So it is 7:30pm on a random Monday evening and I am driving my two dogs (one is on so many drugs he is barely able to stand and the other is wearing a plastic shield to keep her from chewing on her bloody stump of a tail) down I-40. It is pouring rain and I am driving to North Raleigh to hand deliver some paperwork that I forgot to mail in (again). My gas light comes on (again) and I notice that there are two brand new wrecks on the other side of the road and I grumble to the dogs about sitting in traffic and the damn rain (keeping in mind that we are still in a severe drought) and how I am an idiot for not mailing this stuff in last week. In my head I am planning my next blog- a rant about my hellish week (I locked my autistic boy in a hot car and AAA had to come break him out- and that was one of the BETTER parts of my week!) and wondering if the bad news will ever stop coming...

Literally it came out of NOWHERE- one of the biggest and brightest rainbows I have seen in a long time just popped up in front of my car- almost as if it wanted me to follow it. I took the time to enjoy it for just a second before grabbing my cell phone to snap a pic- my mom will love it! So I took a few pics (before realizing that a state trooper was cruising in front of me- this is NOT the week to push my luck with the law) and veered off on an exit to buy some golden gas. I was disappointed that the gas station was on the wrong side of the road (how DARE they build a gas station on the non-rainbow side of the road!), but as I pumped the two gallons of gas I could afford, I noticed that the people around me were all looking to the sky. Then I noticed what I had been missing all along- the rain had stopped and I was parked directly in front of the OTHER side of the rainbow! It almost seemed that it was springing up from the gas station! Just as I grabbed my phone, an old biker dude kinda guy walked up beside me with his camera phone. "I'm bout to do the same thing." he said with a smile.

And I couldn't help it- I was smiling. I am angry and frustrated and really ticked off about pretty much everybody and everything right now, but I just stood in a gas station parking lot staring at the sky with a bunch of strangers and I smiled.

Rainbows mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people and I know that it's nothing more than science to some (reflection and light and stuff), but to me it is one of the most beautiful natural occurrences imaginable. Even more than that, it's a promise. Believe what you want, but the rainbow reminds me that there's only one promise that won't be broken. And today that was the best reason I could think of to smile.

Heather and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad WEEK!

Since I kinda dropped off the face of the earth this week, I feel I owe my readers (all two of you) an explanation as to my absence. What follows is an account of my hellish week. Names have not been changed to protect the innocent because none of you fools are innocent. I had a bad week and now EVERYONE MUST PAY!!!

I will pick up exactly where I left you on the last blog- Sunday afternoon. I had gone to church so I was feeling happy and holy and had no idea of the storm that was headed my way...

I was hanging out with my favorite 6 month old Hudson and we decided (it was his idea really) to take a long walk on a gorgeous afternoon. The walk went ok (and by "ok" I mean I had to stop twice to remove him from the stroller because he was screaming and people were staring, i had to chase his stroller down a sidewalk when it started rolling backward down a hill, and I drove him into a bush one time- in the context of the week that followed, it was a lovely walk) and I returned home with only tired legs to complain of.

The next day at work (Monday if I already lost you), I would stand up from my desk and a pain would shoot thru my left foot and ankle so sharply that it forced me back into my seat. I didn't worry about it too much (it's not like i really WANTED to work anyway) until i found myself barely able to walk to my car after work. I spent the night sitting on my bed scanning pictures (if you haven't heard, this is my new HUGE project i have given myself) with a heating pad on my sad ankle. 

Thinking the rest had fixed my gimp, I headed to work on Tuesday only to find that I had to basically drag my bum leg up the hill. Melody made me go see a sports med doc (i guess there really are no excuses not to see a doctor when you work at campus health) and my foot and ankle got squeezed and squished and poked and prodded and then the verdict was announced- tendonitis.

Ok- I'm not even sure i know what tendonitis is, but it sounds like arthritis and arthritis means OLD (ref. Heather dictionary). With my 26th birthday fast approaching (may 6th- I want gifts), this was all just poor timing...

"But what caused the tendonitis?" I questioned the doctor. I mean, I haven't biked or skated in awhile and I can't remember the last time I did gymnastics or jumped off things for fun- so what could it be? "You probably overdid it during your walk on Sunday." was his answer. 

Let's think about this. I have been hobbling my ass around Campus Health for 2 days and when I finally get confirmation that something really IS wrong with my foot, I want to explain to my coworkers that I wasn't just being whiney all week and what can I say but,

"I hurt my foot walking...

with a baby...

in a stroller."?

