Meg Cline

Carrots

All day long as I went through my Sunday routine – picking up the house, folding laundry, planning next week’s meals – I kept holding the “carrot” of how delightful going to be early would be in my state of total exhaustion.  (Oh, you didn’t know you were reading the lamest blog on the block?  Welcome.  I like sewing, having long conversations with my dog and going to bed early.)  We had SUCH a fun weekend… and of course, are now paying for it now with the kind of tired that makes Monday require a venti.

Matt even had to get up and go to work this morning, poor soul.  When he called on his way home, I lectured him "don’t you fall asleep on the couch after work or you won’t be able to get to bed at a regular time tonight!" 

Fast forward to 6 pm.  Me, face down on the bed, out.  Oops.

Matt woke me up at 8:30, and now here it is 10 and I am WEEEE!  Wide awake.  At least I can catch up on our weekend without having to attempt to recall the events two weeks later.

Friday night we hosted Matt’s sister and her boyfriend, who drove up from Huntersville to stay with us.  It was our first time meeting the boyfriend, and I don’t think we scared him off.  I started preparing for dinner around 3pm, and right before our guest showed up, I stopped to assess the damage: I’m pretty certain I dirtied each and every dish in my kitchen.  Amazingly enough, I had just enough time to wash up the dishes, wash up myself and pour a glass of wine before the doorbell rang! 

My menu: artichoke dip for an appetizer.  Asparagus with proscuitto, panzanella, green salad with roasted almonds and homemade balsamic dressing and slow-cooked ribs.  Dessert was lemon tarts.  Those are pretty much all my go-to recipes… so no one can ever come to my house to eat more than once.

Oh look… food pictures instead of people.  Per usual. 

Found these lights at Target and am in l-u-v.  Hubby strung them up around our patio umbrella. 

After dinner, we got into some games – first Wits and Wagers, then Catchphrase, then Guitar Hero.  Around the time when exhaustion and the wine were forcing me to shut one eye to better see the notes on Guitar Hero, we called it quits.

Saturday morning, Matt whipped up breakfast – his specialty in the kitchen.  Sausage, biscuits and dirty eggs.  That man can make a mean brunch.

No sooner had Micah and Derek gotten on the road, did we start getting ready for weekend event #2.  I went for a quick run to try and wake up for the next round of fun, and Matt took a quick nap.  Then we loaded up a cooler and headed over to our friend’s Kate and Charlie (the newlyweds, two post back!) who we were joining for the Zac Brown Band concert in Charlotte.

Kate + I @ Zac Brown Band

We got down a few hours early for tailgating.  The smell of hot dogs and the sight of people playing cornhole and the joy of waiting in line at the porta-johns make fall and regular tailgating feel like it’s right around the corner!  The lawn was PACKED!  The band played a number of their new songs first (from an album that isn’t out) which made a few people kind of twitchy (me) but finally they got into all their jams and it was like a big lawn party of dancing happy beach-loving people. 

They ended on a mash-up of Free and Into the Mystic, which I adored.  Free is my favorite song by them, and Into the Mystic has always been a song I loved.  (Little known fact: it is one of the most common songs chosen by doctors to operate to.  You’re welcome for enlightening you with that piece of knowledge.)

(Go ahead, take a listen.  It’s lovely.)

It was late when we got back – although I’m not sure how late because I fell asleep in the car.  Sorry, Matt!  We both crashed hard, and it was not a happy moment when Matt’s alarm clock went off at 6 am on Sunday!  (I will admit it was 2 hours later that I finally graced the world with my presence.) 

We in this household are firm believers in the “work hard, play hard” mantra.  We especially like the latter part.  As I write this (at 10 pm on a Sunday night), I can hear my hubby on the phone with his best friend from college planning a visit for a weekend in the fall.  As I try to figure out which weekend he’s talking about, I realize with a start that we’ve either planned or talked about something for just about every weekend he’s not working between now and…. December.  These are really our “carrots”- the reward of time spent with good friends, making memories, laughing hard, eating good – that gets you through the “have to do’s” of life.  Even if it makes procuring a large Diet Coke and taking a mid-day nap on Sunday become a “have to do”… it’s worth it.

The One That Got Away

Doesn’t everyone have this story? The story about the one that got away? The one that you’ll always wonder what if… ? The person who, if you had ended up with, your life would be a totally different story from what it is now. The game changer.

2001

When I was 20, I met a guy and we started dating. Two months after we had begun our relationship, I can remember sitting on my front porch, talking on the phone with my mom and telling her that I had met the guy I thought I could marry. I asked her if that was crazy – I was only 20, after all. My mom, who had met my dad when she was 20 and married him a few years later, assured me that it was not at all crazy and I should expect an engagement ring in a few months.

Okay, she didn’t exactly say that last part… but I may have extrapolated it from the conversation.

I fell hard for this guy. We were a good match on so many levels, and I was certain that we would be together for a long time. One warm April day, 8 months after we had started dating, he broke up with me. I was heartbroken. I hadn’t seen it coming, and in fact, I think I even tried to talk him out of it.

I spent the summer in Durham, working at internship and channeling my sadness and heartbreak and anger at him into the training I was doing for a triathlon. At the time, I was furious that he ended it so definitively (no "on a break" here). But later, after the sadness subsided, I was thankful for how clean our break-up was and the lack of any bitterness or head games that I would see be the calling card of many of my friends’ long-suffering break-ups.

Life went on. I went to Spain. He immersed himself in preparing for post-graduate work. We both moved on, fell in love with other people, had life experiences that shaped and molded us into new people.

2004

One night in the middle of Spring semester, I walked in the door from a fun night with girlfriends out at our usual location, Burke St. We spilled back into our apartment, giggling and rehashing the night. I walked into my room, and out of habit, checked my away messages.

“ANNA! Anna! Anna, get in here!” I screamed to my roommate.

She came rushing in, looking slightly panicked.

“Guess who just IMed me?” I pointed excitedly to the screen.

She looked closely. “No way. When was the last time you talked to him?”

I shrugged my shoulders. Since my return from abroad, we had only run into each once on our tiny campus and it had been pleasant but uneventful. A chance encounter of two acquaintances. Other than that, we hadn’t talked into two years.

I read the IM again. “I saw you at the bar tonight. You looked cute. Thought you should know!” The message ended with the big dorky AOL smiley face. I went to sleep with that ear-to-ear grin on my face. It had been a hard year, and the surprise IM was a bright spot in a stressful spring semester.

Fortunately, the story doesn’t end there. The message left to more conversations over instant messenger, tenuous and guarded at first, then quickly progressing to the rapport we had struck up so easily years before. The semester ended, graduation day came and went, and I was in U-haul van headed for NY. Our IM conversations turned to hour long phone calls which, over the course of the next year, led to visits which led to “will you be my girlfriend?” which led to moving to NC which led, finally, gratefully, and wonderfully to “Will you be my wife?”

And suddenly, the one that got away was the one who found me again after all these years. The one that changed it all? The one I would have always wondered how it would have turned out?

Was the one I ended up after all. Lucky me.

Lucky us.

Happy Three Years, Husband. I adore you. Here’s to changing the game.