5)  Happy Birthday, Spacewolf!  (Zac’s 25th Birthday video)

4) My mom’s love of telling time, my dad’s ADD confessions, and Zac’s pranks… humor… and awesomeness.

3)  The time I was called a lesbian, saw Ryan Adams and The Cardinals, John Mayer, Ingrid, the Crows and Matty Nay to name a few, fed the masses, begged my bffs take over, and celebrated my 27th in style.

2) Written back at the beginning of the great CaresTeam departure/Laurel moving out on her own.

Change is still headed my way. I’m still gonna have moments of complete and utter collapse, and what needs to happen in the next few months will still overwhelm me. But, I’ve stopped playing the reality peek-a-boo game because I know that time marches on whether or not you want it to. For now, let’s go ahead and schedule a time this fall where we can all sit back and laugh at my drama queen distress today. We’ll watch the Arizona sun set as we sip iced tea, and I won’t be offended when you remind how we all knew deep down… it would be okay.

Say it with me now… you were right. It was/ok better than ok.

1) The great Charlie abduction, ransom note, detective work, and New World Order video.

Finally, the NBA finals are set to begin Thursday night.  Boston Celtics vs LA Lakers.  These teams are no strangers to facing each other in the Finals.  They’ve met ten times in the past with Boston walking away with the championship eight times.  I grew up in the Bird-Magic era with a father who was just as fanatical about LB as Zac is about Favre.  No. 33 was the hero in our 80′s sports story, and I still believe today there would have been no Air Jordan domination if Johnson and Bird hadn’t have paved the way and rejuvenated the sport that I love so much. While this isn’t 1984, the NBA needs a reason to believe again: a reason for its fans to feel good about their loyalty.

Usually I’d find it hard to be too overwhelmingly passionate about a series not featuring the Suns, but this Celtics vs Lakers series is what I’ve been hoping for for the past month.  (I even cheered for the Lakers over the Spurs and felt dirty.  That’s how much I hate San Antonio.)  Can Kobe finally be the superhero in the finals and not just the trusty sidekick?  Is the PGA (Pierce, Garnett, and Allen) tour ready to start the newest Boston dynasty and get the rings they’ve coveted for the past decade?  Can this series remind us why we love this game?  We’ll find the answers out soon enough.

1. Thin.

2. Unmelodious.

[Of unknown origin.]

“I might punch myself if I have to listen to that scrannel music bleeding through my bedroom walls for one more minute.”

McCain is genuinely funny and seems to understand a simple fact most politicians get wrong: a large number of The Daily Show and Colbert Report viewers are not looking for a campaign speech or lecture on the virtues of one’s possible presidency. We watch to laugh. It’s that simple. Of course, McCain plugs himself. Yet, for any one who’s seen the other two candidates on fake news lately, McCain is a breath of fresh, humorous air. Despite the fact that deep down you know he’s taking this presidency thing seriously… he has fun with Stewart and plays along. I mean he chooses Dwight K. Schrute for his running mate. Did he not see last week’s episode of The Office?!?! Dwight is an unstable power-hungry leader. Honestly, Dwight’s Emergency Take-over chart reminds me of another famous second-in-command, but that’s just a coincidence, right?

Now the sad thing in this whole election year is many in my generation look to Colbert and Stewart for real news. Lately, we’ve stopped confidently deciding our views on our own and have allowed ourselves to be swept up in punditry and flashing lights. Colbert and Stewart are at their best when they work together as a check-and -balance system of our nation, culture, and thought process. and a catalyst to our own research. Maybe I’ve got this all wrong, but let’s try something new as we move toward November. FoxNews, MSNBC and all your friends, do your job and hook us up with the facts. Stewart and Colbert, you just keep entertaining us, and hopefully, each one of us will decide who we are and what we believe and stand unwaveringly. Isn’t that the change we need?

I’ve spent the last few weeks covering my own eyes as change loomed on the horizon. I hate change. I hate the unknown. I hate not having a plan, a scheduled calendar of events six months in the future. I hate not having control. Sure, I knew things couldn’t always be the way they are now. I knew the facts and chose to suppress those natural human emotions of “what the crap am I gonna do??” Then, tonight it all came crashing down. Dates where a new existence would begin were written on a calendar. Deadlines were set. Goodbyes and hellos became more than just the inevitable, and reality become truth and not just a suggestion.

Let’s not beat around the bush. I didn’t handle it well. Panic set in. I hopped in the car and called my mom who just listened and let those emotions overflow. I hashed out possibilities and timelines. I told her how scared I was and how it wasn’t the future that frightened me but not knowing the path I was supposed to take. She reminded me that every season comes to an end, and every happening has a purpose. She offered encouragement and the reminder that this change was an answer to prayer and the end of countless struggles. She was my wise mother, a compassionate mommy, and my bff mom when I needed her most.

Change is still headed my way. I’m still gonna have moments of complete and utter collapse, and what needs to happen in the next few months will still overwhelm me. But, I’ve stopped playing the reality peek-a-boo game because I know that time marches on whether or not you want it to. For now, let’s go ahead and schedule a time this fall where we can all sit back and laugh at my drama queen distress today. We’ll watch the Arizona sun set as we sip iced tea, and I won’t be offended when you remind how we all knew deep down… it would be okay.

