Do Over

Depression is an odd thing. If you’ve never experienced it, you can’t know that it’s not a choice, it’s not a decision. It just is. For me, it started slowly with a few blue days, and snowballed rapidly until I had to be pulled physically out of bed in the morning and put in the shower and would cry uncontrollably any time I was alone. My mantra became “I’m scared. I’m just so scared.”

Lucky for me, I have an amazing circle of friends, a warm and loving family, and the resources to get help. Life is much better now; I sing songs (badly) when I’m alone and am going back to the gym in the morning to get rid of the excess baggage I picked up from too many mornings dreading the day. I’m happy again, and I know I’m happy, and I’m happy that I’m happy. Sometimes you have to walk through the valley to really enjoy the summit.


Here’s the big kicker though: I lost a whole year. A whole summer, gone; spent in fear and terror. I’m not mad about it – there was nothing I could do about it. I just hate it though. The worst was last year’s hike to Mt. LeConte. I looked forward to the trip for months, hiked to the campsite surrounded by just about every human on the planet I love the best, and spent the evening quietly crying in bed while everyone enjoyed each other’s company. That was no fair.

So – this year is my Do Over. I’m going to do it bigger and better, I’m going to go more places and have more fun since it was taken away last year. It’s starting already; good things are already happening. We had a fun Low Country Boil recently and hosted for the first time ever, our friends JD and Amy:


it was goo-ood. thanks for coming, all!

I'm enjoying being goofball again.


me and lucy covered in face stickers



see note re: goofball. i'm a giant eating a normal size hot dog!

 Oh and perhaps you heard I have two new kittens?

me, polly and olive the other evening

They are so super sweet, and we are just loving getting to know them better and better. Olive is my smart girl, but for some reason she prefers to drink out of the toilet.


i preeefurrrr the toilet water, s'il vous plaît


And Polly is a handful.

i have an ipad cat game i let them play - i came across this after leaving her alone with it for like two seconds - that baby tried to buy an app! good thing i'm on to her...

 Tommy and I travelled to Asheville with the Jomacs (thanks for inventing the Johnson/Womac mashup, Jenny!) recently. A colleague told me about doing her hair up in pin curls to make it wavier and I was intrigued. She went so far as to buy me a set of pins to sleep in, and here we have the result of my pinned hair:


not so much



one hair washing later, and we're off to the asheville beer festival!

Good times involving friends, beer and food:



this is a pitcher full of tater tots



And of course, more parties... last weekend me and some other lovely ladies had Kristina over for a surprise bachelorette brunch!



cheese!

 Her fiance, Monty, and I came up with quite an elaborate plot to create in her a sense of urgency to get over to my house. We had agreed that Monty would make plans to take her to brunch after church on Sunday. I was to call and convince her that I needed her at my house instead.

Here is a list of the lies I told her:
1. Tommy's computer crashed and he lost all his files.
2. I went to check on upset Tommy, leaving the dress I was making for Monty's daughter for her to wear to the wedding alone on the ironing board.
3. A cat bumped the ironing board, causing the iron to fall on the dress, ruining the fabric. I even included this photo:

nice touch! seriously it took me about five minutes to burn it this much. the iron kept turning itself off.

4. I didn't have enough material to make a new dress.
5. After the dress fiasco, Tommy and I got in a fight.
6. Tommy got mad and huffed out of the house.
7. When huffing away, he inadvertently let Polly out of the house.
8. I couldn't find Polly, and she's lost outside somewhere.

Needless to say, Kristina came by. Monty said he was giving her a hard time the whole way over about skipping lunch with him to go help me look for my cat. He also said he was hungry and stopped at a gas station and made her wait for 15 minutes while he found something to eat. HAHA.

the blushing bride, ready for the big day! thanks for being a good sport!

Oh, and in addition to getting to do over my summer, I have also felt more and more like doing more sewing projects. I mentioned Monty's daughter's dress?

unburned!



kristina's garter - it's something old (a penny from her birth year), something new (a 2012 penny) something borrowed (it's on an open-ended loan to her), and something blue (a ribbon from Granny Helen).

 In summary, be prepared to see more of me. A lot more of me. A happier me. Laughing is my favorite thing in the world, and I plan do be doing a whole lot more of it.

It's about time.