...Thanks?

Him: Hey, that sweater looks really good on you!

Me: Really? Thanks!

Him: (looking closer) Yeah...you know, it looks pretty hipster.

Me: What do you mean?

Him: You know...hipster.

Me: Like "trying to hard to be hipster" or "should be only worn by a hipster of which you are not" or are you using it as a synonym for trendy...?

Him: ...?

Me: ADAM! THIS IS IMPORTANT!

Him: I'll never tell.

Me: UGH!

Whoop, whoop.

I hate to take up your time whining once again about the DMV but YOU GUYS.

I went. I churned out various (pointless) paperwork.

AND I CONQUERED!

I really can't describe the joy that filled my heart when I left victorious with newly registered plates in my little hands. I stopped myself just short of shouting "I DID IT!!!" from the cold concrete steps followed by numerous fist pumps.

Because it is quite a feat, after all.

I don't need to tell you how many hoops you need--I mean, get!--to jump through in order to pay a whole lot of money to legally drive a vehicle. It really makes a hard-working, tax-paying citizen feel good, you know? Like, oh YES! I get to prove my identity 50,000 times today and STILL walk in with fingers crossed that I will walk out a success.

Add in a change of state AND name in the last 18 months and you've got yourself a good ol' fashioned nightmare! WHEE!

...Are you still with me?

(You are such good friends.)

I could talk about the depressing lighting, the horrible folding chairs that surround a marble entryway where unhappy workers literally yell, "NEXT!" and have to deal with even more unhappy customers, which is even more depressing than the lighting (and that's saying something).

But that's how it goes sometimes. You take deep breaths, you square your shoulders, you take that number and you bring lots of reading materials and pretend to read them while furtively watching the clock tick-tock closer and closer to "Sorry, we're closed. Please take more vacation time tomorrow."

And sometimes...well, sometimes you just get lucky. There is no skill involved, there are many, many, endless variables of things that can go wrong. But there are days, like mine yesterday, when you get to emerge bursting with a strange sort of pride at defeating the mind-boggling bureaucracy that is the DMV.

You walk taller, head up, and you wipe the perspiration from your brow that gathered as your trembling hand pushed insurance card after driver's license after title after...DOESN'T MATTER! IT IS FINISHED!

And you enter your car and allow yourself one fist pump and a quiet gleeful, congratulatory "Yessss!" and you try to forget how much time, money and energy you just lost. As well as the fact that you will be back in two years.

Maybe even with a change of address--just for kicks.

Leavin on a Jet Plane.

My husband is on a plane to Honduras and I can't help remembering a time not so long ago when he boarded a different flight en route to a two month stay in India.

We were dating and I was so dreading it and while it wasn't exactly my favorite thing ever, it turned out to be good. I mean he came back with an engagement ring so I can't be too upset, now can I? ;)

But what hit me the other day was how quickly things have changed in these last few years for him when it comes to travel. Back then, the year he went to India, he took his first flight just a few months before that trip. To France.

It was a big deal--first flight, first time out of the country and of course he was super excited to spend time at a monastery, which seems fitting for a guy who wore black T-shirts literally every day in college. He is totally on board with simple living to say the least. ha! (Until I started adding crazy things to his wardrobe such as color or pattern or sometimes...wait for it...BOTH AT THE SAME TIME! OH THE HORROR!)

(p.s. Adam if you are reading this yes, it is going somewhere and no, this is not all about your wardrobe. Love you!)

Anyway, there really was this shift that occured once he came back from France but especially once he returned from India. And not just the ring that landed on my finger shortly after (though we were just laughing last night at the madness of wedding planning as he found an old notebook with several wedding-related to-do lists).

It was the idea of possibility. It was like the world had suddenly opened itself up to him and instead of feeling this "I could never do that" or "I wouldn't know the first thing about trips like that" or "I've never even been on an AIRPLANE" and this weird idea of things being unattainable...just like that, a switch flipped.

And now, just a short time later, this man I married is not only extremely affected and shaped by his experiences that year in France and most absolutely in India, but he is also leading trips of youth across the globe and collecting stamp after stamp on his passport.

