Cape Lookout

It's a vacation within a vacation. My absolute favorite place in the world.

And hopefully, it's still there Sunday...

I'm Not Much For Country Music

You wouldn't believe it by hearing me speak, knowing my family, or seeing the farmland that lies within a mile of my neighborhood, but I didn't even listen to country music at all (well, other than the Charlie Pride 8-track that I used to catch in my Mema's car when I was little) until well into high school. And only then because a boy I liked was a fan.

Even now, my "love" for country music ebbs and flows like the tide. Some days I like it and it gets me jazzed, some days I think it sounds like a bunch of redneck trash and I just want to hear David Gray or Pearl Jam. But yesterday, country music saved me. Not from anything big, just from a little despondentness. (If that's not a word, it should be.)

I don't know if it's my monthly friend, my breastfeeding hormones continuing to wane, or just being worn down from the daily grind, but I was feeling really down Sunday night. Like, bordering on depression down. It was a long weekend; I got to see family, sleep in, hang out with my baby, spend some quality time with my hubby, and I should have been feeling good and rested and loose Sunday evening, knowing I had a whole other day off work. But instead, I felt like I was still working. I was tired, worn down, emotionally drained, and just feeling like I hadn't really gotten a rest yet.

The worst part of feeling this way for me is the guilt that accompanies those feelings. I have friends with children with major health and developmental issues, who have suffered debilitating PPD, who live 1000 miles from any family or friends that could help out and give them a much-needed break now and then, whose marriages are suffering, who have been searching fruitlessly for a job for over a year and who may have to sell their home, and the list goes on and on (this is not one friend but several, just in case you were confused by my misuse of possesive and tenses). I have a home, a little piece of land, a stable (if sometimes a little too volatile, I mean, passionate) marriage, a supportive family, two incomes, and an amazingly healthy child. I am lucky. I have NO RIGHT to complain.

But sometimes, y'all, the loss of control I feel over my life gets to be a little more than I can handle. And I try to rely on good friends and my husband to bring me through that, but occasionally it takes a little more to escape that drowning feeling. And yesterday, driving along with Jacob babbling in the backseat, I happened to flip to the country station and Trace Adkins "You're Gonna Miss This" started playing. And I lost it. It was just what I needed to break out of the slump I've been in this past week and get. over. myself. Life is hard, right? Some days I need to suck it up and just be thankful for what I've got. Even if that means I have too much laundry to sort, too much paperwork in the office that needs to be filed, and a lack of focus on the details of my life (like where Jacob's shoes may be).

So here's to shrugging off the shadows and focusing on the bright lights in my life. Because if it were not for those dark moments, I wouldn't be able to realize how much joy I get when that little boy grins at me. Or how amazingly successful and together I felt when the first shopping trip with my new Ergo was pure fun, even if people were looking at me like a crazyhippie mama while I talked to my son the whole time I was picking out veggies. I can DO this, y'all!

I Spent $18 Ruining a $30 Pedicure

And it was worth every sweet penny!

I am back from my OBX vacation with lots to tell, most importantly extolling the benefits of taking a vacation with a child and assorted family members willing to fight over who gets to feed him, play in the sand with him, change poopy diapers, etc. This allows you and the hubby to choose how much time you want to spend with the dear child, but also escape for a late night walk on the pier, a date night, or even just escaping into books. (I almost finished 2! That's 2 more than I've finished since he was born.)

There were definitely some frustrations about beach vacationing with a wee babe. Mostly because the hubs and I are beach vacation people, but not necessarily beach people. The whole sand thing is a problem. Plus our little man's skin is fairly sensitive, so the daily sunscreen/sand/sun/shower routine was not kind to us last week. Luckily he only gets the baby excema, not the full-blown, painful kind, and most of it seems to be clear this week after reverting back to the unscented lotion and Aquaphor routine. The amount of STUFF required to stay away from home for a week, as well as what is required just to go down to the ocean for an afternoon, was astounding. Our poor sedan was packed to the gills, with our furry black baby resigned to make the trip with only about 2 square feet of backseat to herself.

Also, our little guy is a poor daycare napper, which means he spends his weekends catching up on sleep, with a two hour morning nap and a two hour afternoon nap. This was exacerbated (wink, Anne) even more by the activity level he put out during his waking hours on vacation, and the fact that he shared a room with us. A given schedule on vacation: up at 5:30, nurse, back down for an hour if I was lucky, then a 2 1/2 hour nap from 9-11:30, and an afternoon nap beginning around 2:30 that sometimes lasted so long we had to wake him just to ensure he didn't sleep through dinner. There was a lot of waiting involved in this vacation. I didn't mind: see, I read 2 books!

