Walking With Nora

August!? Already!? I have no idea where the summer time has gone.

Current Book(s):
Finished in August- Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris; Lover Eternal, JR Ward; Chocolat, Joanne Harris; Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris
Started: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, Haruki Murakami;  Girl with No Shadow, Joanne Harris

Current Music:
I’ve been listening to a lot of mixed CDs this month and each CD has a combo of hip-hop, alternative, relaxed music (Ben Harper/John Mayer) and a miscellaneous category that I don’t really know how to define but that rocks my socks off on my way to work each morning

Current Shame-Inducing Guilty Pleasure:
Pinwheel cookies. (Downside to living at home: my parents buy all the goodies I loved growing up and Pinwheels are one of those things.)

Current Colors:
A bright maroon and not-quite-teal-blue

Current Obsessions:
Reading anything I can get my hands on
Gilmore Girls (started it over from the beginning)
Buying books
Wandering through the Twilight section at Borders just to see what new things they have come up with to sell

Current Drink:
Water, water, more water. Haven’t had a caffeinated soda in over 10 days!

Current Songs:
Three More Days, Ray LaMontagne

Current Movie:
Julie & Julia. Pretty awesome movie. Meryl Streep as Julia Child is perfection.

Current TV Show:
True Blood. Only one episodes left!

Current Wish-List:
Unrealistic: a trip to the beach; a new laptop for my birthday
Realistic: Massage! Facial!

Current Needs:
Unrealistic: more hours in the day; an office assistant
Realistic: Take better care of myself this month

Current Triumph(s):
I have my finances in order and it’s an awesome feeling. So blessed to be able to save money right now.

Current Bane(s) of my Existence:
45 minute commute, one way
26th birthday in 4 weeks and 1 day

Current Goal(s):
Continue to write more cards/notes for friends & family
Finish two or three books this month and stay on track for the Japanese Reading Challenge

Current Indulgence:
Mint chocolate chip ice cream (in moderation)

Current Blessing:
Irish. Family. Jack. Friends. A comfortable bed to lay my head on each night and unconditional love from many people in my life.  

Current Slang or Saying:
I’ve been dropping the F-bomb a bit lately at work (to myself, of course) as it’s been a tad stressful

Current (Fav) Outfit:
I bought this awesome top from The Limited the other day; it’s probably my favorite even though I haven’t worn it out yet.

Current Excitement:
Irish & I are going to visit my brother next weekend to celebrate his 21st birthday (which is on Tuesday, 9/1!)
26th birthday in 4 weeks and 1 day
Entertaining a possible trip to Florida for Thanksgiving

Current Mood:
Fatigued

* I really, really like the TV show “The Nanny,” with Fran Drescher. Don’t ask me why because I don’t have a valid reason. Now that it’s on the late night slot on Nick at Nite, if I can’t sleep, I watch it.

* I haven’t been working out every day lately (or even three times a week on occasion) and guess what? I kind of don’t care.

* I cheated on a vocab quiz a few times my senior year in my Honors English class. It was the end of the semester, we had already learned about 1200 vocab words and our troll of an English teacher decided to put some words on there from the beginning of the year. So I shared answers with a friend.

* I still love Tyler Perry’s movies. If no one will go to the theater with me, I put them at the top of my Netflix queue as soon as they are available.

* I get super annoyed when we don’t receive Thank You cards from the weddings we’ve attended. Whatever happened to etiquette?

* Every few weeks I daydream about quitting my job without a new one lined up and just going with the flow.

* Living with my parents has been easier than I thought, however, seeing Irish less frequently has been harder than I thought.

* Occasionally I “borrow” stamps from work.

* Some of my “real life” friends pale in comparison to the friends I’ve made through blogging. (Side Note: I’m no longer calling my readers blog friends because, um, you are my “real life” friends too.)

* I own all of seasons of Sex & The City, Friends & Gilmore Girls. I’ve seen the last episode of each show when they aired and with the exception of the final Sex & The City episode, I won’t re-watch the last episode of the show on DVD. Makes things feel too final even though I could watch them again and again and again if I wanted. I know, I’m weird.

