I think how wonderful it would be to be more of a daredevil--to push through the fear and do the things that scare me so much.  Go bungee jumping, climb all the way to the top of a rock wall, ski fearlessly down the black diamond course.  To not have my heart in my throat every time Colby wants to peer over the edge of a mountain or disappear into the wilderness for days of hiking.  I can't imagine what a mess I'm going to be when I have kids.  I don't even like it when my dogs are off leash at the dog park--what if a dog attacks them, or they drown in the lake, or a snake bites them, or, or, or...

But then I hear about a jumper whose parachute didn't open, an experienced bicyclist wearing all of his protective gear who is hit by a utility van and ejected over the edge of a 30 foot high bridge, a baseball fan reaching for a foul ball and plumetting 20 feet to his death.  None of those people woke up in the morning thinking that it would be their last, they just thought how amazing it would be to feel the wind in their face, their muscles working, to see their favorite team play a good game.

And then I'm right back where I started, Colby teasing me about my wariness (I prefer to think of it as wisdom or mindfulness... or self-preservation), and me thinking "Bad things happen to people, and I'm a people.  Coincidence?  I think not."

MilSpouse Friday Fill-In #33

First thing, I want to thank everyone for the incredibly thoughtful comments left on my last post.  I've got to tell you, I hesitated for quite some time before hitting "publish", and even thought about deleting it once it was posted.  But I'm so glad that I left it up, and so honored to have such intelligent readers.  I love that whether we agree or disagree, everyone was respectful of others, and not a single troll came out of the woodworks or someone looking for a fight.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.  I'm a lucky blogger!
1) During military separations (whether short or long) how do you keep yourself positive and motivated?
Our short separations are usually only a couple of weeks, so I pretty much continue on with business as usual, maybe trying to schedule a few more lunches and outings with friends to make the days go by.  We're also quite lucky, that thusfar our longest separations have only been about 4 1/2 months (not counting the 6 month separation brought about just by long distance dating and busy work schedules back in the day).  During those months, I try to plan as many trips as possible and beg everyone I know to come visit me.  Last deployment, I went to Japan, New York, Vermont, and Louisiana.  My sister, San Fran BFF, and momsie came to visit for about a week apiece.  I finished my Masters degree, thought about adopting a cat, worked my way through Insanity, and had tons of fun with friends in the local area.  The time FLEW by! 

2) What is your favorite concert you have ever been to?
Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Christmas concert.  I've been twice--once in Arkansas and once in Seattle.  Both times were amazing, and I'd love to go again in the future. 

3) What do you miss most about your “hometown”?
CRAWFISH BOILS!!!!  Oh my God, I miss crawfish so freaking much.  (My hometown is Baton Rouge, LA.  We love us some mudbugs.)

4) If you could run in any race, which charity would you choose to support?
Breast cancer, for my mom, the survivor!  I'm contemplating traveling somewhere to participate in the 3-Day Walk this year.  We'll see how the next few months shake out. 

5) You find out Willy Wonka is your father, what 3 course meal do you INSIST he create in that stick of gum?
Hmmm... A caprese salad, extra cheesy baked macaroni and cheese, and tiramisu.  Perfect meal!  What meal would you want?

MilSpouse Friday Fill-In #32

1) Do you or your {spouse} ever wish your {spouse} was in a different branch of the military?
No way on earth.  We do our fair share of bitching and moaning about the Air Force, but the bottom line is that out of all the services they definitely treat their people the best.  That's not to say that we don't have all the respect in the world for other services.  There's plenty of good natured ribbing that goes on between the services, but we all need each other to get the mission done. 

2) What duty station(s) are on your “No Way, Hell No, Not Going, Have Fun Unaccompanied” list and why?
I joke about the fact that if Colby gets stationed in Alaska, he'd be going on his own!  I wouldn't really send him off into the ice floes alone, but I would have a really hard time there.  Washington state was enough to nearly kill me--Alaska seems like it would be a million times worse.  But hey, maybe I'd be surprised and love it.  (Doubtful.) 

3) If you could be one age forever, what age would you choose and why?
This is hard for me to answer, and for whatever it says about me, I've thought about it a lot.  My gut reaction is nine-years-old.  I *loved* 5th grade, school was still easy as pie at that point, I played outside after school with my sister and best friends every day.  I was only allowed an hour of television a day (I picked a half hour and my sister picked a half hour), so I had tons of reading and writing time.  All in all, it was awesome.  BUT, I wanted to be grown up so badly.  So, if I could pick that age, it would be with the caveat that the burning desire to be an adult was excised from my personality!  Otherwise, I'd say 25.  Newly married to Colby, in our lovely house, surrounded by a close circle of friends, no conception of the stresses brought by the crashing real estate market.  But then again, 28 is pretty awesome too! 

4) If you were a breakfast cereal, which one would you be?
I choose not to be cereal, thank you! 

5) What is your morning beverage of choice and why?
A nice strong black tea with cream!  My current favorite is Numi Breakfast Blend.  I discovered it first at a restaurant in San Francisco, and it is the perfect combination of strength and smoothness.  Delish!

MilSpouse Friday Fill-In #28

1) If you were a famous movie star, what types of movies would you star in?
Historical dramas, no doubt.  From the moment I fell madly in love with Gone with the Wind to my weakness for BBC costume dramas, I have dreamed of playing a beautifully dressed woman of days gone by in a film with an astronomical costume budget.  Of course, with my luck, I'd probably end up cast as the hard-luck guttersnipe dressed in dirty rags. 

2) What is a vacation you would like to take if money were no object?
This is tough, because there are so many places I want to go.  Just one of my many dreams is Paris.  I would take a first class flight direct from the East coast to Charles De Gualle airport, where I would be met by the driver of a fancy limousine who would spend the next weeks driving me everywhere I want to go.  I would spent the next week in a Frenzy of Parisian delights, then set off for a 2-3 week tour of France stopping at Giverny, Normandy, the Loire Valley, the Champagne region, and the French Riveira.  And of course staying in nothing but the finest establishments--The Ritz in Paris and a swanky castle in the Loire--and eating the creme de la creme of French culinary delights!

Um.  I'm ready to go now.

3) Did you have pets growing up?

Tinkerbelle "Belle" Kriger
July 1994 - November 2010 

4) What do you do for exercise?
Run slowly.  I really like Jillian Michaels and Insanity for building up my manly muscles. 

5) What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received as a MilSpouse?
Whatever you do, always make sure there is a bottle of wine standing by.

MilSpouse Friday Fill-In #27

1) What do you usually want to know about someone when meeting them for the first time?
There's not really one specific thing that I wonder when meeting someone for the first time.  I would say that I'm looking for whether they have a sense of humor.  That's really the most important thing.  Oh, and if they're one of those Facebook caps lock abusers. 

2) Would you rather know everything about your spouse, or be regularly surprised?
After nearly ten years together, there are very few surprises, and I'm really okay with that.  But every now and then, something will come up and I'll discover that Colby doesn't like mint (WHAT?!?) or he puts pickles and mayonnaise on his grilled cheese.  Evidently all of the surprises are food related...  Anyway, those little surprises sprinkled lightly throughout life make it more interesting.  But knowing each other REALLY well is kind of awesome. 

3) If you could live in one city for the rest of your life, where would you live?
You mean if I had to live in one city?  Honestly, I have no idea.  I really love where we're living right now just outside of Charleston.  But I'm still enjoying the adventure of moving from place to place and we're nowhere near making a decision on our "forever home" yet. 

4) When you go out of town, what one material thing do you ALWAYS take?
Underwear. 

5) Using no more than 10 nouns, and ONLY nouns, describe yourself.
Books, Wife, Daughter, Sister, Travel, Internet, Friend, Sarcasm, Author, Mascara

2010 in Review

My favorite thing about blogging is the ability it gives me to actually retain memories of my life.  I can't remember what I had for dinner yesterday, but I can tell you that on November 17, 2005 I had a conversation with a random girl in the fitness center about her certainty that Colby was going to cheat on me because he's a pilot.  Ah, memories!  Brought to you by blogging!

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to do a little retrospective on the year of our Lord two thousand and ten, and this survey that Janet filled out seemed to fit the bill.  So, without further ado... A Year in the Life of Angela: 

1. What did you do in 2010 that you'd never done before?
 Lived in a South Carolina.  I'd recommend it.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions and will you make more for next year?
It didn't bode well that I had to look back in the archives to even remember what my New Year's resolutions were, but your know what?  I actually succeeded! My resolution was to be less of a homebody when Colby was away on trips, and people could accuse me of a lot of things this year, but being a homebody is not one of them.  I spent the vast majority of Colby's deployment traveling or entertaining visitors, and getting to know the amazing wives and girlfriends of our fellow pilot buddies.  I've gotten to know Charleston better than I think I ever knew Seattle, and I've had so much fun with a great new collection of friends.  I will make more for next year, but that's another post for another day.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Virtually everyone I know gave birth this year.  It was an epidemic of worrisome proportions.  Watch out, you could be next! 

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Unfortunately, it was a sad year as far as losing people I love very much.  I lost an amazing aunt who fought a long and brave struggle against cancer, a dear friend of the family who never had anything but a kind word to say, and my psychologically imbalanced but lovable 16-year-old family dog, Belle.

5. What countries did you visit?
It was a very good year for travel!  I went to Japan, Italy, Greece, Spain, and Malta. 

6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you didn't have in 2010?
A wee bairn. 

7. What dates from 2010 will be etched in your memory, and why?
Honestly, I can't think of anything that memorable.  Guess that answers that question. 

8. What was your biggest achievement of this year?
Completing my Masters of Education in Elementary Education.  Suck on that, Grand Canyon University! 

9. What was your biggest failure?
Hm.  I honestly can't think of anything.  The only thing I might consider as a failure is still an ongoing work in progress that I'm not ready to categorize as a wash yet. 

10. Did you suffer illness of injury?
I found out that my internal lady business is a bit lopsided, but fortunately nothing painful or life threatening.

11. What was the best thing your bought?

I've been watching a busted, green television for the past five months.  Our Christmas present to ourselves was a new television.  I never knew colors could be so beautiful!

12. Where did most of your money go?
Mortgages.  Two of them.  Bleeeeerg. 

13. What did you get really excited about?
Vacations!  And Colby coming home from his deployment! 

14. What song will always remind you of 2010?
Ke$ha.  Ugh. 

15. Compared to this time last year are you a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?
a) Happier
b) Thinner, but I was in better shape last year
c) Richer 

16. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Writing. 

17. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Watching television. 

