Please still be my friend.

I read all the time.

I read everything.

I read The Hunger Games trilogy in less than 24 hours.

I read To Kill a Mockingbird multiple times each year.

I read reference books.

I read self-help books.

I read classics.

I read vampire fiction.

I read the books that make fun of vampire fiction.

I read the shampoo bottles when I’m in the shower.

In all sincerity, I read anything that falls into my hands.

I have loved to read since I was a kid, and it’s something that just never went away.

Generally, I am super thankful for the fact that I am so well-read.  My love for books is one of the huge reasons I chose to obtain a degree in English Education.  I absolutely love it when a kid who claims to “hate to read” gets super excited about a book and ridiculously invested in the characters. 

But it is kind of impossible for my love for all things literary to not have an effect (Daddy spent a long time this weekend teaching me the difference in affect and effect... I think I finally understand it.) on my everyday life. 

I went to a Halloween party on Saturday night, and a costume was required.  There were some awesome costumes there.  We had Mary Poppins and Bert.  Fred and Wilma Flinstone were in attendance, as were a honeybee with her own personal beekeeper. 

Me?

I went as The Tell-Tale Heart.  Yup.

I dressed up as a dismembered body part from an Edgar Allen Poe short story.

Thank God for my Daddy, who loves literature as much as I do, who took time out of his afternoon to help me build this costume.  Yes... power tools and linseed oil were involved. 

No, I wasn’t allowed anywhere near the power tools.

For this reason, I still have all of my fingers. 

I have decided it’s a good thing that I am a huge nerd.  It is.  Because if there wasn’t something to counteract my level of awesome, the world might explode.

My Exciting Friday Night

This is how wild and exciting my life is: my plans for tonight consist of sweatpants, FRIENDS reruns, Oreos, the couch, and Ellie Mae.

I like to live life on the edge.

If I start feeling REALLY crazy, I think I may finish the last book in The Maze Runner series.

Today was exhausting... both physically and emotionally. 

I didn’t get to bed until late last night due to my need to spend excessive amounts of time on the phone with certain out of state friends, so 7:00 AM came incredibly early this morning.  I mean, the conversations that took place are undoubtedly worth the lack of sleep, but dang. I’m pooped.

A surprise encounter with a certain he-who-shall-not-be-named did not go so well, and that sucked the life right out of me emotionally. 

Needless to say... not the best day.  I totally deserve my lazy night. 

But you know what?  Even though today has seriously sucked, it is impossible for me to ignore how fantastic my life is.  In the midst of confusion and pain, I have a ridiculously amazing support system, and they’re not going to let me down.

I don’t get “preachy” on here often.  I really don’t.

But the way that so many people find ways to daily show me how much they love me, it is impossible for me to not see God in their words and actions.  Because of the love and support that have been lavished upon me from the very start of this whole mess, I have never once felt as if I was walking alone.  Not once. 

I bet that there aren’t many people who have gone through what I am going through who can say that they’ve never felt alone. 

Gah, I’m blessed.  Even on days that get me down, I love my crazy, beautiful life. 

That’s all there is to it.

Now, it’s time to fall asleep on the couch, while eating Oreos and watching FRIENDS.  At 6:00 on a Friday night. 

(Who says divorced women don’t know how to live it up!?!)

35 Days.

In 35 days I will be hopping on a plane for a weekend trip to see two of my best friends in Virginia. 

I’m pretty excited about this. (I only do a countdown for something if it’s super important.)

Kind of like the whole moving to Florida thing… I haven’t started a real countdown yet, simply because it’s still a lot of days away.  However, I do know that it is less than seven months.  And that excites me beyond belief.

But back to the whole Virginia trip… I am flying out of Huntsville at 6:30 a.m.  I will then arrive in Washington, DC at 9:24.  I leave DC at 10:30 and arrive in Boston, MA at 11:56.  Finally, I leave Boston at 1:20 and arrive in Richmond, VA at 3:05 p.m.

Yes, the random, funny stuff that happens to me is what makes up the meat of this blog, but I’m praying that for this one day, my life is normal and uneventful.  I’m sure it would make for a wonderful post, but I would really prefer it if this trip goes perfectly and according to plan.  I’m shooting for no disasters and no missed flights.  I’m 27.  Surely I can travel unattended, right?

The night before last I got an earring stuck in my hair.  Not just kind of stuck, but so stuck that I had to wait for Joey to finish brushing her teeth and washing her face to help me get it untangled.

