To the illustrious year of 2009,

Thanks for the memories, 2009!

You were quite a year, despite the fact that your lack of visual symmetry and balance really bothered me. Sorry, but you know my penchant for even numbers.

Still, 2009, you brought quite a few changes to my life.

First of all, I started a blog. And miracle of miracles, I kept at it.

Then, I took my first ever trip to the Big Apple to visit by best friend and all New York has to offer.

Next, my sister-in-law had her first baby, and I got another precious nephew.

Finally, I finished up what had to be the worst school year in the history of high-school teaching and cried for the relief and sheer joy that your dear summer months offered, 2009.

I then gave my first editorial advice to, of all people, my father, who still maintains he's going to write the world's next best-seller.

I also survived taking a bunch of hormonal high-school girls to Yearbook Camp and had a pretty hilarious time myself.

My husband joined the U.S. Navy, and we moved to yet another house, although this time, we knew it would the last Florida house we'd ever live in.

We visited family in Arkansas and returned homed to not one, but two dogs. Our original dog Marvin got a new step-brother for the year of 2009, and he's loved every moment of it.

My final school year teaching in the state of Florida commenced.

And then, 2009, the heavens opened, and the unthinkable occurred: My husband did his first (and probably only) guest blog post.

But even more miraculous, I found out that my oldest, best friend is having her first baby, leaving the New Baby Total in my family and friends to seven new little blessings either born or conceived within your time limit, 2009.

Then, the hubs and I became a half-way house for a different kind of baby: An abandoned and abused puppy we called Ruby.

And on Oct. 24, we celebrated our first anniversary.

We also watched several friends join together in holy matrimony throughout you, 2009, and we even had the distinct blessing to be a part of their special days.

So, 2009, before you and I even knew it, I was turning a year older, and we were celebrating Christmas.

And here we are. Mere hours away from your ceremonial passing of the baton to the next year, 2010, which, I'll admit, makes me slightly happier to deal with since the number is easily divisible by two.

Who knows what the upcoming year will hold? We have hopes and prayers for it, of c0urse, but we also have twinges of sadness that you, 2009, are over.

So here's to you, 2oo9!

May we never repeat the mistakes we made during your reign, but may we also look back on our times with you with fondness!

Respectfully yours (despite my crazy, neurotic nature over odd numbers),

Love was named Larry

A year ago today, I slept my last night as a single girl.

A year ago today, I swore I wouldn't cry when I walked down the aisle.

A year ago today, I swore he wouldn't, either.

A year ago today, I was prepared to marry the most perfect man for me, the man who is now my husband.

The man who eats anything I cook, no matter how gross it is; the man who calls me in the middle the day just to see how I'm doing, forgetting every time that teacher's can't pick up the phone at school; the man who does silly dances in the living room, when he needs to pull my attention away from blogging; the man who, quite literally, gave up his whole, set-in-place life to marry me.

My husband.

We were married on Oct. 24, 2008, and so, tomorrow, we will celebrate our first anniversary.

We will celebrate a love story we were both so incredibly blessed to be a part of.

We will rejoice in the fact that a year ago, we married our best friends, surrounded by the rest of our best friends.

And we will remember how we met a little more than 3.5 years ago...

***

I was starting graduate school.

And when I say I was starting graduate school, I mean "I was starting a serious, post-graduate program where I intended to hunker down and perform many important acts of research because after all, I was nothing if not a serious, driven, full-of-myself academic." (Little did I know...)

But because I was starting graduate school, I needed a rather short-term job.

At this point in my life, I was working as a journalist. I was going back to school for a master's in journalism, in fact.

So I applied to no less than 10 different short-term, paid positions at a variety of publications.

Ten publications that would let me return to graduate school after less than a year of work.

Slowly, one by one, all 10 of the opportunities lined up.

And then all of them, one by one, promptly fell through.

Seriously, I'd get the job, only to have an editor tell me the position was cut.

Another newspaper said they were turning the job into a non-paid internship.

One publication fired their human resources director, and apparently her parting gift was all the new hires she'd brought to the publication. (As in, they didn't want us, if she'd hired us.)

