(Barely A)Live! from Raleigh!

I’ve been in Raleigh, North Carolina for two weeks. My first week was- in true Kelly fashion- ridiculously overscheduled: moved all my stuff in my apartment, joined two softball teams, found a meetup group, went on a date, saw a live show, and started a new job. I hit the ground running people.

Then my fantastic friend Emmy came to visit from a neighboring town for the weekend. We explored Crabtree Mall and went to Artsplosure in downtown Raleigh. It was a fun weekend with an old friend (I can’t believe we’ve known each other for 10 years). But Sunday came and Emmy left.

Then Monday hit. A went to this big networking/learning forum for work. I didn’t know a soul. I didn’t know the acronyms, titles, organizations that were being tossed around. About half way through the day I found myself in a funk as I realized that professionally I’m at a new beginnings: no one knows me, no one respects me, I don’t know the systems or the major players. I was just so connected in Florida that going from there to this is pretty odd and ego crushing. I know I’ve got to give it time but still, not fun at the moment.

After work I went to my first slow pitch game where I got a chilly/non-acknowledgemental reception from my new teammates. I was expecting to be welcomed and small talked with but the extent of small talk I got was “what is your name? what positions do you play?”.

And then Monday night I realized I was feeling more than bummed, that I was kind of feeling sick. Tuesday the cold hit me full force. I struggled through work (no leave time yet) and made it home to stare blankly at my computer and realize I had no plans for the holiday weekend. Alone, sick, and miserable I realized that the highs of moving are accompanied by valleys and I was trekking into one.

“Moving on, is a simple thing, what it leaves behind is hard.” – Dave Mustaine. I’m missing my friends, co-workers, and Tallahassee right now. Being the new kid on the block isn’t that much fun. I wish that this weekend I could take a road trip or have a BBQ with my Tallahassee friends. I wish I wasn’t sick.

Not regretting the move, just experiencing the bumps in the road…

My “Dear John” Letter to Tallahassee

Dear Tallahassee,

This is a hard letter to Write… I love you; I’m just not in love with you anymore.  It’s not you, it’s me. After 10 years our relationship has just grown stale; the special events you plan have lost their luster. I know your rhythms and, while they are comforting, I’m growing bored. About seven months ago I decided it was time for a change. I started exploring other cities, states, options. I just feel- for me personally- we aren’t a good fit right now. Who knows though, maybe our paths will cross again? You have so many great qualities: your beautiful canopy roads, your beautiful springs and forests, your quaint local shops, your bikini bicyclist. You have so much to offer, you do, and you’ll make some other resident really, really, happy. They’ll be so lucky to live here. You deserve someone who is in love with you.

XoXo,

Kelly



What My Divorce Has Made Me Thankful For

• I’m thankful that my divorce has prompted me to reconnect with and redefine my authentic self. Not to go all Oprah or anything but I feel like I’m in this stage of deep self discovery: what do I value? What do I want from life? What are my priorities? What makes me happy? What do I believe? Nathan and I started dating when I was 19 years old and at that age I didn’t know the answer to these questions; I was still developing and growing up. Throw in a serious relationship and the desire to maintain it and I think I slowly and gradually “bent”. I think all people in relationships bend- I think it’s natural- but to have this bending happen during very formative years was probably not the best case scenario.  I want to have clear answers on those authentic self questions before I embark on another serious relationship.
• I’m thankful that my divorce made me realize how many people love and care for me. I have a hard time asking for help; luckily I didn’t have to ask. My brother showed up at my door almost every night the first two weeks after we separated. My divorced parents came up (together) the weekend afterwards and co-habitated and cooperated for my sake. Work colleagues gave me support and flexibility to deal with life after a separation. New friends stepped up to the plate, commiserating with me but also making sure to get me out of the house and helping me realize life does go on. Old friends provided much needed perspective when I’d fall down the rose-colored reminiscent rabbit hole and listened when I needed to vent. What surprised me the most though was just random acquaintances reaching out and offering support. It reminded me that there is kindness in the world and that people want to help; I just have to be ok with letting them.
• I’m thankful that my divorce has helped me gain perspective. Wow, the amount of perspective this life change has given me is overwhelming. Besides a high school boyfriend here and college crush there I’d never experienced a broken heart. Having experienced having my heart broken now, and surviving it, smaller acts of rejection which would have sent me into a panicked tizzy before only mildly faze me. The initial period after the separation I felt very fragile, it’s nice to finally start feeling more resilient. In addition I realize I had no idea what friends and family were going through when they were struggling with divorces or big breaks ups. I feel like I’m more empathetic towards others pain now that I’ve experienced it and I hope in the future when a friend or family member goes through a large life change I’ll be more supportive/ understanding of their journey then I’ve been in the past.
• I’m thankful that my divorce highlighted what I didn’t like in my marriage has made me figure out what I do want in future relationships. About 6 months after the separation I decided to write down my list of five non-negotiable (a la Patty Stranger). I’ve learned that life and relationship are about compromise… to a point.  But by making sure my future partner meets certain deal-breaker criteria up front I think I can avoid lots of heartbreak in the end.
• I’m thankful that my divorce means I didn’t have to juggle five (FIVE!) different Thanksgiving Day celebrations for the first time in 6 years! Talk about a change of pace! For that, I am truly thankful!