Two weeks ago, I had the same misfortune with a round hair brush.  After my attempts at freeing the brush, all you could see was the handle.  That situation required the assistance of friends as well.

A few months ago, I tried to throw my gum out of my car window as I was driving down 72.  Yup.  It came right back in the window and found a home in my hair.  That particular incident required a quick “fix it” job with scissors and then an emergency hair appointment to correct the damage.

My boarding passes can’t get tangled in my hair, right? 

Ode to Cowboy Boots

It’s the time of year

Where my outfit isn’t complete

Unless there are cowboy boots

Gracing my feet

My love for cowboy boots

It doesn’t really make sense

I didn’t grow up on a farm

I have never mended a fence

I have a degree in English

How redneck can I really be?

I say that as I’m wearing my boots

And a Mossy Oak hoodie

I’m terrified of horses

And cows, they really smell bad

My efforts at being a country girl

Are truthfully quite sad

But there is something about the first moment

When I first slide my feet into a pair of boots

That makes me wish I wasn’t such a poser

And that I really was just getting back to my roots.

E.E. Cummings, who???

Jessica the Wanderer

I really do feel like a nomad.  I just moved into my fourth place in three months… 

This spring, however, I will be moving a fifth time.  Now that I have talked to my parents about it, I am comfortable sharing the following news with the world: I really am moving to Jacksonville, Florida in May!  The details aren’t completely worked out yet, and there are still several decisions to be made, but I’m definitely going. 

I’m not sure that I have ever been more excited about anything in my entire life.

Two of my best friends are moving down there to work and establish residency for grad school, and I’m hopping on that train and going with them.  The Jacksonville area has the second largest school district in the state, so maybe I will be able to get a teaching job?  If not, it is such a big city that I’m sure I will be able to find a job doing something.  I just know that being out of Florence, Alabama will be the absolute best thing that can happen to me.

No one will look at me with pity.  No one will have to speak oh-so-carefully around me, in fear of bringing up what happened.  No one will know about everything that went down and how badly I was hurt and humiliated.   (I’m not saying that I don’t appreciate all the kind words that have come my way and all the concern people have shown.  I appreciate the support everyone has given me more than I can express.  It’s just hard to be constantly reminded of what happened.) 

No one there (aside from Brooke and Alyssa, of course) will know anything about me. 

Well, they’ll figure out that I’m awesome within a matter of seconds.  Duh.  But aside from that, I will be able to start from scratch. 

I think that I deserve a fresh start.

I think that I deserve to experience all the things that I never got to experience.

I think that I deserve to be happy.  And as much as I love this place, and as much as I love so many of the people that are in my life here, that isn’t going to happen in Florence, Alabama.

Those of you who really know me, you know I don’t say I’m going to do something and then not do it.  If I say I’m going to make it happen, I’m definitely going to act on it. 

So, yes.  This is really happening.

Feel free to start planning my surprise going away party.  I know that I’m not leaving for months, but the more time you spend planning, the more spectacular it will be!

On an unrelated note…Ellie Mae is now has a roommate of the feline variety.  The cat weighs almost 3 times as much as she does, and they have the funniest relationship ever.  They don’t fight.  I actually think that both of them have a strong desire to be friends, but don’t really know how to go about it.  Jack (the cat) can’t really figure out who or what Ellie Mae is. I’m pretty sure that he thinks she is some kind of toy. They follow one another around the house, in slow motion, for hours at a time.  I am going to do my best to capture it on video.

On another unrelated note, I had a crazy couch adventure on Saturday.  One of the biggest things that I had insisted on keeping in the whole divorce debacle was our living room couch.  It is quite possibly the kind of couch Jesus sits on in heaven.  It’s that amazing.  Well, it was no problem loading it into the U-Haul.  (And by no problem I really mean that I stood there and watched as two really big guys struggled to get it situated.) 

Yeah.  No way in hell was that couch going to fit in the door at Joey’s.  We turned it every direction you can imagine.  Nothing.

Finally, I gave up, hopped back in the U-Haul, and went and bought a new couch. 

That one wouldn’t fit in the door, either.

I’m totally kidding.

Amazing how much measuring actually helps.

My Bucket List.

 Kind of.

I want to do all of the following things before I turn 30.  I think normal bucket lists are generally things that people want to do before they die.  Right?

I’m giving myself a time limit, though.  I have a little over 2 years, and now, I have NOTHING stopping me from doing whatever the heck I want to do. 