I mean, weird stuff. Weird stuff got in the way of all 10 short-term opportunities.

So, in the end, I was jobless. And I was kind of desperate.

You see, part of the reason I wanted a new job so badly was that I wanted to escape before graduate school.

At the time, I technically had a boyfriend.

A boyfriend I didn't even like.

We had met in high school and ended up dating as adults for three years. I told myself I'd marry him, mostly because he had me believing he was the best (and only) guy I'd ever get.

It's not really important to belabor that relationship, but it's safe to say it was unhealthy. At least for me.

He was so clearly not the guy for me, and I ignored years of God and all my friends indicating so.

But I didn't know how to get out of it. So, quite literally, I was looking to run. To move away for a little while to a town where he wasn't, and I could be.

So, on a whim, I applied for a job to work at a camp for chronically ill children. I had done volunteer work at this place a couple years before, and I'd fallen in love.

But my graduate-school-driven mind never allowed me time to go back.

So, because again, I was desperate, I saw this as my chance.

And within three days of applying, I was offered the job.

At the time, I didn't know this, but the normal application/interview process for this job takes most people a month or more.

I literally sent in my application, conducted my interviews and was hired by the end of the week. (If I'd only known....)

So I packed my bags, ready to move to a little town in the woods where I had no cell phone service, little to no Internet access, and no solo apartment.

I, quite literally, was going to live in a log cabin with many different roommates.

Still, I left.

I left my not-right-for-me guy; I left my journalistic aspirations.

I just left.

I left scared out of my mind.

***

I got to my new place of work/home at dusk in late spring 2006, and I stopped to check in with the camp's administrative staff.

I met a bunch of people there; some checking in, others greeting new employees.

I eventually got the go-ahead to move on in, and I turned to walk back to my car.

Then somebody spoke to me.

Or, more appropriately, bellowed at me.

I heard a man's voice, a really deep voice with a bit of a drawl, say, "Hey, wait. We haven't had the chance to meet yet."

(This sounds like a come-on, but it wasn't. This was quite common for this camp. We all kind of existed in this little utopia, deep in the woods, of peace and love, united with our desire to work with kids. Everyone was, or became, over-the-top friendly.)

I turned around to see this big guy, holding a walkie-talkie, beaming, and wearing a read, paint-stained plumbing company T-shirt that said, "Hi, My Name is Larry" on the left breast pocket.

I extended my hand and said, "Hi, Larry."

The big guy looked confused.

"What? Um, I'm Patrick. Nice to meet ya," he said.

He finally followed my eyes to his old T-shirt and laughed.

"Oh, this is just an old shirt. I wear it cuz it's comfy," he said.

Then I laughed, exchanged another pleasantry or two, and walked away.

And to this day, I distinctly remember feeling, at the moment, like I'd been hit by a ton of bricks, as if the weight of the importance of the person I had just met was pushing down on me.

I just didn't know why.

***

So, I settled into training for my new job.

And a week later, I found out this Patrick-Larry character had been working at the camp for three years and would end up being my boss.

I was thrilled, because I found him really wonderful. But I didn't think anything else of it.

After all, I in the process of extricating myself from a very painful relationship. (At this point, we both knew it was over, and the other guy started to fight. And he turned out to be downright mean.)

I also was in love with my new job and the children I worked with, and I literally lived and breathed it 24-7.

Frankly, I had no time to think about the fact that I found my boss to be one of the most amazing human beings ever.

I was too busy.

***

I was too busy, in fact, for the entire time I worked at that camp.

It took until my last day on the job for me to realize why meeting Patrick had been so significant.

Both Patrick and I were assigned a housekeeping job, of sorts, moving picnic tables to a centralized location on the camp grounds.

This involved a lot of lifting and sweating, but it also involved me finally spending time with my boss, who I'd never actually had a real conversation with.

So we lifted tables, and we talked about our families.

We organized tables, and we talked about our loves and passions.

We cleaned tables, and we talked about our futures, our goals and our dreams.

The very next day, I was set to drive back to my old home and start graduate school; Patrick was set to move out of Florida, back to his hometown of Arkansas for another job, as well.

