Lessthanthree

This weekend I witnessed my BFF get married. The ceremony was quick and the party lasted all night. They are such a beautifully loving couple! I cried. A lot. I cried before I left, I cried once we got there and then I cried during the ceremony and during my toast to them. I was such a blubbering idiot. 

These are a couple that have taught me the proper way to love and to raise a family. I always wanted to have the kind of love they have. I was able to bring Hubby with me which meant a lot to me. Not only for the thirty-four hour round trip drive but for the honor to have him on my arm while I see my BFF get married. Well, I was in the wedding so he sat with my family but you know what I mean. They are not a religious type of people so the ceremony focused on love and what love means and why to get married.

The way ALL weddings should be.

It really must be love. We were crammed in my tiny car for seventeen hours on the way there, once we arrived it was wedding planning to the max and getting stuff ready. He doesn't know BFF and her family as well as I do so he more or less babysat the twins while her sisters, her and I scrambled to do things around the house. Their house is a decent size but still quite small for about twenty or so people milling about putting flowers together, wrapping center pieces and cleaning empty wine bottles. The house was also a disaster from the regular life of two adults and three small children on top of all the boxes full of wedding stuff to be moved to the venue. Did I mention Hubby isn't much of a people person? I mean, he's personable but his happy place is alone or with maybe two/three other people in a quiet setting watching a movie or making small talk. He was thrown to the wolves on this one.

We arrived at the wedding venue and everything came together magically in just over an hour. We ran a bit behind after getting ready and making our way back to the venue, but the short ceremony made up for it. As BFF and I were walking to the place we were getting ready at Hubby pulls up just in time to give our wedding present: A new cellphone! The night before amidst wedding stress BFF had thrown her phone (that already had a messed up screen but no cracks) giving it a nice rainbow shaped crack across the bottom of it. She squealed when she realized what the box had in it. I have to give Hubby major props because he totally made it happen. The cellphone was his idea and everything. We got her the same phone I have because she liked mine and we knew she was already familiar with it.

After the ceremony we took some really amazing pictures. (Well, had them taken of us.) I love the colors! Hubby and I went out with the bride and groom after the reception and danced the night away. We then faced another 17hr drive home. I drove most of the way to and from. Hubby said that was my punishment for making him go back to North Carolina for any amount of time. My CardioTrainer app said that much driving was well over a thousand calories burned so it's debatable if I should be annoyed that I had to drive that much or not. He was also kind of crabby on the way home but only in the way he said things not so much what he said. He slept a lot, I love that about us as much as I hate it. If either of us gets extremely agitated/angry/annoyed we just go to sleep. It's like angry narcolepsy almost. We both do it though so it's hard to be annoyed about your own personality trait showing in someone else. We finally arrived back to our apartment complex and jumped in the shower to wash off a drunken wedding reception and hours of being on the road. Then we crawled into bed and cuddled like it was the first time we had seen each other in months. Our bed felt heavenly. We fell asleep quickly and didn't even budge until Hubby's alarm went off a couple hours later so he could get up and get ready for work. He begrudgingly got up and got ready for work. When he left my heart sank a little... I wanted him to stay in bed with me and sleep the day away!

That's how I knew it was love. When you can go through a stressful (No matter a happy stressful or a negative stressful) situation; be crammed in a tiny car for hours of driving through state lines, being with each other for basically every second of a very busy weekend just to come home and then cling to each other like we hadn't seen each other through any of it.

I finally know how my BFF feels about her husband. I've been friends with them long enough that they would have their relationship quarrels in front of me like I wasn't in the room. (Well, I also lived with them for a bit so it was bound to happen) Even when they seemed the most agitated at each other they still looked at each other full of love and would instantly drop it when the argument seemed to not be going anywhere... only to be revisited when it had been mulled over and a compromise was being sought out. That's love, people. THAT is how things are meant to be. Love prevails more when it's not all sunshine and rainbows. I always envied their love in the way of wanting it for my own and now I can easily say I have it. I thought I would never be as lucky as them.

Thank you, Hubby, for loving me the way you do.

I want both.

Ten days. One Zero. Ten. Ten days and I get to wake up next to him, cuddle him during a thunderstorm and nag him when I'm feeling bitchy. Sigh I cannot wait! I can tell that he's excited too, since his smiles are bigger on Skype as of late.

"You're going to miss those babies!"
I keep hearing from... well... everyone. It's true too. The twins I babysit have quickly become my entire life. My reason to get up in the morning, my smile when I feel like crying as well as my hair-pulling, snotty nosed cry babies when I'm already at my wits end. They cry when I walk out of a room, they make me feel needed.... they snuggle me close when they're feeling bad. I'm going to miss those little bobble heads like no other. It's not just the twins though, I'm going to miss their older sister, their mom, their dad, their Mama C and PawPaw. All of them. This family has been with me through the thick and thin. They have given me a place to stay when no one else wanted me. This family has given me a job when I was scraping by at a sandwich shop. This family has done absolutely everything for me, without hesitation, without asking for anything in return. Leaving them breaks my heart. I can't help but cry at the idea of leaving them at all much-less in need. The boys are still too young for daycare and too expensive to have in daycare, anyway. The boys don't like strangers but they took to me the first time I met them. Their older sister asks if I'm out of the house for longer than twenty minutes. I feel more apart of this family than I have any family, ever. Yes, even my own. They accept me for who I am and always wish me the best. They have showed me unconditional love (Not required by blood relation) and now I have my chance at also creating a family of my own. It's the dilemma of a life time. I've tried not to think about it. BFF (The twin's mom) and I don't speak about it... It's the elephant in the room that no one wants to acknowledge. I worry about them thinking I'm abandoning them. Is it too selfish to leave now? But staying hurts too. I feel like I'm happy with a thorn in my side. It's like gnawing my arm off to live another day. I want both things equally. To stay and be apart of this family and to go and start my own with someone who I've always had a very strong emotional attachment to.

