My sister found her wedding dress today! She had narrowed it down to two by the time I got down there today. I knew instantly when she put the first one on that that was the dress. But I was very curious about the second one… I couldn’t imagine her looking more radiant than the first one. It was a tough competition – the second one was just as gorgeous and she looked just as lovely. (Can feel the eyes getting a little prickly right now thinking of my baby sis walking down the aisle. Scuse me for a second, while I do the Southern Lady eye fan and regain composure.)
Both dresses were made for her, but the first one was it.
I can’t wait til June 18th, 2011.
My mom and sister arrive from New York tonight! I wonder if my Mom knows what she’s getting into.
It has been really, really, really hot here. Really hot.
I’m going to cook flat-iron steaks with a balsamic vinegar reduction sauce tonight. I really like saying “reduction sauce” because it sounds fancy, but it really just involves leaving something liquid on the stove for a long time until about half of it evaporates.
When you do that accidentally it’s called “getting distracted.” BUT, call it a reduction sauce and suddenly it sounds fancy.
My mom and sis will head on down to Charlotte on Wednesday, where they have wedding dress shopping plans all day. I’ll join them Thursday, to hopefully help narrow down some finalists.
Friday, my mom will return to me where I shall put her to work helping me get ready for our garage sale on Saturday. Like I said, I wonder if my Mom knows what’ she’s herself into.
I think some gene gets activated when you have kids that makes you suddenly and selflessly okay with doing what would otherwise be intolerable activities, all because your sweet precious babies asked. I mean, I adore the Budster but he’s never asked me to help him move, organize a kitchen, iron a shirt, pick him up from softball practice, quiz him for a spelling test, or make a grilled cheese sandwich. Now that would test my love.
Then again, I’ve never asked my Mom to take my crate out back and hose poo out of it every day for an entire year. So, yea. Gene activated.
Totally innocent. No idea what this “crate business” you have mentioned?
My Prom Dress, 1999.
I adore this dress. Can someone please invent a party for me to wear this to again?
Or perhaps, I could star in an off-off-off-of-off-off Broadway production of Beauty & the Beast. (My sister and I spontaneously broke out into singing “Tale as Old as Time” when I put this on.)
I’ve given away every other prom dress, homecoming dress and bridesmaid dress. But this continues to take up prime real estate in my closet. I don’t know why I have such a hard time parting with it.
Real life should include more opportunity for tulle.
Posing with Daddy, Prom 1999.
Yesterday was deliciously lazy.
I laid in bed til almost eleven. ELEVEN! I kept dreaming of water boiled bagels from Brighton, and french toast from Midtown Dessertry and even, I think, a Bojangles biscuit.
I don’t even really like Bojangles biscuit but that tells you how delusional slash sleepy I was.
When I did finally get up, I had Dad’s homemade banana bread instead. I won’t tell you how many slices I had, but I will confess my luggage had two more loaves in it.
It’s hard to want to be in two places at once.
I had Pontillo’s for lunch one last time and continued working on cleaning out my room. I can only do a little bit at a time, because it’s hard for me to get rid of stuff.
Like slap bracelets.
And best friend necklaces.
And my parents’ pass to get into basketball games.
Those are memories, ya know? (I’m a bit of a packrat.)
Then I packed, and we left for the airport. Weekends at home go too quickly. My travel back was uneventful, but I’m thinking that I’m going to stick with driving more these days. It bugs me that ever since airlines made us pay for checked bagged, everyone is bringing ginormous bags as carry-on. Now you can even pay more to get on early to make sure you get overhead space, which at first I thought was totally stupid, but now I see is kind of necessary. And it’s becoming a vicious cycle of paying for more things and it annoys me.
I’d rather pay for gas, diet mt. dews, combos and roll up I-95 with the windows down, singing to myself at the top of my lungs.
(My biggest fear in life is that I’ll purse-dial someone while I’m singing “Don’t Stop Believing” at the top of my lungs and instead of hanging up when they realize it’s a purse dial, they’ll listen to the whole thing because my singing is so atrocious.)
(For real. Whenever I’m singing in the car, I check my phone compulsively to make sure it didn’t dial anyone.)
Travel makes me punchy. I got to Charlotte around 10:30, and drove up to Winston. Then, because I had started a really good book on the plane and was almost done, I stayed up til almost 3 am finishing in the book. File under “bad decisions.”
