memorable memorial day.

memorial day has been a mixed bag for me.

in college they were the start of my kick-butt summer job. selling tickets to the gay ferry. that could and should be its own post.

my grandma passed away around memorial day in 2007. the next year my other grandma passed away.
a few years later, i bought a house. last year, john was here and yes, we went to...DISNEY!

but this past weekend might take the cake. literally. there was a ridiculous cake, see below.

first i flew to connecticut to help host my bff's bridal shower. it started out rocky when i woke up at 6:15am and i had wanted to leave my house at 6am. i jumped out of my bed half-crying, half-shouting "oh no oh no oh no" as i flashed back to high school when i woke up late EVERY day. my poor dog didn't get to poop and my poor airplane neighbor had to smell my stank since there was no time for a shower. good news is i probably set a PR driving to the airport.

so i gfinally get there and leah's mom (and aunts) and i don't mess around getting everything ready for the shower. there was a lot of complaining, by others, about the humidity. i honestly did not even feel it and i froze in the AC. thanks florida for thinning my blood that much. thanks also for giving me an awesome tan.

which one of these is not like the other?

saturday it hit me. leah's getting married. this is her shower. we are old enough to get married. we dreamed of this since we met 20ish years ago and i couldn't be happier for her. you can tell why we are bffs because her shower was chocolate themed.

we used share clothes. then i became an amazon.

see...cake!

after the shower, my mom and i headed over to my sisters so i could meet my new niece! she is almost three months and twelve pounds of pure pretty.

i've done a few things i'm proud of in my life. but i think one of my proudest moments was when i walked in the front door and my nephew saw me, got a huge smile and ran over to give me a big hug and called me "aunt jesse."

i'm sure i'm biased, but even with the buzz cut he is pretty much the cutest kid. his parents might disagree, but even his tantrums are cute. the way he scrunches his nose and the crease he gets in his forehead. a-dor-able. but i also can just sit back and watch.

he let me tuck him in both nights which was pure heaven. i know we are related because he has like 298 stuffed animals in his bed. just like i do did.

monday we went to the zoo and he only wanted to hold my hand (until i took him away from the elephants too soon) and kept asking "what's next?" he is getting tall enough where i don't have to look like the hunchback of notre dame to reach him. and his sweet hand in mine is as good as it gets.

side note: have you ever seen an elephant poop? if you haven't, put it on your bucket list. it's pretty incredible.

weekend highlights also included: seeing my college dance partner-in-crime chalee. back in the day we broke it down, on stage mind you, to mary j. blige and whoop there it is. our costumes were even more awesome. my college roomie, meggers came to the zoo with us. belgium waffles for breakfast. and a FRIENDLYS MILKSHAKE. (i have been dying for it since my last one in february at that half marathon)

and teaching aidan the magic of maple seeds...

hello, pinocchio!

and that folks is four days of perfection. a memorial day* to remember that's for sure.

*this weekend was made possible by the men and women who have served or are serving our country. THANK YOU! 

for the love of disney, volume one.

if you know me you know i love disney. i have so much to say about the most magical place on earth. but i'll start with this.

you know that game six degrees of seperation? where you connect joe schmoe with george clooney by saying he's your uncle's brother's cousin's roommate's dog sitter's boyfriend. well i can do that with pretty much anything or anyone and disney. minus five connections.

i have the uncanny ability to relate anyone, anytime or anything to a disney character, movie, ride, theme park or something that happened to me in, at or around disney. actually i think it's more like a superpower.

your dog? looks like the dog in lady in the tramp. yes, your dog is a tramp.

oh you went to new orleans? well have you seen princess and the frog? there is a little girl i know and the ONLY way i can remember her name is to think of princess tiana. that has nothing to do with new orleans besides the fact that princess tiana lived in nola and cooked delicious cajun food. and turned into a frog.

had a great margarita at your cinco de mayo party? i can tell you where to get a better one in epcot.

your camfire smells like spaceship earth.

i realized this super power when this weekend i stubbed my toe. no, seriously i did. and my first thought, after "ow, don't fall people are watching, just keep walking (ahem, nemo reference)" was "that reminds me of this one time i was in disney."

by the way, i say "this one time, when i was at band camp disney" more often than mickey himself. if you were in high school in the late 90s then you get that reference.

anyways, i was at the house of blues in downtown disney for july 4th with some friends to see a free show. i think the band was matt and kim? mike and kat? who can remember. the point is i was at disney without john (gasp!) and at the place we met no less.

yes, i met my former boyfriend in disney world. and it was a fairytale. minus fairies. more on that later.

