If you had asked me about my bucket list a few years ago (well before I met the Architect), I would have clearly been able to tell you that my number one goal would have been to find a job where I could live overseas. I wasn’t quite sure what that job would be and even then, I knew I eventually wanted to settle back in the United States when it came time to settle, marry and start a family but time marches on. Circumstances change and situations evolve. The things you once wanted you either can’t have or you can’t do. You can choose to yearn for what you once wanted or you can look to the future and build new hopes and dreams to fill your bucket with. I’ve never been one to really dwell on the past; I’m forward looking. I’m a planner and I like looking to the future.

I met the Architect in 2007 and when I fell in love with him and got to the point that we were seriously talking about marriage. I eventually kind of abandoned plans to move abroad. It wouldn’t have worked with the Architect’s job and it wouldn’t work with my current job and I love what I do now. I was fine with that. A few friends asked me how I felt about abandoning those plans. I said I was fine and I was. I was fine and excited for this new future with this new person. I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything. I still want to see the world and I know I will eventually but now I have this wonderful guy that I want to share it with. It’s what I want with all of my heart.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that just because your plans change doesn’t mean that you’re giving something up. Or that you’re going to feel like you wasted your life later on. You may just be trading up!

I had never felt more awkward in my life. Middle school had been hard already. My family had moved just before I went into 7^th grade. In our new county, middle school was 6^th through 8^th grade so I came in right in the middle. There’s something kind of hard about being the new kid. People are curious about you. They want to know where you lived before, why did you move, etc. At that age, you are a novelty as a new kid. It was horrible; with everything else I was going through, to be under a microscope was the absolute last thing that I wanted.

My family had moved from a county that had the reputation throughout the region of being not the kind of place that you wanted to live. To put it bluntly, the county we moved from was a lot rougher than the county of wide open spaces and quaint little towns that we moved to. If we had stayed in the old county, I would have gone to a middle school that had metal detectors. Because of the reputation that my old county had, I was expected to talk a certain way (more street) and act a certain way (more street again). The fact that I didn’t fit into the stereotype that people in the new county wanted to put me in kind of threw people off and made me even more of a curiosity.

Middle school is hard. Everyone is going through the same time in their life, the same changes, and yet those same changes seem to become a point of contention for many. It’s such a weird time. I’ve never felt uglier or more out of place. I shot up about 4 or 5 inches and finally figured out that I had inherited those big hips from my Mom’s side of the family that I was so afraid of. I was totally ill at ease with this new body. I had a bad haircut… with bangs. I just felt horribly awkward. The sad thing is that everyone feels really alone at the time even though everyone is going through the same thing. Eventually I made a really good group of girl friends (I’m still friends with a lot of them today) and that made things so much easier. It’s just better not to face that time alone.

Ah, yes, I haven’t told you about our trip to Boston yet. I tried to upload pictures last night but Xanga wasn’t letting me.

 We got up early on Saturday and drove to the airport. The flight from this area to Boston is only a little over an hour. As we got off the plane, they played “Sweet Caroline.” It was rainy and icky but I was happy to be there. We got checked into our hotel and then decided that we wanted to walk around downtown a little bit. It was raining and silly me, who forgot to look at the weather only had flip flops. The Architect and I went on the hunt for some shoes. I ended up scoring a really cute pair of Sketchers shoes that I had my eye on several months ago for waaayyyy less than I had seen them for before. We ate lunch at PF Changs in the Prudential Center and while the food was good, service was horrible. It took us about 45 minutes to get our food!

Afterwards, we decided to go to Cambridge to walk around Harvard or Hah-vahd as the natives say there. Honestly, aesthetically speaking, Harvard is not that impressive. The pathways are beat up and pot-holed and the buildings aren’t anything to write home about. In fact, the Harvard campus looks a lot like the school where I first started my Masters, a little dinky, no name school in Northern MD. Haha, let it be known though that if you say Harvard doesn’t look impressive, you’ll get dirty looks from the students, which we did.

It poured on us while we were there but we walked around and shopped a little. We went into Lush, one of my very favorite stores, and they happened to be having a deal where if you spent $45 dollars, you got to spin a wheel and get a free item. I also got a free hand treatment while I was there. I was running low on Lush stuff (it’s bath and body stuff and between that and coffee, it’s getting me through grad school, lol) so I went shopping. I got a facial scrub, sugar scrub, and some bath bombs. When I spun the wheel, I got a gift box with a bubble bar and lotion and a shower bomb. I also spent enough money (about $50) to get a free item so I got a bubble bar. When we got back to the hotel, we found out that the cashier had accidently put in two gift boxes and two shower bombs. Score for me!

We were cold and wet from the rain so we got some Pumpkin Lattes and hung out in the hotel for a little while. We ate dinner at a really wonderful Irish pub while watching the Sox play in the rain.

It was a great day… stay tuned for part deux.

Of note: Tonight the Architect and I are going to a lecture on DC architecture for his professional society. It should be fun.

