He’s my buddy

My man

The one who….just decided to lay right in front of my phone as I was typing this.

He’s my favorite nuisance

My Skippyjon Jones

  

Awhile ago I took one of those online assessments where they ask you how you pronounce certain words. Upon completing the quiz, they tell you where they think you’re from based on your pronunciation.  I tend to confuse these tests. They can’t seem to figure out where I’m from!

See, I grew up in Philly, yo! There are moments when my Philly accent comes out more strongly than others, like when I spend a decent amount of time with my brother, Todd (which sadly doesn’t happen nearly enough).  There’s something about him that brings out the Philly girl in me and the accent comes out like a fighter.

Then I transported myself halfway across the northern U.S. to go to college in Minneapolis…which also maintains a strong accent. By Christmas of my freshman year, my internal accent couldn’t quite figure out which city I belonged in! It was a bit of an identity crisis, to be honest.  My Philly friends that were in school with me were fighting the Minnesohta accent strongly and making fun of my mishaps frequently.  The joke’s on them…most of them stayed in the upper Midwest after college…and now they sound like natives.

After five years of Minnesota-loving talk I moved to the Mitten.  Michigan. The Detroit area, to be exact. Now, Michigan has its accental quirks-especially on the western side. But let’s be honest-I spent most of my time in Motown, where the Detroit city speak was prevalent ands where my students yelled out, “I gotta use it!”  It wasn’t so much an accent that I picked up there, as it was a whole new way of speaking. I taught for seven years in the D and you could always tell when I’d been talking about my students in the classroom.  It would come out. I had morphed into a different person. It was comical.

Almost seven years ago I moved to D.C.  This area is such a melting pot that there isn’t truly an accent…until you crossover into Virginia.  There is something about that line. All of a sudden you get closer and closer to southern accents. It didn’t help that I developed a ton of friends that are from the south and who have kept their accents from the days they used to fish with their pawpaw and have low country boils to feed a hundred folks.  Nowadays, people meet me for the first time, hear me speak and they often assume I’m from the South. I just laugh and say, “Yea, no, but that makes sense.”

In two months I will be moving back in the Philly area. I look forward to carrying a little bit of everywhere I’ve had the honor of living over the past nineteen years back with me, if in no other way…but in through the many accents I’ve picked up along the way. 

Thanks for the blog idea!  http://www.nextstepediting.com/your-30-stories/

Basking in the love of my Father…words from this song by Housefires hits my heart in a deep place.

This love is every moment. Everyday. Always.

Walk with You. Be with You.

This love is an everyday kind of love.

This love doesn’t leave me all alone. It never forgets its own.

It doesn’t leave me ’cause my past is bad.

It lifts me up above the waves. I don’t need to be overwhelmed.

Forgive yourself.  Those who have hurt you.

There is no chain this love can’t break.

Be free.

This love will ruin every fear.

#lovewins

I have 17 posts in draft form behind the scenes here at Memoirs.

So much to say, and yet I don’t say it.

So many blogs started, only to feel like that’s just too much right now.

Even though you can’t tell from this blog over the last couple of years, I do actually consider myself to be a writer…who only writes occasionally, and even at that, not really much at all.

Even as a fairly transparent individual, too many of my experiences are just not ready for the world.

Ever feel like that?

I will find spaces in my world to share. Because I miss living out my love of writing.

These are, after all, my memoirs.

Five years ago, yesterday, I showed up in Alexandria with my family and all my stuff in a UHaul. It was moving day. I had just left my seven year stint in the Detroit area-the place I moved to after college…you know…every girl’s dream. It was a place that I loved being.

But…

It’s been a great five years here in the DC area for so many reasons, and it’s also been a considerably tough segment of my life. Some things have changed in the last couple of months that are bringing refreshing to this weary soul, and healing to this broken heart.

More to come on that.

Now…what to anticipate over the next five years…

Truth: God uses the thing that crushes us to heal us. If we’ve been injured in community, he uses community to heal us. That’s not to say we run headlong into toxic relationships. We are to grow up and learn discernment from our negative experiences. It means God leads us toward healthy community to help us recover from difficult community. It means we risk again for the sake of our healing, even though that seems entirely counterintuitive.

Mary DeMuth, The Wall Around Your Heart: How Jesus Heals You When Others Hurt You

Don’t be surprised when you are hurt by someone that you have allowed to become dear to your heart. In order to hurt you they must be close!

-Christine Caine

Knowing me is to that I like to be on-time.  That isn’t to say that I am ontime all the time, but I do actually aim to be, as often as I can get myself to be.

There’s a saying that I learned at my first teaching job.

Early is on time, and on time is late.

That’s baloney.  If you want me to be somewhere at 10:55, then don’t tell me to be there at 11; tell me to be there at 10:55.  If a meeting is starting at 5:00, don’t expect me to be there at 4:45 unless I, personally, want to be there early enough to get a certain seat, or chat with someone.

Keep your word and be honest with me on when you want me somewhere, and I will keep my word on being in place when you ask me to be.

I digress.

Early often are not words typically used to describe me.  I don’t know anyone that would say that about me…except the folks at my new job.  I live about thirty minutes away, and for every minute after 7am that I leave, my commute gets a little bit longer.  If I were to leave at 7:20am, I’m pretty sure that I would be an hour late.  That’s how bad DC traffic can become on a weekday morning (and occasionally on a weekend).

So, what do I do?

I leave by 7am.

Also, to be clear, morning person are also not words that anyone would use to describe me.  I’m not even good at faking that.  I’m actually not good at faking anything, but I’m really not good at faking being a morning person.

Leaving at 7am gets me to work by 7:30…7:35 if I stop for a soy mocha with whip.  Since work doesn’t start until 8am, I am (drum roll please) always here early!

Other than my first couple of years teaching, when I was completely overwhelmed and didn’t know which end was up, I have never consistently been this early to work.  I’m starting week five, and I’m on Day 20 of arriving at work early.

So today I decided to blog (whoa!).  This could even be a record for earliest blog post ever written on Memoirs.

Eek!  It’s 8:07.  Maybe tomorrow I should leave at 6:45 to get myself here early enough to finish before 8:00.

Or…maybe not.  Forgive me while I run to check my email…