this is a super flattering picture of the night we met. 

moving on (ha! no irony there)

since my mom reads this i'll just say that i may or may not have been drinking too many mojitos lemonades and breaking it down on the dance floor. i was jumping and shaking it all over the place when my non-dancey friend totally stepped on my toe. hard. maybe he thought i should stop jumping and shaking. no, i think it was just an accident. i'm a pretty good dancer.

there was blood and toenail breakage. i made many totally sober phone calls to john with some tears and lots of i miss you babys. and i never call anyone baby. i blame that on the lemonade. i called him at least a bajillion times from the bathroom at the house of blues, the cab and plenty more times at our hotel to tell him how bad my toe was. that he should fix it. all the way from indiana.

so yes, when i tripped on that rock, it was just like that one time at disney. minus the band, the dancing, the non-dancey friend and especially the lemonade. oh, and the phone calls. but my toe really did hurt.

point is i'm a very graceful person with one unfortunate toe who can connect anything to disney. in fact, i think disney should pay me to do this.

ps. i mean i'm pretty sure i can do this. i find myself mentioning disney in conversation ten times daily. you can test me but i can't guarantee my rate of success. but i'm pretty good. 

pps. if you're my mom you get my lemonade reference from senior prom. i may or may not have had a lot of lemonade then too.

ode to johnny.

i wouldn't be here if it weren't for johnny mathis. (seriously, it was my parents first date). normally i'm not a fan of cheesy ballad singers like neil diamond or barry manilow. but when i hear mr. mathis's vibrato i instantly feel at home.

did you watch the season finale of desperate housewives? if you didn't, you didn't miss much. but if you did, you would have heard johnny singing about love and loss at the end of the show. if you were me you would have instantly known your mom would be crying.

but i digress.

the point is that there were so many factors that had to come together for me to be here today, typing this post. i've always thought this and it has contributed to my bigger feelings about faith and life. and i've always abided by the "everything happens for a reason" rule.

but lately i've been having a hard time with that.

i've seen friends meet, marry, have babies in the 3.5 year span that john and i were together. i can't help but want the same for us. but here we are living states away, leading seperate lives. was it not meant to be? is there a reason? or are we screwing with fate?
i read recently that "comparison is the theif of joy" and there is so much truth to that. if i compare us to other thems, it will only make me unhappy. if i compare myself to you, or her, or kim kardashian i will either end up feeling unfairly better about myself (ahem, kim) or more likely short-handed. i can only be me and if i try to be someone else, i will be unhappy.

it just looks so much greener on the other side.

but if i keep thinking that i'll cheat myself on my own life. i have to enjoy what i have, and i really do have a lot. just because someone else's life looks better doesn't mean that mine isn't great. just because i want something different doesn't mean that i don't have what i need.

even if i don't like the things that have happened doesn't mean they didn't happen for a reason. too many double negatives there? 

anways, i realize there are much worse things out there that i could be dealing with. and perhaps i'm being over dramatic. i just want to be sure i'm on the right path. that johnny mathis's ballads are not wasted and that one day i'll really appreciate one of his cheesy love songs.

letting go.

i have had to let a lot of things go lately. and i'm not good at that.

you're talking about the girl that still has a notebook from kindergarten and her first teddy bear (well really the second one since i lost the first one in the mall when i was little).

first i let go of the mission i felt so passionate about. except i didn't really let go of that, i just traded it in for a new one and serve the old one as a volunteer. and i didn't let go of the 5K i panned for habitat either.

then i let go of john when he moved back to indiana. that one is still hard. when you are with someone for a long time it takes a little while to stop looking back. so many of my memories are of us and so many of them are good. (you tend to remember the bad ones less). i'm slowly prying my fingers off the choke hold i have on the "what-ifs" on that one.

i've been letting go of expectations, judgements, grudges, some hopes and wishes. or trying to, at least. my disney annual pass. (another hard one). maybe some weight, in my dreams. i've also been letting go of a large chunk of my bank account thanks to some self-prescribed retail therapy.

most recently i let go of the habitrot. my baby. my proudest accomplishment since moving here (besides buying my house). in a way it's liberating and in another way it is totally devastating. but they say doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. so after 5 years, i decided it was time to move on.

i guess it hasn't all been letting go. there's been some trading, some gaining and some moving forward. on occasionally there is some wallowing.

i've been doing a spring cleaning of my house, getting rid of all my accumulated junk, i realized it's hard to move forward when you are carrying baggage of your past. sometimes its really painful to throw something away but once it's gone, you hardly miss it.

just don't expect me to throw away that notebook and teddy bear.