love lust faith + dreams in 2013-2014

I am just tired. I'm so tired that I had three different dreams about sleeping last night and ended up calling in 'sick' and sleeping 'til noon. This is after going to bed two hours early. For a grand total of 14 hours of sleep. Most of this week has been cursed with overnight thunderstorms keeping me awake and breaking my sleep, and I am way too old for this crap. Shut up, sky.

Anyway, backtracking.

Sara's wedding trip went well. I was thrown a bone and Aaron could come after all, and seeing him walk in the door Thursday night was pretty much the best thing ever. We left Friday morning and got in town early enough to stop by parents' house, drop off my dog and change, and spend the night on the beach. We walked about 7 miles total (over 10k), and saw dolphins and stingrays and pelicans. We watched storms blow up over the Gulf and didn't see the sunset, but did see lightning over the water from the same thunderhead that blocked out the sun. I found lots of pennies and nickels and a quarter, we had ice cream and scoped out the sketchy-ass new amusement park, and briefly looked in JC Penney at dresses (wedding and sundress) as justification for using their bathrooms. At the end of the night, we watched Maleficent, which we both loved, and got home close to midnight. My dad wanted to hang out and show us his MRI brain scans, but we were both too tired to sit up straight.

Sheppy did really well, even downstairs in my parents' bedroom, but he did grow up there, and it reeked of my dad.

On Saturday was the wedding, at 2pm. I straightened my hair and then we just hung around, watching baseball on TV and messing around with the dogs until a thunderstorm knocked the cable offline. The dryer didn't fully dry my mom's clothes, so we left without them. We had no umbrella and it was still raining lightly, so Aaron held a (clean) plastic garbage bag over my head from the parking lot to the church.

The wedding was a full Catholic Mass. My uncle, mom, and dad kept goofing off in the back row, which surprised me a little, because they were Catholic for decades and you'd think they'd be able to manage a Mass. That said, it took about 2 hours, and the Eucharist took FOREVER. Aaron and my dad plotted out our 10 kids and I threatened to raise them all Catholic and mandate that both men attend every. single. ceremony. and. sacrament. times ten.

Initially, I was supposed to play Clair de Lune on flute as Sara walked down the aisle. Then she messaged me to say that her mom had hired a quartet and did I still want to play as she entered the reception. In the end I declined, but I was still a bit surprised to see her walk down the aisle to a trio playing something I didn't recognize. Her dress was also ENORMOUS. I mean, two thousand dollars worth of ENORMITY and a train bigger than I am. It was beautiful, but I know my 'twin.' After the wedding, as I dodged people I hadn't seen in 10 years who wanted to coo over my growth and development, Sara's mom caught me to go full motherofthebridezilla on me about how come I didn't play?! Meanwhile, Grandma was trying to ooh and ahh over my engagement ring, and then Josh, the groom, popped up, grabbed my arm, and dragged me off to see the bride. Thank you, Josh.

I hugged Sara and got glitter all over me, she was delighted that I had made it, and then I blurted, "your dress is HUGE!" She agreed. She said she hadn't expected that. She then told me to hurry to the reception, because the bar was only open for an hour or two. The music + the dress--and the Mass, because last I knew, she wasn't an up-to-date Catholic at all, makes me think that she was not the boss of her own wedding. I overheard her mom say to someone else later that she "got the prayers, that's all [she] wanted," which I guess confirms that. Sara's parents are divorced, she's the only girl, and her dad has the money, and I don't even want to know how that all shook out.

The reception was a country club off the bay. It looks nice to most people, I guess, but the view is out toward the place where even rednecks fear to tread, so I thought that was pretty funny. I made some dry remark about that and I think my parents forgot that my friends all lived out there and I did some wild-ass driving out there, because they didn't quite get it... or they were being nice for Aaron, who knows. Regardless, my mom took some posed pictures of us and I'm sure none came out as sweet as she wanted, because she hasn't posted them online. Aaron and my dad did a lot of bonding, which was awesome, and other than that, it was a fairly standard moderately priced wedding reception. (That said, it was still way out of our price range, and we spent most of it going 'nope nope nope hey I like the candy bar nope.')

