Nevermind

I just read an article pointing out that color scheme should work around colors that are already in the venue; ex. if the venue has green carpets, I have to be sure to pick colors that will look good with that. Not that big a deal, right?

What that actually means: I can't even pick colors, and therefore can't make ANY design decisions until we have a venue. We can't have a venue until we have a date, and, for those I haven't already explained this too, we can't have a date until Nate officially has leave for that time, which he can't do until he's where he'll be stationed in the summer of 2013, when we want to get married, which won't be until at least January of 2013. I hate my life.

Is there any planning stuff I CAN do?

Beginning the Summer's Wedding Work

To color scheme, or not to color scheme? That is the question


I'm open to suggestions

Itch

Today the itch to leave here is very strong. I want to pack a bag and get in my car, drive somewhere I've never been before and see something I've never seen.

I am always the better for open air breathing, and was certainly meant for the wandering life of the Indian. - Maria Mitchell

Home, Pt. 2

Being back home is very strange. I think Vicki summed it up perfectly tonight, as she often does, when she told me, "Half of your body and soul left here a long time ago, and now you're back and that half is like, what the hell are we doing here?"

Amen.

I wasn't expecting this place to feel so little like home. I have been aware over the last two years of the distance growing between myself and this place that used to be my home, but I am still surprised that my old room is not at all the safe haven that it used to be; now it feels more like simply a reflection of my younger self. Sometimes when I'm driving around Norcross I realize that I have forgotten all my old shortcuts and lost the easy knowledge I used to have of which routes are the fastest at which time of day, and I find myself thinking, "I don't live here anymore! What does it matter?" This town has no attraction for me anymore, not even that created by the pride I used to feel in knowing its roads like the back of my hand. The only real times I feel deeply at home here are when I'm driving to Onelia's house, or driving back from Tiffany's late at night, when there are no more cars on the road. The rest is just buildings with history.

Maybe I'll put some of those roots back down this summer, but I doubt it. The roots that used to tie me to my room and to familiar roads have dried up and been gradually replaced by the ones I've grown deep into the soil in Asheville, and even in Myrtle Beach. But I don't even identify Asheville as being fully my home. I think that somewhere in my past few years of ramblings I became a wanderer, that that half of me that is so long gone from Norcross is at home wherever I'm living out of a suitcase. There is a part of me that misses that feeling, that wants to be driving with a backseat full of suitcases on to some new place and new adventures. To that part of me, my car feels more like home than my mom's house in Norcross.

It is strange, being "home" and yet not really being home. I wonder if I will always feel this way, if I'll ever really settle down or if I'll always be a wanderer at heart.

Home

I am back in Norcross for the summer. In the last two years, I've spent a total of three months here, non-consecutively, and, with the exception of winter breaks, only for a few weeks here as I get ready to move on to somewhere else. Now I'm back for the whole summer, one large chunk equal to the whole amount of time I've spent here since high school. I'm here because God told me it was time to come back, to finally begin to focus my energy closer to home. Originally I thought it was because I need a rest, because I feel like I've been running from one place to another for the last two years, and to reconnect with the family and friends I left so immediately after graduation and have hardly had time for since. That is certainly part of it, but today I realized that God has much more in store for me here than that. This summer is going to be about learning to be patient and loving with my family, about learning how to serve them the way I've spent my last two summers serving campers and homeowners, and it's going to be hard. So hard. But it is a lesson I need to learn. How can I spend my life loving and serving others without ever learning to properly (or at least as properly as any of us can) love on my own family? God is going to grow and stretch me very much this summer, and I can already tell that it's going to be very uncomfortable, but it's also going to be very good.

Praise to the God who sees our weaknesses and helps us grow past them. That is love.