We spent our last day with picnic tables and each other, and it was one of the best days of my life.

***

The next morning, I cried when I left that camp. I cried leaving the new friends I'd made. I cried leaving that safe utopia that was filled with love and peace. I cried because the real world was a mean place, and I had to go back into it.

And I cried because I felt, for sure, that I'd never have another conversation like the one I'd had with Patrick the previous day.

Until he called me two days later.

He looked up my number from our job directory, and he called to wish me luck on my first day as a teacher of an intro-college course, a job I'd secured that would help me pay for graduate school.

I missed the call, actually. He left a message.

And then he called the next day.

And the day after that.

And the day after that.

And left message after message after message.

And pretty soon, every night, we were talking about our families, friends, loves, passions, goals and futures, sometimes till 2 or 3 in the morning, just like the day we'd spent with the picnic tables.

Until one early morning, when he called me one more time. This time at 4 a.m., after we'd already had our nightly conversation.

"I know this is like so ninth-grade of me," he said. "But I just have the need to tell you this. I think you're wonderful. In fact, I think you're perfect. And I think I'm falling in love with you. And by that, I mean I want to spend the rest of my life with you, because I don't want to fall in love with someone who I'm not going to marry. So, I guess I just want to say I love you."

You read about these things happening, you really do.

But until you're in that moment, you don't believe they happen to you.

I don't remember what I said back.

I honestly don't.

But I do remember agreeing that I was in love with a man I'd never even walked down the street with, hand-in-hand.

I do remember being shell-shocked, because when I'd come back to go to graduate school, I'd prepared to, literally, be single for a long, long time, forever maybe, if I never found my husband.

And a few weeks after I'd vowed to God and myself that the next man I dated would be the man I'd marry, Patrick all but proposed at 4 a.m.

So I fell. In love.

Into the beautiful space of knowing that this man was my husband, and that while I still had some years ahead of me, I had met the man whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. And who wanted to spend the rest of his life with me.

Six months later, and Patrick moved back to Florida to be near me.

Six months after that, he proposed (formally.)

A year after that, we were married.

And a year after that, we're here today, still in love, celebrating our one-year wedding anniversary.

And I'm still terribly glad I met "Larry" 3.5 years ago.

***

Have a wonderful weekend everybody! Happy Friday!

Can you hear it?

If you listen very, very closely, you might just be able to make it out.

There. Right there.

That faint, high-pitched tinny noise.

That, my friends, is the collective scream of my students, heading back to the 10-month prison known as HIGH SCHOOL on Monday.

Poor things, stuck in their last, fleeting summer weekend, these humid nights, when the days seem to fly by, and before they know it, their bums are back in desks before 8:30 a.m. every morning.

It's all too easy for me to remember my own high school experience, actually. The funny thing is, I feel like I'm now a totally different person than the awkward, insecure girl I was in high school.

Still, the older, more mature me still cringes at my memories of a me as a teen, going about my day-to-day existence and not giving into the temptation to shrink into a ball and whimper, "Does anybody really like me? You know! Me! The girl who wears all the water-polo sweatshirts to hide her wider-than-normal, not-terribly-feminine, broad shoulders."

I mean, I had friends. I was good in school. I never did anything terribly dumb, or ridiculously stupid, or horrifically shameful. All in all, life wasn't half-bad for High School Me.

But still, being a teenager, especially on the first day back at school, is rough.

Let me just take you back...

Remember? You had to face that sometimes-alarming school schedule, wondering where the heck Room 347 is and how you'll ever find the elusive Mr. Gwinn's class.

You had to face your own arms piled high with class textbooks, school supply lists and syllabi, wondering how you'd be able to write your first high-school English paper before the week was up while also buying, organizing and carting around four 3.5-inch, three-ring binders.

You had to face some crazy teachers, who were already giving you nightmares with phrases like "pop quizzes," "Saturday detentions," and "I'll burn every cell phone in the room if I so much as hear a text message come through." (OK, that wasn't exactly our generation, but I like to live in the present.)

