YaYa Princess

Those that know me rather well are probably aware that I’m all about self growth and learning and all of those fine things.  Sometime in late March/early April I stopped long enough to look up at my calendar and realize that “holy potatoes May is going to be INSANE!”.   Basically, this year’s May is last year’s April…if that makes any sense.

I entered the month of May as I do most things when there is a lot to accomplish, head down and ready to charge.  But I also want to enjoy the fun times, of which there were a lot to be had.  I reconcilled myself to knowing that May 4-June 4 would just basically be a whirlwind and God willing I would enjoy the ride. 

And so I present to you 30 lessons in 30 days…or somwhere around there.

1. Threatening a union worker is never smart, and usually leads to the head union guy coming to the planner (yours truly) to put everyone in “timeout”.
2. Even when it rains fun can be had.  Who says you can’t ride on an open top tour bus in a drizzle?
3. South Street is MUCH farther from the Marriott than it looks when walking back after a long day and a full belly.  That requires stopping along the way at a bar and trying your first Guiness.
4. Guiness (at least I’m told when poured badly) has an aftertaste like blood.
5. As it turns out, PETA is now running the Shennandoah National Campground horsetrails.
6. And yes, that crazy old coot will actually bring out the scale and have you stand on it to see if you are 235lbs or less FULLY CLOTHED.
7. Nothing makes Big Girl want to eat (or drink) like a little humilation.
8. Aunt Sharon gave us the WORLD’S BEST WATERPROOF tent for our wedding!  YAY for mountain-folk!
9. You can still have fun camping when it’s raining, but as it turns out rain on your tent “roof” sounds more like an ambush than something spa-like.
10. Bear poop is HUGE.
11. Blue Moon with an orange is the most deliciousness EVER.  I <3 it.
12. My husband knows me well, and sees me better than I see myself.  I know I mentioned this in yesterday’s post but it’s still true.  Not a day goes by when I’m not thanful for him.
13. Sometimes you just need to turn to your boss, tears in your eyes, and admit that if your schedule stays as crazy as it is you will simply not be able to keep up.  And you need to realize that that is ok to admit.
14. My sister and brother in law are what relaxes me.  I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s as if their presence centers me.
15. They also happen to be very decorator savvy.  I had no idea how cute my front porch could be unti they got their hands on it.
16. As it turns out, one of my favorite places now is my front porch with some good friends, family and beer (apparently LOTS of beer if you saw our trashcan).
17. Finding out you are still over 600 hours over “fully billable” after already having one meeting removed from your calendar is not nearly as glamorous as it sounds and causes you to refer to #13 above.
18. “Sweet little Allie” will in fact bold face lie to the guy, IN THE FACE, who asks if she knows the way to the White House tour when threatened with bodily injury to keep it a secret from SK and Trey by her husband.
19. Karma is also a b*tch and said guy and his wife (who you tried to apologize to) end up following you around every tourist attration in greater DC, giving you the skank eye all the way.
20. Beer is good-especially on my front porch-did I mention that?
21. Having your husband come onsite with you to a meeting is nice in theory, but as it turns out I snap right into work mode. 
22. That state right over the bridge?  Yea, still don’t like it.  Even if it is only 7 mins from my front door. 
23. A reception at the Congressional Visitors Center, while it sounds glamourous, is really a logistical nightmare and much sexier in theory than practice.  Add rain to that and you end up with one wet planner.
24. Apparently it takes house guests to get us to finish our house….but boy is it getting cute!
25. You never know just HOW much like your mother you are until you see her for the first time in 7 months.
26. It’s worse than originally thought-I’m actually a combination of BOTH of my parents!!!  RUN FOR IT!
27. There’s something special about cooking your parents dinner on their 35th wedding anniversary with your husband at your new house.   Makes you wish you were closer to family.
28. My parents still leave me money in random places when they visit.  $20 bucks in the fruit bowl-score!  Somehow it never ceases to make me smile.
29. You never realize how old you are until you go to dinner and a movie with friends at the Tysons mall for an 11:20pm showing and are in the food court.  Oh.My.Gosh. 
30. I am blessed with some amazing friends and family.  But you already knew that didn’t you?

So I’ve survived the month.  Crazy as it was, I wouldn’t change it for the world.

No Comments | In: Everyday Life, Personal, The Boy, Travels, Work | | #

So the boy left me here in Philly today.  All alone.  You know, just me and a major city full of people and 1400 attendees.  Like I said, he left me allll alone.

I’ll be honest, I was super sad to see him leave.  It’s odd, I realize, but better I suppose than the opposite…you know, me ushering him out of the door.  He wasn’t even gone before the poo started to hit the fan.  Just another day in paradise around here. I suppose I’m lucky though, my floor even manager was a third party planner like me until about 6 weeks ago so hopefully we speak the same language.