Musings On My Impending Divorce

In early May my husband and I separated. We had been together almost eight years.

There is no sugar coating the reality of the situation: it sucks. Regardless of if it’s the best thing do to, most rational thing to do, it just sucks. The physical prying apart of our property, the emotional prying apart of our souls, the breakdown of our daily routines, the loss of a soft place to fall at the end of a hard day. My life has changed more drastically then I could possibly imagine in the past two and a half months. I don’t like change.

Even though the divorce is amicable, even though it is a “simplified divorce”, the process is exhausting. I’m not even talking the legal aspect; luckily Nathan and I agreed on how to split possessions, finances, and pets. The legalistic, paperworky, hashing out the details aspect has been as good as it gets as far as divorce goes. But the emotional exhaustion has been overwhelming. I am keeping the house we bought, moved into, and set up our lives in together and plan to stay in it. While in some aspects that is good (yay stability) it also means I am living in a emotional trigger. For the first two months I’d find myself momentarily forgetting about the divorce as I got lost in job responsibilities, or reading, or YouTube or general distraction. I’d suddenly look up to the hallway Nathan usually would appear in when coming into the living room and suddenly the fact would hit me like a punch in the gut. He’s not there. He won’t be there.

I’ll be fine. I know this is the best. I know our love for each other couldn’t transcend the fact we don’t fit well together in oh so many ways. I know I’ve got a lot going for me: great support network of friends, loving family, good job, awesome pet. I know I’m a strong, independent women who will be a-ok, hell probably better off in the end. But none of that mitigates the fact that right now, the process… it just sucks.

Weekend Update: Pie, Golf, and Graduation!

• Last weekend I went to Orlando. While there my friends and I ate pie!  Celebration, FL is home to The Great American Pie Festival. For $10 vendors had access to an unlimited pie buffet. Strawberry? Check. Apple? Check. Peach? They got it. Mint chocolate? I’ll take two.  Key lime pie on a stick dipped in dark chocolate? Yup. Victoria had a lot of her friends meet at the location and we put out a large blanket that, within 30 minutes, was full of pie containers. It was such a spectacle that the CBS’s The Early Show spotted us and taped an interview with us for part of their segment. You can see the video here.  It was a fantastic day and I definitely want to try to go again next year and bring Nathan.

• Sunday I participated in a golf tournament that supported my work and a little girl with cerebral palsy. My foursome consisted of my dad, my Uncle Jerry, my friend Andrea, and me. Golf was on my side that day; I played better than I had in years.

• Last week was spent at Tampa for work. It was a good week, a productive week, but a LONG week. I was so happy go get back home to Nathan and the buddies on Friday.

• I got a iPhone 3GS for work. My brother dropped it off Friday and it still sits on my counter unopened. My motivation is low to open and play with it. Hoping it grows on me in the next couple weeks as I’ll be carting it around in addition to my Palm Pre.

• Nathan graduated! I’m proud of him.

• I’m trying to cook more at home. Tonight: meatloaf and roasted veggies and sweet potatoes. Homemade dinner = good. Having dishes = bad. I hate dishes.

• Having Scooby walk to and look at two big, fluffy dog beds and then choosing to lay on my feet makes my heart go aflutter. I <3 Scooby

The “Can we go on a walk?” Look.

