The Circle of Life..

It always amazes me how things have a way of finding their way back to you.  You lose something you hold dear to your heart.  You mourn its loss, even though it's just a thing.  You finally come to terms with never seeing it again.  Then after a few months, maybe years, it comes back to you.  I feel like that is something special.. like the thing you lost is MEANT for you. 

For example, back in 2002 ish, I had this great necklace: a cubic zirconium star on a silver chain.  I had bought it when my obsession with stars was at its height.  I had just gotten my tattoo, and the necklace was the perfect compliment.  I wore that necklace every day, no matter what, for about two years.  Then, in the fall of 2002, I lost it.  I knew I lost it on a visit home from college one weekend, but that was all I knew.  I looked and looked, and finally gave up.  Fast forward to the next spring, I went home for Easter Break.  I was walking from my car towards the house when something shiny caught my eye from the ground.  I couldn't believe my eyes when I realized it was my star.  All dirty and almost completely covered with mud, but beautiful. 

I mentioned in my last blog that I lost my grandmother's ring at my wedding.  My grandmother died about 8 years ago, and I had her favorite amethyst and diamond ring.  I wore in my wedding ceremony as my something old, to honor her memory.  That night, about 4 AM, I woke up out of my deep sleep and realized I had no idea what happened to it.  I knew it was gone, without even having to look.  But of course I looked.  I looked through everything I had with me.  We went home and looked through everything brought to the house.  I looked in my car.  I called my mother and sister in law to make them look through their cars.  I called the woman who runs the building where we married.  I had the man at the Bed & Breakfast where we'd stayed that night look through his stuff.  When I returned from my honeymoon, Carmen and I went back to the wedding place to look through the grass & bushes around the building for an hour.  I called Men's Wearhouse to see if it had somehow gotten into Jared's tuxedo pockets. 

All of this time.. nothing.  Three months of feeling a sense of loss.  I know it's just a material possession, and that it doesn't mean much in the real world, but I felt like I was somehow letting my grandmother down. 

BUT.  Yesterday I was walking around the back of my car.  You know that space between the back seats and back windsheild of a car?  Where there is always a bunch of dead bugs and no one ever looks?  Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a HUGE dead bug back there.  I stopped and looked closer.. and there it was.  My grandma's ring.  Just like it had been there for 3 months.  How did I not notice it before?  How did I miss it the twenty times I looked through my car? 

Doesn't matter.  It finally came back to me last night.  Like Nana (that's what we called her) was just holding on to it for a while so I would remember her.  

But this ring is now even dearer to my heart.

Gift from the past

Yes, as Carmen pointed out in the comment on my last blog, I got married.  Though if you're reading this, you probably already know that.  But just in case you missed it, the pictures are here.

It was lovely and amazing and I'm still flabbergasted that I was able to pull it off.  Not everything went perfect, but that's how these things go.  What mattered was that the next morning I woke up a married woman.  And I didn't go bridezilla!  Jared got drunk.. but survived unscathed.  I lost my grandmother's ring at the end of the night. And someone threw up out front.  My step-brother hit on EVERY female there, including my married (and pregnant) best friend, my other best friend's wife, and all of Jared's cousins. But that's just the little things that no one will remember.  What was great was the dancing, the sweetness, the people, the colors, the pictures, the family.  I truly had a great time, and unfortunately it was over before I could blink.  The pictures are all I have to remember it by. Someone videotaped, but I havn't received the DVD yet.  Since it was a favor, I'll wait patiently. 

The honeymoon was more that I could have imagined.  The two months afterwards have been even better.  Nothing has really changed, except my name.  Jared lived with me for 3 years before hand, so this was nothing new. 

The next stage in life is moving.  We are working on that.. Last night I cleaned out my closet to find stuff for Goodwill.  I am giving away about 60 pairs of shoes, and 4 trash bags full of clothes.  I also found something odd in my closet: a wrapped Christmas present.  I could tell it was one that I had wrapped, I recognized the paper.   It was small, and squished under some boxes.  I opened it and found a little journal.  There was no name attached, not to the paper or written  in the journal. 

Who could this have been for? I have zero recollection of buying or wrapping this.

Maybe I put it there so that I would forget and find myself a happy little gift in the future...

Ginger Ale

In an approriate return to the blogging, I was inspired by Gnumoon's list of famous/hot Englishmen, and decided to make my own list.

Not a list of Englishmen, as I find my list would be almost a mirror of Gnumoon's, but my own special kind of list. 