Still, if that's all you remember, you were one of the lucky ones, because if you think about it, your first day could go a whole lot worse.

For instance, there's the select few kids who have totally botched schedules: The freshmen registered for AP Spanish; the senior boy enrolled in freshmen girls' P.E.; the editor-in-chief of the school yearbook listed on the roster of the newspaper class. (Um, yeah, don't even get me started on that one.)

Then there is always the lunch-time drama: Where are my friends? Where should I sit? Are those seniors going to beat me up if I go near "their table?" What if no one I know has the same lunch as I do? (This, apparently, is very traumatizing for high-schoolers. My father, who has clearly seen some time away from the high school circuit, still remembers his "junior year, when I didn't know anyone at my assigned lunch, except Bobby Bobberson, and he switched out the first week. Leaving. me. all. alone. It was horrible. Just horrible." Poor Dad. But where were we...)

You also might happen to have about 18 syllables in your last name. You're the student forced to listen to its pronunciation be butchered by six different teachers over a five-hour period, while they're calling roll. Invariably, they mispronounce it so badly that they inadvertently make it sound like some (lewd) term for genitalia, and the boys in the back of the class start to snicker.

Bam! And just like that, you've got a new nickname.

You also might have forgotten your medical release form, causing you to be left out of football try-outs and relegated to water-boy duty "until you can remember to bring your forms - and your brains - to practice, young man."

Or better yet, you get run over by the crazy journalism teacher, barreling down the hallways and dragging around her entire class on wheels in a trunk bigger than your car. (Hehehe.)

As a result, you spend the entire first month of school in an air cast.

OK, OK, you get the point: High school is rough.

I really feel for (most of) my students, who have to face a lot of responsibility with very unsure shoulders.

It's rough out there, in those hallways filled with brick walls, lockers and that unmistakable stench coming from the girls' bathroom.

It's confusing out there, in a world where you need a notarized hall pass just to go pee, poop, or secretly sneak in a cell phone call.

It's heart-breaking out there, in those first moments when you realize your high-school crush has a girlfriend at the cross-town rival school, or that the summer brought Becky Robertson boobs and a fabulous tan, while all you got was zits and a cheap trip to Yearbook Camp (where no one gets tan. Ever.)

Really, it's amazing we all survived it.

And even more so, it's amazing that some of us want to go back.

We watch T.V. shows about high-schoolers. (All you closet "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" fans, I know who you are.)

We dig through boxes and boxes of memories, things we saved lest we forgot the spirit boxes, lettermen jackets, prom corsages, honors cords, and SAT scores we lived and breathed for four years of our adolescent lives.

We hear Green Day's "Time of Your Life" or The Verve Pipe's "The Freshmen" and tear up.

We still have Puffy-painted spirit T-shirts from the our senior Homecoming Game. We still have the pictures framed of us wearing the the Puffy-painted spirit T-shirts at our senior Homecoming game, arms around our friends, or "BFFs," as the caption on the back of the photo says.

We remember those teachers we thought were the coolest people ever; we remember those teachers that we hated more than anyone; we remember those teachers we scared so badly that they quit teaching and went into early retirement.

We remember.

As a teacher, I am now blessed to watch other kids build up their boxes of prom corsages and school spirit gear, photos of them at Homecoming Dances, winter plays, senior banquets, the like; they now get the chance to put together their own boxes of memories.

I envy them a little.

And then, I don't.

It's all too easy to look back on high school, as an adult, and miss the days when all you had to worry about was group projects, bad breath, and senior bullies.

Heck, we even long for it, for nostalgia's sake, sometimes.

But then, I look at the faces of the kids that will come pouring back into the hallways on Monday, and I'll remember what it's like to want to crawl into my own skin and hide.

And so, this weekend, I pray that my students will know peace in our school. That they will know love in our school. That, as they build their box of memories, they won't have to fill it with too much baggage, too much heartache, too much lost innocence.

And that when they think back on these high school years later on down their roads, they will remember me not as the teacher they hated, not even as the teacher they loved, but as the teacher who tried to help them crawl out of their skin and experience high school, flaws and all.

Because we all deserve to look back on our box of memories with laughter and love, not pain.

