Sunglasses Always Fit

Favorite Moment: This time a week ago I was in Puerto Rico, on a rooftop, watching the sun set quickly across the island, casting shadows on the hotels, the brightly colored buildings, the oceans, the kiddie pool I sat in as I sipped a margarita out of a Nalgene bottle.

I’ve also been in airports, which I love – sitting down in whatever section says the next place goes to London, so I can eavesdrop on brilliant accents.

I’ve been home with the puppy, who looks into my eyes and sees my soul, and reads my moods, and gives herself hiccups when she gets too excited to see me. Which I love. I’ve walked miles and miles on the trail. Which I love.

But my favorite moment might be now – sitting in the backyard with the twinkly white lights, blogging, drinking wine, smelling the barbecues of the neighborhood, watching the citronella candles flicker in and out. Feeling summer come. Feeling the last chapter of my life fully close, and the next one tentatively open amidst the dancing mosquito hawks and blooming snapdragons. The most revealing and peaceful relationship of my entire life might be with the outdoors.

Tweetskies/Statii:

• Having a “drink coffee until it’s socially acceptable to drink wine” kind of day.
• Do you think birds know they’re flying? I walk around and stand and sit and have no idea what I’m doing.
• Remember learning how to light a match for the first time? Magical.
• Spending the last few minutes of my twenties on a rooftop in Puerto Rico, eating bacon, drinking boxed wine, telling my sister “no THIS is my favorite song,” smelling of suntan lotion and watching for falling stars. And it takes practice and effort and encouragement, but I am thankful thankful thankful.
  Happy birthday to me. 
  Thirty – I’m gonna kick your ass.

You know what was nice this week? I turned thirty. I get weird birthday anxiety; I am always surprised to get older, always disappointed in what I haven’t yet accomplished, always worried I am not living up to expectations. I know that this is all something I create in my head, but it was nice to just be in Puerto Rico with my sister, who said “drink and eat and cry and sleep and tan with no judgment.” And the “big threatening birthday” became just a day. And I could manage a day.

The cool thing about technology is that I got texts and calls and Facebook stuff that made me feel loved in an easy way. In a “no one is looking at me and singing a song that never seems to end when it is being sung to you” sort of way. Some cute pics popped up, which is always fun.

In bummers… So, turns out getting a work visa to move to another country is not a walk in the park. Or a piece of cake. Or like taking candy from a baby (which is hard, by the way. Who made up that phrase?! As if babies are just giving candy away).

I miss… certain things and certain people in North Carolina. I miss the nature, and I miss not having a television – I watch far too much TV now that I’m in a home with fancy channels and OnDemand. In a plot twist, I miss being alone! I miss playing guitar…something is totally weird with my writing/texting/strumming arm which makes things difficult.

And I miss teaching. I got to sub at my old school this week, and it filled up my love bucket to have skinny arms flung around my waist, little faces turned up in eagerness for the next thing I would say. One of my former students had heard I was coming to sub and made me cookies and wrote me one of those cards you keep with you until you die, signing it “you are a beautiful child of God and you are my world.” It helped me remember why God may have put me on this earth.

I’m looking forward to… a few trips coming up, moving to Brazil quite soon, karaoke this weekend, Mother’s Day is always a fun messy love fest with all the females in my family. Seeing my best friends before I move! And most of all, getting back to teaching. I felt really confirmed in my abilities to teach this week, and it is a big sigh of relief.

Something I learned… it might sound cliché, but this week was one where I learned, not for the first time, and probably not for the last, that happiness is a choice. The days I wake up and decide to choose happiness, and keep choosing it over and over, are the days that I am happy.

Life isn’t shits and giggles all the time. Sometimes you have to fake it until you make it. But you can choose to look at everything as a blessing or a lesson. And it works. It just works. Every other day you don’t is a waste.