The highlight of the trip by far, though, was our jaunt to the same waterslide where I spent my own childhood summers building my love affair with any kind of water activity. I spent $12 so I could ride the big-kid slides, hubby spent $3 so he could hang in the kiddie pool, and our tiny tot was free. We spent nearly two hours hanging in the kiddie pool letting Jacob "swim" back and forth between us, walk through the water, and sit in our laps while we went down the easy slides. This excursion was such a delight, I could have cared less that my new perfect pedi got scraped to all hell in the pool. My mother exclaimed "I guess we're going to have to install a slide on the pool next summer" with excitement. I would have gladly done it over and over to watch his laughing face as we hit the water.

I think we're even considering going again later this summer! Lucky for us, we only live 3 hours away!

CABOODLES!

That is a seriously funny word...one I had forgotten about for quite some time (like, since waaaay back in the '90's). Until someone I know wrote it in a facebook status. Man, it brought back one searing memory faster than I could blink, and here I am, sharing it with you.

I am a meticulous gift giver. I feel like I spend hours thinking about what I'm going to give people at Christmas, making lists, converting those lists to Excel files complete with a budget calculator, and then online shopping until I find the perfect deal. On the flip side, I worry about gifts given to me. I want people to know that I am truly thankful for anything they give me, and I've always stressed when people have asked for me to make a list of what I want. It feels so incredibly vain and selfish, yet I sit down and plot out all the restaurants I'd love to eat at, spas I'd love to visit, and beauty products that I won't splurge on with my own money (well, most of the time...)

One year when I was around 11 or 12, those horridly awkward tween years (although we didn't call them that back then, we were just still children) my grandmother wanted my Christmas list. And the one thing I really wanted was a Caboodles make-up case.

Come on ladies, you know that either brought you right back to somewhere between 7th and 9th grade, or you are now slack-jawed in all of the early '90's awesomeness going on right therr.

Now, knowing my Granny the way I do, I was all excited for Christmas that year. I had been asking my mom for a Caboodles for months and she just would not give in. Every time we went to Wal-Mart I eyed them, wondering which color Granny would pick out for me, how big it would be (b/c ya, bigger was totally better, we used a lot of eyeshadow AND hairspray in middle school in North Cack). I couldn't get over myself and this Caboodles deal.

And then we got to her house for Christmas, and as I eyed all of the gifts under the tree (Granny went WAY overboard with Christmas presents) I spotted one of those plastic Christmas bags with my name on it. And the shape of made my stomach churn. Because under that bag, I could tell, was a makeup case. A Sassaby makeup case. And I just got more and more nervous and anxious as my turn to open gifts came. Not because I was a bratty spoiled kid, but because I could tell Granny was so proud of getting me exactly what I had asked for and I was nervous that she would be able to tell from my reaction that it was not the right thing. I tried to fake it, I really did. I smiled and hugged her and said thank you and nodded my head when she beamingly asked me if it was the right one. But she could tell.

She kept asking me if I was sure it was right, if I was sure it was ok. I assured her I loved it, but when we got home it just sat in my room untouched. None of the cool girls at Carnage G.T. Magnet Middle School (yes, I went to a school named Carnage, and yes hubby teases me every time I saw it) carried a Sassaby. I would be mocked if I brought that Burgundy monstrosity to the dress rehearsal for our dance recital. Finally my mom just made me exchange it for the one I wanted, and it was like a sigh of relief.

I don't know why I am so worried people won't like my gifts, but I know I am much more worried that people will think I don't appreciate theirs. I would love to hear your gift giving/receiving stories!

A Tradition even I can Stand Behind!

For the most part, I am proud to be from the South, and specifically from North Carolina. Don't get me wrong, I am well spoken and fairly intelligent, and I am slightly proud of myself when I have to correct someone who thinks I'm "not from around here". But the older I get, the more I think that North Carolinians are a misunderstood breed, because most of the ones I know are good, solid people.