18. What was your favorite tv program?
Well, my all time favorite show is Arrested Development.  Favorite new show in 2010?  It was a pretty bad year for television premieres, but Boardwalk Empire was a shining gem in a pile off doodoo.  Favorite show currently on tv... tie between Glee, Vampire Diaries, and Modern Family. 

19. What was the best book you read?
It was not a great year as far as literary discoveries go either.  I just didn't fall in love with many of the books I read.  But to answer the question, I'd go with either Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen or A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. 

20. What did you want and get?
An epic vacation with my husband and parents. 

21. What did you want and not get?
A new phone.  Mostly because I'm waffling between sticking with the iPhone or switching to a Droid. 

22. What was your favorite film of 2010?
I really loved Black Swan.  Honestly, I can't even remember what else I've seen this year, so that one wins by default. 

23. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 28 on December 20.  We'd just gotten home from a long vacation the night before and were pretty wiped out, so decided to stay home.  But Chef Colby surprised me with an amazingly delicious dinner and a promise to take ballroom dance classes with me at a nearby dancing school.

24. How would you describe your personal fashion concept of 2010?
Take more risks, try out trends even if I think they'll never work.  I've fully embraced jeggings and leggings, though I still think rompers are for 8-year-olds. 

25. What kept you sane?
My level-headed husband, my supportive family, my wonderful friends, and the ability to word-vomit all of my thoughts onto the internet. 

26. What political issue stirred you most?
The repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.  It's controversial, but I think it was an amazingly progressive step for our country and the military.

27. Who did you miss?
So many people, it's not even funny.  That's what happens when you've lived in four different states in six years. 

28. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010.
This too shall pass. 

29. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
I suck at song lyrics, so I'll leave this one to Carrie Bradshaw:
"After all, seasons change. So do cities. People come into your life and people go. But it's comforting to know the ones you love are always in your heart. And if you're very lucky, a plane ride away."

MilSpouse Friday Fill-In #8

It's 9:30 in the morning, and I'm already wiped out.  Whoo!  Yesterday's relaxing day turned into a morning spent bonding with the DirecTV guy as he installed our satellite dish (SUCK IT, COMCAST!!) and then an afternoon running errands in the 110 degree heat index.  Then I had the worst time sleeping.  I don't think I slept more than an hour at a time all night.  Ugh.

But I woke up this morning, put on my big girl britches, and went out to replace the embarrassingly dead flowers around the bottom of the tree in our front yard.  Holy shit, it is hot outside.  So, after an hour digging, planting and collecting debris off the lawn, I'm already about to die.  Fortunately, today's blog is an easy one--Wife of a Sailor's MilSpouse Fill-In!

What is ONE thing you’d like civilians to understand about being a military family?
Well, I should preface this by saying that every family is different, including military families.  I guess for me in particular, I just want you to know that we're really not that abnormal!  I swear!  As I've talked about before, I tend to get a lot of "wow, I don't know how you do it" type comments, and I just think it's a product of people trying to reach out and be kind, but honestly, there's nothing particularly special about us.  It's just our life.  We still have the same conversations, do dishes, cook dinner, argue over stupid things.  We're just like you--we just spend more time apart.

What is your favorite mistake?
Haha, getting super drunk at a college party in 2002 and making out with Colby all night in front of all our friends.  Super embarrassing at the time, especially as we spent the next few weeks awkwardly avoiding eye contact, but I think it worked out pretty well in the end!

What indulgence could you give up for a year?
Hm, this is a tough one...  I guess I would say professional hair coloring.  I already do my brown out of a box, but I still like to get highlights put in every couple of months.  I could live without that.

If you could be a winged animal, what would you be?
I would be a butterfly.  They have a great sense of style, sit around in the sun a lot, and drink nectar.  Sounds good to me!

What is one question you’d like to see asked in a future MFF?
I'd like to know people's favorite assignments and why!  The Air Force has already told us to start putting together our dream sheet for our next assignment, and I want to know what people really think about the places they've lived.  Maybe we could get some insight into where we should go next!

Girl's Night In

I'm exhausted.

Honestly, how did I do everything I do now, and still work?  Granted, I watched a lot less television, but it doesn't seem to matter how much time there is in the day, sleeping is ALWAYS my last priority.

I need to recharge my batteries.

I've mentioned before that I'm an introvert.  Lest you all get the wrong impression, I feel like I should clarify.

I'm really not a shy person.  The thought of going out exhausts me, but I always have a good time once I'm there.  I love spending time with my friends and meeting new people.  There are few things as fun as splitting a bottle of wine with a friend or shopping till you drop with a group of great gals.

But when I say I'm an introvert, what I mean is, I do not feed off of these outings.  As much as I enjoy spending time with family and friends, my energy is sapped.  There are people like my sister, who are constantly going, going, going.  No matter how full their day becomes, they want to do more.  It seems like my sister actually gains energy from her constant activities.

Whereas I want to die from exhaustion just thinking about working full time, taking classes, working out and having an active social life on top of it all.  When I spend time with people, I have to recover afterward.  I need to have time to myself to decompress and just... be.  To be alone and not lonely.

I've had plans every night this week.  I have plans on Friday, Saturday and Monday, as well.  My mom is coming to visit on Tuesday, and I'm sure we'll have all kinds of fun together over the week that she'll be in town.

But I need a night to myself.  I need to sit at home, in my pajamas, remote control in one hand and a book in the other.  I need to not hear anyone's voice.  I need to not have to think of anything witty to say.  I need to refuel my energy so that I can enjoy the next round of events coming my way.

What about you?  Do you feel more energetic when you're surrounded by people and busy as a bee?  Or do you treasure your alone time above all else?

Cherry on Top!

Ahhh, the excitement still hasn't worn off, and plans became even more official yesterday as we booked our flights to Barcelona for a screaming deal.  My parents also decided to come with us, and have a fancy balcony room on the top of the ship, so we'll probably be spending many an evening crammed onto their balcony gazing out on the vast blue sea.

Another event occurred last week that gave me a thrill as a fellow military spouse blogger, To the Nth, honored me with one of the most adorable little blog awards I ever have seen.  I'm so grateful to her for this honor, and so happy that we found each other through the Mil-Spouse fill in.  She's always got the most hilariously dry take on life, and I look forward to reading her posts because I know I'll always get a good laugh.  Thank you so much!

Cherry-licious Rules:

• Thank the person (or people) who, in a display of erudite good taste, bestowed the award upon you.
• List three things you love about yourself.
• Pass the love along to five other bloggers.

Self Love

• I love my sense of humor.  I crack myself up on a regular basis, regardless of whether or not anyone else is laughing.  It's great that I enjoy my own company since with Colby's job I'm by myself frequently.  I spend an alarming amount of my own time talking to myself and cracking jokes.  If I start to feel too self conscious, I just pretend I'm talking to my dogs.  I'm not sure if that's more or less insane.
• On a more vain note, I love my eyes.  As I've gotten older, I've noticed that I have sort of an eyelids-at-half-mast thing going on that's a bit annoying, but I still think my eyes are one of my best features.
• And riffing a bit more on the first bullet point, I love that I'm perfectly happy on my own.  I love to go to movies by myself.  I've traveled alone.  I shop and go out to eat alone (still haven't gotten brave enough to go to dinner at a restaurant by myself), and I'm completely content.  Of course, it's also fun to do these things with friends, but I have this theory that if you can love your own company, everyone else will love it too.  I have not yet scientifically proved or disproved this theory.

Blog Love

I'm going to use this platform to highlight some of the newer blogs that I've discovered.  Not new to the world, perhaps, but new to me!

• Kaley at Cheap Therapy
• Chelsea at Chelsea's Psycho Babble
• Kendra at Uncork and Unwined
• Aly at Breathe Gently
• Ashley at Ashalah (Okay, well, I didn't just discover her, but I DID rediscover her after losing track of her blog for ages as we both moved internet addresses!)

Congrats ladies, for having that little bit extra... on top...  You know, like a cherry.  Nothing dirty, you perverted people!

MilSpouse Friday Fill-In #7

1) What is something you wished you’d learned to do earlier in life?
I wish that I had learned to sew a long time ago.  It's something I still haven't learned to do, and I have all of these fantasies about seeing a fabulous outfit in Vogue and being to whip it up on my sewing machine in an hour for, like, 50 cents.  My mom tried to teach me to cross-stitch when I was about 5 and I worked on some damn yarn cat on a net sampler for the next seven years without ever finishing it, so I think I'd like to stick with sewing for the sake of fashion.

2) What is your biggest pet peeve with the military?
A lot of people will say that they dislike the instability and the inability to plan anything because of unexpected deployments, classes that suddenly pop up, canceled leave, and yes, that bugs me too, but it's not my biggest pet peeve.  My biggest gripe is the rating system.  You see, there are these things called EPRs and OPRs (Enlisted or Officer Performance Reports).  These are done yearly and are the main source of information when it comes to promotions--especially officers.  However, it's gotten to the point where they are so overinflated that everyone looks as though they are Superman, and if you can't somehow turn making photocopies into a Herculean task, you're probably not going to make it past Major.  They're completely awful, and for years the military has talked about overhauling the system, but that would be a huge pain in the ass and just hasn't happened yet.  Sorry, that got... long-winded...

3) What tourist attraction near you have you never seen?
We've been in Charleston for a little over 7 months, and while there are tons of attractions Colby hasn't seen yet, I've done a pretty good job of seeing most of the big sights.  Of course, there's always more to see and I'm desperate to get up to the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina.

4) What are you avoiding doing right now?
I started Insanity on Monday, and it's not nearly as awful as I'd expected, but I'm always going to avoid doing exercise.  That's just the way it is.

5) Wine, beer or liquor?
Wine--red wine to be more specific!  Liquor has its place from time to time--particularly in a fancy martini, a pina colada or a cranberry and vodka, but NEVER beer.  Blech.  If I have to drink something beer-like, I enjoy a delicious raspberry lambic, but wine still comes first.

Blog Hop 2010

(I just found this carnival through Uncorked and Unwined--the 2010 Blog Hop, hosted by Pensieve.  A great way for those of us who aren't at BlogHer this weekend, to connect with the blogosphere!)

Hey, y'all!  Welcome to my little corner of the internet.  I'm a 27 year old Southern Belle with an itch for travel and an aversion to staying in one place for too long.  My husband is an Air Force pilot, which means that we move every 3 years or so, perfectly suiting my nomadic streak!  We've known each other since I was 17, been together since I was 19, and married for almost 3 years.