I don't believe that one has to travel internationally to experience this, though it has had quite an effect on both Adam and me personally through my own travels, and I do recognize that actually, these opportunities are not available to everyone--it costs a pretty penny for a plane ticket, after all. (Though as Adam has discovered, there are creative ways to raise the funds, it is still without question that we and he, specifically, has been extremely blessed with opportunities that we and he, specifically, does not take for granted.)

But it is fun to witness that change in him and to see that lens shift in his world. It's funny how one little shift and suddenly your whole perspective is changed with new colors spilling over everywhere you look. And the world can seem much brighter, both bigger and smaller at the same time, and you can find this confidence bubbling to the surface.

(Though also as we have both discovered, sometimes the world seems much darker...but that's for another day.)

It's especially nice to remember this on a send-off day, my least favorite of days, and know that I get to witness these changes in this man of mine for years to come and he in me. There's a comfort in that, a knowing that you are known as you are but that you will also be known as you become and  whatever you become--that he will be there for the full arc and not just a blip here and there.

And I know that sounds really corny and totally unrealistic in this day and age, but you know what? I believe it.

p.s. But still please hurry home.
p.s.s. This doesn't mean I want to live in another country. I don't.

And the winner is...

I heard a story yesterday about a man who was slotted to receive the Nobel prize in medicine. He died two days before he heard about his hard-earned honor. He had prolonged his own life with the cancer-fighting drugs that earned him the prize.

Can you imagine? 

For some reason this story strikes a chord in me. I'm not sure that I can articulate it but it has something to do with legacy, with devotion, with recognition.

I think that's a real struggle of mine with growing up. If you'd ask me what I want for my life, there is a definite part of me that wants to be known for something. And when I say known, I don't just mean the deep kind of knowing that I desire from my husband, from my family, from a few close friends who really get me (or at least as much as one can really know of another).

There is absolutely that desire but that's not what I'm talking about here.

I mean to be largely known, recognized, celebrated even (as cheesy and probably pompous as that sounds). I'm not sure if that's normal or not. I like to think that it is.

It's been part of me for a long time now, as evidenced by a diary entry made in my pre-teen days that listed out what I would do with my fortune and fame When I'm Famous. Oh yes I did. (Bonus points for at least wanting to share it with others--buy my cousin a car, treat the family to an awesome vacation? No? Still weird? ha.)

When I was 12 this desire really was to be a celebrity of some sort but today it is not. Sure, there was the time I had to write my own obituary in college (don't ask) and wrote that I died on Oprah as my critically-acclaimed book interview was interrupted with the surprise that in fact it was OPRAH'S FAVORITE THI-INGS! And I died of shock...you've got me there.

But nowadays, celebrity life sounds absolutely dreadful. I'm a Midwestern girl at heart. I have no place in my life for any sort of Hollywood glamour and I would TOTALLY FREAK OUT with the invasion of privacy that we expect from our celebrities.

The (long winded) point is, the desire for this celebrity is not in the fame as we ordinarily think of the word, it is not for the money (although I would definitely enjoy it for awhile, don't get me wrong) and it is not in the day-to-day wine and dine. It is the idea of legacy. Of my life mattering in some larger sense of the word. Of for some reason believing that if I do not leave a lasting impact on the world in some fashion, I failed.

And yet...if you would ask me whose lives are living legacies to me, I would tick off people who worked every day, who raised their families well, who raised me well, who were faithful in the small things. Who had character. Who were honest. Who are not rich. Who are my heroes.

And how often do they get recognized? Get the Nobel Prize for Living Well or Living For Others or Sacrificing Day After Day For A Handful of People in the World?

And how many of those people would do it anyway, who do it anyway, who even if they received their grand, life's work-prize days after death would shrug and still say with certainty I would do it again?

...and would I?

The Unknowable.

It was a flitting, fleeting thought. A run of the mill momentary, eh, I change my mind. A non-decision really, so inconsequential or so it seemed at the time.

I was running late. I was headed to a party. I had been gone all day and stopped at home just long enough to pick up my car and part ways with my then-boyfriend (now-husband).

I had ice cream in the fridge inside, just up the driveway, a few feet from where my car sat parked under the shade tree by the curb.

"I'll see you tomorrow," I said to him. "I'm just running inside for a minute and then I'll be off."

