30/30: Happy New Era!

October 16th

For my last photos in my twenties, I wanted to pay homage to my running status as the world’s last young, old person.  Though, if it wasn’t a Wednesday night in North Carolina (and probably if my sister was around)…I’d prefer to be spending my last hour watching the Thunder Down Under.

I tried to think of something ceremonious I could do.  People like to plant trees.  I recalled a seedling packet for a Japanese Red Maple (I love those trees) that we received as a favor during a wedding we attended when we first moved to San Diego.  I have no idea if the seeds will still sprout, but I planted it right before midnight and made a wish.

Of course, I had to stay up until midnight of my birthday just like you do on New Year’s.  Only I’m the only person cheering, “Happy new era!” like the crazy old lady I now am.

30/30: Last Pictures of a Young Man

October 15th 

(Tommie's Birthday)

I made Tommie take pictures before the clock struck midnight on October 15th to capture his last moments in his twenties.  Then I woke Maya up and bothered her too.

This is the first birthday that's sitting heavily with me--it feels substantial and scary, which is why I'm trying to disguise it as "fun."  

At 10:30 last night, I suddenly felt anxious about Tommie turning 30, as if he might drop dead the second it happened and I told him he should be spending his last hour doing something crazy--he should go to a strip club or something!  He said I wasn't making him feel better.  So, his last moments of youth were spent doing work on his computer and yelling at me for taking annoying pictures.

And just like that, we're halfway through 30 to 30!

30/30: When AARP Finds You (20 years early)

October 2nd

Tommie worked from home today so we were able to go to the gym together in the morning and we checked out a YMCA we hadn't yet been to (downtown Durham location).  

I made us smoothies afterwards and we got to enjoy an early dinner--a hearty meal of American Chop Suey.  

Perhaps the best thing that happened today was that Tommie received a registration card from the AARP.  I remember how mad my mom was when she turned 50 and got her first solicitation from AARP.  She had just moved across the country to California and she said, "How did they find me!?"  This feels worse--they found us 20 years early.  There's nothing to make you feel like you're aging too fast than a letter saying, "We're here to help you make the most of life over 50!"

30 Days of Turning 30 Kick Off

October is my birthday month and this month I'm turning 30.  It's impossible, but apparently true.

My late twenties were not easy on me, so in a way, that's the silver lining--I'm not dreading the milestone of entering a new era.  Still, I feel like I should be doing something to commemorate the moment.

I wish I came up with the idea sooner, but last night (September 30th) at 11 p.m.  I decided my husband and I (he is turing 30 this month too) should challenge ourselves to "30 Days of Turning 30."  I don't know exactly what this means, but it currently means thinking of something fun and creative to do each day of our birthday month.  Some days it can be as simple as taking a good walk or cooking a good meal, other days it should be more elaborate.  If my sister were here, she'd call it her "30-Day Shit Show."  We're a little more sophisticated (and lame) than that.

October 1st

Seafood sales at Harris Teeter prompted us to cook a fish dinner with a "side" of baked lobster tails.  Fish is a rarity of us nowadays because it's hard to get wild caught, fresh(ish), affordable fish in the middle of the state.  

Lobster is always a good way to kick off a birthday month.

Radio Silence...And A New Blog

This past year kicked my ass.  Actually, it's been a gradual build-up of a few hard years cumulating to this final boot in the butt.

While writing helps me sort through emotions and hardships, it didn't seem productive/fair to subject the cyber world to my woes, so I didn't write much at all.

This year was emotionally and physically destructive and I blame it on one thing.  Doctors.   They are my Kryptonite and they wore me down.  After a year of appointments with 10 different doctors, going through dozens of tests and lab work to try to figure out a chronic pain in my lower right abdomen, a pelvic pain specialist finally figured out it's a hernia.

The worst part is that when the pain first started I read an article in the NY Times about how difficult hernias are to diagnose in women so I asked every doctor about it but they all told me I was wrong and thought I was crazy.  I can't even begin to tell you how frustrating and taxing this experience was for me.

Here is a link to the article about diagnosing hernias in women.  All doctors should read this.

I am partly relieved to finally know what the problem is but terrified, of course, to face surgery and recovery.

With that said, I'm focusing my attention elsewhere.  In the midst of all this madness, my husband and I bought our first home.  It needs major updates so I have no shortage of projects lined up and things to distract me from the rest of my problems at hand.

To chronicle the progress of the house for our families, friends, and anyone else to follow along, I started a new blog.  It's called The Amberican Dream.  

Hope to see you there!