Ummm, can't I just say I dropkicked some girl in a bar fight?

The doctor told me to stay off my foot as much as I could, so Tuesday night I was back in bed scanning more pictures. 

I decided to officially rest my foot on Wednesday (this might be a good time to interject that I am moving next Wednesday, so at this point in the story I have exactly one week to pack up my whole apartment and get this place clean and ready for inspection- and I'm in bed), so I stayed home and- you guessed it- scanned pictures. The picture scanning was not without drama of its own though. While going thru pictures of myself from high school and college, I came to the realization that I do not currently look puffy because my hair is shorter (the story I use to console myself while i wolf down a bag of doritos), I look puffy because i AM getting puffy- there I said it! And not only am I getting puffy, but scanning pictures of people I try hard not to think about only caused my subconscious to jump on the bandwagon and I started DREAMING about the people I don't want to think about, so now I am waking up in a HORRIBLE mood!

I decided that being home alone was doing more damage to me than all the walking would do to my foot, so Thursday I headed back to work. It appeared that my luck was beginning to turn around when I received a request for an interview for grad school. We made the appointment for next Wednesday (anybody see a problem with this? ya, I didn't either.) at the exact same time I had an appointment to sign the papers for the townhouse. Did I really expect anything more?

By the time I got to small group on Thursday night, I wasn't exactly spreading sunshine, so Heather offered up some white chocolate liquor which I gladly accepted (What? You don't drink liquor at Bible study? Perhaps you should join mine...). Things were beginning to look ok again when I got a phone call (these are the moments in the movie when you scream at the character "Don't answer the phone!" because you know the other shoe is about to drop, but the poor helpless sap doesn't have a clue).

So I answered the phone (wink) and my roommate informed me that my dogs had escaped from their crate and had destroyed my room (as I typed that last sentence Oreo leaped on the bed and began licking the screen, obviously still apologetic for her bad behavior). I returned home to find a) two very happy dogs and b) a hole in my wall accented by fur and slobber.

Let's review again. I'm moving in LESS THAN A WEEK and this is the only apartment I have ever lived in that did not bear the marks of my dogs- Oreo ate the carpet out of my first apartment and Pat shat (yup, that's the past tense of "shit") all over a textured wall in the next one.

And now the hole.

Oh yes- I forgot to mention that on Thursday I realized I had maxed out my credit card, so now I am in debt up to my eyeballs and I can't put the charges for a busted up apartment on my credit card. (Last night I realized that I have NOT maxed out my credit card. It was apparently a website error, but it caused significant panic on Thursday)

Not gonna lie- I didn't handle things well. I screamed and cursed and pouted and cried and my dogs and roommates all hid from me. Then I fixed the crate and went to bed.

And by "fixed" I mean that when I came home from work on Friday afternoon, Pat was sleeping on my pillow- Oreo was in the crate being pissed off.

I don't remember much else about yesterday- I think my mind went into self-preservation mode. I vaguely remember that while I was inspecting the crate to see exactly how my canine Houdini made his second escape, I noticed a distinct chirping sound coming from one of the three smoke detectors that Lauren and I have between our rooms. We took turns taking the batteries out of the smoke detectors, trying to disable the chirper, and finally realized that all the batteries had been removed and not one, but TWO of the bastards were still going off! THREE phone calls to the office later (I wasn't playing- I threatened to disable all our detectors if we didn't get help), the chirping stopped.

One trip to Wal-Mart and sixteen automotive clamps later (my mom suggested putting one on each corner of the crate, but I thought that sixteen was a better number), my dogs stopped escaping.

The blog ends here not because my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week ended but because you are now caught up to 4:19pm on Saturday afternoon and nothing bad has happened while I wrote this blog.

Keeping my fingers crossed...

What I Look For in a Church

So my friend Elizabeth dragged me to her church yesterday. She really did drag me- she called me every Sunday morning for 2 months to gently remind me that church was about to start if I wanted to drag my sinful self in.

I never did- until yesterday.

If you don't know me well, here is something you should know- I'm a watcher. Especially in new situations, I notice EVERYTHING!

So I walk into this new church and I'm skeptical- because that's who I am- I don't know these people and I don't trust this church and I will watch until I have reason to believe otherwise. The first thing I notice is the cheesy worship music- I hate cheesy worship music, so I roll my eyes. Some people are raising their hands- that has always kinda weirded me out...

