A Picture Is....

orange life jackets
sunscreen and floaties
snoopy fishing pole
giggles and squirms
warm naps
burnt skin
curly hair with helicopter bows

a wooden boat
wobble knees on skis
robert spraying Mama Anne
long boat rides
alligators sunning on the point
learning to bait a hook
you catch it, you clean it
checking crab traps on the hour
wet hair and card games

laughter and smiles for every meal
and waffles :)
first bikini
summer crushes
first GOOD kiss
sneaking in the cooler
bonfires with a broken radio
sneaking out only to get caught
fireworks and screams
motown and james brown

tears and heartache
comfort and support
refuge from reality
shooting stars
Orion
questions and answers

reunions that last forever
memories that will never stop being made
my line that keeps pulling me in

mom and dad

home

My Perfection

Everybody has something about their life that makes them sad at times and makes their smile fall a bit. The people that survive are the ones who understand this commonality. Knowing you are not the only one with extra weight on your shoulders, allows you to push this sadness aside at times and simply enjoy all the good things about your life.

The best times in life, to me, are the times when everything is perfect at a single moment. That moment may not last longer than a second, but it lasted. Last night was one of those moments. I was sitting on the porch of Old Bay Steamer with one of my best friends, her family, old friends and new friends. The table was covered in sweat from the scotch, Auburn was proving another sad football season, and the humidity definitely could have been turned down a notch.

When you invite someone new into a group you have known your whole life, it is always nerve racking to see how it will all work out. Will this new person feel out of loop? Will the life long friends fail to see the good parts of this new friend? In an instant everyone meshed. New friendships were born beside a hand full of new jokes.

I sat back and looked at my life at that very moment. Everyone was laughing, forgetting about all the horrible things our world can offer. For one instant, the events of your past did not matter. Your football team did not distinguish you from the table, and selfish emotions did not play a role. There is no sound sweeter than the sound of your friends laughing….knowing the people you love the most are happy right now.

At that very moment, life was unmistakably perfect.

Wake Up Rip

I honestly feel like Rip Van Winkle. It is like I just woke up and don’t remember the past few weeks or maybe even months.

I have been working my tail off for my wine festival in FL this past weekend. I have been over worked, my confidence has been bruised and my positive attitude has been stretched. But what I learned from this past six months is to get over myself. Time for an ego check.

A volunteer came up to me early one morning when we were setting up and started asking me all about the festival and my job. I was worried about where the rest of my volunteers were and thinking only about the tasks I had to accomplish in the next 2 hours so naturally (for me) I was rude. I gave short answers and didn’t smile at her. She started asking if this was all I did all year, like a f***ing ant could do my job. I was ready to tell her what a bad ass I was until I looked at her. She looked at me in amazement and said, “You get to do this for a living?”

Well, hell, she got me. Guess what Searcy, not everyone is judging you when they ask about your life and you do have an amazing job whether you are good at it or not. After she said this, I stopped and looked around my event site and it looked completely different to me. It looked like a blessing, luck. Whatever you want to call it, it was me.

Every day I wake up and walk into an office where you don’t meet a receptionist. Each person is different, but the one thing we have in common is our shoes stay under our desks. We laugh until we cry, and we bicker until we laugh. The pieces of my puzzles include wine, food, and forklifts. Where else on earth could I find a job that allows me to rub elbows with some of the most well known chefs and community leaders in the South and drive a 26ft Penske in the same day? (If you don’t know me, the driving the 26 ft Penske part is one of my favorites!!)

So it is time to wake up, Rip. Life is only getting better.

Sweet Cheeks

So you know how I mentioned I am trying my hand at song writing? Well, I have been writing things down here and there but nothing really falling together yet. The other night that ADD man was back and I couldn’t sleep. I need to mention too that my doctor took me off of “the pill” to try and get rid of these headaches. So my emotions are all over the place. I started crying and I mean boohooing the other night over something that happened seven years ago!!!!! Really?

Anyway, so I couldn’t sleep because I was sad. So I sat up and just wrote about it. It is a topic that is really personal to me and I didn’t know if I wanted to write a whole song about it or just make a reference to it in another song. I mean I guess I can do both.

So, this weekend I let a good friend of mine read what I wrote. He has written a few songs, and so he was really interested to see what I came up with. I would LOVE to be able to write songs for a living. How cool? So when he read my thoughts, why in the world did I feel butt naked!?

I seriously had to walk outside and find something to occupy my mind. I felt like someone had just pulled my dress over my head. You know that feeling of complete vulnerability and humility? And I do not mean the funny kind!! I love embarrassment and embrace it at any given moment, but this was a completely different feeling.

I know everyone has had the dream where you are all of a sudden naked at school. Well that is the feeling I had in the clearest way I could explain it. I guess this goes back to my first blog posting when I talk about writing being a form of complete vulnerability.

I just all of a sudden got scared that every word I wrote down was stupid, and some of them were! I didn’t want him to read it and be like, “Oh crap, now I have to fake that I like it.” I wanted to be anywhere but there at that moment. But it ended well. He is a sweet friend. He came outside with a really great look on his face and said he wanted to work on it with me. He was honest!!! It was not great, but it was words and they were true.