Adult-In-Transition

We have different stages to pass through in life--there is childhood to adolescence, adolescence to young adult, and young adult to adult...you get the idea.  Each stage comes with increasingly difficult challenges we must get through before successfully moving on to the next phase.  I've always been hyper-sensitive to these transitional moments.  They are full of change and uncertainly and they put my worry-meter on high alert.

As an adult-in-transition, I find myself worrying about things I never had to worry about before--big things. I worry about my health, I worry about my parent's health, I worry about long-term financial stability, about settling in the right place, buying the right house, and starting my own version of a family.  

I joke that I feel like I'm going through a second puberty--only "adult puberty" feels worse.  My body isn't changing, it's decaying.  My emotions aren't melodramatic, they are dramatic.  At this rate, I'll need a lobotomy when I hit menopause.

Through each transition we gather wisdom, we gather strength, and we gain a few new scars.  I have felt myself getting knocked down over and over again as I try to figure out a comfortable landing spot (both mentally and physically) for my adult life.  Some days I can  feel myself gathering strength, while other days I feel like I'm falling backwards.

I need to remember that we don't get to choose when or how the transition stops.  One day, life just gets a little easier, but really, it's us--we've adjusted to the hardships and it feels like life is easier.  I just have to hope that I come out on the other side of all this a wiser and stronger soul.  I'm working on it.

Welcome 2013: A Four Year Review

It took me far too long this morning to figure out that I have been blogging for four years.  (I'm really bad at math.)  Here are some stats about my four year tenure blogging that Google helped me figure out.

Since I began this blog just before the start of 2009, I have moved from California to Massachusetts to North Carolina.  We have lived in four different apartments.  That's almost one state and one apartment per year.  Maybe it's time to settle down.

I blog an an average of 40-50 posts per year, which is half the amount of posts I completed in my first year.  I guess the "newness" blogging rubbed off a bit after that first year.

How to make Soup Can Luminaries is my #1 viewed post of all time, with almost 700 views.  Pinterest surely has something to do with that.

I have 246 comments total--most of which are from my family, though a few brave cyber readers share their thoughts here and there.  Thanks brave cyber readers...I appreciate knowing it's not only my family reading.

Obviously, most of my page views come from the U.S., but the second largest number of views come from Russia.  Who would have thought?  Then it's Canada, The United Kingdom, and India.

Today, I begin my fifth year of blogging and wish everyone around the world a great start to 2013!

Meeting a Foster Family

As a woman of childbearing age who does not want to bear her own children, I often find myself doing a tricky dance around the subject. Explaining to people that fostering and/or adopting is my first choice for creating a family is like telling people I'd rather walk across the country than take a plane or a car. It's a much harder route. Why would I do that?

Last week, I went to the doctor and listened to the "make sure you take those folic acid pills for the future baby" lecture I have heard a million times before. In the past, I would launch into a counter speech, but at some point I realized that my doctors didn't believe me; didn't understand me, and they definitely didn't care to listen to my anti-childbirth diatribe. This time, I just nodded my head, while thinking about how ironic it was that later that night Tommie and I were headed over to a couple's house to learn about the foster care system.

This couple, still in their 30's, has four children of their own and has fostered five children over the past few years. It was a welcome change to be able to discuss our plans openly with people and get their firsthand account. Even though the process is as emotional as one would expect, and the system is as frustrating as most systems are, talking to this couple made me more excited about the idea. 

People ask why put in the effort when the kids assigned to you are likely to leave after a such short time? 

After discussing one of their most difficult good-byes with a pair of siblings they thought they were going to get to adopt, the husband we were talking to looked at his wife and said, "Don't you feel like the kids were in a much better position after being with us than when they arrived?" And she answered, "They were." And if that's all I do, it's worth it.

The woman left me with a list of books to check out. I'll share them here for anyone who might be interested.

* "One Small Boat" and "Another Place at the Table," by Kathy Harrison
* "Three Little Words," by Ashely Rhodes-Courter
* "Damaged" and "Happy Kids," by Cathy Glass

Feet on the Ground

When we moved into our new place in North Carolina this June, the entire yard was covered in several inches of leaves, sticks, acorns, vines, beetles, snakes...you name it. 

After weeks of sweaty determination, about 300 mosquito bites, and breaking out into hives after brushing up against some kind of poisonous plant, I can finally see most of the ground in the backyard. 

I wish all that raking revealed something beautiful underneath, but really, it's just dirt. 

On the bright side, every pile we rake displaces the bugs that were getting a little too comfortable around the perimeter of the house. Less wet leaves also (I hope) means less misquotes. And it just looks a lot "cleaner" back there.