Yesterday a coworker sent me a link to wicked rad t-shirt I would get if I wore t-shirts... Here is a picture:

You can order it here.

GINGERS!!

I took some ideas from this shirt, because I like a lot of these people, but I added some.  And I took out Lucille Ball because I will always be dissappointed that her hair color wasn't real.

People I didn't include: Julia Roberts & Nicole Kidman: because they're annoying.  Carrot Top: don't need to explain this one.  Chuck Norris: is he really a ginger?

In my ginger research, I was sad to discover the following people are not actually gingers:

-Alyson Hannigan (still love her though)

-Kate Winslet (I don't know why I thought she was)

And then there's Lindsay Lohan, who repeatedly dyes hers other colors to hide the ginger.  Sure, I did it once in high school, but that's what I would call experimentation. Plus, I wanted to see what life was like when people weren't CONSTANTLY STARING AT YOUR HAIR.

Finally, here's my list of my favorite famous gingers:

Bryce Dallas Howard

Molly Ringwald

Laura Prepon

Julianne Moore

Lauren Ambrose  (Six Feet Under, amazing show)

David Caruso (because of the f*ing sunglasses! ha!)

This guy (because he has a SOUL!!)

Tilda Swinton (because she can wear the weirdest shit and get away with it)

Susan Sarandon (because The Client)

Chucky

Conan (because you would all hate me if I left him off)

Gillian Anderson

Prince Harry (because he's so Spicy)

Ronald McDonald 

Shaun White (Hot!!)

And my absolute favorite, because of those awesome faces, those Ron Weasley moments, Rupert Grint

Alright, who'd I miss?

Why Carmen and Jon rule.

My engagement portraits, done by Jon Eckard with help from Carmen.

Well, nevermind, I was going to post the slideshow but I can't figure it out, as I'm internet challenged.  Just  click on Carmen's name up there^^^ and you should be able to see how much she rules.


p.s. THREE MONTHS!!

That F***ing Cat

As most of you are aware, I recently started a new job in a city which is an hour from my current home.  Commuting sucks, therefore I will be moving to the new city once things fall into place (once Jared finds a new job or once we're married, whichever).  As part of this, I have tried to start fixing things up around the house.  This weekend my goal was to primer my upstairs bathroom.  Four years ago in a drunken stupor I picked out a superdark shade of purple for this tiny bathroom.  I suppose I was still in college mode which was why I wanted fun colors.  This "fun" color is awful and made my tiny bathroom tinier.  Not only that but I was not good with paint, and got it all over the place.  Hence, primer.

I worked on the primering some with Jared on Saturday.  Sunday, while he was at work, I finished it up.  This is a very laborious, mind-numbing process, especially since I didn't have a roller and was using only a paintbrush.  Sunday morning before I got started, I went out to my car to grab my ipod to keep me company. 

Cut to four hours later when I finished up.  I got dressed in non-paint spattered clothing and was going to head to the gym.  I was cleaning up all of the paint stuff and getting ready to go out, which means walking around and closing doors and turning off lights.  I noticed I didn't see Meatwad anywhere.  So, I pretty much knew the little booger had escaped when I went out to my car four hours earlier.  Now, let's remember, I was upstairs, in the little bathroom, listening to music.  Easy to miss a missing cat.  Meatwad likes to run out the front door sometimes, out of curiosity I suppose, but he usually runs right back in.  Not this day.

Since I knew he wasn't in the house, I walked out the front door and looked to my right.   And noticed several people standing in the parking lot, and a police man standing next to the bushes in front of the building. 

I just knew it had something to do with my cat.

So I walk over and he says, "Do you have a cat?".  Sigh. 

Meatwad had been out for hours and had been acting psycho kitty.  The neighbors had noticed him in the bushes and tried to get him out of there because he looked ill or something (well his butt is still missing hair from the surgery he had 8 months ago).  Anytime anyone got near him, he hissed and pawed at them (tried to scratch).  The people freaked out thinking the cat had rabies or was hit by a car, so they called police.  Of course.  They didn't know it was my cat.

So the policeman tells me that animal control is on the way and that if they get here, they'll take him.  If I want to keep my cat, I need to get him inside without being bitten.  Apparently, if a cat bites you, even if it is your cat, animal control automatically takes the cat and puts it down.

I tried and tried to get near enough to him to pick him up, but he was not happy.   I grabbed a towel and was going to try that, but no good.  I was very upset, thinking he was sick or hit or something.  The officer did say that he had walked around earlier, so he wasn't hit, which is good. 

