Screw you 2011 I want my flying car!

Looking back on all these retrospectives of 2011 I can't help but gag a little whenever I see some glowing post about how fantastically awesome 2011 has been.

"OMG it's the best year ever"

"2011 has been a year of amazements"

"this has been the best year of my life"

Really? Because I have to say that 2011 has been a year of disappointments. Do you what I drive? A Toyota. It's a regular car that drives on a regular road. Seriously, how boring is that? It doesn't fly, or transform, or talk to me. It just sucks gas and drives.

And do you know how I get from pace to place (when I'm not driving my boring car) I walk. No jet pack, not even a hover board. Seriously, I'm willing to start wearing high tops if it means I get a hover board.

So I ask you 2011, where is my personal robot like Rosie from the Jetsons? Shouldn't she be waking me up in the morning with coffee and breakfast? Shouldn't she be making my bed and brushing my teeth and basically turning me into the laziest person EVER (side bar: why weren't the Jetsons fatter). Where is my spaceship? Where is my machine that magically cooks anything I want with the touch of a button in under 60 seconds? And for the love of Pete where is my flying car?

I mean sure, I'm typing this on my iPad while listening to my iPod and answering email on my phone...but really 2011 I expected more from you.

The Rejection Game

Do you remember middle school gym class and how horrifying it was when two of the super athletic cool kids were chosen as team captains and the rest of the class lined up waiting to be picked?

This, as you can well imagine, never ended well for me.  I was neither popular, or athletic.  What I was, was short...very short.  I was once compared to a wind-up toy.

For this reason I never much cared for gym, and never took it past those dreaded middle school years (in my high school the marching band counted as PE credit...told you I wasn't popular).

I like to think that those middle school gym classes were the beginning of my fear of rejection.  And lets face it, no one really likes being rejected.  We strive to fit it, to be part of a crowd, to be accepted by those around us.  It's the reason why people dress, and act, and talk, the way they do.  And lets not pretend like you don't do it too.  Everyone wants acceptance.

I'm not saying its a bad thing to want to be accepted.  I'm saying that it sucks to be rejected.

The adoption process, at least in my personal experience, is a study in rejection.  You spend months getting paperwork together; with background checks, and fingerprints (multiple times which, come on, is stupid), and social work visits, and interviews.  Your friends and family write letters of recommendation.  You create a self-absorbed (on purpose) scrapbook all about how fantastically awesome you are.  And FINALLY you submit everything to the agency and you wait...

and wait...

and wait...

And while each adoption journey, domestic or international, has it's own particular struggles, the wait is universal. And it doesn't matter if you wait 4 months for a birth mother to choose you in a domestic situation, or 36 months to get your match from China, the waiting (while it lasts), seems endless.

In my particular case the wait (9 months and counting) is interrupted with these intense moments of hope.  When I match the criteria a birth mother is looking for, and my profile is shown.  Let me assure you that the wait, during those moments, is worse then endless.  And when the hope dies, I'm still waiting, the short, unpopular kid in gym class, standing on the sidelines while everyone else plays.

It sucks...a lot.

And it's happened five times. 

And I really don't want it to happen a 6th.

A girl can only be rejected so many times before she starts to think...maybe it's her.

(also, gym teachers, I really hope you don't let the cool kids pick teams anymore...just sayin)

Envy

I often find my self suffering from blog envy or, more specifically, envy of the crafty-antiquey-bakey-homemadey stuff I see in blogs.

You see in my mind I am that girl, the one who crafts, and writes, and reads, and L.I.V.E.S. everyday like life is some sort of carnival and I'm queen of the parade.

And I like to craft, and antique, and bake (ok that's a lie, unless you count the cookies that you just break apart and set on the cookie sheet because I can bake the shit out of those), and do homemade things.

But.....

I'm inherently lazy.  I mean there are lots of things I like to do (in theory).  Things like knit, and open an etsy shop, and find a job I can do from home AND make enough money to pay the bills, and run.

But...my hands hurt when I try to knit.

Etsy already has ten thousand of any idea I've ever had (and they are all way cuter than anything I could make).

I was an English Major, which means that my second degree gave me the skills I needed to get a job, but somehow teaching from my living room isn't shaping up to be that million dollar work-from-home idea.

The idea of shopping for a sports bra hardy enough to reign in the girls is too overwhelming for words.

So until then I'll continue to read blogs and drool over the craft rooms, and gorgeously wrapped presents, and lovely re-purposed furniture that someone just happened to find in an old barn.  And I'll work on small projects and dream of the day when my niece won't need a play room and I can turn  it into a crafting mecca....

Classy is my middle name

There is, in my town, a gated community.  A very nice gated community. With guards, and "estates."  It holds the type of houses where I imagine that people dress for dinner.  The kind of places where the pool house out back is bigger than my first apartment.  The kind of neighborhood where the Gilmore's would live (Richard and Emily obviously...Lorelai wouldn't be caught dead there) It's one of those neighborhoods that get made fun of for being snotty and stuck up (and let's be honest....parts of it probably are).

But I have friends that live in the (still very nice) but un-snotty part of the neighborhood.  And when I visit them, as I often do, I am usually conscious of the bevy of (very nice) cars going by me in the residents lane while I idle in the visitors lane waiting for another lawn-care truck to get waved through by the guard of the hour.

And often as I sit, I become aware of the fact that my car is old, and dirty, and has a pile of discarded Starbucks cups and empty diet coke cans on the floor of the backseat. And I wonder if the guard is secretly judging me for not living up to the Gated Community standards.