Our fire burns bright

Then there’s nothing left to burn

Yet my heart still beats

The truck was probably already about thirty years old when my dad inherited it from his dad, Grandpa John. It was rusted in some places and had a broad variety of dings and scratches all over the entire body. My mom pleaded with my dad to sell the truck or at least donate it; she didn’t want the truck sitting in the driveway taking up space and becoming an eyesore. My dad refused and assured Mom that he’d get it fixed up and he could use it around the farm. Eventually Mom gave in and simply told him he needed to move the truck to the garage behind the house. Dad moved it out back and over the next few months, he started to fix the car up. He hammered out some of the dings and he gave the truck a new coat of bright blue paint in the shade of Maui Blue. When we were in the hardware store picking out paint, Dad said that Grandpa and Grandma had gone to Hawaii for their honeymoon, 25^th anniversary and 50^th anniversary and that Grandpa had always said that Hawaii was his favorite place and that the name of the color was very fitting.

I was too young to help Dad much with the car but I loved sitting in the garage with him and watching him work. He always had country music on the radio and would whistle along with the songs and would work on the truck for a few hours in the evening. He tackled the outside of the car first. Finally he got to the interior. I helped him clean out the car. Even though Grandpa John hadn’t used the truck for a few years before he passed, it was filled with junk. There were receipts and books and coins and even a few old soda bottles. “Your grandfather never cleaned his car and it drove your grandmother crazy,” said Dad, chuckling and shaking his head as he picked up a crumpled receipt from the floor of the passenger side. Dad started working on cleaning between the seat cushions.

“Wow, Mary, wouldja look at this!”, Dad said holding out the small object to me.

“An arrowhead? Where did that come from?”, I asked as I took the small object from his hand.

“Don’t know exactly but Grandpa liked to look for those sort of things when we were still living in Montana. Come to think of it, I guess we were still in Montana when he bought this truck. He loved his arrowheads. He used to have a whole shoebox of them. I don’t know what ever happened to it though…”

“Wow, that’s pretty cool.”, as I put the arrowhead back in his hand.

Dad sort of smiled to himself and handed the arrowhead back to me, “I think your grandfather would have wanted you to have that.”

I liked that connection.

(this is fiction)

Momentum

Stop

Where are you?

Stop

You left me hanging

Stop

This is wrong

Stop

On your principle alone

Stop

I don’t understand

Stop

Where you’ve gone

Stop

Hope it’s not long

Stop

Until you’re back

Stop

Cancer. It’s a word that I dread hearing. I’m not sure if there is anyone in the world that doesn’t get a little queasy when they hear the word. When the word ‘pancreatic’ is put in front of cancer, my stomach sinks and my chest feels like it’s tightening. Patrick Swayze died from pancreatic cancer yesterday. I lost my grandma to pancreatic cancer three years ago. My mom’s best friend, a very good family friend of the entire family, is currently fighting pancreatic cancer and has been for quite awhile. She was actually diagnosed before Patrick Swayze, which if you know anything about pancreatic cancer, it’s pretty amazing that she’s still fighting.

I called my mom last night because I knew that she’d probably be pretty upset about Patrick Swayze dying just because it would make her think about her mom and her best friend. It’s amazing to me that something as small as a cell could be so pervasive and so threatening. The scarier thing about pancreatic cancer is that your pancreas is so close to so many other organs (i.e. intestines and liver, etc.) that it has the potential to spread. Even scarier is that you can’t really do much to prevent getting cancer. If you want to prevent lung disease, you can do things like not smoking. If you want to prevent a heart attack, you can keep your cholesterol down and exercise. There aren’t really any preventive measures you can take for cancer except for some forms of skin cancer. If you want to prevent internal cancer, you are kind of out of luck. There’s not much that you can do. You can try to limit exposure to carcinogens and the like but even that doesn’t mean that you’re totally safe.

I’ve always had a fear of the unknown. I like control. I like planning. While I don’t necessarily fear myself getting cancer (I can’t control it so why be scared), I have hated every minute of watching my loved ones go through cancer treatment. I don’t like not being able to make them feel better or to make the whole thing go away. I don’t like the unknown of where the cancer is going to go next. The loss of control is scary.

The Puncher

My youngest sister, KT, called me last night. She’ll call me every once in awhile with funny stories about things that she thinks I would appreciate as we both have really silly senses of humor. She checked her email yesterday only to see that she had three crime alerts in her email inbox. They had all come in on one day within hours of each other. She got a little nervous and so she opened the emails to see what’s going on. Apparently my alma mater (also the school the school she now attends) has a serial puncher. Not a serial robber, rapist, or killer. No, Towson has a serial puncher. All this guy does is ask people questions and then he punches them in the face and runs away. He asked one kid for a cigarette and the kid said he didn’t have any so he got punched. He asked another kid where the rec center was; the kid said he didn’t know so he got punched. He doesn’t steal wallets or anything. The Serial Puncher just punches people and walks away. It’s a very bizarre crime.