I want both.

I want both.

I want both.

I've been going through the motions since I got back from my short visit to Louisiana. Sometimes I'm in the moment [with normal every day routine] and I'd think, "I've got to remember this, take a picture, cherish it... I'm about to move" and it still wouldn't feel real. As I'm nearing the single digits on my countdown, the realization has settled heavy somewhere in my pelvic region. (You know, where IBS lives.) I feel like it's a backpack when I run, a fly in my ear as I play with the boys and a heavy beating drum when I'm hanging out chatting with BFF. I don't feel doubt in wanting to live and be with Hubby, I feel guilt for being happy. Does that make sense? How can I be happy about something that will be taking me away from this new family that has stood by me for so long? Guilt because I've lost friends along the way and it doesn't bother me. Guilt because I'm so happy and quite frankly, I'm not sure I care who I lose in the process. (Well, accept the twins and their family. Everyone else can go fuck themselves for all I care.) Hubby means that much to me.... I hear that's suppose to prove you do have real love. The fact that the ones that matter supports us the most seems to be the shining factor.

This isn't a thinking decision, this is a decided matter. It's finally sunk in. It's real. This isn't a fantasy anymore. This isn't a day dream on a hot summer day in Greensboro... or a last thought before drifting off to sleep in the middle of winter....

This is real.

Holy shit, is it real.

After the storm

I've had too much coffee, too much sleep, and never enough food. I'm shaking, my heart feels like it's trying to escape via my throat and all I'm doing is dancing in place to keep everything in check.

Irene came and went quite peacefully in my part of North Carolina. The wind blew in circles and pissed the trees off that hang over my balcony. The night of the hurricane was quite amazing for me... I sat on my balcony for most of the night having very good conversation with very good company. Needless to say that while I was having the most amazing night of my life my family was being pummeled by mother nature as Irene tossed trees around like an angry toddler.

Cell phone service cut out. Power was lost. Even internet shut off. Trees falling around my parent's house, my grandmother's house and my sister's house. The wind blew sideways and the rain flew around like angry darts. "This has been the worst hurricane I've ever experienced" said my mother, who has never strayed too far from her mother's house about 2 miles down. I missed it. Thankfully, but regrettably as well. My grandmother banked on the idea of some undesirables spending time with her through the hurricane... of course they flaked. As trees lay inches away from the house, my uncle and cousin rescued her and brought her to my mother's house so she wouldn't have to spend the rest of the hurricane alone. Thankfully no one was hurt in this effort.

I've seen pictures of my favorite park in my hometown under more than 13ft of a swollen Neuse River and rain. Facebook feeds filled with "Evacuating west, pray for my family" and pictures of fallen trees over the road, squished cars and large bodies of water that aren't meant to be. Disaster, devastation... stories of people swimming to the post office begging for rides to safety...

I come from a town that thrives in hurricanes because it's the most excitement all year... but after Katrina something changed. I was actually dating someone during Katrina and they lived farther inlet than I. Their entire house was flooded, lifting the house off the of its foundation, floating a couple inches above the concrete structure... then slammed the house down, cracking both structures in half. It felt like I was walking through a movie scene. Soggy carpets, we tried for 3hrs to get to that house, so many flooded roads we couldn't get through... passing people on canoes, paddling away, on or in the road. Katrina was one of the worse storms I've experienced and my mother said Katrina was just childs play compared to Irene. Now, when a hurricane comes people evacuate like they're told, buy out Food Lion and get their radios ready.

My middle school and high school have been flooded. My middle school has been flooded before, 6ft during Katrina, I can only image how deep Irene took it swimming. I've had to stop looking for information on the angry left overs of Irene. It makes me cry. I see pictures of places I've frequented for most of my 24yrs totally under water, covered in trees or otherwise disrupted. The local Harris Teeters are giving away ice and water while their stores are closed. If you have twitter, visit the hastag #NCIrene for personal accounts, to-the-second updates, pictures and other things that have made me cry in the last 24hrs. There are also facebook groups you can be a part of for more information about how to get help or just to share your stories of survival.

What most people aren't realizing is how bad the bugs are. That's something the news doesn't really touch on. They talk about the clean up, they show these terrible pictures... but they don't show how nasty and thick the bugs are right now. My entire childhood neighborhood and surrounding areas are, quite literally, a temporary marshland right now. It's perfect for mosquitoes and other nasties. The CDC has a page of information about how you should go about protecting yourself after a natural disaster and what to notice with certain bites.

Don't be afraid to ask for help... everyone needs it right now. Also, don't be afraid TO help. Being there for each other is what community is all about.

Please click the links, I hope they prove to be helpful in some way!

xoxo,
SallyD