Still I don't spend a lot of time worrying about it (time that could be better used playing reruns of  the Gilmore Girls in my head).  And, since I'm generally such a classy person, I feel fairly certain that I belong in that particular neighborhood (or at least my friends house).

But then on Friday, I pulled up to the gate around 8:00pm to let the dog out and check the mail, already in my pajamas (sans bra), missing one hubcap, with a piece of pie on a paper plate on the passenger seat and a Styrofoam cup full of cool whip in the cup holder I thought..."way to keep it classy Keener"

And also,  this place may be a bit out of my league (I'm way more Lorelai than Emily anyway)

How do I not own this?

There are a few things you should know about me....

First, I'm pretty much always cold.

Second, I dig crafting. 

Knowing this one would think that I would be the proud owner of a Snuggie (Hello?  A blanket with sleeves....GENIUS).  I could be warm and craft, or read, or play on the computer without having to readjust the blanket to keep me snuggly (OMG do you think that's where they got the name?).  I have a plethora of blankets, fleece, wool, big, small, electric, and old fashioned, but I don't own a Snuggie. Which is sad, but I've been able to muddle through life just fine without one thank-you-very-much.

Last week I found myself flipping through one of the approximately 10 million catalogs that have arrived in the mail this month and I came across that can only be described as the GREATEST. SNUGGIE. EVER.

But before you can fully appreciate how completely amazing this particular Snuggie is, you have to know one more thing about me...

Once upon a time it was my dream to be Wonder Woman.  Seriously.  She is clearly awesome.  I spent a good deal of time running around in my Wonder Woman underroos pretending to be her.  And so you must understand that when I saw an ad for this

I was immediately transported back to a childhood spent running around our apartment in this...

And it became abundantly clear that THIS Snuggie was made for me!!! (for real yo, I want it)!!

What I Remember

I remember the phone ringing, not wanting to answer it because I was tired, but answering it anyway.

I remember my mom telling me to turn on the TV because there had been a plane crash, and feeling annoyed because I was scheduled to fly to Paris the next day and who wants to watch news about a plane crash the day before they fly.

I remember the exact shade of green of the shirt I was wearing and the feel of the ottoman against my legs when I pulled it up to sit within a foot of the television.

I remember seeing that second plane enter the screen and disappear into a cloud of fire and smoke, and crying in disbelief.

I remember, with absolute perfect clarity, watching a man and woman holding hands as they fell, and thinking my god, what must it be like for that choice, the choice to jump, be your best option.

I remember yelling, YELLING, at Peter Jennings when the split screen showed the tower begin to sway and then fall, and the look on his face when he realized what had happened.

I remember calling my college roommate who worked in the House of Representatives, when the news reported that a plane had crashed in DC, but they didn't know where.

I remember calling her parents to tell them she was okay, that it wasn't Capital, and that she would call them when she could.

I remember how empty the sky looked without anything flying.

I remember story upon story upon story of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

I remember thinking that someday I would be teaching my kids about this day and how very odd that seemed.

I remember feeling angry, and sad, and confused, and scared.

I remember standing at ground zero, 9 years and 9 months after that day and still not being able to really comprehend what had happened, and just how enormous the buildings had been, and how difficult the cleanup efforts were.

I remember it like it just happened, and I imagine I always will...

The one where I reminisce about a driveway....

Hill House comes with a driveway.  A steep driveway.  I mean seriously steep, like taking the trash down each week is kind of dangerous because if the can gained enough momentum it could totally flatten me.

Here is a totally accurate illustration of the driveway.

Luckily I live in Georgia so at least I don't have to think about things like ice or snow coating the driveway.  Or, more accurately, I don't have to worry about ice and snow because if we ever do get ice or snow the entire state basically shuts down so I won't feel obligated to go anywhere until it all goes away...

At first the driveway completely put my sister and I off the house.  The first time we drove by and saw it we immediately threw it out as an option.  Not only did I have absolutely no desire to drive up it, I most certainly didn't want to have to mow the equally steep front hill.

As it turns out the front hill isn't an issue because I don't mow it (that's what lawn services are for), and the driveway isn't such a big deal because there is enough flat driveway at the top to park, and play, and turn the car around so I don't have to back down that monster hill.

But most importantly the driveway makes me totally nostalgic for childhood (I know, right), but it's totally true.

See, my BFF growing up was a girl named Brenda.  Brenda lived in my neighborhood, and I practically lived at her house.  Her house, much like Hill House, had a steep driveway.  The only difference being that while my driveway is very steep it is relatively short, and her driveway was both steep and l-----o-------n--------g.

In the winter we loved to sled down her front hill and fly off the top retaining wall only to hit the, slightly less steep, bottom portion of the hill.  Sometimes we would build a snow ramp and attempt to sled down it off the retaining wall but my aim, as ever, sucked so that never really worked out.

But the absolutely BEST THING EVER was riding down her driveway on my scooter.  Oh yeah, I had a scooter.  It was a thing of mint-green beauty and I rode is so often that my dad actually had to replace the break pads on it (I'm such a bad ass....wearing out the breaks on a scooter).  It looked a little something like this:

Only, as I've mentioned, mint green.  And, if riding the scooter wasn't fun enough, Brenda and I used to BOTH sit down on it, legs askew, and ride it down her driveway, across the road, and into the driveway across the street (thank you Peacock family).  All the while I was stretching my short little arms as high as possible so I could hold onto the handlebar and "steer", or break if it became necessary.

Looking back, it probably wasn't the safest way to spend the afternoon, but it was super fun.  And I think about it every single time I go up or down my driveway, and I kind of wish I had a scooter to try out on this driveway.