Tuesday, November 27, 2007

To be the best I can be




Pictured above: Alice, Amy & Leanne

This past weekend I had the opportunity to go out with a few friends. One couple consisted of my best friend Alice and her husband Chris that live in New Orleans. The other couple was Leanne and Chad. Leanne and I used to be best friends from junior high school until it fell apart our first year of college. It was really good to see her and her man, he seems to take really good care of her and I’m thankful for that. Alice & I have been friends since high school and got closer and closer in college and beyond.

On Sunday I found myself flooded with a million different feelings about the situation. I am one that never likes to lose friends. I know that some people come and go in our life - but i have always thought that when you are that close with someone that the friendship never really dies. I am sure that comes with being an adult but I also think it comes from me geninuinly caring about someone. There are girls I have gone to school with since kindergarten and they have turned more in to acquaintences. Sometimes that bums me out but it doesn’t pull at my heart strings like the loss of a friendship/friend that I spent a lot of quality time with does - someone that I "grew up with."

I have had a few friendships that have come full circle, that I lost touch with and I now spend time with, its not as close as I would probably like for it to be - but I am sure I am just as much to blame in those instances.

There were a lot of questions that flooded my head after all of my emotions of hurt and frustration mixed with excitement and true joy for this "new friendship" - for me that is what this is going to have to become in a sense - a new friendship. There is A LOT of history there but our lives are completely different, in a way, both of us have experience different turns in our lives, but I know the roots of our personalities are the same. I really just want to know what happened. Was it me? Am I the one at fault here? For some reason I can not find the courage to ask those questions yet - it still hurts. (Which is frustrating in its self, because I sometimes think I am stronger than that- HA! who am I kidding?)

I can remember when the day I was told I had cancer and how bad I just wanted a close girl friend there beside me - to hug me, cry with me, and laugh with me. I may not have talked about that much or I may have put on my strong face - but man, was I dying inside! Thinking... "Really? Cancer? I’m only 24! I have so much more ahead of me!" ... to name a few.
I do know now though that if anyone I consider a close girlfriend goes through anything life-threatening I will do everything in my power to be there and to be the comforter and friend that I needed.


This weekend taught me a lot, but most of all it reiterated what I have always tried to be... I want to be the best friend I can possible be... I want to be the best person I can possibly be... I want to be the best wife I can possibly be... I want to be the best mother, sister, aunt or cousin I can possibly be.


Pictured Left: Stephen, Amy, Chad, Leanne, Alice & Chris
Leanne - if you read this - I always wanted what was best for you - ALWAYS! Meeting Chad has put a great sense of peace in my heart and it seems that right now, you do have what is best for you! I am so happy for you!


Here is to all types of friendships - old, new or revitalizing.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

The great dingy adventure!!

Off the main island there is a nationally registered island called “Buck Island” where locals and tourists spend their Sunday afternoons. You can only get there by boat and it is a mile off the mainland.

Most people take boats out there that a/b 20ft or larger. Most of the larger boats will pull a dingy (tiny boat w/ an outboard motor) so that they can take it to shore, cruise around to everyone else’s boat or take people around to the other side of the island to the snorkel trail.
Stephen wanted to take our friend’s (Dick) dingy out (funny, huh?) and ride right behind them (a 1970 60ft something) b/c he didn’t have a tow line for it. Well… this would be first time this dingy has ever been “out to sea” and the swells were a/b 2-4 ft., not bad, but not fun.
So off we go, merrily riding behind them as they pull out of the slip and out of the jetty. It looked as if we were going to keep up… until – Dick cranked it in to only about 10-knots and we were soon left in a trail of churned ocean. I thought to myself “that’s okay- it will just take us a half a day to get there.” Wasn’t happy about it, but was adjusting okay.
Then the motor dies. He cranks again, we progress a/b 15 ft (we are going in to the seas to go to the island) then it dies again. We lose our 15 ft. gain. By this point we are a/b ¼ mile or more from land. He then says “why are we taking on water?” He grabs the water pump that you use to usually pump out rain water and starts pumping. We lose more ground. He starts it again. We gain 10 more feet, maybe and it dies. The engine sits too far in to the water, so every time we would hit a high wave and the back end would drop a little the engine would get flooded. He then asks me to grab this milk jug that has half the top cut out of it so I can start bailing water. “Fine, I thought, I can do this, its not big deal, this is a tiny boat, and it’s kinda’ like being in he lake.” Then I happen to look up and the boat is bounding up and down and get my bearings all messed up and here comes the nausea.
So, now I’m nauseated, it’s hot as heck, we have nothing with us but a water pump, my mosquito bitten feet are sitting in a/b 8 inches of ocean water/ left over beverage that was spilled trying to do 3 things at once and I realize I’m burning b/c I didn’t put sunscreen on my back b/c it wasn’t supposed to be that long of a ride. I can also see that my family and a/b 12 other friends had made it to Buck Island and was starting to get a little panicked/really pissed that they were not going to come get us. If I could have screamed profanities I would have, then I thought at this point there was no point in wasting my breath.

My husband looks at me and says “Well I guess if worse comes to worse we will eat your left leg first.” I was stunned, thinking “WHAT?,” and I replied with, “Oh no(!), why my leg?" He was trying to lighten the mood and I wasn’t having it.
We notice that the big boat has turned around to come get us and they are looking a/b 1/4mile west of us. We’re screaming, waving our hands- then they finally come over.
As we are bobbing up and down as they back in to us so we can get up at the swim platform at the back of the boat, I hear something buzzing beside my left ear. I swat it, thinking it was mosquito and BAM! A STINGING SHOCKWAVE goes through my left thumb and in to my body. I’m screaming, I see the bee do a dive bomb in to the bottom of the dingy and look at my thumb to see its stinger lodged in to the top pad of my thumb and half of its intestines still attached.
So, I’m screaming, freaking out b/c all I want to do is get on the freakin’ boat – a friend reaches over grabs me underneath my armpits, and like superman lifts me to safety. Now I realize I’m okay and I lose it – I am a balling – I had had enough crap in the past 45 minutes, I was done – then I notice there are about 10 people on this boat that I have never met before and they probably think I am the biggest pansy.
They ended up finding a line to pull the dingy behind the boat, we get there, they check to see why were taking on water… Dick (our friend) had taken out the plug for something and forgot to put it back in. We found out that champagne corks work just fine for a drain plug. Let the engine out and the dingy was ready for other adventures…. That did not include me!

Here is a picture of my dad, Stephen & the infamous dingy.



VACATION

We had a wonderful vacation visiting my dad and step-mom. We didn't get to go island hopping which was a HUGE bummer b/c of some incompetent boat mechanics at the marina.

However, some good friends of ours, Robyn & Ethan, rent villas for a living and they let us stay in one for a few nights. The name of the group of villas is called The Villa Madeline. If you would like to rent one for your next vacation, let me know and I can contact them, in the mean time I am going to try to find their website so I can link it here. It was awesome - 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, den, full kitchen and a private pool. Very romantic.

Here are some pictures.


(L) Stephen looking for baby sharks. (R) Robin, Deborah & me on the boat at Buck Island.


Out in the town shopping.









Us being tourists - at the eastern most point of the United States of America. Behind us is a sun dial that was built in 2000 for the millenium.



THE VILLA!