Since I’ve been back at my parents place, I’ve been doing a lot of cleaning up/cleaning out of things and stumbled upon a huge box of my journals from high school.

First of all, my handwriting? Apalling. It’s so messy, big and just ick. I can’t believe I used to write that way and that in high school I had the prettiest handwriting among my friends! I do give myself a bonus because I managed to use legible ink, not pink like a lot of my friends did.

Secondly, the words I used for things is hilarious. Examples:

Life Juice = Coca Cola
Rat, Ring, Parrot= Rat, the nickname for a person I didn’t like; Ring nickname for a guy I had a crush on with a tongue ring; Parrot, the nickname for a friend who talked way too much
CLAA= a group I “created” to help me get over a guy I had a Crush on. I don’t even remember what the letters stand for nor could I find them in my journal!

I love that I included random facts about my day or reminders for myself, like “Don’t forget to watch the American President this Friday at 8pm,” or “My doctor says I’m 10 lbs under weight for my height/age,” (That was freshman year in high school and boy do I wish that was true now!) I also found emails that I printed out from guys I had crushes on or AOL Instant Messenger conversations and tucked into the pages, “Drawings of the day,” and an insane amount of teenage insecurities over friends. Ah, teenage insecurities. Can’t say that I miss those.  

Looking back, it’s funny what I found to be important to me on a daily basis: grades, clothes, band practice and then yearbook gossip, boys, and an insane amount of concern for what others thought about me. Even funnier is that if someone had asked me to “journal,” my life online I would have laughed at them in their face. I can only imagine how much more intense high school would have been with social media. Maybe something like Mean Girls + Varsity Blues + American Pie + Weird Science/other geeky teenage movie aka way too much drama for a normal person.

A few tidbits from my sophomore year journal mostly because they made me laugh out loud…

July 21st, 1998

MM wrote K an email about his sex life. He’s such a freak.

(MM happens to own a record label now and lives somewhere in ChiTown. Also I’m glad to know I thought people who talked a lot about sex were freaks.)

******

July 26, 1998

Today my brother told my dad that I cursed in an email. He’s being a huge buttface.

********

Date Unknown.

Crushes of the day: Ethan Embry. Seth Green.

*********
Your turn! Did you keep a journal pre-blogland? Best secret? Best code name for a crush? Something you thought was a big deal then which is not of concern at all now?

(Also, I think “A Look Back:…:” will become a weekly feature on my blog. Taking suggestions for topics to “Look Back,” on!)

…over the weeekend:

1* I’m at my happiest when I have little or no obligations, plans or monotonous chores to get done. This also means I laugh a little louder, stay up a little later, and feel genuinely rested.

2* Getting up at 9am and taking an afternoon nap is preferred to sleeping the day away.

3* I thrive in 70-something degree weather.

4* It is possible to finish an entire book from start to finish in one weekend provided the first thing learned is present. What did I read? Dead Until Dark, by Charlaine Harris. I may or may not have purchased the second book on Sunday, though I haven’t started it…yet.

5* It’s also possible to start a new book in the same weekend and become so enthralled by the writing and imagery that you are 50% of the way through it by Sunday night. (The book in question: Chocolat, by Joanne Harris. Yes, I’ve seen the movie but I want to read this book before I move onto the Girl with No Shadow, the sequel to Chocolat by Joanne Harris.)

6* There is wine named after me! Nora wine! How cool is that?

7* Impromptu picnics complete with wine, cheese, crusty bread, blanket + pillows, as well as a few books and my fabulous man are my new favorite thing. Bonus for finding some amazing cheese at a local smokehouse.

8* Quentin Tarantino is seriously disturbed but has an amazing cinematic eye just the same. Go see Inglorious Basterds. It’s worth the 150 minutes of your time.

9* It’s okay to make a meal out of appetizers while watching True Blood with my boyfriend.

10* Jack is more of a cuddle whore than ever. He is now attempting to cuddle with me while holding his new toy (a stuffed goose) in his mouth.

11* Irish & I have a book buying problem. We’ve made a pact to not set foot into nor buy another book until my birthday which is in one month and five days.