But, I did come home to a clean house. Swiffered floors, laundry put away, dishes done. That is the best surprise I could have ever asked for.
I don’t have any work to do until later today, so I’m having a slow morning. A few more slices of banana bread, and I might get going.
Might. It is Monday, after all.
I made a bit of a last minute decision and bought a flight to go home to Pittsford for my ten year high school reunion.
Ten years! It doesn’t seem possible. Imagine a decade from now…. 2020. Doesn’t that seem like eons from now? Like, we’ll have flying cars and self-cleaning houses (oooh!) in the oh so futuristic ten years from now, right? Ten years goes fast.
The reunion was so much fun – it was an odd mixture of people who came, I guess since it was in the middle of summer, and a fairly small representation of my class. Maybe forty people? I think we graduated with about 250. It was kind of nice that nobody seemed to have their entire high school posse represented so we all just sort of floated around and visited with each other. Or maybe it was just after ten years, no one remembered or cared who belonged to what clique anymore. No one seems that different from ten years ago, but everyone seems to be doing good things with their lives.
I only took one picture the entire time, and it was in the cab on the way there. This is my best friend, Krissy, and I. We met in eighth grade, in a class called Enrichment. I don’t remember what we were supposed to actually do during Enrichment, but if passing notes was the point, then we were top of the class. We originally bonded over our musical preferences. While everyone else was listening to either Pearl Jam, Dr. Dre or Dave Matthews Band, we had both (separately) discovered a love for the oldies station. We had certain songs we’d call each other when we heard them on the radio: Little Red Riding Hood and Snoopy vs. The Red Baron stand out in my mind.
In other words, we were pretty dorky. But we managed to turn out okay.
10 years ago: Spring Break in Myrtle Beach, April 2000. My sister, Katie, and friends Jamie, (me), Krissy and Tamara. And a waiter who wanted to immortalize himself in this shot too. I don’t think we’ve changed too much in ten years, except that no one parts their hair in the middle in the anymore. So late 90s.
I feel like the advent of Facebook (and the ease of keeping in touch over instant messenger, email, texting, cell phone/no long distance) has made reunions a little bit anticlimactic. I’ve kept in good touch with my closest friends from high school through these mediums, but I also have the ability to spy on almost anyone I’m slightly curious about from high school or other past stages of life via Facebook. There were very few people who I saw at the reunion who I didn’t have some semblance of what was going on in their life already. In fact, I found myself in conversations mentioning something about someone’s life and realizing I only knew that because I had seen it as a Facebook status. Since it happened back to me, I think that’s okay. For example, congratulating someone on a baby they just had when you probably haven’t had an actual conversation with them since sometime around graduation day? Thanks to Facebook. I obviously love the connections that internet/technology allow me to make and keep, but it certainly ruins the “where are they now” moments that reunions are supposed to have. I know exactly where they are; their Foursquare check in just told me.
What was the last reunion you had? Did you attend?
I am thankful for every minute of the sun soaked days on a flat as glass lake spent with the best of friends.
I am doubly thankful that said friends welcome us (and our doggy) into their family-filled holiday weekend with open arms and room on the boat and the biggest platter of chicken salad I’ve ever seen.
I am thankful that after 200 failed attempts at wakeboarding, I didn’t give up, I stood up and finally experienced the thrill of *boop* going over the wake.
And with regards to that, I am thankful that Craig starts the boat slow enough that I actually *can* stand up.
I am thankful for the experience of watching Donna and Matt make their first attempt at wakeboarding, and specifically the smile that erupted across Donna’s face when she got it. (On like the 3rd time. Jerk.)
I am thankful for SPF 50.
And on this holiday, I am thankful for the freedom that living in this country bestows upon me: the right to pray to my God, to speak my mind, to choose my spouse and to get an education. To name a few basics.
Hope everyone had a happy and safe 4th. What are you thankful for?
I don’t know why people don’t believe me when I tell them about my dog’s anxiety. I mean, LOOK at him. He is just WILD and out of control.
Um, yeah, he’d be the one all noodled up in the lawn while 15+ people splashed in the lake, spun off on sea-doo’s and ran back and forth past him to the house up the hill.
But really. He is very anxious.