Oh. Story. On the drive down, I dripped a philly cheese steak all down my shirt, and then later, Aaron was trying to hold my drink so I could sip out the straw when we went over a bump, and my mouth went up while the straw did not, and it splashed all over me. Then at the reception, he somehow completely fumbled a carrot stick covered in ranch dressing and just about baptized me in ranch dressing. We laughed our asses off and my dad nearly took a picture. The dress has since been washed, but it was definitely the Weekend of Moneyshots. Face, boobs, everywhere.

We wanted to leave right afterward so we could drive back to Athens, but my parents held us up probably about an hour. They did manage to see us off, though, and as usual, Sheppy was super excited to go home. Thunderheads loomed ahead, and I prayed hard, so for 3.5 hours driving straight north, we had lightning all around us and about two sprays of light rain, and clear driving otherwise. Aaron looked up the radar once his phone had service again and there were only two storm cells along the route, but the lightning was crazy enough to be seen for literally a hundred miles in either direction.

We switched at the halfway point. I wasn't tired so much as I just needed a mental break from driving. He made it about 2 hours before getting too sleepy (at like, 1am) and we stopped at a Waffle House parking lot for a nap. I lied there, full of exhausted nervous energy, and prayed for the energy to drive home. Boom, second wind. I started the car and headed back, letting Aaron sleep. He woke up to me singing on I-20, three Interstates later, and laughed as I blew out my voice to Despair of an Alto. He played DJ and gave me things to sing all the way back and we made it home at 3am. And then craaashed.

We went to a steak house for lunch after we got up in honor of our two-year anniversary a few days later that week, went home, and went back to sleep. We're adults. And that means sleeping whenever we want. That or we're house cats.

Aaron left that night. The usual gloom descended. I think I made an entry about that.

The important part was that a bunch of little prayers were answered that weekend that reinvigorated my faith, and I sorely needed that.

The last two weeks have largely been a blur. I did the SAT last Saturday and I have the ACT tomorrow, so I've been working weekends as well. I've worked out a lot. I've come down with and recuperated from shin splints, and discovered the magic of icing my legs with frozen veggies. I've realized that what worked to lose weight and inches at 150 pounds isn't working at 140 pounds and I need to step up the game, which is going to annoy me a lot because I already work out about 5 times a week. It's not asking an awful lot to go up to 45-50 minutes a workout rather than 25-30, but uughhh, fine. I've been trying to up my mileage, anyway. I'm experimenting with calcium supplements (dark chocolate chews!) and ice to see if that helps my legs bounce back faster. I had some nasty shin fatigue last week. Those 7 miles on the beach did me in, I guess.

My period came about last week with a whopper of fatigue, to the point where I got up last Friday for work and fell asleep on the toilet for 15 minutes. I apparently turned narcoleptic. I stayed home (read: did not get behind the wheel of a car) and slept 15 hours total. So basically what happened today, minus the excuse of bleeding profusely.

I experimented with three ingredient cookies. The three ingredients are two ripe bananas, a cup of oats, and then whatever you want. I'm greedy, so my 'whatever' was dried blueberries, dark chocolate chips, and walnuts. (Baked 15 minutes at 350.) They are delicious! And pure healthy, right? Because fruit + dark chocolate + nuts + oats? There's no sugar or oil or anything added. I also have coconut and some dried cranberries/pomegranates/blueberry mix to try with the next batch. The dark chocolate and blueberries go magically together. They're like long-lost soulmates for my mouth.

My dad has promised not to worry about dogsitting for Aaron's family reunion, so I'll probably have a parent come up and stay for that. That would be awesome! It's in two weeks and we've been looking forward to it for a year.

Other than that, I've been job-applying and praying... and the holding pattern continues.

You are now caught up.