Even though it's currently too hot and buggy to sit outside, getting the deck set up with furniture and lights was, naturally, one of the first projects I worked on. You know I love my lights and lanterns.

The next step for the yard is determining if I can figure out some kind of groundcover in certain areas. I actually like that some of it has patches of moss (albeit, dried out moss until it rains). Maybe I'll plant shade tolerant flowers in the circle around the tree, or try to get a patch of grass for Maya so she stops rolling in the dirt with her ball. 

It's all new to me...the climate, gardening, and having to soak myself in calamine lotion every night.

Our *New* Anniversary

Last year, July 30th was a hot, sunny day in New England and I couldn't believe that I had planned an outdoor wedding that would not be rained out...it was a miracle.

So much has transpired over the past year--I started a new job, we traveled, I had surgery on my foot, my mom had surgery on her lung, Tommie started a new job, and we moved from Massachusetts to North Carolina. It makes the wedding seem like it was much more than a year ago...which is why I wish we could do it again!

But really, even if I tried to do it all over, I couldn't guarantee the sky that day would be so blue, or that everyone I loved could be there, or that the dress I ordered on a whim would be just right, or that Maya and all the kids would be so well-behaved during the ceremony, or that my Dad would make everyone laugh so much with his speech, or that my day-of wedding planner would be so supportive, and everyone who helped us in some form would be amazing, or that I would look back and appreciate it so much that I'd even want to do it all over again. This day last year was perfect.

Going to Carolina

We will be on our way to North Carolina this time next week. Well, I will be. Tommie is already there, so I guess he'll be on his way back.

We've been living separate lives for a few weeks while he started his new job down there and I stayed here to wrap up and pack. I think we both feel we could use a temporary boyfriend/girlfriend while the other one is away. I swear I just want one to help pack and move things around, though naturally I wouldn't mind if he did this with his shirt off. Alas, I'm managing without a Ryan Gosling look-a-like to help, but I'm anxious to get going. 


Just like when my family moved to California, I'm not sure what to expect. That was over six years ago, and now I look back and I forget what a crazy time that was--learning a new place, meeting new people, making a new life. 

The first time I left home I was nostalgic, but it's different leaving the second time. It is partly true what they say, that you can never really go back home. It's not the place that changes so much as it is you that changes from living somewhere else. Also, after leaving home for the first time, you realize you can leave home. You can make a life for yourself somewhere else, and that knowledge is powerful. 

I used to be afraid of change, but over time I realized I can't control it--all I can do is try my best to thrive within it. So, here we go onto the next big change. I'll be sure to document bits and pieces along the way.

We Are Moving...Again!

The stars have aligned for my husband and I to embark on our next journey, and it's taking us to North Carolina!

Tommie was recently offered a job at a non-profit based in Durham, NC. I really think the change will be good for us and will help us move on to the more "grown-up" stages of our lives. Let's be honest, with the household income of a writer and an organizer, we really should be in a more affordable place. 

The truth is, Tommie and I have felt a pull to North Carolina since our first road trip together six years ago. It was the first stop on our drive from Massachusetts to California. Since then, we have been back to visit on several occasions. My Mom blames Dawson's Creek, which is partly true. I fantasized about rowing down a moonlit creek where they filmed the show until I learned there were gators down there. Anyway, we won't be by the creeks in Durham, but there is still a lot to like about the area. It's warm, it's cheaper, it's up-and-coming, and it's an interesting place to explore.

Before Tommie landed his interview, we started a Vision Board on Pinterest with North Carolina in mind. Now, a couple months later, we are getting excited to head down there and start pinning in real life.

The Hollow Woman

My sister and I joke about wanting to be hollow...and I don't mean shallow, though we can sometimes be that too...I mean hollow bodies--no bones, no blood, no organs. Like one of those chocolate Easter bunnies'. I wish I was born hollow (and somehow still alive) because as I'm terrified of being "hollowed out" involuntarily.

My Mom hasn't had the best of luck keeping what's inside her. Heck, even my sister and I had to be cut out (C-sections); she told the Docs to grab her appendix while they were in there. Last year, they had to take even more from her...one of her kidneys that had a cancerous mass on it, and just last week they took a lobe of one of her lungs where another mass had formed. I am beyond thankful she is recovering well as I write this. My Mom is so much more than a bunch of cells and organs that are in her and taken out. I hope she always keeps her inner strength, humor, love, and of course, the rest of her insides. (She blogs about her experience here.)