12* Watching Six Feet Under before you go to bed is a bad, bad idea. Cue insane nightmares and waking up gasping for air.

13* Staying in on a Friday night is totally acceptable.

14* There are never enough hours in the weekend but a perfectly unscripted weekend is much needed at least once a month.

The winner of the Lilies & Love Giveaway from the Your Wishcake Etsy store is…

Tabitha from Tabitha Blogs!

Thanks to everyone who entered; I am working on a few more giveaways for this fall. Stay tuned!

Besides the insane amount of emotion I experienced on Wednesday while we moved my brother into his new place, I had a lot of flashbacks to my first time I set foot on the very same college campus and the months following…

* Sunday morning ritual. Fortunate to live in a small dorm my freshman year, the girls on our floor routinely hung out in the hallway every Sunday morning to recap the weekend’s event. Pajamas were welcome, we’d pass snacks around and eventually get our acts together to go to a dining hall en masse. (Side Note: I’m still friends with two of the girls today.)

* Public Transportation. I didn’t have my car with me for the first semester which was really no big deal since you don’t really need to leave campus for anything (at a school of 25,000 there are convenience stores, tanning beds, hair salons, food courts/dining halls galore and much much more) but occasionally my roomie and I felt the need to shop like any normal 18 year old girl. So we bravely tried our hand at the public transportation. We thought we had it mastered when one night, bags in hand, we found ourselves riding the through the “less safe,” part of town, the only two girls on the bus with a handful of very angry, disgruntled men staring at us. NO one was talking on the bus. It was pitch black out. We had no idea where we were. Finally we are dropped off at the bus depot which isn’t even close to campus. Bags in hand, we had to walk two miles home. We collapsed into laughter when our dorm room was finally in sight.

* Sorority Rush. I wound up pledging for only a short period of time due to some issues I had with the sorority president, their views on grades vs. being a sorority girl and a few other things but Rush isn’t an experience I would change for the world. I had a lot of laughs (as well as nerves, tears, and laughter) over Bid Day.

* Football Tailgating. I admit, I didn’t understand the attraction. Standing outside in the cold fall weather to eat and drink? Didn’t make sense. Something about the football game/stadium grew on me and before I knew it I was tailgating almost every home game possible unless of course there was a test to study for.

* Wearing flip-flops in the shower on a regular basis. So glad I don’t have to do that anymore.

* My first taste of beer. My first frat party. My first Homecoming (my college does it up right. Huge parades. Floats. Candy. Beer. Food. It’s an entire town event. Hotels & football game tickets sell out one year in advance!)

What’s one thing that stands out in your mind from your freshman year of college/first excursion away from home?

I tell myself it’s only 128 miles away. A 90 minute drive; max of two hours if there is a lot of traffic on the four-lane highway- one hour if it’s an emergency.

I comfort myself, and hopefully him, by sharing little tidbits about the college town as I remember it. Which bars are fun, which are bars are a haven of douchebags, the best grocery stores, bank locations, how to get the best discounts on internet, cable and other money-saving tips that every college kid loves to hear.

I remind myself that he’s almost 21, not a freshman by any means, simply transfering to a new school to follow his heart’s dream which is of course what I want for him.

I occupy myself on the drive down by singing loudly to music, checking out passing license plates, catching up on phoen calls and letting out my road range where applicable. (Side Note: speeding up behind me when I’m already going over the speed limit is unnecessary. Furthermore, no need to swerve back in forth in the lane behind me.)

I am a flurry of activity when we arrive at his new apartment 128 miles away. Unloading, unpacking, moving, hauling, assembling, cleaning, dusting, soaking, de-greasing. (Since when do landlords leave houses messy for the next tenant? Uncool.) My parents are flurries of activities too.  

I sneak hugs in when he lets me and hold back the tears as best I can.

I arrange the presents I got for him on his bed: a stuffed animal that we both had growing up; a Moleskin Journalist’s notepad and of course a letter with some emergency cash. I do this when he’s not looking.

Post Wal-Mart trip (there is only one Target in this town 128 miles away from us, and it’s on the opposite side of town from where he lives), I busy myself with de-greasing the blinds that are right next to the stove cursing the girls who lived there before him for not being very good at domestic diva-ness.