So far, I've lived in Oklahoma, Virginia, Louisiana, Arkansas, Washington, and we are now thrilled to be making our home in Charleston, SC.  I've worked as an administrative assistant for an oil marketers association, a hostess at a pizza restaurant, a personnelist in the Air Force, an office manager for a technical marketing firm and taken care of other people's children at before and after school care.  I am back in school right now to earn my Masters in Elementary Education, but I still haven't totally figured out what I want to be when I grow up.  Right now, I'm thinking ballerina.  Maybe I should take some ballet lessons.

I'm an avid fan of reading, writing, scrapbooking, traveling and LSU football.  My biological clock recently started ticking like a time bomb, and I am seriously considering kidnapping a small child if my husband doesn't return from his deployment soon and knock me up.  I recommend that my friends and family keep a very close eye on their children when I'm in the general area.

I'm looking forward to "meeting" you all, as I really am something of an introvert, and the idea of standing in a room full of thousands of bloggers at BlogHer makes my palms sweat and my mouth dry.  Let the blog hopping begin!

Confessions Part 3

(Don't forget, today is the last day to enter my pearl necklace giveaway!  All entries must be submitted by midnight and the winner will be announced tomorrow.  And follow the directions so I can give you all the points that you earn!)

So, it's been a long time since I've bared my soul to you and confessed a whole lot of things that I generally keep swept under the carpet.  But sometimes, it's very cathartic to just SAY THINGS, regardless of what people will think of you or whether anyone will agree.  Get it out there, let it roll around the universe for a bit, and then let things settle where they may.  It's been a while since I've done this.  I wrote my first round of confessions almost two years ago, and I let go another volley a few months later.  So, here we have it, my most recent round of Uncomfortably Honest Things I Should Just Keep to Myself.  Except I'm a blogger.  By definition, I am incapable of keeping things to myself.

* I have always wanted to be a stay at home mom, and my foray into child care further reinforced my desire to raise my children myself and not depend on relative strangers to do it for me.  I don't judge moms that choose differently, but wow, there is some seriously weird shit that goes on in child care.

* I’ve come to think that my Masters degree is a huge waste of time and money.

* I hate any website with music that plays automatically.  I don’t care how well you write, I’m out.  Jane Austen could come back from the dead, start a blog, and if Colbie Callait came blaring on my speakers, I’d be done.

* I am crazy competitive.  Unfortunately, I’m not super great at a whole lot of things.  This can frequently lead to a “situation”.

* This competitiveness spills over into blogging sometimes.  I’m never going to be a super blogger.  I get that.  I embrace it.  But the stat counter can really boost or destroy my ego.  Especially when I think about how many hits I used to get, compared to how many I get now.  I know I need to just get.  Over.  It.  But that’s difficult.

* Sometimes when my dogs are really driving me nuts and I snap at them and yell like an ogre or smack them on the nose, I become absolutely horrified at what kind of mother I might be someday.  Note to self: remove all wire hangers from the house the second I conceive.

* In addition to the boobs I would like to purchase some day, I would also love to have extensions put in my hair.  For it is flat and thin and uninspired.  Yes, I would like to be made of Fake.

* I’ve been going through a serious crisis of faith for the past couple of years.  I know I believe in something.  I just don’t know what it is.  I still pray, but I don’t know who or what I’m praying to.  Usually, I just feel like I’m talking to myself.

* Receiving a long email can significantly brighten my day.  Hearing my phone ring makes me want to throw up.

* It doesn’t matter how cute a piece of clothing is.  If it runs small and I have to “size up”, I refuse to buy it.  Subsequently, Target and Old Navy get a lot of my money.

* I don’t work out to be healthy.  I work out so that I can eat like crap.

* If no one comments on my Facebook status, I feel like a total loser.  Me = totally secure.

* I think people who follow trends regardless of how that trend is even remotely flattering are stupid.  Remember gauchos of yesteryear?  Bodysuits, anyone?  The rompers of today.  Mark my words.  We will look back and laugh.  Bitterly.

* I think I’ve become addicted to tea like most people are addicted to coffee.  I can’t go a day without a cup.  Or two.  Okay, three.

MilSpouse Friday Fill-in #5

Oh, this week just keeps getting better and better.  More school drama is rearing its ugly head, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed very tightly that I'll be able to work something out with the school of education.  The short story is that I believe they enrolled me in the wrong class this term (which was supposed to be my last), and now that I'm halfway through that class, they're telling me that I still have one more class to take.  Sound familiar?  Sigh.

This weekend Colby and I will reach the end of month number one of the deployment.  Which means only a bit more than three months to go.  Um, yeah, that sounded much better in my head.  But still, it's one month closer than we were a month ago, so it's a start.  It does make the first couple of questions of the Mil-Spouse Fill-in pretty easy to answer though!

1) Besides the horizontal mambo, what do you miss most when your spouse is deployed?
Someone else cooking dinner with me... okay, for me.

2) What do you miss the least?
How he untucks the sheets on his side of the bed at night.  I have a strange need for tight, tucked in sheets, but poor dude is just too tall for our bed, and he says his feet feel trapped by the sheets if they aren't untucked.  My little Abe Lincoln.

3) You only get three crayons to finish your picture... which three do you choose and why?
I guess it depends on what my picture is, doesn't it!  Hm...  well, I'm getting pretty pumped up for LSU football season, so I'll go with purple, gold and black!!

4) If you could have your own fragrance, what would it be called?
Eau de Introvert

5) If the shoes make the man (or woman), what do your shoes say about you right now?
Well, if you mean the shoes I'm wearing--I'm not!  So I guess that says I'm a hillbilly.  If you're talking about the 60ish pairs that I have in my closet, well, I guess they'd say I have a serious addiction problem.

MilSpouse Friday Fill-In

If there's one thing I love, it's answering internet surveys.  If there's another thing, it's stumbling upon a bustling hive of like-minded, intelligent individuals with whom I share a common bond.  Over the past few days, I have discovered an absolute treasure trove of blogs written by fellow military spouses.  Obviously, I didn't think I was the only one out here spewing my nonsense into the ether, but I really had no idea how many other ladies are out there writing about their lives as dependents of our great, and often times infuriating, United States military.

In an effort to connect with these bloggers, I'm participating for the first time in the MilSpouse Friday Fill-in hosted by Wifey over at Wife of a Sailor.  I haven't been reading her for long, but it appears that she is not only a spouse, but also a member of the military herself.  A girl after my own heart!  So, without further ado, here are five things you didn't even realize you were dying to know about me.

1) What food reminds you of your spouse?
Bizarrely enough, both to you and probably to him, duck.  Not because he eats it often or even regularly, but because on our very first super-swanky dinner date to Maison Lacour approximately 5000 years ago, he ordered duck with a raspberry glaze, and I was starry-eyed at the thought of how positively cosmopolitan such an entree choice was.  Since then, every time I see duck on a menu, I think of Colby.  And AFLAC.

2) Who would you rather sit next to in a cross-country plane ride: an irritating non-stop talker, or a quiet stare-er?
Well, assuming the stare-er is staring out the window, that one.  I'm not much of one for chatting to strangers on airplanes.  I'm pretty easily creeped out by people, and I don't like the thought of being trapped beside someone for hours on end one way or another, particularly if they have already creeped me out.  I generally read on airplanes.  And politely ignore everyone around me.

3) What are your best tips on how to save money?
HA!  Hahahaha... HA!  Um, my best tip would be to cancel your internet service and throw away your mobile devices, thereby eliminating the potential for late-night, early-morning and/or mid-day online shopping sprees.  Also, don't buy a house.  Trust me on that one in particular.

4) What is your favorite summer memory?
Generally speaking, summer vacations with my family.  We always road-tripped it everywhere we went, and we visited some really amazing places from coast to coast.  A more specific memory, my summer abroad in Ireland when I was 18, where I met two of my closest friends and fell madly in love with Dublin.

5) Do you believe in ghosts?
I do, and I've even written about it before in a series of Thriller Thursday posts (oh my God, I just reread them and now I've totally gone and freaked myself out).  I truly believe that I have experienced visits from spirits or ghosts or whatever you want to call them, and I believe there is far too much evidence to the contrary to think that they don't exist.  I try to live my life by one tenet, and that is: If Fox Mulder says it can happen, it can happen.

Ashes, Ashes, I Always Fall Down

I'd like to begin by saying that I have officially become a true Charlestonian in my own, very special way.  I do a lot of things very well--I read quickly, I'm good with kids, I make a mean boxed macaroni and cheese--but one thing I do not do well is walking.  I am a TERRIBLE walker.

My poor mother enrolled me in ballet classes when I was just a wee thing, I'm sure with dreams of seeing her graceful daughter twirling around the stage in a gossamer tutu, and still I ended up being one of the klutziest people I know of.  I'm constantly tripping on things, misjudging depth and slamming my forehead into corners or walls, tumbling down stairs...  One of my biggest fears living in a two story house and being alone so often is that I'll somehow catapult off the top step and break my neck only to have my dogs eat my face and my husband discover my remains when he returns home from a trip two weeks later.

Long time readers may remember my graceful tumble down the hills of Seattle, not once, but twice within the span of about 60 seconds, prompting a kind Samaritan to doubt my sobriety.  That was also the experience that led to my phobia of walking down hills of any sort.  My heart leaps into my throat even thinking about descending a downward grade of more than 1%.  And yet, in my life, I have come to the conclusion that you never really live somewhere until you bite the dust there in a spectacularly painful and humiliating fashion.

Up until yesterday, I had managed to navigate the streets of Charleston with great success, and I think the heady rush of stability led to a sense of ambulatory overconfidence and my eventual downfall (pun intended).  There I was, walking down the treacherous sidewalks of the city, admiring the impressive architecture and chatting with a friend, when out of nowhere that sidewalk reached up, caught hold of my boot and dragged me down to the ground with impressive force.

The really ridiculous part was, as I observed the ground rushing toward my face, all I could think to myself was, "Oh my God, my boots are going to be so scuffed!"  As I pushed myself off of the ground, sadly taking in the shredded and scraped condition of my jeans and knees, and carefully brushed the gravel off of the remaining shreds of my dignity, I heard the sound of a car window rolling down and a voice floated out into the damp lowcountry air, "Are you okay?"  As I looked over at my friend Sarah and then back at the family gazing out of their car in surprise and concern, I felt a sense of what can only be described as relief.  It had to happen at some point, and now I have that awkward first time behind me.

And then the throbbing began.

Confessions

There are some couples that when I find out they are getting a divorce, I am very sad, but also not very surprised.

My opinion of how "fat" or "thin" I am completely depends on how well a pair of pants fit, not how I look in the mirror.