And then...I just didn't. I don't know why. I didn't hear a voice or feel an inkling or anything. I just didn't go inside.

But I could have.

And I planned to.

But I just didn't. 

And who's to say that non-decision, non-incident was anything but an ordinary Saturday September 7:08 p.m.?

But it sure feels like something when your friend's husband's phone rings two hours later as you're eating pie and having a grand ol' time and give a rather puzzled smile as he passes his phone halfway around the room to you and says, "Um, Sara...it's for you. It's Adam. He's been trying to get a hold of you."

"Hi!" you say into the phone and immediately alarms go off between your ears and your brain scrambles to keep up as you recognize the sheer panic in your boyfriend's voice at the other end of the line saying words like "break-in"..."your bedroom"..."police"..."so glad you're okay."

And you ask about your roommate (Yes, she's okay) and you apologize for having your phone in your coat pocket--the coat you took off.

And you start repeating these strange words back to him and have to walk outside into the suddenly scary night where you start to cry and wonder what if...

And you feel so exposed and so violated and you can't help but wonder the un-knowable--was it the area's serial rapist? Was he watching me? Was he already inside? What if what if what if...?

And you wonder about the other girls and you wonder how you'll ever feel safe again and you jump a million times a minute for days, weeks, months on end and you think about that vanilla ice cream, untouched in the freezer.

And you'll never know.

Learning:

"...Which I guess, bring me to a larger, more serious point: that it's hard to love someone, I've found, when you're preoccupied with holding your entire world firmly in place. Loving someone requires a certain amount of malleability, a willingness to be pulled along, at least occasionally, by another person's will."
-Molly Wizenberg, A Homemade Life

Footloose and Facebook free.

I did the unthinkable everyone.

It is with a heavy heart and twitchy hands that I report to you that I have made my last status update for a month--a whole month! And one with 31 days nonetheless!--and will be living life sans Facebook for the whole month of October.

I KNOW.

I am taking lots of deep breaths today and repeating positive sentiments (I can do this. I am strong. I have Pinterest. There is always Google Plus...JK ADAM! I know you are reading this with delight at my misery and would totally--rightfully--accuse me of cheating should I pull the Google Plus card. LOVE YOU!)

Why put myself through such torture?

1. I was complaining to my sans-Facebook husband about Facebook's shady new updates/marketing deals. I'm not sure if you've met my husband but he is not someone that takes your words lightly. If you make your case on why something is horrible--especially, in this case, something he already thinks is pretty terrible--then you better be ready to put your money where your mouth is. This is a trait I admire most times but also one that is LIKE TOTALLY RUINING MY LIFE (cue the teen angst eye roll...except I'm not a teenager anymore so now it's just poor manners).
2. He ran a 5K with me and this is our way of making each other better people. Slash making each other miserable in the name of love but hey, isn't that what love is for?
3. I have never, not once, been without Facebook since I activated my account during finals week 2004. It is time.
4. Not sure if you're aware of this but even with the weirdo new layout that is  (I mean, WAS) completely confusing to me, Facebook is a time-suck with little benefit. Except for knowing engagements before your husband so PLEASE for the love, will everyone agree to text me if anything big happens in the next 31 days?! I am serious.
5. (insert commentary on awkward social pressures, the pretense of real relationship and the ease of which one can stalk others and be stalked here.)

This is not a judgment on you if you love Facebook because OBVIOUSLY I am right there with you but this is me trying to puff up my pride and say hey, yeah, I can sooooo do this.

Also! To make this a bit more fun for me and just because, ya know, I could use a bit of a jump start around here and need to fill my need for online social interaction somehow (ha), I am also going to publish a blog each day in October. The idea is not themed content, nor is it polished writing, but just more of a "set an egg timer and write til it dings." We'll see how it goes.

Happy fall everyone! May your weekend be full of sunny walks, bonfires, pumpkin AND pecan pie and ice cream with your mom as is mine. OH, and also perhaps a hilarious night at the comedy club...not so much because of the performing acts, but more because your poor husband got picked on more than once from the stage since ya know, they seated us IN THE VERY FRONT AND CENTER TABLE. What are the odds?!