We all deserve to one day look back and actually miss high school.

Happy Friday everyone!
__
And don't forget to ask my husband some questions here! We'll be posting his answers next Thursday!

Holy T-shirt!

The lovely Kristen over at Ladybug Blessings bestowed on me a while back the Keepsake Blogger Award! Thank you, Kristen! I'm so honored!

I have been a total slacker on posting about it, so as blogger penance, I am fully committing to this award. And let me just warn you all, this award will now lead you into a rather interesting look at my past. Hold on to your hats, or in this case, T-shirts!

First off, just so we all know what we're playing for, the rules:

1. Post a funny or sweet keepsake that tells something about you. 2. Pass the award on to 10 other bloggers that you think are keepers.

A funny or sweet keepsake about me? This was surprisingly tough. I had several sweet contenders, but I didn't want to get too sappy on a Tuesday, so as I was wondering around my house, looking for inspiration, I glanced down at a particularly embarrassing part of my life:


The T-Shirt Drawer, otherwise known as, The Place Old Jersey Goes to Die.

I have a strong connection to my T-shirts. I know that sounds weird, but they really do mean the world to me. They tell my story, in a way.

In that drawer, you can find T-shirts I got more than 10 years ago, for some random activity I participated in during high school, perhaps, like my high school graduation, the state championship water polo tournament, or a swim meet.

Now, I've moved past a point in my life where, for the most part, I can wear these living pieces of history. Some are so threadbare and stained that I'd be ashamed; others have been shoved in that drawer for so long that wrinkles have literally become ingrained in their fabric. Plus, nothing says professional like a good old T-shirt, circa the year 1999, does it?

But I still can't part ways with them. (Plus, I don't think Goodwill could sell them. And the homeless shelter? Well, it seems a little unfair to make to make a homeless woman wear a threadbare shirt that says, "If you can't take the heat, get out of the pool. 2000 Wildcat Swim Team.")

So there they sit, crammed into my top drawer. (Because I don't wear them, I rarely fold them. What can I say? It's a slippery slope.) They sit, taking up space for no good reason, other than sentimental attachment.

I've been saying for ages that I'm going to cut them up and sew them into a quilt. And I will. One day. (When pigs fly, and I look like Audrey Hepburn.)

But until that point, I thought you all might like to take a look at my T-shirt Treasure Trove. (Cue music that's supposed to warn you that you're about to enter into some very odd flashbacks.)

Here's the 10th-anniversary T-shirt for a camp that my husband and I used to work at. I have four of this exact shirt. Four. Don't ask me why I've been keeping them all. Even sentimental attachment doesn't explain that one.


Here's the lovely director's shirt for Golden Key International Honor Society, of which I was a member in college. This is also known as the Ugliest Shirt in My Collection. Seriously, I don't think you can tell from the picture, but the gold color is more like a mustardy puke-ish shade of yellow. It's just bad.

Oh yes, and the T-shirt I wore when I was a referee at college dodgeball tournament that was set to raise money for Florida's hungry chilren. I'm not entirely sure how I ended up ref-ing games where grown boys chucked rubber balls at each other. To be honest, I don't even remember playing dodgeball myself. Ever. But apparently, I was good enough to get a T-shirt out of the deal.


Then there's my vast collection of University of Florida (Go Gators!) fitness instructor T-shirts. Seven years and about 18 T-shirts later, I no longer teach fitness at my alma mater, but these tops, complete with their gross sweat stains, definitely bring back memories.

Oh, and I can't forget the rather depressing, yet positively pink!, T-shirt from the women's community service group I started with my best friend Blair while I was an undergrad. We were really into life-affirming, motivating statements at the time, and since we designed the shirt ourselves, we managed to pepper it with no less than 13 quotes from women throughout history. Hello, overkill!

Sadly, though, that T-shirt wasn't my first foray into clothing design. My T-shirt drawer did not disappoint, revealing many a T-shirt craft project from my earlier years.