I still really, really want a boob job, but have put off thinking about it until post-babies.  Every time I try on a shirt or a dress, or put on another 34A bra that I can't completely fill out, I reconsider that decision.

Whenever I realize that a blogger is about to launch into a political post, I click away from the blog.  I get enough of that in "real life".

I'm pretty sure if Playboy offered me 2 million dollars to pose in their magazine, I'd do it.  I would, however, require a LOT of airbrushing.

Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever really feel ready to have kids.  I always thought that I'd have my first child at 26.  That happens in three months and I know it's not what I want right now.

That makes me feel guilty for thinking that traveling and new shoes are more important than bringing a new life into the world.

I have written seventy pages of a book that I feel has great potential, but I don't think that I have the talent to make it as good as it should be.  I haven't so much as looked at the file on my computer for seven months, but I think about it every night when I'm lying in bed.

I am terrified of dying, because I am not completely sold on the concept of Heaven.  I wish I could make myself believe that we don't just cease to exist upon death.

Whenever I meet someone new, I always rate my attractiveness against theirs.  Completely shallow, completely automatic.

I always say that I have no regrets.  That is a lie.  I have two of them.  One I can't do anything about now, but the other I can.  I know I probably never will.

It makes me sad that I haven't received birthday or Christmas presents from my last remaining grandmother for the past few years.  I understand her reasoning, but the twelve-year-old in me is disappointed each year.

I don't like The Notebook.

Happy Belated Blogday to Me!

Okay, so this post has honestly been a loooong time coming. I "officially" celebrated my third blog birthday on August 23 (meaning I realized two days later that the big day had come and gone and vaguely thought about writing a blogiversary post before falling asleep watching a rerun of Doctor Who), but I figure that as birthdays and anniversaries go, it is better to celebrate late than never. Unfortunately, there is quite a depressing lack of cake around here, but if you'd like to feed your soul, you could take a look back on the tasty goodness of my first two years of blogging here and here. And without further ado, let's get on with the Blog Birthday show!

I spent the end of last August accepting a position working as an office manager at a technical marketing firm in downtown Seattle, my dear friend Lori threw a lovely couples wedding shower for Colby and me and Labor Day weekend was spent at my insanely fun bachelorette party weekend with some of my favorite partners in crime (Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four.)

September was taken up mostly by New York recaps, but I was also dealing with adjusting to my new exhausting work commute schedule, being hit on by homeless men, and I got into a wreck with a parked car--that just happened to belong to my future husband.

In October, I got excited about the Fall television premieres (little did I know that a writer's strike loomed in the future, threatening to destroy everything I had grown to love... Journeyman, I will always miss you!!), received helpful input from almost seventy voters on what dress I should wear to my upcoming rehearsal dinner (I hope it's not too much of a spoiler to let you know that dress #3 won in the end), I finally started to feel some of the stress of wedding planning with just over a month to go before the big day, and explored the pros and cons of living with the love of my life--in the end, the pros have won out.

November was a huge month for me in many ways, I successfully participated in NaBloPoMo, I joined 20 Something Bloggers when there were still only 50 or 60 members, oh yeah, and I got married on November 24th at the beautiful White Oak Plantation and spent a romantic mini-honeymoon at the Monteleone in New Orleans.  Some more mundane events included falling down the hills of Seattle twice within two minutes and finding the perfect rehearsal dinner shoes.  Oh, and I think there was something about a national holiday somewhere in there as well.

December was a little anticlimactic after the incredibleness that was November, but I spent some time mulling over the post-wedding name change, got an amazing pick-me-up from a stranger after some difficulties coping with a winter slump, and "celebrated" a fairly lackluster 25th birthday.  Honestly, poor December.  There is just no way it could possibly compete with November!

In January, I started over fresh with a new attitude and some New Year's resolutions (um, yeah, let's not talk about those...), recapped my first Christmas and New Year's in Washington, I got a rather misguided haircut (oh blonde, it is so good to have you back in my life!), decided on a chick lit fast (that I have mainly stuck to, with the exception of two Little Lady Agency books... my willpower is not strong enough to resist the lures of a quirky British heroine), visited my oldest friend (as in length of acquaintance, not extremely advanced age), Shani, in San Francisco, and saved a dog from a life on the streets.  And I decided that instead of having babies, I wanted to be skinny for another few years.  Man, I had no idea January was so jam packed...

February was a pretty quiet month, but there were a few exciting moments.  I finally received my published story in the mail, began the inaugural Great Shoe Quest as I searched for the perfect shoes to wear in Italy, I got a little mushy reminiscing on the past seven years with Colby in my life and our Valentine's Day celebrations through the years, participated in The Great Interview Experiment, and went skiing for the first, and God willing, last time.

March was even more tame as I spent most of the month waffling over whether or not I should stay on at my job in Seattle (finally deciding to give my two weeks notice) and counting down to our Italian honeymoon.  I confessed my bizarre fear of birthday party planning as Colby approached his 28th, endured about a week's worth of technical difficulties as I changed my blog URL, and quite possibly the most exciting moment in March came when I decided to begin recapping The Hills.  Oh happy day!

April was almost all about the guest bloggers, as I spent the majority of the month trekking around Italy with my strapping and navigationally gifted husband.  This was also the month that our friendly household ghost made his first appearance, doing his best to encourage my eBay obsession.

Many of May's posts were spent recapping and giving travel tips about our time in Rome, Siena, Florence, Chianti, Pisa, Positano, Capri, and Pompeii.  I wrote a very whiny post about how I just couldn't keep up with the level of blogging that I had been able to maintain while sitting behind a desk all day every weekday and you all seemed very understanding.  Colby and I spent Memorial Day weekend in Louisiana for a friend's wedding and visiting our parents and I ended May with an ode to green.

I kicked off June with my thoughts on the thrilling return of our four favorite New York girls on the big screen, then I made the decision to return to school for my Masters and certification in Elementary Education, I tied a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree and waved goodbye to my airman as he flew off for his four month deployment, and shared my memories and thoughts about my mother's battle with breast cancer.

I returned to my blog after a ten day absence at the beginning of July, and tried to defend my vanishing act by explaining that I'd had two different sets of visitors from out of town and then taken yet another trip down to San Fran to visit my Bay Area pals.  After a lackluster month of blogging I once again hovered this close over the decision to pack it all in and just quit blogging, but decided to keep plugging away at it in the end.

Then came another August, with an update on how I'd been keeping busy during Colby's deployment--including plenty of girls' days and nights out, a job search, and getting close to wrapping up my first grad school class.  I also posted a very extended review of the Twilight series and debated the difficult question of whether I should take a higher paying job that I wouldn't really enjoy or a lower paying job that I would probably love.  (Again with the spoilers, but I went with the latter and the regrets are few and far between  Mainly when I want to buy some cute clothes from the first company.)

And that's it, folks, I am officially over a month into my 4th year of blogging.  I honestly can't believe how long I've kept this up, and though I'm sure there will be more days in my future when I consider throwing in the towel, I feel fairly confident that I'll be around these parts for quite some time.  I love having this record of my life that I can share with friends and family near and far and this connection with all of you wonderful blog people.

You Ask, I Answer!

A couple of weeks ago, I signed up for The Great Interview Experiment.  There are few things in life I enjoy more than talking about myself, and asking other people personal questions, so the combination of those two activities was an experience I could not pass up.  I was interviewed by the oh so fabulous Darcey, a.k.a. The Muse of Strip Search City, and I very much hope she doesn't mind me posting the interview here.  It's been kind of a busy couple of days at work, so, you know, free blog fodder!  Can't pass it up!

I think she came up with a lot of really fun questions, so without further preamble, on with the show!

1) First off, congratulations on your wedding - the pictures were beautiful! What was the inspiration for your wedding colors?

Thank you so much!  My colors were red and ivory, with hints of gold, and like most of my wedding planning decisions, were kind of a no-brainer for me.  Red has been my absolute favorite color for as long as I can remember.  I love its richness and warmth, and honestly, what girl doesn't look fabulous is a stunning red dress!  I chose ivory rather than white because all of the white dresses I tried on made me look like the Corpse Bride.  On top of that, our wedding was in late November, and I thought it was a nice nod to the holidays without hitting people over the head with snowflakes, reindeer, and stockings.

2) What would you do if you and your husband supported vastly opposing football teams? (Case in point: my bf and I are polar opposites - I'm a UGA grad, and he's a GaTech/Tennessee fan.) Do you think it would have any great impact on your relationship?

That's a tough one to answer since I've never had to face the tragedy of seriously dating a fan of an opposing team!  I would like to say that the power of our love is strong enough to overcome his misguided affection for a team like Auburn or Tennessee, but I don't know.  We would probably just have to have separate residences from September through January!

3) Yay, another fan of the great and powerful Eddie Izzard! Of his stand-up shows, which is your favorite and why? And also, have you been watching "The Riches" - what do you think of it?

Oh, I adore Eddie!  Is it just me, or is he the only man who can pull off lipstick, eyeliner, blush, and high heels and still be supremely sexy? A friend introduced me to his stand-up when I was in college and I've never found another comedian who can make me laugh as hard.  I have a very soft spot in my heart for Dress to Kill, as it was the first show of his I ever saw, and I still find myself offering people the choice between cake or death and always giggle when anyone asks me if I want a cup of coffee.  I love that you get what is essentially a history lesson over the course of his shows and his humor is so intelligent and referential, but he can also drop an f-bomb like nobody's business! I've actually never seen The Riches.  I know, I know!  I was so excited when I heard about it, and then I just never knew when it was on or what channel--still don't come to think of it.  Anyway, it's definitely on my list of things to watch before I die.

4) If you could live in any city in the world, where would you go and why?

I would absolutely love to live overseas some day, for just a couple of years.  I am in love with Howth, Ireland, a quaint, picturesque town on a peninsula, just a short DART ride away from Dublin--but I don't know how long I could stand living that far away from all of my family and friends with those tiny, tiny bathrooms.  Within the states, my current obsession is San Francisco. I've been dreaming of living in the Bay Area for well over a year now. I love the weather there as well as the thought of being within driving distance of mountains, beaches, woods, and  great shopping.  I love that I already have good friends that live there, and I just find the city charming.  It just fits all of my criteria for the perfect place to live.  Except for the real estate prices.  Those suck.

5) Are you a believer of destiny/fate or is everything just chance and luck?