 The Dough

 Last night, we went to an auction for architecture art for the Architect’s professional society. Basically, they went out to a bunch of famous architects and had them do quick sketches on napkins and then the pieces were auctioned off to support the professional society. It was cool. Before that though, we ate at a place called Pizzeria Paradiso in Georgetown (there’s another one in Dupont actually). We had the best appetizer ever. It was all my favorite foods combined into one. It was beautiful, light, fluffy bread covered in a mixture of creamy goat cheese and herbs, with a layer of prosciutto over that and topped with sun dried tomatoes and fresh basil. Oh man, it was awesome. We got a cheese pizza that had fontina, mozzarella, gorgonzola, and pecorino on it that was also amazing.  And no, we didn’t buy anything at the auction. We looked though; oh how we looked.

 School

 Yes, I started school this week. I am taking statistics and two project management classes (quality and communications). It’s going to be a heavy load but after this, I’ll only have one semester left before I finish grad school. That is pretty cool.

 Boston

Because I’ve started school this week, I keep forgetting that we leave for Boston tomorrow. The Architect and I are going for a long weekend. We aren’t really sure what we’re doing but here’s a few things that we’re thinking about: trying to get in to see a Sox game (both are sold out but if we could find decent tickets someplace, we’d go), Kennedy Library (I’ve been there; the Architect hasn’t), trying to go whale watching, going to the aquarium. I’m excited. After DC, Boston is my next favorite city!

What are you doing this weekend?

History is a strange thing. Time can make it even stranger. An event that was so fresh in one generation’s mind, can simply become something that the next generation must have learn about in school and complete homework after the lesson. Time does indeed march on.

I read an article this morning in the post about how the events of 9/11 are now being taught in middle and high school. At first it struck me strange that something like that event would have to be taught. Wouldn’t everyone, even younger kids, remember what happened? Then I realized that a high school Junior or Senior today would have been about only 8 or 9 years old. Therefore, they probably weren’t old enough to really comprehend what was going on. I don’t remember that much specifically about being 8 or 9 years old.

It’s strange when what us that are a little older (I was a Junior in high school when 9/11 happened) still think of as sort of current becomes something that has to be taught in schools. It’s just a really weird feeling for me since this is really the first time that I’ve encountered something like watching something I still think of as very current history slide under the past history category.

I very, very vividly remember 9/11. My hometown is about 48 miles from downtown DC and there were so many parents of kids in my school that worked in DC as well as in VA at the Pentagon. That in itself was terrifying but to watch the coverage on tv was another thing. I still can’t really watch documentaries of any of the events because they still freak me out a little bit.

It kind of makes me wonder what some of the people who lived through Pearl Harbor or similar events thought about when their children and grandchildren had to start learning about those things in school because they were so far removed from the actual occurrence. I know that personally, I really like asking my parents about the eighties and early nineties because I don’t remember them really. Just this week, I read a book by Robert Reich, who was the Secretary of Labor under Clinton’s first term. It made me realize how little I remember about the early nineties but then again, I would have just turned 11 during the election of 1996. The unfortunate thing about time is that it tends to remove the personal connection that people have with the event. For people learning about what actually happened during 9/11 for the first time, they probably aren’t going to have the same understanding or same context of understanding of the event that those of us who remember that day do. I suppose I’m the same way about a lot of events that I either didn’t live through or was too young to know what was going on. Just look at the book that I’m reading; I don’t remember Chernobyl happening at all! For that matter, I don’t remember the Soviet Union collapsing (I would have been about 4) even though that was a huge event!

History can be strange but I do hope that these lessons that are being taught now display the necessary gravitas of the situation that all of us who are a little older witnessed on that day in September.

Ah yes, there are a few groups of characters that appear on the Metro frequently. They may not come in the form of the same person but the characteristics are all the same. First, you must know this about DC commuters. We are not a friendly bunch. We don’t like talking to each other and when we’re on the Metro, it’s either to go into the city for a long day of work or come out of the city after a long day at work. Most of us would rather get lost in a book or take a cat nap while we’re on the train. I’m sure most of are nice people in general most of the time but on the train, forgedda ‘bout it.

Anyhow, I’m on a crowded train yesterday and the train stops and this guy gets on. He looks like a tourist (sleeveless shirt and shorts; not an outfit that you’ll see on the natives here). He stands next to a guy who was already on the train. The guy looks like a native and he’s wearing a backpack on his back.

Sleeveless sidles over to this guy and says, “Hey, you look like an adventurer with that backpack on. Are you going on an adventure?”

Native Guy sighs and mumbles, “No.”

And Sleeveless goes on and on and on about how he doesn’t usually come to the city and he’s been exploring it himself non-stop and doesn’t let Native Guy get in a word edge-wise (not that Native Guy probably would have much to say anyhow…). Native Guy simply looks bewildered and a little scared.

Native Guy gets off at my stop and looks crazy relieved.

Lesson of the Day: Native DC-ers get scared when random people speak to us on trains. Please don’t frighten the native species!