Buggin'

OKay, okay - you guys have been bugging me to start blogging again, so here goes! As many of you know, I was resently discharged from the hospital after a long (35 days!), difficult and nearly fatal stay at Grady Hospital's Burn Unit as a result of being struck by Toxic Epidermis Necrolysis (TENs). I entered the hospital on June 2, 2007 and left July 6. It was an ordeal to say the least - although the medication they used on me (Versed [ver-said]) put me in a coma and later gave me amnesia, so I really don't remember much of it.
You can read a day-by-day account of it as written by my wonderful friend, Reena, at http://heyjeeves.blogspot.com - but I must warn you that some of it is medically graphic. I haven't even read most of it (except your sweet comments!) because it upsets me.
Anyway, I've been home for a little over 2 weeks now and things are coming along pretty well. The doctors are all impressed with the speed with which I'm recovering but I'll be honest and say that I definitely have my moments when I am really frustrated. Nobody likes having really tender and dry skin and mine is a lot of both.

But let's talk about happier things like our wedding! We have postponed it from Aug. 18th to January 19th, 2008 - with all of wedding day plans remaining the same. So now it'll be a "winter" wedding (it is Georgia after all, so I doubt we'll have very wintery weather!). But I might just get to wear one of those faux fur wraps - oh-la-la!

Totally Bummed to the Max

Now that my birthday party is over and all of our guests have left and J has left for work, I feel especially lonely. But that's only because the weekend so so wonderfully full of friends, family and surprises!
My actual birthday was on Sunday the 4th, but of course Saturday is party night. Eventhough I knew what the theme was for the party (1980's a la "Miami Vice"), I was still really surprised when I walked in and saw all the balloons, posters (there was a multi-colored sign in the bathroom that read: "For a good time, call: 867-5309") and people all dressed up! You know people really love you when they dress up like fools for you.
Overall I think about 50 people showed up - girls with big hair, guys with tight-rolled jeans and kids spraying each other with silly string (evidence of which will probably be found in odd places around the house 10 years from now). People were dancing (ok, maybe just me) to the 80's tunes and happy birthday was wished to me in high-pitched, helium-induced voices - everyone agreed it was a really fun time. I know my friends helped out a lot, but I really have to give a lot of credit to J for putting this whole thing together and then, while I was visiting with my sister the next day, he cleaned up! Who could ask for a better guy?!? Not to mention he made for one hot "Don Johnson"!

Family and other indisposable things

Our wedding is inching closer and closer, faster and faster. I have officically busted the budget and it seems that everyone's deposit is due right now, $500 here, $1,000 there - it's adding up and freaking me out. And I really am trying my best to find the best deals while not compromising too much on quality. At this point I'm only nervous about the baker - I'm sure it'll be lovely cake, but I'm worried it'll taste like wedding cake and I've never really liked wedding cake. There is a difference between cake and wedding cake. I don't know what happens to make them different, I just know that eventhough I like to eat cake, I rarely like the cake served at weddings. There's something dry and too-sweet and yet nearly flavorless about wedding cakes. At least to me.

But this is one of the two bakers everyone suggested to use and the other one won't make the groom's cake the way I want, so that's that. There is only so much time you can spend on each part of the wedding or else you'll drive yourself crazy. And because I do want our wedding to feel like a wedding, you pretty much have to have a cake and flowers and all the other stuff that makes a wedding a wedding.

Which brings me to family. As the wedding nears, the distance between me and my family becomes increasingly painful. I am lucky in that I am not referring to emotional distance, just old fashioned miles of space. My mom, stepdad, little brother and one of my sisters and her family all live way far north and I live in the South.

The distance slashes across my heart because I know that it won't be long after we get married that we're going to try to start having a baby and I won't have my mother around for comfort and help. Yes, J's family in here, but we're not really close. We're all friendly with each otherand it's nothing against his sisters, but honestly I'd just prefer to have my own mother and sister with me. I guess it's just a comfort/familiarity/blood thing.

I've turned this over and over in my head and there's just no reasonable solution to it. They like living up there and actively dislike how land-locked we are. We like living down here and actively disike the cold, grey weather they have up there. Not to mention that everyone has their jobs and homes and what-not that makes it practically impossible to move. The prospect of having children who don't really know their Grandparents and other family members makes me so very sad, it almost makes me not want to have any - the emotion is just that strong.

Not to mention everything I've missed in my little brother's life. He's 15 now and I get to see him twice a year at best. Same goes for my sister and her kids. My niece Sam hardly even knows I exist. That kills me. When I moved down here after college I never really thought about how drastic the distance would prove to be. We had always moved around so much, I think there was a part of me that believed we'd all end up living near to each other somehow.

How fitting: Marc Broussad's song "Home" just came on.

I think one thing that makes this so tragic for me is that I always liked/loved/appreciated how close our family was considering and despite the divorce, step-parents, half-siblings and many, many moves that happened, for better or worse. I think this led me to believe that my family would do the same - not let outside things affect our sense of family and always come back together in the end.