Life Lessons- pt 1

Things I learned from my month-long sabbatical in Key Largo:

• I’m more adaptable then I thought. I adjusted quickly to living in a new town, with 8 strangers, in a small condo. While I missed my husband’s and dogs, I didn’t get home sick and was able to cope with challenges like sharing a fridge with eight people with more ease than I originally imagined.
• Sometimes people just don’t like you. That’s ok. I need to learn to accept that fact, smile at them anyways, and move on with my day. Trying to make people like you is senseless and a waste of energy.
• I love my husband a lot. And Scooby. I love Scooby a co-dependent amount. Being away from them was worth the experience but I missed them both dearly. I missed Nubbs and Tina too, just not as much as my Scooby-Do.
• I am so fortunate. So so so so so ridiculously fortunate. I have a great family, friends I love, a house I adore, a stable job, and I was recently offered a job that will allow me to make a difference in people’s lives every day.
• There is a dark underbelly to even the brightest places. No, there are no deep, dark secrets at Island Dolphin Care but it’s still a non-profit and a work environment. With that comes a myriad of issues and- while the smile of a dolphin a couple times a day dampens the frustration of the negative- I realized there are always negative. What’s important is how I choose to respond to it.
• I want to travel. A lot. I need to save, plan, and make it happen while I’m young, energetic, and child-less.
• Give people the benefit of the doubt. More often than not they’ll surprise you in positive ways.
• Commuting by bike/walking is not nearly as time consuming or challenging as I anticipated. It actually was really nice.
• Even if you’re in a new place, with new people, doing new things, living a “new” life the bad habits you’ve developed over decades don’t shed miraculously. I don’t know why I thought I would be able to physically leave my negative behaviors and ticks in Tallahassee; they are part of me and they will travel.
• I need to focus on doing interesting things more often. It makes life more colorful. The only one holding me back is me; I need to not be trapped by my own fear and laziness. I want to live an extraordinary life. I want to enjoy it. To appreciate it. To watch the sunset more often, enjoy the conversations I have, and take chances.

Damn You Nasal Labial Lines and Other More Serious Stuff.

I’ve had kind of a mentally heavy last couple of days.

Monday I read “Strained by Katrina, a Hospital Faced Deadly Choices”, a fabulous piece by the New York Times on the happenings at a hospital right after hurricane Katrina that is lengthy and intense. And I mean intense. If you feel like dealing with questions of mortality, fate, and ethics read it. If not, go look a LOLcats. I made me grapple with thoughts about my profession (health care/ developmental disabilities policy), human nature, how hard life can be some times, how grey most decisions are, and how I would respond in the same situation. And it made me pray hard, veryveryvery hard, that the field of emergency management was working steadfastly so nothing like that ever happens again.

That night, with thoughts of aging and death already on my mind, I decided to watch YOUTH KNOWS NO PAIN on HBO. “At a time when plastic surgery and injectable substances have become socially accepted options for fighting age, YOUTH KNOWS NO PAIN shows how the fear of getting older shapes attitudes in a youth-obsessed culture and supports a lucrative market that holds out the promise of miracle cures.”

While I watched it, thoughts of a recently take MySpace-style self portrait popped in my head. It looked good on the tiny little digital camera screen but, when enlarged on my laptop, my first reaction was “I look old”. I noticed visible creases on my nasal labial and forehead due to smiling and too many years of squinting in the sun while playing softball. I didn’t have an intensely negative reaction to the picture (shown, left) but more a “wow, I’m 26… time is going by fast… I’m getting old.” reaction. And a need to swear to use my Clarasonic face brush dailyand research new, stronger ant-aging moisturizes to start using.

The documentary also made me want to invest in some preventative botox. Bad.

Then yesterday I woke up to my cell phone ringing at an ungodly hour. My friend Loren, who I am health-care surrogate for, was a being admitted to the Emergency Room. Loren’s 64, an individual who is developmentally disabled and a quadriplegic, and has extremely limited natural family supports. Yet he manages to be happy and productive in his own way (he’s a very talented painter and likes to wheelchair dance). As I stood over his hospital bed talking to him, looking at his wrinkled skin and body that was deformed by a difficult birth and cerebral palsy, I suddenly felt intense shame and extremely silly for getting so soberly thoughtful about labial lines the night before. It’s that kind of reality, “thereismoreimportantstuffgoingonthanyou”, smack that I felt when reading the Times article.