I believe that we choose our fates.  One of my favorite pastimes is thinking back over all of the decisions I have made in my life that have led me to where I am now.  I've managed to get as far back as 9th grade, when I opted to take Junior ROTC for two years rather than one and a half years of gym.  That turned into four years of Army JROTC, which led to an AFROTC scholarship, which is how I met my husband, and how I ended up in Washington when the Air Force stationed him here.  I had a miserable time for the two and a half years that I spent in the Air Force, and many days spent wonder why on earth I had ever signed up for that life, but in the end I truly believe that it was my destiny to be there because it brought me to the life that I have today.  I could have made a very different choice at thirteen and taken gym, and I'm sure that my life would be very different right now, but when I made that decision to enroll in a different class I chose a different fate. I'm pretty sure I just made zero sense.

6) How/why did you start blogging?

I actually started blogging in college, about six years ago, I just didn't know that's what it was called.  I had a bunch of super-geek, computer whiz friends and one of them randomly offered to build me a website.  I remember thinking, what the heck am I going to do with a website?  But it was free, and I was probably bored, so I said sure, and while you're at it make it very flowery.  And so he did.  And I wrote about my life for about six months until I got distracted and went to a movie or something.  No one ever read it outside of my circle of friends, and I completely forgot about it for almost three years. Then I entered the real world and started my job and got bored again. A couple of my friends that lived far away had these websites that they would write about their lives on, and I started clicking on some of the links on their sites (what I would now call their "blogroll"), and I was hooked.  I read silently for about four or five months before I realized that I too could get a blog, and then when I was at work I could write on it and comment on other people's and it would look like I was working!  Brilliant!  And so my blog was born in August of 2005 and I never looked back.

7) What kind of pizza do you like - do you always go with a specific chain, or does it vary? And do you and your husband agree on toppings?

Lucky, lucky girl that I am, Colby and I are in agreement not only about our love for the LSU Tigers, but also for Papa John's pizzas with light sauce, extra cheese, and black olives and/or mushrooms.  Are we not a match made in heaven??  Unfortunately, Papa John's does not recognize our neighborhood as a legitimate residential area, and so we are forced to turn to Papa Murphy's and Pizza Hut.  It's not the same, but when you need a pizza, you need a pizza!

8) You mentioned sending Colby into the lingerie department to find a replacement sticky bra for the Air Force Ball - is there anything that you wouldn't send him to the store for - whether it's because it would be too complicated for your hubby (makeup, perhaps?) or just isn't worth trying to explain the details?

Oh no, after that, he totally sealed his fate.  I will now send him to the store for anything.  Any man who can successfully select a stick-on bra can do anything in my book.  Although I will admit I'm hesitant to allow him to go grocery shopping without me.  He always comes home with the most bizarre generic items, and I am very choosy about which brands I prefer.  But he's learning.  I'd say within the next year or so, he will be fully licensed to go to the grocery store without my supervision.

9) You seem to stay fairly active - what is your favorite form of exercise?

Hm, yes, I think once upon a time I did indeed do something other than sit on the couch and stare at the moving pictures on the other side of the room.  Running is absolutely the greatest exercise in the world, both in terms of how many calories your burn and how quickly the results start to show in your legs and core.  Unfortunately, running also destroys your knees, hips, and ankles, and in the past year I really started to feel it.  So, the next best thing for me is the elliptical machine.  It simulates the motion of running, but without the nasty joint pain side effects.  It doesn't burn quite as many calories, and it doesn't start to show for a bit longer, but I'm sure my eighty-year-old self will thank me some day!

10) And everyone has one of these... what is your best drinking story?

Oh, nice.  Okay, well, there are a bunch of really great ones, but since this is a family blog (i.e. My mother and father know of its existence and read on a regular basis), I think I'll stick with a story they've heard before and isn't too shocking.  Admittedly, it involves only an average amount of drinking, but at least it was underage, and it did take place in a house of spirits! 

So, when I was eighteen, I called home to let my mom know that I was going to Ireland for six weeks over the summer, and did she want to by my airplane ticket?  Seriously, when they're pitching those study abroad programs, they do NOT warn you about the horrifying cost of international airfare.  And so it came to pass that I spent half of the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college in Ireland. After our four weeks of class in Dublin, we had two weeks of free travel.  I had decided to travel around the perimeter of Ireland on my own for a week, and then meet a friend in Dingle for the last week.  It was amazing, fabulous, and the greatest experience of my life, until our last weekend before meeting back up with our group.  We'd had a very fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants approach to traveling, and typically made our reservations in a hostel on the day we arrived in the city. This all worked very well until we tried to make reservations for our last night on our own in Dublin, only to find out that it was a bank holiday weekend and EVERYTHING was booked.

We meandered sadly over to our local pub, plunked ourselves at the bar and began pounding back the ciders (me) and Guiness (her).  At some point over the course of the evening, we decided that our best option would be to stay at the pub until they kicked us out, and then wander down to St. Stephen's Green where we would take turns sleeping on a bench.  We'd had a fair amount to drink at this point, which I'm sure is why this seemed like a remotely reasonable proposition.  As the night wore on and the locals trickled out, we were left nearly alone at the bar, surrounded by our various backpacks and shattered dreams.  The bartender struck up a conversation with us, and when he discovered that we were seriously planning to spend the night in a public park, he was understandably horrified.  Due to the combination of his fear that we would be attacked in the night by a crew of homeless Irish folk and his attraction to my friend's very large breasts, he offered up his tiny apartment over the pub.  We weighed our options and eventually determined it would be easier to fend off one suspect Irishman than twenty, and agreed to his proposition.  We all drank a bit more together, invoking that unbreakable bond of drunkenness, and eventually stumbled upstairs to his loft.  The next thing I remember is waking up the next morning in the bartender's bed (I was alone--he was quite the gentleman, and also I was not the one with large breasts), my friend shaking my shoulder viciously and insisting that we needed to leave NOW.

It turns out that in some point in the night she had looked over at his head and noticed that it was crawling with lice.  It was never determined whether this was indeed the case or if it was the pot they had been smoking talking.  Regardless, we scurried to the nearest drugstore and as soon as we were able to get into the dorm room that we'd managed to secure at Trinity College, spent the rest of the afternoon scrubbing ourselves raw with every bottle of Rit we'd been able to lay hands on.  And so ends the longest drinking story known to man.

***
Such great questions, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to ramble on about myself extensively!  I'll be posting the interview that I conducted as soon as I get the answers back--no pressure Erin!

"It's Mah Blawg Birthday!!" Subtitled: An Ode to Parenthetical Phrases

Hoo boy, folks, it has been QUITE A WEEK!  There have been visits to the doggy doctor after a half of a package of semi-sweet chocolate chips were ingested in the middle of the night, there was a faux computer crashing incident in which I panicked, prayed to God to please save my computer, and then immediately forgot all of my heavenly promises when my wedding invitation list appeared to be unscathed upon recovery (but really, thanks God for intervening with Microsoft for me), and today I had a job interview and decided that my fiance must have dropped off the face of the planet (Oh, wait, no, he just called!).  But you know what, all of that is just unimportant water under the bridge now because guess what--it's my bloggy birthday today!

Yep, two years ago today I sat alone in my apartment, probably watching Laguna Beach or The Real World, when I was bitten by the blogging bug and decided that it would be a fantastic idea to share my life with a bunch of strangers on the internet.  How could that ever possibly be a bad idea!  Luckily for me, it has turned out to be very much not a bad idea, and in fact an AWESOME one, and no one is more surprised than me that two years later I'm still plugging away at this on a semi-regular basis.

I've decided to stick with the same method of celebration that I used for my first birthday last year and recap the past year of adventures, providing extra fascinating links that will provide you with hours of unimaginable entertainment while you're bored at work.  (Not that I would blog at work, that's really very unprofessional of you.  Consider yourself scolded.)

So, beginning in the month of August a FULL YEAR AGO (which is forever if you're a newborn) I got the news that my separation from the Air Force had been approved, and then immediately freaked the hell out because wait, does that mean they're not going to pay mean anymore?  Didn't think that one all the way through!

When September rolled around I finally managed to catch up with all of the angsty fourteen year old girls in the world when I read The Bell Jar and had my world rocked.  I recognize that I was a little bit behind the curve on that emotional milestone, but at least it finally came.  Later in the month I took a trip to Seattle to visit Colby and our poor little Southern souls were destroyed when we saw the cost of real estate in the area after a week of house hunting, then I got home and was honored to find out that I had been nominated for Company Grade Officer of the Quarter.  Which was super fantastic until I found out I had to put together my own nomination package.  In the next five hours.  Oh Air Force, how I (do not) miss thee!  Oh, and then we bought a house.  (And I suggest you cherish and love those pictures, because I've been promising pictures of the actual house we live in for months now, and you see how well that's turned out.)

In October I finally followed through with the pictures I'd been promising from my Seattle trip (it's a recurring theme with me, promising pictures and then not delivering... but you guys love the chase!).  I also decided to share my love for real life spooky encounters, and started Thriller Thursdays throughout the month documenting a number of "unexplained" events that had occurred in my life.  Scary!  Even more scary?  The fact that I decided that I needed to think about saving my pennies for the inevitable jobless future.  (Ask me how that turned out, go ahead, ask!)  Then Colby came to visit for the last time before his four month deployment and we got all serious and set ourselves a wedding date.  Oh, and then my budget went to crap and my friend, Kelly, won the Miss Arkansas USA Pageant... all in a days work, really.  (Busy month!)

November got off to a GREAT start when Colby began his four month deployment to the Place That Shall Not Be Named, I had an (ahem) minor freakout about our relationship, and then I got a speeding ticket from a really intimidating policeman.  Awesome month so far!  Oh, but then it does get awesome, because I started cataloging my shoes--hey, I should get back to that, it was really fun!  For me...  Anyway, then came a lovely Thanksgiving with my family and the exciting news that I had found The Dress.  You know for The Wedding that was still waiting for an actual Engagement!  But lo, I digress.

In December I took part in Holidailies, which means there are a lot of really boring posts, but things got a little spicy when I got all political and had a discussion about gay marriage/parenting, one of the few platforms about which I actually have strong feelings.  (I'm not really very political, you see, but I'd be happy to share with you my passionate feelings about what direction I think Grey's Anatomy should take this season.)  Then it occurred to me that, hey, I'm actually happy, how should I deal with this strange turn of events?  And that pretty much sums up December.  Hello, boring, so nice to meet you!