Maybe that was just my perception, a romanticised memory. In reality my older half-siblings were parted with our common father at ages 3 and 4 by marrying my mother and moving away and then my immediate sister and I were parted with him after he left and our mom's marriage moved us away from him when we were 10 and 11 years old. All of us, our dad's children, spent the rest of our lives as occasional guests at his house, but all of the kids, though legally only half-siblings, all refer to each other fondly and willingly as just sisters and brother - even my younger half-brother, who has absolutely no blood relation to my older half-sister and half-brother, is regarded as family.

That said, this kind of openness in titles and affiliation has also led to some strain - my stepdad calls me his daughter, something that I like - but he would like and has asked that I call him "dad" - something I just can't do. It's not anything against him - he's known me since I was 10, he went through my teen years much more acutely than my own dad who saw me only 5 times, two weeks at a time, while I aged from 12 to 17. But I just can't bring myself to call him "dad." I've tried to explain this to him - that if my own father had really cut out and left completely or died, then I could and would be happy to transfer the title. But my dad didn't and he's not, so I can't.

Anyway, the point is I am sad, upset, pissed, torn...etc. about not having my family closer to home - so that it can really feel like home.

Now this is what they call...

Truth in advertising:
This photo was taken by my dad when we were on a hike up Pilot Mountain in N.C. and came across a pack of cig's on the trail. Dad thought it would be funny but no one helped us pose at all - we were influenced, I believe, by all of the billboard ads that showed pictures like this Misty ad. Creepy, huh?

Hilfe!

Ich suche fuer meine Freundinen aus Stuttgart, Isolde u. Dorothee Wuensch (vielleicht Dorothee Paulus). Ihre spitznamen sind Iso und Dodo. Kennst Du Sie? Bitte melde Dich!! Ich vermisse Euch so sehr!!!

{This post says "I am searching for my friends from Stuttgart, Isolde and Dorothee. Their nicknames are Iso and Dodo. Do you know them? Please get in touch with me! I miss them so much!" I wrote this because I lost touch with them and thought, hey, people google their own names all the time, maybe this post will come up in the search - and it worked! Dodo emailed me about a month later and then Iso came to visit. This internet thing is pretty darn swell, doncha think?}

NOLA needs YOU!

{{More Photos from the trip HERE}}
J and I went to New Orleans last week - I hadn't been there since 2000, so it was the first time for me since Katrina. It's a weird mix between renovated houses that are completely redone, empty houses that look like the flood happened only a week ago and other areas where, truly, they were probably falling apart before anyway and now the situation has exacerbated the problem.

As we drove into the area, you first pass Slidell and then the outer part of New Orleans, which, according to what you can see from the highway, is full of empty, boarded up and fenced off aparment complexes and neighborhoods. There was a Wal-Mart that had yet to reopen. J recalled having seen that same Wal-Mart parking lot full of tents when he came here about 3 months after Katrina. I was pissy when I thought about how Wal-mart was so quick to run commercials touting their support for the people affected by the hurricanes, but now can't seem to be bothered to reinvest in this community and offer much-needed jobs. But then, I didn't see really any work being done on the abandoned neighborhoods (except demolition) - so maybe there simply is no need for a Wal-Mart?

We arrived to our hotel, the Rennaisance Arts, got cleaned up and then headed out for dinner. We asked around for a true down-home style NO restaurant, but we wound up at Brennans and that wound up being one of those typical places that is mostly known because it's been around for-EV-er despite the food now being mediocre and waaaay overpriced ($100+ for 2 people and only 1 drink each!). BUT we shared a wonderful Bananas Foster, which was especially yummy because apparently this was where the dessert was created (due to an overflow of banana shipments). I like eating history!

Next day J had to work and I took a long walk down Magazine Street. I walked for almost 3 miles and saw the aforementioned mishmash of up, down and everything inbetween houses & businesses. Once I got to the retail section, that's when the human element, namely desperation, kicked in. Every salesperson I met had an underlying panic/fear/stress about the lack of tourists and money being spent. There they are, trying their darndest to get back to normal, opening their stores everyday, but with few people coming by to shop. They were very chatty - much more so, I believe, than before Katrina - and were full of questions. Where I am from, why I was there (J's business), what kind of business...? This was one time I felt no guilt spending money freely because I knew they needed to business so much.

I didn't leave a single store without the shop keeper strongly encouraging me to come back and bring friends. Or at the very least tell everyone I know that it's time to come back to New Orleans. My fave shops: Winky's (I spent the most here for some great funky clothes and a postcard that says "Gnome on the range"; Brass Menagerie (a reproduction house hardware store run by an old couple and their cat with the heart-shaped shot on it's nose, Domino); and Derby Pottery.

That theme carried over into the evening when we were given two rounds of drinks by 2 different people at the d.b.a. bar on Frenchman Street.

Merry F-ing Christmas

What a screwed up couple of days! Not all bad, but some of it was pretty damn unfortunate and is messing with my head. Good thing I can latch onto the made-up concept of starting over fresh in the new year or else ... I don't know what.