Here's one of the matching T-shirts, made by my best friends' Sherri, Melissa, and me, that were to commemorate our friendship, I suppose. The friendship lasted. The T-shirts? Not so much. In fact, I'm probably the only one of us crazy enough to keep this thing around. And let's not even talk about how old this thing is. And don't you love the iron-on design? (Seriously, Sherri, this is cracking me up right now! I remember ironing this on!)

Now, this wasn't our only attempt at "BFF" T-shirts. Take a look at this one. Puffy paint!

Although to be fair, I still love that quote. Melissa and I made these, and then got tired of waiting for them to dry. So we stuck them in the freezer. No joke.

Now, I'd like to chalk all of my puffy painting days up to teenage antics. But I can't. Because another friend of mine, Julie, and I proceeded to paint these lovely numbers for when we started teaching a Boot Camp fitness class. In college. The class was good. Our clothing was not. (We actually had matching whistles. Sigh.)

Seriously, people, what is wrong with me? This only comprises about 1/5 of my T-shirt drawer. I have bridesmaid, maid of honor and bachelorette shirts, from my wedding and others. I have a gymnastics shirt, somewhere, from back in middle school! I have a U.S. Navy Water Polo shirt and a Green Bay Packers shirt, both attempts to support my brother and my father's undying sports loves. I can only imagine what else is crammed in this drawer!

However, I have put you through enough. And if you've made it through this whole thing, I sincerely thank you, from the bottom of my heart. No one should have to see that. Thank you, again, for your patience and acceptance:)

So now, I have to tag 10 people to do this fun activity. (Although, as always, if you I don't tag you but you want to do it, by all means, jump on in!)

So I would like to pass along the Keepsake Award to: Melissa, Mrs. Southern Bride, Brett, Jessica, Carrin, MissBliss, Nat, Jillian, Joshley and Charles, and Jenny.
Love you, girls!

And happy Tuesday everyone!

Hubs takes a trip down memory lane

Last night, I walked in on a miracle occurring in my very own kitchen...the hubs was cooking!

And, bigger still, he was cooking with purpose and a sense of deliberate-ness.

The man was following a recipe.

Because I'd been feeling so crummy, he decided he was going to surprise me by making me one of his favorite dishes from his childhood (insert drum roll here).

His Aunt's Chicken and Dumplings.

Now, being the bad wife that I am, I, of course, have no idea how to make this dish, so it's not like he can put in a request with the good old wifey to whip up batch whenever he's got a craving.

So the man did it all himself.

He went through all the trouble of:
1. E-mailing his aunt for the recipe
2. Buying all the ingredients
3. Making the meal
4. Making enough of the meal that it could double as two meals (I heard angels singing when he told me this part!)
5. Garnishing the meal with fresh dill (even I don't use garnish on our dinner dishes!)

I was pretty impressed.


He actually made the dumplings from pre-made biscuits from the little cans that explode when you whack them against the counter tops or accidentally drop them (both completely sufficient ways to open those little suckers in my household when I was growing up.)

Now, I'm a teensy bit paranoid of food poisoning (I freeze bread and defrost only the slices we need...like I said, paranoid), so I didn't actually enjoy my dinner that much, amid all my furtive pokes at the dumplings and questions of "Babe, are you sure these are cooked completely?" (Confession: I did not know dumplings were supposed to be a little goo-ey. I know. I'm ashamed for me, too.)

But it really was delicious, and Patrick loved them so much! He said he totally got a flashback to his childhood, when he used to dig on the bottom of the pot for second helpings because "sometimes, there'd be extra dumplings hiding down there!"

I loved hearing those memories, and it just reminded me of all the foods that bring back childhood sensory experiences for me.

My food trigger would have to be popcorn made on the stove-top, or "rainy-day popcorn," as my mom called it. We ate it all the time (and especially when it rained outside, for some odd reason), and I smell it and taste when I make it now, and I instantly flash back to being a dirty 9 year old, playing outside with my brothers all morning and eating popcorn in the afternoon inside the house during the Florida rain-storms.

It's just so funny how powerfully food can affect our memories.

Do you all have an dishes or tasty treats that bring back childhood memories? If you have some time, feel free to share. I love hearing people's food and childhood stories!