January was kicked off with a recap of the holiday season, the crowning event being the Wicked party that my sister and I threw for a bunch of our equally dorky friends.  (Yeah, that's me with the green face.)  Soon after I freaked out about moving some more and then found out that my date of separation had been moved and I had less than a month left in the Air Force.  Man, that seems like so long ago...  Then I was like, hey, I know how I can make some money!  I'm going to start selling my shoes!  And that really went surprisingly well.  Finally I got the chance to break the news about the very exciting Girls at War book project that L spearheaded, and is still very much a top priority for us.  You know, other than our upcoming weddings that are a month apart.  But then, after that?  TOP priority.  And I ended the month by getting all sappy and nostalgic about a person I don't even like very much.  Weird?  Oh yeah.

In early February I was all, aw crap, I'm moving in a week, maybe I should start packing?   But then some people came and did it for me and I was kind of like, awesome?  But, no, more like awkward and terribly uncomfortable actually.  Then it was the last day of my active duty Air Force career, and I moved back to my parents' house for a month to wait for Colby to get home.  That was... interesting.

I kind of took March off from blogging, which is good, since this is really getting obscenely long.  But that is the month that Colby returned home from his deployment, a story which certainly merits a mention.  And maybe a little hysterical laughter.  That was also the month that he officially popped the question and we made the exhausting trip from Louisiana to Washington.  I am a testament to just how exhausting that trip was since I slept pretty much the whole time.

In April I promised to post pictures of the engagement and our engagement party and shower.  And then I didn't.  See, told you it was a trend!  And then I did post pictures, and everyone was like that's great, but you still owe us a green olive experience.

May in Seattle turned out to be quite a lovely time weather-wise, and we took advantage of it by staking our claim on a small hill in a park down the street from our house.  Then we decided that it was time to put grass in the back yard, and that turned out a little differently than we'd expected.  So, to make ourselves feel better about the failed grass project, we went out and made our first joint furniture purchase.  Well, joint in that we both picked it out and then Colby paid for it.  Remember, I'm unemployed.  And not very good at budgeting.

I opened June with a love letter to traveling and then to make myself feel better about the fact that I NEVER TRAVEL, I bought some shoes and went out to dinner to meet one of my bestest online buds.  The next week, I died from horror when I went to buy plane tickets to New York for my bachelorette party, because the prices, they were not cheap.  Which plays a rather large part in why I never travel.  At the end of the month we had a security system installed, much to Colby's chagrin, but then I got to play the "See, I told ya so!" card, and talked about where I think my fears about home security stem from.  And then I lost all credibility when I butchered my bangs in a fit of insomnia and found out that a short story I wrote was accepted for publication.  So, you take the good with the bad sometimes!

In July I stayed busy with all things British, namely discovering Dr. Who, seeing the 5th Harry Potter movie and tearing through the 7th book the second it arrived on my doorstep.  So, not really ALL things British, but there was a definite trend.  And then I yapped the most I have EVER yapped here about wedding stuff.  Oh, and I finished designing the program today, and it looks awesome!

And at long, long, really LONG last we come full circle, back to August.  It's been both a great month of completely uncharacteristic amounts of social activity and a not so great month of embarrassing sartorial slip-ups and expensive car problems. 

So, that brings me to the end of my annual blog birthday roundup.  Thank you so much to those of you who have been here with me doing this since the beginning, and also thanks to the more recently acquired blog friends.  On days when Colby is gone and I can't stand the silence anymore, and the conversations with the dogs just aren't stimulating enough, I know that I can always come to this crazy little world we have to find friendship and laughter.  Here's to a third year of this nutty venture--I really hope you stick around for the ride!

Eight Things I Love About Me

My God, my titles are atrocious.  Anyhow, now that I've gotten that out of the way, let me fill you in on just what's going on in this magical Monday blog post.  I have been tagged by the lovely and hilarious Princess in Galoshes (Don't you just love that blog name?  She always has brilliant titles.  I wonder if she contracts out for that service??)  for the Eight Random Things About Me Meme.  From what I gather I'm supposed to tell you eight weird things about myself... you know, because I don't do that, like, every day on this website?  But enough with the procrastination, let's get started on the narcissistic self-analysis!!

1.  There is still a tiny part of me that is completely convinced that if I could ever meet Prince William, he would be completely swept away by my stunning good looks, witty sense of humor, and innate charms.  And I'm happy to report that as I will never actually meet the man, I will always be confident in my abilities to woo members of royalty.

2.  I count EVERYTHING.  This, along with my perfectionist cleaning and organization tendencies, are what lead me to believe I may have a slight case of OCD.  Of course, that is based on absolutely no research and entirely on what I took away from that Jack Nicholson movie where he's a complete asshole to Helen Hunt.  I count steps when I'm running, I count bumps on the road when I'm driving, if I'm in a waiting room I'll count squares in the floor tiles or bricks on walls outside.  It can really get to be annoying at times, because I HATE numbers, and also I tend to lose count once I get over 50, which just serves to further frustrate me because I have to start all over again.  Yes.  I HAVE to.

3.  Texture in food, more often than flavor, is a turn-off to me.  There are very few things that I dislike because of their flavor--green olives, that horrible sweet and salty popcorn, and sweet potato pie to name a few.  But textures have always had the ability to give me the heebie jeebies.  For example, I love guacamole, but avocados squick me out completely.  I'm fine with the creamy texture of a dip, but it just seems terribly wrong in a vegetable.  Similarly, a delicious cheesy, buttery grits casserole sounds utterly appealing, but a big mound of them swimming around on my plate like little bits of sand in a congealed liquid disgusts me to no end.

4.  At some point in my life, I got it into my head that if you are not a genius at something right off the bat, it must not be "meant" for you.  I think it all goes back to a number of books I read in my youth where the child in the book tries their hand at certain talents and is brilliant with absolutely no training--piano, writing, singing, math, whatever.  Even in my adulthood it's something I still struggle with, and I think the reason it took me so long to send anything I've written out for judgment.

5.  Birds TERRIFY me.  I blame Alfred Hitchcock entirely.  I have nightmares where my eyes are being plucked out and my hair is all tangled with birds, and in real life I cringe at the thought of aviaries or wildlife habitats.  Baby birds are okay though, I have no unfounded fear of little fuzzy yellow chicks or gaping mouthed grey-feathered birdlets.

6.  Sometimes I think I really am addicted to chocolate like other people are addicted to cigarettes, or alcohol, or drugs.  And that kind of scares me.

7.  I haven't got a CLUE about music from the Top 40 stations between the years of 1982 and 1995.  Growing up I always listened to the stations my parents listened to which were either adult contemporary or Your Favorite Hits From the 60's, 70's, and 80's!!  All of my personal tapes were either Disney soundtracks or Glenn Miller--both of which I still love to this day.  I had one New Kids on the Block tape, and I really don't remember ever listening to it.  I do remember a friend once asking me what my favorite song was, so she could add it to her Bat Mitzvah playlist and I couldn't think of ANYTHING.  So, instead of telling her, you know, the truth: that my favorite song was "Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog", I told her I didn't HAVE a favorite song.  Yeah.  Right.  And to this day when anyone starts talking about Tupac or TLC I just kind of smile blankly.  But I'd be glad to have a discussion about "String of Pearls" or "Little Brown Jug"!

8.  I'm obsessed with online shopping.  Sure, I love going out to the stores and boutiques as much as the next girl, but I feel so much more comfortable in the online world.  I love to search endlessly for coupon codes, hunt different websites for the best deals, I get little thrills of excitement when the doorbell rings and a box is on my doorstep, and I love trying clothes on in the comfort of my own home with my own mirrors and lighting.  It's often difficult to  find my size in the store, for some reason places don't like to stock XS in the tops and the 4s and 6s are always gone with 14 million 14s and 16s left on the racks, but on the internet, all I have to do is click my size and price range and everything is right there for me to sort through.  It's truly the antisocial shopping heaven!

Just The Facts, Ma'am

Well, I'm back home and it seems that we've brought the sun back to Seattle with us.  No complaints here!  The days have been beautiful, I've been cleaning out my closet, trolling the sales racks for great deals on cute clothes, my nails are done and I booked an appointment for next week at a top rated salon in Seattle.  In short, I'm much happier with my situation now than I was about a week ago.  It helps that I'm over the PMS hump, but we won't linger on that now, will we?

So, you may have seen these little 5 question interviews that have been spreading through blogland like the plague.  I wanted to play along so I told Crazy Momcat that she could interview me, however, it seems that my blogger identity is still associated with my yahoo address, which is my junk mail account, so that's where her set of questions went.  Thinking that life had taken over and Steph just hadn't had a chance to send questions I saw that Wordnerd was looking for volunteers so I told her to bring it on, I weren't scared of no questions!  Sooooo, yesterday I was looking for an old email address in my yahoo account and lo!  I came upon a second set of questions from Steph.  And that was just a really long, unnecessarily detailed account of how I got double booked and will now be answering 10 questions.  With any luck my answers below will be a lot less boring than what you've seen here so far today.  And away we go!

From Wordnerd:

There's a small box on your doorstep, addressed to someone you don't know.  Do you open it?
Once upon a time, when I was just a young, impressionable little thing, I read an article in Reader's Digest about a woman who opened a box that was sitting on her doorstep and ended up with all of her fingers blown off.  Since reading that story I have been completely paranoid about opening any box that lands itself on my doorstep, regardless of the address on the label.  So, if I had a box that were addressed to someone else you can bet your butt that I wouldn't open that sucker.  And I'd probably try to contact Jack Bauer at CTU.

Are practical jokes funny?
When they happen to other people, they're hilarious!

Which three historical figures would you like to have cocktails with?
Okay, well, there are tons of historical figures I would like to meet, but since we're talking about cocktails that narrows the field a bit.  For starters, I think Marie Antoinette would be an absolute scream, and maybe she'd do my hair and let me try on her shoes.  The second invitee would be Oscar Wilde because he seems like a fun drunk and we could talk about all the cute boys together and then philosophize in the way you can only do when you're completely smashed.  And finally, I think Jesus would have to be in attendance so when we ran out of drinks he could just perform a couple of miracles and whip up some wine and sushi.

Which three historical figures would you NEVER have cocktails with?
Well, this is hard...  I think probably Hitler, for obvious reasons.  Why is this question so difficult?  There are all sorts of historical assholes that I wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley, never mind have cocktails with them.  Who the heck are they??  Oh, okay, Vlad the Impaler, definitely.  I think his idea of a cocktail is very different from mine anyway...  And oh my God, I just googled "evil people" to help me get some ideas and I came across this guy:  H. H. Holmes.  Check that out, y'all, that is seriously evil, I would NOT want to have cocktails with that guy!  How has that not been made into a horror movie yet?

It's a hot afternoon in August, and your chores  are all done.  What do you do?
I would head on down to Seattle and shop till I dropped.  Not terribly exciting, but hey, it's what I would do!