The weekend was a lot of fun, and we did a LOT.  It’s funny to me to be back here where it all began for my family.  The convention center is litterally over the old train station…the same train my parents met on.  And I’m blocks from Jefferson Hospital where she worked, and I can see good ole William Penn like we used to when we’d go into work with my dad at night.

The boy and I got into the “what if” discussion again.  I’m so often drawn to the idea of the smallest change in decisions and how they would change your life as a whole.  What if…

My parents never left Philly

I chose a different unviersity than ECU

I stayed in Harrisonburg

No right or wrong, just the fact that even the little choices change the course of your life.  The boy tells me I’m nostalgic.  I say, yes thank you I am.

Just a walk down memory lane.

No Comments | In: The Boy, Travels | | #

Last night I was tooling through old posts.  I found one that I never published from when I was in Philly for the site inspection in December.  Tonight I leave for the City of Union Fun Brotherly Love.  Time really is flyin these days.

Anyway, it’s my first onsite of the year…well, for my standard clients.  Sadly one of my shows this spring was cancelled due to that ponzi scheme.  It’s always hard getting back into the swing of things.  Not to mention that apparently at some point the client was promised something called “continuous web registration” but there was a discconect with programming, so reg closed yesterday.  Sadly the originally reg coordinator is no longer with us due to downsizing, so there was a lot of searching through old e-mails to figure out what was going on.

Now, considering all that’s going on in the world, it’s really not THAT big of a deal.  But it’s just one more fun hurdle to conquor.  Luckily I set days like this aside for the eminent choas that occurs when people remember the 7200 things they forgot to do over the course of the last few weeks.  Product of being human and all.

Meanwhile, I have to admit that I’m nervous about this onsite.  Not just b/c I have been dormant for a whopping 2 weeks either.  I tend to watch a lot of news as it pertains to scares of any sort.  What can I say, I’m a drama queen and the news media certainly helps me fulfill that quotent.  Normally I’m not really all that concerned about whatever catastrophe of the week they are reporting on, but I cannot lie, this swine flu thing has gotten to me.

I was in Texas when I first really heard about it, and when they started reported about it coming over the boarder from Mexico.  I need not remind you of the proximity of Mexico to Texas.  On my return trip there were people in masks in the airport…a little too close for comfort.

And now?  Well, now it’s spread through out fine country.  New York has the largest outbreak in the US, which let’s face it is not surprising concidering that mass amounts of people that come through that state/city on an hourly basis.

Tuesday morning I will be faced with 1400 registered attendees from all over the country.  Attendees who are executives that travel all over the world themselves.  I’ve taken to washing my hands and carrying my Purell, but none the less, I have an uneasy feeling. Perhap b/c it is basically a convulted flu and not SARS or the Bird Flu or something. 

I suppose the fact that I’m a rather healthy individual should calm my nerves, knowing that while the flu would suck beyond all suckiness, I’d be ok.  And if not ok, I live in a major city with some good hospitals.  And beyond that, I have a friend whose husband does medical research, so I’m pretty well connected

Perhaps what really got me though, was the mass industry e-mails that came through on Monday about the effects of this on my industry, or the fact that by Monday night my company had created literature on how to deal with the swine flu as it pertians to events, planning and the like…literature that I have printed out in my binder.

It’s uneasy I suppose.  In reality I’m sure I’ll be fine, but in truth I’m nervous.  And Lord help any single person, VIP attendee or not, who has the sniffles and comes around me.  I may just have to sic the union on them.

Now, off to cross the border…err, uhh, Mason Dixon line.

No Comments | In: Personal, The Boy, Travels | | #

I’ll be the first to admit that when we moved into this house, it wasn’t the most plesant time in my life.  24 hours prior to closing on the house I flew home from my last onsite of 2008.  When I landed at Regan, I found the lovelist little e-mail to one of my VP’s from one of my executive directors.  An e-mail which proceeded to talk about all of my shortcomings.  An e-mail that had more than one “falsehood” in it, and yet I was forced to keep my mounth shut and take on for the preverbial team.

When the boy picked me up at the aiport I found out that it only got worse.  The mortage company was late getting some of the paperwork in.  The morning we were supposed to close, while the boy was continuing to pack I shut down to an extent.  I kept jumping on my laptop, trying to deal with work e-mails.

By the time we closed at 2:30pm, the charm around this special first in our lives was totally gone.  Secretly I was nothing short of heartbroken.  This is supossed to be this amazing day, full of hope and happiness.  And there I sat in a lawyers office, while a lawer rushed through so he could hand off our paperwork to his assistant and get on the road for his Thanksgiving road trip down to his UVA football game.  There wasn’t even some dramatic handing over of the keys.  Our realtor gave them to us at the walkthrough as an afterthought.