I swear!
My sister came to visit me!
We made squash sandwiches.
And talked about weddings. (Hers, obviously.)
And snuggled with pupdog.
And met some of hubby’s co-workers out a bar – but only talked to each other and Jamie. (Oops.)
And talked about how much fun it will be when she moves to Winston-Salem permanently.
Just kidding.
But wouldn’t that be nice?
Matt was working last night, so I downloaded the movie Valentine’s Day to watch while I folded laundry and cleaned. I thought that it would be a nice way to “treat” myself, considering my lame-o Saturday night plans. (Don’t take that as a complaint; what makes me a perfect match for an emergency medicine resident is that one weekend night out, one weekend night in is my idea of perfect balance.) Anyways… I digress. The movie? Have any of you seen it? Other than it having lots of my favorite actors in it, the plot/stories were really weak. Like a watered down Love Actually. The only part where I truly laughed out loud was at the end there’s an outtake of Julia Roberts in a car, and the driver says to her as they pass by, "Rodeo Dr? You ever shopped there?" and she goes "Once. Big Mistake. Big. Huge."
Oh Julia. You are a keeper. (Anyone else psyched about her playing Liz Gilbert in upcoming "Eat, Pray, Love" movie?)
Friday night, we attended end of the year party at our friend Anne and Locke’s house. End of the year for both teacher-Anne and the first year interns. To the rest of us suckers, summer doesn’t mean anything except relief from the heat in the office air conditioner. I brought my camera, but somewhere between mainlining artichoke dip and bringing back my old school flip cup skills, I forgot to bring it out. Jamie was walking around with hers, so I’ll just send you on over to her post. (Eventually, we’re just going to come up with a schedule as to who is in charge of documenting and blogging our mutual events.)
Once I had my house all spiffy and my laundry all folded, it was crafty time up in the Cline house. (Seriously, guys, I am just OUT OF CONTROL and wild.) I saw this post and decided to try my hand at it. So I spent the wee hours of Saturday night cutting up an old tee-shirt and glue-glunning. (Haven’t sewn to a shirt yet; will post pictures when it’s complete.) To say my husband was shocked when he called at the end of his shift (midnight) and I was still up is an understatement. It was a fortunate surprise though, as we had nothing as far as good eats in the house, so I put away my glue gun and whipped up some late-night quesadillas for the good doc. See what I mean? Best EM wife ever.
From flip cup Friday night to crafting with my snoring doggy Saturday night. That, my friends, is balance.
Oh, and footnote… speaking of crafts: I know I posted this on Facebook, but I don’t think I posted it here yet. This was my other project from our sewing night. Anne had brought this cute swirly orange and white fabric. I cut shapes out from it, and just free-handed them on with the sewing machine on to a T-shirt that had been in my goodwill pile. I was really happy with how it turned out. Pardon the dorky self-timer pics.
Right now, I am sitting in an office with no windows, updating a credit card expense report and listening to what I am pretty sure is a dentist drill on steroids, although I am told it is a wet vac because there is a leak in our office roof and the room next door to me has a squishy carpet. Eww.
On THAT note, I think I need to go look at pictures from last weekend on the lake. It’s been my experience that being near or on water is pretty much an instant dose of happy. I can be laying on the beach with the sun glinting off water nearby, sipping coffee on a porch overlooking a still lake, laying on the front of a boat shielding my eyes from the choppy spray or, my most recent happy discover, being tugged along with a rope and my feet hooked together behind said boat. And I’m happy. Judging from these pics, I think the universal vote on this situation would be: “Me too.”
These are all from Memorial Day at Cherokee Lake (Tennessee), where our wonderful friends Zac and Jamie took us under the lake-living wings and adopted us for the weekend.
Ok, maybe everyone doesn’t love the water quite like we do…. Gus looks like he could do without lake time.
For now, I’ll put some Jimmy Buffett on my playlist, pretend the wet vac is the sound of the boat motor, and put on my sunglasses to protect me from the glow of the UV lights. Until next time, Lake.
What about you? Do you have a favorite beach, lake, pond, blow up baby pool in the backyard that blisses you out just to be nearby?
All you really need this time of year
Is a pair of shades and an ice cold beer
And a place to sit somewhere near
The water…
- Brad Paisley, Water