My reaction, of course, is to cry like a baby and call Jared to talk through my options.  Jared calmed me down some, but didn't really know what to tell me.   After a few more minutes, I decided to try one more time to just call him out of the bushes.  Well what do you know, it worked!  He jumped up and ran after me to our door and right into the house.   At first, the officer followed me in "just to make sure he doesn't bite" me.  But he could see that Meatwad was fine, just needed his momma.  Plus, I was still crying (which scares the hell out of men) so he left us be.

So that damn cat was fine.   He was apparently just scared and probably really hot (spoiled a/c cat).  But he sure did scare me for a minute.  I really thought I was going to have to say goodbye to my beloved butthole of a cat.  What most people don't get to see is how sweet he is (usually) to Jared and I.  Not thirty minutes after he came back in, Jared was home and he was rubbing all over him with love.  Meatwad is just an odd cat, but he's my odd cat.

I love that f***ing cat.

tomorrow

A year from now, my life will be pretty much completely different.

Tomorrow is my very last day as a GIS Analyst in Hickory.  After five and a half years,  I am leaving.  Why?  Well it turns out when your job is based off of contracts, when the contracts run out, you're out of a job.  In the beginning of June, I was told that they probably would not be able to pay me any more after September 30th.

Needless to say, I freaked out.

How am I going to pay my bills?

What am I going to do for insurance?

Well, the first thing I did was get online and apply for every GIS (mapping) position in NC that I could find.  I think I applied for six jobs that first day.

After a few weeks though, I wasn't hearing anything back and I was running out of positions to apply for.  I was checking jobsites several times a day.   Then I got a call for a interview! Four days later I went to that interview.

And... I was pretty darn sure I tanked.  TANKED.   I'm just one of those people that get nervous and my mind goes completely blank when I realize I'm nervous.  I was tripping over my words and repeating myself.  When they got to the GIS questions part of the interview, I had NO IDEA what the heck they were talking about.  But somehow I got through it, and went home.  And looked for more jobs.

At some point I was starting to feel a little hopeless, but then there's Carmen.  Carmen is a pretty positive person, and she talked to me and told me that if I think positively, things will go positively.  So, that's what I did. I started to see the good side of all of this.  If I did go on unemployment, I could at least sleep in.  Some of my bills I'd be able to defer.  I still had my Outback job, so I could possibly still pay my mortgage.  I could trade my car in and get something older that I wouldn't have to make payments on.  I could put all of my focus on planning my wedding.  Things would be okay.  And I would find a job.

This positive thinking thing really does help.  Carmen is a genius.

So, then I got a call from the people I interviewed with.  And a job offer.  WHAT?  I couldn't believe it, but yes, I got a new job.  A better job, really.

And on Monday, I start my new job, and my life will be changing.  

In January, I'm getting married.  Shortly after we will move to Winston-Salem, and we will have a new house/apartment/condo to live in.   We may even get a dog.  Next July 22?  I will be in a totally different situation.  

I will miss my friends in Hickory very dearly, but I will only be an hour away.  I will miss my coworkers and that sense of family that I have with them.  I will miss Katie and how she knows exactly what to say.  I will miss Carmen, and living next door.   When something breaks in my house in Winston,  I will not be able to run next door and ask them what to do.  And I won't have my trivia nights with her...  Perhaps we'll set up a weekly dinner in Statesville or something.

Things will be different.

But we will okay.  :)

Goings on

Hey everybody! It's my birthday Friday! I'm going to be a stinkin' 28 years old.  That's a little too close to 30 for  my taste, but I can't change it, so oh well.  Jared is taking me to the Merlefest on Sunday for my birthday so I can see the Avett Brothers!! Whee! It's been forever since I've seen them live and I'm just dying for the chance.  I just looked back and i haven't seen them since September 2006!  Good gravy.  That's way too long.

Also, one of my favorite bloggers who lives in San Francisco just did a music blog and included them in her list.  Sweet.

Since Friday is my birthday, I'm taking the day off from work (sleep! yay!) and Jared and I are going for our wedding cake tasting.  One of my coworker's has a sister-in-law who does wedding cakes and she seems really nice.  That will be my birthday cake, unless Jared feels like making one, no pressure.  Then, I'm going down to my momma's house for dinner.

This past Saturday was my niece Elora's birthday party.  She is nine now and that blows my mind.

When did this precious little angel get so big?

I saw every member of my immediate family on Saturday and I have to say, it was nice.  Crazy how that can happen sometimes!