Next is the neighbor greeting part that makes me wanna run screaming to the land of Germ-X, but I resist- Aaaahhhhhhhh church!

The pastor begins to speak and he cracks a few jokes and I'm not really listening because I'm focused on the little boy in front of me and how he is obsessed with his daddy and I'm thinking that he is adorable and I would kinda like to have a little kid to be obsessed with me like that- then I would like to give him back to his parents :)

I guess I was subconsciously listening to the sermon because I heard the pastor say something about drugs and the congregation bursts out laughing. Confused, I look to Elizabeth and she explains that they are laughing because the pastor has been to prison.

WHAT?

He immediately acknowledged the laughter and explained that his congregation was laughing because they knew his story and if visitors wanted to read it, they could pick it up in the back of the room.

Prison, huh?

Elizabeth would later explain to me that he spent some time in jail (presumably for drug possession) and that he accepted Christ while he was there. When he was released, he went to Duke Divinity School, got married, and had 5 kids- what a life!

Immediately upon hearing that the pastor spent time in prison, my attitude toward that church changed- I know, I know, it doesn't make sense, but that's just how I work...

I noticed that the pastor was wearing jeans and a t-shirt and I liked that he looked comfortable- made me feel comfortable. I liked that people felt comfortable commenting to one another during service and nobody gave them the evil eye. I liked the fact that two homeless guys who I recognized from Fayetteville St sat in the front row of the congregation. And I liked that the pastor had been in prison.

I'm not pledging my allegiance to this new church or to any church for that matter. But for yesterday, it was exactly what I was looking for in a church.

Thank you Elizabeth!

Carolina in my mind...

When I was a kid, I watched a lot of Carolina basketball. I remember watching giants like Eric Montross, Antawn Jamison, and Vince Carter and being in complete awe. At the time, all I knew about my heroes was that they were tall and that they lived in this magical place called Chapel Hill and I hoped that someday I could visit the land of the giants :)

Fast forward a few years and I'm sitting in my first college class at UNC. I took a moment to breathe in the experience and to stand in complete awe of the opportunity that lay before me. Over the next four years I would find myself pausing often to soak it all up- the electricity that filled the Dean Dome as I chanted "Tar!" and my 15,000 closest friends answered with "Heels!", the incredible peacefulness of an afternoon spent lounging in the quad or playing football in the yard, and the way my eyes filled with tears every time I heard the Clefhanger's rendition of "Carolina in My Mind".

I loved every minute of it.

This afternoon I was walking on campus and the trees were in bloom, the sun was just warm enough, and the sky was this amazing shade of Carolina blue- in short, it was a perfect day. And just as I might have missed the moment, my ipod shuffled to James Taylor- the perfect soundtrack to the perfect day- and I was reminded, once again, how incredibly blessed I am to live in this magical place called Chapel Hill.

The Truth About Wisteria

For the past two weeks or so, I have been obsessed with a particular stretch of 54 that I pass on the way to and from work. This area has a wall of bright purple flowers that stretches for about half a mile and it makes me soooooooo happy! No matter how early it is or how stressed I am, passing those beautiful flowers just makes me smile. Sometimes I even remember them when I'm not in the car and I get excited just thinking about seeing them again!

So, ya, I like this area :)

Since I am just discovering this year that I live among some beautiful plants (25 years in NC and i noticed the flowers and trees THIS YEAR), I have been kind of obnoxious about asking my family and friends to identify plants that I find appealing, but nobody seems to know what my heavenly purple plant could be...

Finally I had had enough. I googled "NC vine" images and I recognized the very first picture as my purple friend! The website called the vine "wisteria" and I giggled at remembering Wisteria Lane from my Desperate Housewives days. But now I wanted MORE wisteria! Where could I see more? Where did it come from? Could I plant some in my apartment complex? I needed more information, so I found a wisteria website.

And that is when my dreams died...

"Wisteria occurs throughout North Carolina and is listed as a worst weed by The Nature Conservancy's Sandhills office. The Chinese variety of wisteria is the most frequently seen in North Carolina. When this vine escapes into forests, it climbs trees, intercepts sunlight, and kills or represses host trees. Hundreds of miles of wisteria vines are destroying trees at Raleigh's Umstead State Park. In fact, this deadly vine may be as destructive as kudzu."

So that's it. My beautiful wisteria is actually KILLING the beautiful trees it lives on!

Life just isn't fair :-(

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I think the first blog is always kinda awkward, don't you?