And now from Steph, a.k.a. Crazy Momcat:

List your 5 all-time-favorite CDs.
Hm, honestly this switches almost hourly, so I'll give you my five favorites right now
1. Rachael Yamagata, Happenstance
2. Katherine McPhee
3. Wicked (duh!)
4. No Doubt, Tragic Kingdom (it's almost a classic at this point!)
5. Britney Spears, Greatest Hits: My Prerogative (it hurts me to write that, but I love it)
I'm sorry I have such pedestrian taste in music, I swear I do listen to other things, but you just asked for my favorites!

What celebrity are you told you most resemble or do you most admire and why?
Most often I've heard I resemble Alyson Hannigan and Jennifer Aniston.  (And bizarrely enough, on the plane going to Arizona one of the flight attendants told me I looked like Monica from Friends--eh???)  I don't really see either one of those gals when I look in the mirror, but hey it's nice to hear, and whatever people want to tell themselves is fine by me.  As for the second half of the question, I don't really admire celebrities.  I enjoy their work, and quite a few of them are extremely attractive, but I don't think any of them are any more special than the person next door, just by virtue of their celebrity.

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live and why?
Honestly I can't pick one place--I want to live all over the place.  I want to live in another country at least once in my life and I certainly want to experience different regions of our own country.  Luckily, with Colby's job, I don't think those goals are extremely unreachable!

What is your biggest cause of stress in planning your wedding to Colby?
I'm really very rarely stressed.  I've had a couple of very stressful moments, and they're all related to the store where I bought my wedding dress and bridesmaids dresses.  The other sources of stress have mostly had to do with other people's "advice" and input.  But mostly I just try to breathe and remember that it's just a big party and what I need to focus on how excited I am to be marrying such an amazing man who I wake up every morning grateful and thrilled to have in my life.

List three of your favorite new blog finds.
I have been an absolutely TERRIBLE blog reader lately, but the most recent additions to my blog roll are Taster Spoon,  Princess in Galoshes, and Project: Gay.  And basically the only way to go on my blog roll is to be a favorite, so there you have it!

Annual Roundup

First of all, I would like to say that today my little "not a blog" turns one whole year old.  Yes, one year ago today, I first provided this little gem to the internet--a post that managed to insult children, prove that I am a sucker for peer pressure and attention, as well as foreshadow subsequent visits to who I fondly refer to as my Crazy Doctor.  It also warned you all to beware of run-on sentences, in which case I direct you to the previous sentence and beg your forgiveness.  Don't you just love how you don't have to pause for breath when you're typing?!?

So, originally, I had this awesome plan where I was going to do up some catchy little rhyme to recap the past year of my life, but then I stayed out until two in the morning last night, drinking and singing my arse off at karaoke, so, um, I'm a little less than inspired right now.  However, I have had a pretty significant overhaul in my readership over the past year, so for those of you who are new(ish) to my world I'll go ahead and provide an extremely uncreative and somewhat organized recap of my year with links to corresponding posts that you can check out if you're exceptionally bored at work.  Or not.  Whatever, my head hurts so this is about as good as it's going to get today.

In late August I revealed my unhealthy coping habits when it comes to stress in my life--obsessive shopping--and also mentioned a little storm that was creeping toward New Orleans.

In September I took complete and utter leave of my senses and adopted a deathly sick, heartbreakingly scruffy puppy from an animal shelter... and proceeded to write a shitload of posts about her him (oh yeah, there's a story there).  New moms--they're so cute, aren't they?  During this time I was working round the clock shifts at work as we did all that we could do to assist in the aftermath of Katrina.

In October and November I first displayed my obsession with celebrity couples, started the 100 Things About Me List (which is still not completed...), encouraged infants not to smoke while they were in the womb, and went on a freaking awesome cross country trip with Colby.

December brought about a love letter to the holiday season, the reemergence of an ex that I'd hoped to never hear from again, cracks began to show in my relationship with Colby, and I spent the holidays at home seeing just how sick my mom's breast cancer had really made her.  Not actually such a hot month in retrospect...

In January I started trying to imagine life after the military, finally admitted to myself that I needed to get help for the depression I'd been experiencing, dealt with Colby's first deployment of MANY more to come, and started on Zoloft.

February shot off to a rollicking good start with the cannibalism of my gerbils and February 7th was Colby and my 3 year anniversary.  February 13th we broke up.  Awesome.  I dealt with these tragedies by watching a lot of tv.  No, seriously, A LOT.

In March I decided to embrace my single girl status by stalking a local celebrity and flirting with a highschool friend, losing about a bajillion pounds and marketing my diet plan of depression and heartbreak, and cyber-dating Stupid Jerk Boy (SJB) a super-crush from college (oh shut up!).

In April, I discovered that writing may be a better direction to funnel my emotions and I began my novel in earnest.  I decided that aiming for the stars was the way to go and penned an eloquent epistle to Nick Lachey.  And I finally felt comfortable enough to share the story of my family's experience with my mom's cancer.

In May, Britney Spears guest-blogged, and dude, I totally called her second pregnancy.  I wrote my obligatory quarter-life crisis entry and then remembered that I shouldn't take myself so damn seriously and went on two dates in one day and felt pretty pimptastic about myself.  In a moment of clarity I composed my very own Relationship Classification System, and FINALLY introduced Ellie to the world.

At the beginning of June I found myself questioning my "friendship" with Colby, I fell for another stupid boy's smooth lines, and then after drama with Auburn Guy I came within spitting distance of shutting down my site.  Which, uh, obviously didn't happen.

In July I continued to deal with my fears surrounding the extremely confusing relationship I had with Colby, but continued getting out and about and meeting new people.  I finished off the month by taking a 4 day trip to New York and taking the leap by FINALLY turning in my Air Force separation paperwork.

And rounding out my year of blogging, in August I confronted my fears about having close girlfriends and Colby and I finally managed to dig through the friendship myth and get back together.

So, here I am today, in the middle of my story and not really certain what direction my life will be taking from here.  Reading over the past year's worth of post has been a pretty emotional experience for me--I've discovered so many things about myself, both good and bad.  I've had incredibly wonderful and incredibly awful things happen.  I really feel that I've grown so much as a person, and I'm sure that the upcoming year will only bring more changes.  As much as everything has changed and evolved over the past year, the one thing that has remained constant is this journal and the support that I've found from each person who has taken a minute out of their day to read about my world.  So, you know, thanks and stuff, for reading, for commenting, for emailing, for your honesty.  You guys pretty much rock my world.

Finishing What I Started... Or At Least Starting to Finish

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there was a girl who decided that she would write a list of 100 Things About Her.  Not only was this an act of obscene self-obsession, but she didn't even have the decency to finish what she had begun.  In the same way that she had started and begun many an ambitious project (including the scrapbook of her trip to Ireland that had been in the works for 6 years) she started off her list with great gusto and enthusiasm and dropped it thoughtlessly halfway through.  She thought nothing of the people who would wait futilely for the next installment of fascinating facts about herself, and instead rambled on pointlessly about the inane escapades that made up her day to day life.

Then, one day, tragedy struck in the form of writer's block.  No matter how she searched the recesses of her mind for a topic upon which to expound, she could find nothing that struck her fancy.  Then!  It came to her!  She would resurrect an old topic that would surely fascinate the audience that she had somehow managed to alienate and drive away over time, and draw them back into the love and adoration she remembered so fondly (or had made up in her head).  And so, without further ado, she presents to you Numbers 51-60 in her legendary All About Me list:

51) I had never tasted sushi until I was a junior in college and the sushi craze finally reached the deep south.  My first encounter with raw fish was a frightening experience, but after repeated exposure to it I formed an inexplicable addiction and since then I have been known to eat sushi for 3 consecutive meals.  But not the scary stuff like eel and octopus... just the tame avocado, cream cheesy, tiny tuna/krab/salmon types.

52) My favorite books when I was a child were typically "series" books--Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, The Fabulous Five, The Babysitter's Club, and Betsy, Tacy and Tib rank among my fondest remembrances.

53) When I can't sleep at night I usually make up stories in my head... I always intend to write them down because at 2 o'clock in the morning they seem like they might have some potential but I can never remember them the next day.  I've done this for as long as I can remember.  It makes me wonder how many fairly good stories are floating around out there in the ether that I'll never be able to get down on paper.

54) I'm really, really horrible at cursive.  I can sign my name, and that's about it.  My favorite part of entering middle school was that we could write in print.  That being said, my handwriting is a bizarre marriage of print and cursive--I connect quite a few of my letters and use some cursive letters mixed in with the print.  It's just faster for me to write that way.

55) I really, really despise handling raw chicken.  I'm okay with pork, ground beef, and steak, but for some reason raw chicken reminds me too much of my own skin and that just really grosses me out.  I guess I wouldn't do so well as a cannibal.

56) I've started reading Anna Karenina 3 times now and never gotten more than 50 pages into it.  The names all sound the same and confuse me and I know how it ends, so it's very hard to invest myself in the story, but for some reason I always go back to it.

57) I can't figure out why it was so easy for me to learn how to type, but I never could get the hang of the piano--it seems as though the finger placement memory should be similar, but I never did feel comfortable tinkling the ivories.

58) My last name means "warrior" in German.  Ironically, "warrior" is the word that lost me the regional spelling bee when I was in elementary school.  I'm still bitter about that.

59) I don't really have a favorite flower.  Anytime I'm asked, I give a different answer.  I think all flowers are beautiful and can't figure out how anyone could ever choose a "favorite".

60) I have an extremely bizarre, unexplainable memory.  I was probably about 4 or 5 and I was looking out of a window in our house at nighttime and when I looked down at the street Grimace was walking past our house on the sidewalk.  I remember being terrified, and now I can only imagine that this was some kind of dream, but I remember it as an actual memory--not a dream.  It still kind of freaks me out to this day.

100 Things... The Project That Wouldn't Die

Happy Monday my darling Internet! I looked over all of your suggestions for getting some schooling on web design, and I’m definitely going to look into those online programs you mentioned. Today I shall regale you with numbers 41-50 of my 100 Things About Me series.

41) My favorite guilty pleasures author is Sophie Kinsella. I absolutely love the Shopaholic series and only wish that I could find a hot PR hunk who could buy me all my hearts desires.

42) I love show tunes and can almost always find a way to fit them into everyday conversation (because I’m good, aren’t I grand, aren’t I great aren’t I swell, aren’t I fun, but nothing stays.)

43) I don’t have any live plants anywhere in my house—I have a fake banana tree in the bathroom, and that’s all. The less responsibility for other living things, the better.