Then late last night- swinging back to the superficial- I suddenly got really anxious about my community living situation in the Keys. I will be living in a condo with six other interns. I’m friends with some of them on Facebook and yesterday browsed their pictures of being at Key Largo so far. Seems they like going out, partying. They are very young, very pretty, very thin. I suddenly got that weird summer camp anxiety: will they like me? Will I be an outcast? Is this going to be like a bad extended episode of The Real World? Nathan said, worse comes to worse, I would just be the mother hen of the condo. Albeit a mother hen that doesn’t clean or cook, but the married, non-drinking, non-partying, napping mother hen at that.

Going to sleep I thought… “is that what I want to be? Do I want that to be my identity? Is that my identity? Why do people say I’m motherly when I’m not yet (and not even close) to being a mother? Why do I revert to this persona? Have I grown up too fast? Is it just my nature? Do I look that haggard? Why do, when I tell people my age, they are shocked and say they would have guessed I was much older?”

My guess is the nasal labial lines.

New Car!

2004 Nissan Xterra, originally uploaded by just_kelly.

This weekend Nathan and I bought a new (used) car. We got a 2004 Nissan Xterra. It’s in good shape, sporty, roomy enough for the dogs and fun to drive. And it doesn’t sound like a wooden roller coaster when you make turns! As my friend Emmy said “You will get down to the Keys in one piece!” Yes, my old car was just that scary…

Today is Adopt-a-Less-Adoptable-Pet Day!

Today is Adopt-a-Less-Adoptable-Pet Day! What… you didn’t remember? So you… didn’t get me a gift? Even with my trio of Less-Adoptable-Pets?

What is a “Less-Adoptable-Pet”? Petfinder.com conducted a survey of 12,600 shelters and rescue groups across North America. What they found is very distressing — 96 percent of shelters and rescue groups currently have adoptable pets for which they are having particular difficulty finding homes.

The survey found that:
- 40 percent of shelters and rescue groups said animals that are too large are often overlooked.
- 43 percent said that color plays a part.
- 47 percent said that shy pets are overlooked.
- Animals can’t live with other pets are passed up.
- People are breed prejudiced.
- Pet that are not housetrained don’t stand much of a chance (like it’s their fault no one trained them!)
- Pets that are blind, deaf, or have other abnormal physical traits are less likely to be adopted.

Petfinder gives some silly reasons why less-adoptable pets rule:

• Older pets are mellower – you don’t have to worry about your lamp getting knocked over!
• Physically challenged pets are often unaffected by their handicap – but you still look like a hero!
• With “bad reputation” breeds, you get the chance to prove people wrong with your great dog!
• Dark-furred pets make it easy to accessorize – black goes with everything!
• Pets with behavioral issues allow you to form a tight bond as you overcome obstacles together!
• Big dogs are easier to find when it’s time to go to the vet!

And I’ll add:

• A three-legged dog is a great conversation starter. Having two three-legged pets? It blows people’s MINDS!

Ladies and gentleman, meet my less-adoptable pets: Scooby, Tina, and Nubbs.

Aren’t they adorable? These three buddies give me more unconditional love and joy than anything else in the world. They were all adopted, Scooby and Nubbs as adults and Tina as a puppy. I can’t put into words how much I love them and how much their presence in my home has enriched my life so I won’t even try.

Moral of the blog post: adopt! Seriously. There is no reason to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for a purebred when there are millions of loving, adoptable dogs and cats in shelters around the United States. Heck, if you have a specific breed you love I can almost guarantee you there is a breed-specific rescue for you to adopt from! The Humane Society of the United States estimates that animal shelters care for 6-8 million dogs and cats every year in the United States, of whom approximately 3-4 million are euthanized.  And if you take a trip to a shelter or rescue, don’t overlook the oddballs: the animals missing limbs, those that might look like a breed you’ve heard bad things about, and those sprouting a few gray hairs. By passing them up, you might just be passing up the best friend you could ever have!

Find your next great pet at petfinder.com!

My Pen > Your Pen

My pen is cooler than your pen. Why? Because it’s a computer. A smartpen. It records what is being said while I am taking notes and links it to what I am writing. I can save the page of notes and the audio associated with it to my computer. I can search the electronic version of my handwritten notes for words. It can translate phrases into other languages. And I can draw and play the piano on a piece of paper.  It probably does a lot of other cool stuff too that I haven’t discovered yet but I am already geek-giddy over my new toy.

Here is a video that is kind of cheesy but shows exactly how freaking cool my new pen is. Thanks Mom for the great graduation gift!