However, I do not follow those customary "rules" of the South. Or specifically, the Southern Baptists. I lived with my husband for years before we got married, a fact that is still secret to his very internet-unsavvy grandparents and certain other family. I wear white whenever I want (which really is never because, honestly, it's not the most flattering color I can imagine anywhere near my bottom half). I breastfeed IN PUBLIC and make my own baby food. I shop at the Farmer's Market and use reusable grocery bags. OK. In our defense, there is a misconception among the Yankee hippie population that think they started all this "local, slow food" stuff. My roots are deeply planted in the South, and I know that there are a lot more farmers in the South and Midwest than the big cities out there, and we've always gotten our food as fresh as we could. I spent lots of time as a kid at pick-your-own farms with my grandmother. We just also like a Big Mac now and then. (Also, how many southern grandmas do you know that don't recycle their grocery bags? Haven't you ever seen one of them wind-sock looking things homemade out of some leftover quilt material and drawstring that Mema always shoved all her plastic Wal-Mart bags into so that whenever she gave you leftovers, she could pull one out to tie them all up in?)

I digress...my point is, there are two traditions I do follow. I visit family on Sundays, and every year, I buy a new Easter dress. Even years like this one, when we're trying hard to scrimp and save, my husband, son, and I went shopping a few weeks ago and I spent way more than I had planned on a cute new dress for Easter. It's silk and brightly colored and has a little yellow bolero jacket to wear with it. And when I tried it on and looked in the mirror, I felt good! I did not feel like I looked like the size it said in the tag. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I could tell I weigh almost ten pounds less than I did when I got pregnant almost 17 months ago. I believed my husband's grin as I left the dressing room and walked towards him.

It's been hanging in my closet ever since. Taunting me. Wanting me to wear it to work. But I won't. Because the other tradition I follow is that when you buy a new Easter dress, it must make it's debut on Easter!

Take Foot, Insert into Mouth...

I mentioned yesterday that I am attending a workshop for work (I'm on my lunch break people, no need to report me) and I am really enjoying it despite being sick as a dog.

It started on Tuesday. It's in the big city environment of Raleigh, and to get to the building, you have to go down a very busy four lane road with a median. It has small cut-throughs for the roads that branch off with office buildings, and people tend to drive very fast on the main road that goes through the center. The cut throughs only hold at most 1 1/2 cars, which tends to block up the lane behind if some is having trouble *cough*, "pulling the gun" and turning left across the two lanes of oncoming traffic. (I would draw a map, but it would probably just be even more confusing.)

On Tuesday I was behind one such car, with a sweet young lady driver who waited. And waited. And WAITED at the cut through for what seemed like hours to turn left. It was probably in reality about 96 seconds, but it felt like an eternity as I could see the cars piling up behind me. I pulled forward, kind of parallel to her to try to get my rear end out of the lane and let people pass, and as I did that I got a clearer view of the oncoming traffic. Or lack thereof. Seriously, I could have ridden a CAMEL through that turn with all the time she was waiting with no traffic in sight. Or led a gaggle of geese across.

So what did I do? I pulled this nifty move that I learned in Boston about 6 years ago when someone did it to me at a MUCH busier intersection. I pulled out and around her and went about my merry way. I think she got the picture then that she had enough time to get across the oncoming lanes, so she turned to. The closer I got to my building, the more the sinking feeling in the pit of stomach mounted.

There are like thousands of people who work in this complex of offices, so what are the chances that she is one of the 10 other people attending this workshop? You got it. I had to pull into the parking lot, park a mile away from the building, and wait until I saw her walk in before I would get out of my car. I did not want an awkward "you're that bitch that cut me off" encounter my first day of the workshop.

Crisis averted, but let's just say that I have been a much more conservative driver the rest of the week.

"They don't know how to drive in it down here."

Snow, that is.

If I have one more Yankee look at me conspiratorially (because at work I usually do a decent job of hiding my accent) and say that, I think I'm going to go on a rampage, gunning my engine as I fly down an icy embankment, taking out as many parked cars with New Jersey plates as possible.

What does that even mean, anyway, when someone says, "Oh, I know how to drive in snow." Seriously? The only technique I can think of for snow-driving is to use common sense, drive slowly if you are on top of a patch of ice, don't follow other cars too closely, don't slam on brakes, and if you skid, turn into the direction your car is floating.

And if you are proudly lauding your bad-weather driving skills in a two-ton four wheel drive monster of an SUV, then no, you really don't know how to drive in the snow. Because your car does it for you.

As for us Southerners, we will more than likely do the common sense thing after a snowstorm: stay home and wait for the plows to fix everything.