He hugs me from behind, tears streaming down his handsome, grown-up, almost 21-ear old face, thanking me for the gifts in choked tones. I drop my greasy rag from the darn blins and hug him back. Tears pour from my face. I promise him I’m always here for him, no matter where he lives. He promises me he’ll be okay. I promise him that yes, he will be okay. He’ll be more than okay. He tells me he loves me.

We hear our parents coming and quickly divert the tears and our faces.

My dad is the first to leave (we had three separate cars. It takes a lot to move a college kid, you know). He’s never been good, and why should he be?, at his kids moving out of his house.

I am clinging onto the minutes here, in this great apartment, with this great brother, with Darling doing the exact same thing. We’ve done everything there is to do for the time being.

We leave with our lists of things to remember for next time we visit which is thankfully in two weeks, to celebrate his 21st birthday.

I stand on the sidewalk, hugging, wishing him nothing but success as he starts a new career path and new life, remembering all the big sister moments I’m so proud to be a part of, knowing that our relationship has become closer and stronger in the last year, reassuring myself that the miles won’t change that. I’m a ball of snot again (allergies, I’m blaming it on allergies) and force myself to walk to the car. He’s crying again because he’s really a lot like me.  

I call Irish and tell him we must move 128 miles away for the next three years. Being the solid rock that he is, he tells me it’s no problem. He tells me that my brother will be okay. He reminds me of the trip we are taking in two weeks.

Another 128 miles and I’m back home.

My parents and I treat ourselves to Mexican & Margaritas. My brother texts each one of us here and there. We finish a pitcher of margaritas.

My brother called me this morning for help with some college campus stuff. I realize that his experience pursuing a Journalism degree is not going to change our brother/sister relationship. In fact, I think we’ll become best friends as a result. I still miss him like crazy, but it will pass. Plus, it’s only 128 miles away.

This week’s giveaway is brought to you by the lovely Your Wishcake.

Every time she posts new things to her Etsy site I literally have to sit on my hands & debit card to keep myself from buying her entire shop.

One lucky will winner will score the following fabulous creations:

Lily Hairpins

And guess what? There is more! The hairpins will come tucked inside a Love cloth gift bag!

The Rules:

* Anyone can enter; there are no geographic limits on this one
* Deadline for entering is Friday August 21st at midnight

How to enter:

1) Visit Your Wishcake’s Etsy shop and tell me what your favorite hand-crafted item is by leaving a comment on this blog.

2) Mention this giveaway in one of your blogs. Be sure to come back and leave a comment with the link to your blog.

3) Tweet about this giveaway and leave the link to your status in a separate comment.

4) Earn a fourth entry by leaving a separate comment telling me why you need these hairpins &  love gift bag.

I’ll announce the winner in one week. Good luck!

(All Photographs courtesy of Your Wishcake & Your Wishcake’s Etsy Shop.)

 There were a total of 25 eligible comments on the Make Today Famous Giveaway.

 I used a Random Number Generator to determine the winner  which is commenter # 6, Fritz over at Jen’s World. Congratulations, Fritz! I’ll contact you via email to get your address.

Thanks to all of those who entered and if you didn’t win today, come back on Monday to check out my next giveaway. I’ve paired up with the lovely Your Wishcake to bring you a special, handmade giveaway!

(Hanging out with my brother last week, bonding and enjoying every minute of it before he jets off to college.)

Me: It’s going to be really weird not having you around to hang out with when you leave.

Brother: Well, now you know how it feels. Don’t worry though, Mom & Dad will buy you anything you want.

Me: What? That’s how it works when a sibling goes away to college?

Brother: Yup, I got everything I wanted and then some after you left for undergrad.

Me: Hmmm… I wonder if I can play that card even though I have a full-time, well-paying job.

Brother: Oh. Yeah. Probably not. So I guess you’ll just have to miss me.

And that is when I hugged him and walked away so that he wouldn’t notice the tears welling up in my eyes. The next day he asked me to help him move into the apartment; I quickly secured a personal day. I guess I better have the tissues ready.