Truthfully, its not the waking up that’s the issue. (That’s why God created coffee.) The issue is the going to bed. I’m innately a night owl. If I don’t watch myself, it’ll be 11pm, and I’ll think, “Hey, I should do some laundry… go for a drive… reorganize my life.” Then, the next time I look at a clock it’ll be 3:30 in the blessid am and I’ll wonder why I’m feeling sleepy. No wonder I’m the full-time staff member who gets the ‘sorry it’s midnight but we need you to come into the office calls’… everyone else is smart enough to be sleeping!!!

So starting tomorrow I’m setting up so new ground rules for my life. No more late-night caffeine, cleaning sessions, or drives to Winslow. Bedtime will be closer to when the sun goes down than when it comes back up. Work (when possible) is to be done only at work and left there. No more hauling stuff home to work on after-hours. Instead, I’ll just stay an extra thirty minutes to crank out what is top priority in the office where there are less interruptions. Also, breakfast is a must. If I discovered anything this past week, it was that going into work mid-morning without a real breakfast is no big deal. However, going into work a few hours earlier without breakfast equals a near-meltdown by 10 am.

I’m a realist.  I know that I’m not going to be able to adhere to these new rules every day of the week.  You can’t change a tiger’s stripes, right???  But, if I manage to do it at least 75% of the time, life will be much, much sweeter.

Know what that is?!?! Oh yeah, it’s a picture message from Zac of the movie poster for X-Files: I Want To Believe, the much-anticipated, ‘I’m gonna pee-squirt’ X-Files sequel. Never has there been a show that I so religiously followed and unabashedly loved as this one, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the script must be phenomenal if it could draw Gillian Anderson out of her acting hiatus. Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, Walter Skinner, and Chris Carter are all on-board, and I’m just not sure I can wait until its July release. Guess it’s time to start watching all the old episodes again. Eeek!!!

“So long you’ve journeyed, hiding your face from the wind. Wondering if your broken heart will ever hope again. I know it seems like all your dreams have been buried somewhere on the way. But I can hear a new beginning calling your name.”

Throughout my life I have learned countless lessons from my mother. I’ve learned how to sew on a button, survive in the kitchen, and what it means to be loyal. Yet, one of the simplest, most valuable lessons I ever learned from her was a festering wound hurts more to clean than a fresh one. Over a year and a half ago I was tripped and scraped my emotional knees, but instead of running to my mom and having her clean and kiss it to make it all better like I did when I was little, I hid my wounds from the world. I was ashamed of what had happened and when I did tell a few people I received two responses… “move on and get over it” and “this is why I avoid such situations”. Part of me hoped that people would look at me and see that I was hurting, and the other part was determined not to let a single person’s actions wound me so deeply. Just as my mom had always taught me… I can’t control someone else’s actions, but I could control my reactions.

For the past year I have been pretending I was in control. Pretending that my soul didn’t ache and that this was just a speed bump in the journey of my life. I was lying to myself because the truth was by pretending nothing was the matter I was letting this wound grow infected and fester in my heart. I had dropped my journey’s compass, and even if most of the world didn’t notice that I was lost, I was. But beyond just being lost, I refused to tell anyone I was wandering. It was as if I had gotten food poisoning from my favorite restaurant but was too loyal to its owners to tell anyone that I had gotten sick there and was too scared to eat there or at any other restaurant again. As wrong as it was I think I felt I was to blame for ordering the dish that made me sick. So I stayed hungry and silent for far too long.

Then out of the blue within the span of hours on Saturday two of the wisest women I know asked me how I was dealing with ‘eating out’ after what had happened at ‘my favorite restaurant’, and it was like a dam burst within me. You see, the thing about a festering wound is if you leave it long enough when you finally pick that scab all of the grossness that’s been building up inside rushes out. For the first time in a long time I was forced to really look at what I was pretending not to feel and before I could stop, I was confessing that I was scared and unsure of where I belonged. Finally, I was thoroughly cleaning my wound.

I wish I could tell you that after some emotional alcohol wipes and hydrogen peroxide everything got better, but that’s just not the case. While no one expected me to eat at my old favorite restaurant again, I had been starving and needed to eat somewhere. So the next day I prepared to go ‘eat’ like I had my whole life except it had never felt this difficult or lonely before. My go-to support team for situations like this (and an endless supply of hugs) were all out of town, so this leg of the journey was mine to travel alone. It might seem silly to some but I fought back the tears the entire way to the new ‘restaurant’. Facing your past fears and hurts is never easy and just because I was beginning to heal didn’t mean that I wasn’t still in pain. It took what seemed like the strength of a hundred men to take that first step of faith and get out of the car, walk inside, and sit down alone. Despite the fact that just being there felt more like home than I had felt in months, it was still a struggle, until an old friend walked up behind me, gave me a hug, and asked me to move out of my lonely pew and come sit beside her.

Even though the first step is usually the hardest to take, healing doesn’t magically happen overnight or because you pretend it does. It’s an uphill battle of staying emotionally clean and checking those old wounds for signs of new infection. Just like the times when I fell as a kid, I’m sure this part of my journey will eventually leave a scar. But a scar reminding me of the strength I found in forgiving and moving on is much easier to carry than a wound filled with lingering guilt, self-lies, and hidden shame. With my compass in hand, the journey continues, but hopefully from now on, I’ll remember exactly how right mom always is.

“Go on and join the dance. And take the chance. Let your heart dare to believe again…”