In the back of my mind, aside from the mess that was my worklife, I was stressing over dealing with the movers and how my poor little stinker was going to deal with the move, much less deal with us boarding her.  And oh yea, how about having to pack and drive 15 hours to Mississippi 48 hours after we moved.

Moving day was cold and bitter.  The boy, ever Mr. Social, wouldn’t deal with the movers.  That left me.  It’s my role in this marriage, and I get it, but that doesn’t make me like it.  The fact is it’s weird to stand there while a bunch of people move your stuff for you.  But it was also the boy’s birthday, so I went with it.

Looking back now, I really have to give the boy credit.  I was even less than barely engaged during the move and the days following (even after we returned) during the unpacking process.  Truth is, by the time we opened our front door, well, frankly I didn’t like this house.  I less than didn’t like this house, I resented this house to an extreme.  There, I said it.  I resented this house, I missed Fairfax, I wanted to move “home”.  Except here was the thing, this house was “home” now.  And man was a bitter.

We’ll have been in this house 5 months tomorrow.  I didn’t even realize this when I started this post.  In those 5 months I’ve finally started to come around.  But oh it took a while.  The day of the walkthrough and the immediate days following I began to wonder if the former owners forgot they had to move out until the morning of given all of the crap we found in this house (that did NOT help my attitude).  As a side note seriously, if you’re moving out and you don’t want your sh*t, guess what, I don’t want it either!

Anway…it’s been a long five months, but in that time I’ve slowly started to come around.  I’ve painted (with the boys help) most all of the house.  I’ve wanted to hire people for just about everything, but I’ve trusted the boy’s lead and we’ve done everything thus far ourselves.  He just keeps reminding me that not only does it save us money, but it helps us “bond” with the house.  He’s continually surprised me with not only his handyman skills, but his patience.  If he ever reads this, I’m sure that while he may be shocked at the fact I finally admit that I resented this house, it won’t be a surprise.  He knew, the whole time he knew.  And slowly he has helped me to accept this house and make it our own.

This weekend we decided to tackle the front yard.  12 bags of yard waste later, we discovered our front yard of …dirt.   But, we also found another garden, and some flowers, and most importantly a fondness for this place.  At one point in the afternoon the boy looked and me and told me how he was so excited to see me sincere interest in our home.  Because somewhere in the last 5, very long, months that’s exactly what it has become.  Our home.

Oh sure there’s a lot of work to do.  And I know for a fact I won’t always be interesting in whatever project the boy is cooking up, and I’m sure there will still be times when I am frusterated or days I will curse the former owners.  But it’s our home, and we’ll do whatever we can to make it comfortable. 

 But don’t think I still won’t try to hire help

2 Comments | In: Everyday Life, The Boy | | #

I’ve never been what you might call a fashion maven.  I’ve always been more of a “jeans persuasion” kinda gal.  I pretty much peaked in college when wearing pj pants and a tee shrit to class was considered the height of fashion (yay for the 90’s!)  After that, it all seemed downhill.

When I graduated I didn’t have much money, and therefore not a lot of ability to purchase suits.  Then I got a job and moved to NOVA and had even less money.  I’ve often half joked that I need to purchase full outfits bc I have no ability to put them together myself.  The problem with this is that I couldn’t afford to go out and buy full outfits, and I never learned how to dress myself in something more than Jeans and PJ’s.  9 years later, I’m still looking for full outfits.

 I stress to no end about what to wear, HATE packing for vacations, and absolutely love it when one of my clients has a uniform that we are required to wear onsite b/c simply put, it’s brainless.

When I met the boy, I quickly discovered his love of all things visual and spacical.  I learned this as it pertains to web design, but this also includes a great eye for style.  This doesn’t necessarily mean he’s GQ (though quite frankly he’s more of a classic style anyway), but he understands all of the fashion rules.  All of my life I always thought that somehow I just missed out on the day they taught us about plaids and stripes, brown and black, which shoes match which outfit, and here I get matched up with the man who has all of the answers.  Today, the conversation in our room went a little something like this:

So I can wear any color nuetral shoe with any color nuetral pant, as long as my belt matches b/c it’s an accessory. 

Black can be worn with tan, but only if it’s a shirt/pant combo, not a pant jacket combo, especially since black is the most formal and matching it with tan is informal, and with a cordoroy tan jacket is even moreso. 

And Brown, well brown as it pertains to pants is really a color, not a neutral.

And on we went.  Yea people, that’s right, this coversation was a FASHION LESSON.  And not my first mind you.  That’s right, I’m not ashamed to admit it, my husband has waaaay more fashion sense than me.  So I got a fashion lesson, one that I requested,  complete with the boy trying different color combos on to show me how they DON’T work. 

Bless his heart, he married a fashion moron.

3 Comments | In: Everyday Life, The Boy | | #