1)      Get another tattoo.  I want a white ink tattoo on my collarbone that says “delete the adjectives.”   That is part of one of my favorite lines from To Kill a Mockingbird, and I think it would be a fabulous, fabulous tattoo.

2)      Skydive.  I know, I know.  With my horrid luck, that is a disaster waiting to happen.  But I want to do it so bad.

3)      Spend the night on the beach.  (Since I am currently working on moving to Florida, this one may be quite easy to accomplish.)

4)      Kiss a complete stranger in the rain, and then walk off without even glancing back.  

5)      Go an entire week without my cell phone or the internet.

6)      Have one of my pictures published in a magazine.

7)      Change the life of a kid.

8)      Go on a cruise.

9)      Hand out food and supplies to the homeless.

10)   Smoke a really good cigar while reading The Great Gatsby and drinking a glass of wine.  (Every time I have tried to smoke a cigar before, I have thrown up.  I am going to figure out how to do it correctly.  I am.)

11)   Crash a wedding.

12)   Graffiti the side of a railroad car.

13)   Take a Greyhound bus to a city to which I have never been, spend the day, and come back home.

14)   Participate in a flash mob.

15)   Write a rap song about the parts of speech.

16)   Visit my brother in Hawaii. 

17)   Learn how to change the oil in my car.

18)   Quit biting my nails… for good.

19)   Fall hopelessly and stupidly in love.

20)   Give $100 dollars to someone, hug them, and walk away.

21)   Join a random group of protestors and picket like I truly believe in their cause.

22)   Somehow, someway, I am going to manage to work the lyrics of “My Heart Will Go On” into a regular conversation without the other person realizing it. 

23)   Go to midnight mass on Christmas Eve at a Catholic church.

24)   Master when to use “affect” and when to use “effect.”  Yes, I have a degree in English.  Yes, this still confuses the mess out of me.

25)   Kill a deer.

26)   Pick a random person to follow for a whole day. 

27)   Go to a casino, and stop while I’m ahead.

28)   Memorize all the verses in the Bible that talk about God’s grace. He is good, even though I’m generally not.  I need to be able to back up that statement with scripture.

29)   Have adventures with my best friends that are so insane we will never be able to tell anyone else about them.

30)   Live well.  After all, that is the absolute revenge.

Not going to lie… I’m pretty pumped about this.  If there are any of these with which you want to help me or of which you want to take part, let me know. 

When I set my mind to it, I'm pretty good at making things happen.  Just ask the girls that were in Nashville with me this past weekend... ha.

Wanderlust?

There is a big, strong guy who lives in one of the apartments above my office.  His girlfriend has agreed to let me borrow him for the day on Saturday to help me move… and he has driven a U-Haul before.  So no worries boys and girls, you are safe to travel the roads of Florence this weekend. 

For the first time in my life, I think I have wanderlust.

I came to Florence when I was 18 to go to college, and I have never really considered living anywhere outside of this area since then.  I love this town and I love the people.  I love my friends and I love the familiarity of it all.

But when I woke up this morning, I was so angry that I was here and not somewhere else.

Maybe I am just weirded out by the fact that for the first time in 7 years, I have complete and uninhibited freedom?  Of course I have my job and a few other obligations, but I can do what I want to do pretty much whenever I want to do it.

I can’t help but wonder about what else is out there.

One of my brothers has been in Italy for four years and is moving to Hawaii at the beginning of next year.  My other brother recently moved from upstate New York to a beach front condo in Ft. Pierce, Florida.  They’re living these awesome lives and seeing and experiencing so many things.  I never thought that I would have the option to just pick up and move away and start completely fresh.  And I was okay with that.

But things changed. 

Even though I poured every ounce of my everything into keeping it from happening, things changed.

Last night one of my friends quoted an old school Foo Fighters song to me.

It’s times like these you learn to live again.

I’m not sure that any words have ever hit closer to home. 

It’s so, so scary.

But I think I’m ready to live again. 

Really live.

I’m not positive what my next step is going to be.  I am currently looking at which states accept an Alabama teaching license and which areas of those states are in the most desperate need for teachers.  I think that's a good start, right?

This is such a weird feeling.  But I know that I have to get away from here.  Somehow, someway.  I need to get away.

And you know what?  I’m going to figure out a way to do just that.

(P.S.  I love you, Alyssa. So much.  And I’m so glad that you are amazing enough to be able to quote a Foo Fighters song that was released when you were 12… ha.)