44) I’ve ridden a horse two times in my life, and quite frankly, they scare me to death.

45) I’m right handed, but find it easier to snap with my left hand. Also, when I fold my arms, my left hand is on top.

46) I love to wrap presents—particularly when the gift is a shape other than a cube. It’s so fun to try to find a way to wrap it so that it looks neatly done!

47) I hate to do laundry. H-A-T-E. As soon as you’re done with one load there’s another one ready to go in—it’s rather like a punishment out of a Greek myth.

48) I think that my feet have shrunk recently—I used to wear a size 9, sometimes up to 9 ½ dress shoe, now I’m down to an 8. (And don’t tell me that manufacturers have just started giving larger shoes smaller sizes, because I will not hear you)

49) I actually had a blog a couple of years ago before I even knew what a “blog” was. It is dead now; however, it was a beautiful thing, really beautiful…

50) My middle name is Noelle. You may now commence with the singing. I shall even begin for you… “The first Noel, the angels did say…”

You Ask, I Answer Pt 2

Harry, Harry, wherefore art thou fictional and only 16? My love for you dost beeth illegal and perverse, oh, if only with a flicketh of my wand I could maketh you mineth. I twould kicketh Ginny’s ass for only one moment with thee and thou twee little glasses.

Right, so, onto the second part of this whole interview process…

From Sophie: Why did you choose your email address?

I am what one might call “obsessed” with Gone With the Wind—seriously, people want to buy me all things Gone With the Wind as gifts, but are always too worried that I already have whatever rare collectible they’ve stumbled upon. So, there you have the “Katie Scarlett” bit. However, Yahoo! already had a fair number of Katie Scarlett’s registered, so I got to choose a number. I have a horrible memory with numbers so I went with my bra size. There you have it internet. My email address equals my bra size, there is no shame left in my world.

From Kenju: What is the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you?

Sweet baby Jesus in heaven, I couldn’t possibly choose the most embarrassing thing, mainly because my embarrassment is never ceasing. So instead shall we go with the most recent embarrassing situation? We shall, excellent. Not long ago my boss got this wild hair that when he went for his ATV training, his executive officers (that would be me) should go along with him, because wouldn’t that be fun??

I’ll preface this for those of you who may not know me personally—I am not the ATV type of girl. I didn’t even know what an ATV was until I moved to Arkansas, and when it was explained to me I responded with “Oh, you mean like those little Barbie Jeeps?”

So, what no one tells you about ATV’s is that they pretty much do whatever they damn well please. Including refusing to go into reverse, refusing to brake, refusing to climb hills and instead bringing you nearly to the peak and then beginning a steady roll back downhill because I NEVER LEARNED HOW TO DRIVE A STICK.

Yeah, so that was a blast, I rolled down the hill within the first five minutes and landed in a patch of tall bushes, not much later I got left at the stables when all the guys drove off leaving me desperately trying to reverse, went the wrong way after getting rescued, and then got yanked and jerked off the path (and I use that term loosely) because also THERE IS NO POWER STEERING and literally drove into the woods. And when I say into the woods I actually mean into a bunch of trees. And guess what? I couldn’t reverse.

All of this while my boss was watching. I would have loved to have died except that I probably would have wrecked the ATV and then my parents would have to use my death benefits to replace it for the Air Force.

From Stephanie: What is one of your most cherished childhood memories?

For this one I’m going to have to go with a collective grouping of memories, and just say that my favorite memories of childhood all involve Christmas. I don’t necessarily mean Christmas morning with the presents and the food and the presents and the presents, but the whole Christmas season and all of our family traditions. This year is the first time that I’ve not been home for the holiday season. Last year I was lucky enough to be TDY close enough to home that I could come home for the weekends leading up to Christmas and help decorate the house and the tree. The tradition that I know I’ll carry on some day when I have little demons of my own is decorating the Christmas tree with John Denver and the Muppets playing in the background. Because there is no soundtrack to Christmas like Miss Piggy flipping out about figgy pudding (with bacon).

And last but not least from my dear, darling girl Kristi(n) (teehee): If you could be doing anything right now, what would it be?

Watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN….

You Ask, I Answer Pt 1

Okay, first thing—from now on I promise to do better spell checking before I post! I was reading over my last post and in the words of one of my favorite bloggers, fat hot ham, I was annoying the crap out of myself with how many words I’d misspelled… Also, use of the word “incredible”, consider it stricken from my vocabulary from hereon out. I didn’t actually count how many times I used it in my last post, but we’ll just all agree that it was excessive!

Now moving on to the fun part—answering the great questions that y’all came up with a couple of posts ago. Depending on how long my answers get I may break this up into two posts. We’ll just see where this goes. I’m also doing this during my Sunday night television viewing, so it will depend on how fascinating Desperate Housewives is tonight as to how far I get!

First from Samantha: The story of my first kiss.

When I was growing up, I was always boy crazy, but I wasn’t allowed to date until I was 16, so I actually was “Sweet 16”. (Well, sort of, I don’t think Truth or Dare kisses count…) I’d had a HUGE crush on a guy in my class for ages, but he was always dating someone so I didn’t think he had any interest in me. But, we all know how high school works, my friends talked to his friends, it got around to him that I was interested and wham bam thank you ma’am, I had my first real date. Being the little innocent that I was, I didn’t kiss him for a couple of dates, but eventually we ended up going with some friends to another high school drama production of Guys and Dolls. He drove me back home and walked with me up to the front door. Usually I’d just give him a hug and then run inside before he could do anymore, but that night he went in for the kiss. I’d been dreaming of this all my life, and waiting for the fireworks and choirs singing in the background. He kissed me, and I stood there. And I stood there longer. He pulled away and I said goodnight and walked slowly inside. My parents asked how the date was, I said it was great, and then I closed myself in my bedroom and I cried and cried and cried. It had been horrible! No fireworks, no choirs, not even a butterfly fluttering, nada. We dated for another 4 months or so, mainly because I felt like such an idiot for crushing on him for years and then 3 weeks into the relationship moving on to the next guy. But really from there on out it was all downhill, any big surprise?

From Sharon:  Correct me if I'm wrong but don't you believe in ghosts? Experience any ghost encounters lately?

I do believe that there are ways that spirits can communicate with us, and some people are more attuned to that communication than others. I, for one, am about as sensitive to it as a brick. I’ve only got two stories that can be construed as “ghost stories” in any way.

When I was in high school I worked at an Italian restaurant that had been built recently and often had shifts during the daytime on weekends. We would come in early to clean and it was usually pretty quiet during the shift. One day I was out in our main lobby dusting off the wine rack. It was mostly out of sight from the dining room and there was a To Go counter behind me with a door that connected to the kitchen. It was very quiet—I can’t remember if we hadn’t opened yet or if there just weren’t any customers, but the kitchen wasn’t really busy and I was the only hostess working. So, I’m dusting off the bottles when I heard my name called. I turned around to see if one of the waiters was trying to get my attention, but I didn’t see anyone. I waited for a minute but didn’t hear them call again so I went back to dusting and heard it again, this time I went around to the dining room to see who was calling me. When I didn’t see anyone around I went back to the kitchen and told them to leave me alone, but no one had any idea what I was talking about. It happened one more time when I was cleaning out shelves behind the To Go counter after closing, and again no one was around. I have no idea if that was anything supernatural at all or if I’m just insane, but a couple of the other hostesses claimed that the same thing happened to them in the same area of the building.

The second story is a dream that I had, but this I firmly believe was my grandmother’s way of communicating with me. My grandmother passed away in March after declining for years and not long after that my grandfather passed in July. We all knew that my grandfather was very sick and my mom had gone up to see him. I had a dream that I was at a funeral but I didn’t know who it was for. I was sitting with my younger sister on one side and my grandmother was on the other side. In my dream, I knew that she was dead, and I tried to talk to her, but she just kept looking straight ahead without speaking and patting my leg comfortingly. I wasn’t afraid, but I was confused. I turned and asked my sister if she could see a woman sitting next to me and she just looked at me like I was nuts and said no. Right then my phone rang and woke me up. It was my mom telling me that my grandfather had died. I think that my grandmother knew how difficult the next few days and weeks were going to be for me and she was doing what she could to comfort me in the only way she could reach me. Through my dreams.

Not the Boyfriend: Am I going to let my boyfriend pick any radio stations on the car ride to Seattle?

Of course dearling. Isn’t it wonderful how you love all of the same radio stations as me and just hate all of those screamy rock and roll stations and secretly bless me every time I change it to easy listening! Love you, *muah*!

That seems like a good place to break for now. I’ve only whetted your appetites, the best is yet to come—aren’t you excited! And now I shall go back and edit my little brains out because I can’t tell you how much I hate it when I use “your” instead of “you’re”. Don’t I have a fascinating life??

National De-lurker Day Game! (At Least On My Page!!)

Well my fair friends, the time has come for me to bid you a fond adieu... at least for a little while. With my internet addiction, I'll be lucky if I make it a week without getting on at least once. Especially since my fancy, beautiful new laptop has a wireless connection!

I have yet to pack, however, the bathroom has been cleaned, house dusted, kitchen is sparkling, floors are vacuumed... the packing however is always a horrifying last minute endeavor. I've tried packing in advance, but I always end up digging through my perfectly stacked clothing and shoes stuffed with socks at least 5 times, trying to remember if I actually packed my phone charger or if I just thought about it. So, Thursday night I'll probably stay up until about 2 in the morning packing and then still go through everything 5 more times the next day, inevitably still forgetting to pack underwear.

However, during my absence I invite you all to de-lurk yourselves and help me in writing my 100 Things list! (It did however occur to me late last night (because yes, I think about my site ALL THE DAMN TIME) that those 20 things I wrote yesterday can totally be included in the hundred--so I've only got 60 left now!) (And can it actually be a National De-Lurking Day if it's only on my site? And if not, what should I call it?) (And could I please stop with the asides in parentheses?)

I shamelessly stole this idea from Day-by-Day, and I invite you to ask me a question, any question, in the comments section. I know you are all just burning with curiosity about whether I prefer Burger King or McDonald's or what color my hair is right now (because, yes! It's changed again!), so here's your chance! Whether you found me by googling something dirty, or stumbled upon me from another site, or you just know me in real life and so feel guilted into coming here because I will totally quiz you on my site to make sure you're reading... Ask away! And when I return to blogging-land I shall bestow my answers upon you all like a gift from the gods.

(And please do ask questions, because, y'all 100 is a way bigger number than I ever really thought... It doesn't seem like that much when it involves acquiring shoes...)

Signing off! Angela, out.