Musician's Widow

Five years ago tonight, we had our joint bachelor/bachelorette party. None of my husband’s friends had met any of my friends, so it was a chance to get everyone together before the wedding (something I credit for our having such a smooth wedding!). Plus, my now-husband and I had no interest in separate parties… we wanted to party together!

After meeting in a small town outside of College Station, TX, we all drove (in several vehicles) to Aggieland for dinner at Freebirds and then dancing at Hurricane Harry’s. It. Was. Epic!

What great memories! Everyone got along famously, and I am happy to say we are still friends with all our wedding party! I hear all too often about friendships fading after a wedding (just in different places in life, I guess) but it has not been the case for us. Every friendship is just as precious as it was that night, when we shut the place down partying the night away.

It was a party that continued into the next few days…

I almost made it through NaBloPoMo without missing a day. Almost. I missed yesterday. However, I have a good excuse.

Sunday night, my husband and I hit the road from Texas to Tennessee. I had intended to write about our trip on Monday, since it was 13.5 hours long and surely it would make for a semi-interesting post. We drove from 8:30 pm to 10 am the next morning, successfully running behind the mad Thanksgiving day traffic for the last 12 hours of the drive.

After that many hours on the road, though, my muse was sleeping. Writing just wasn’t going to happen. So I figured I would get some sleep, then write when I got up.

Instead, I slept a lot longer than I meant to, and I hit the floor running. We had invited friends over for the evening, and our house was void of any food other than a couple cans of soup. So it was shower, grocery store, home, and cook.

It was a great choice to have friends over, though. We had SO  much fun just eating frozen pizza and decorating little liquor bottles into Christmas ornaments. It wasn’t until they headed home that I realized I’d missed posting the entire day.

Oh well, I decided. It was okay to miss a day writing about life just to live it for awhile.

Black Friday, Smack Smy-day. I just don’t get it. Why end the beauty of a day of thanks with a mad-dash-beating-people-up-to-buy-something-on-sale?* No, thank you. I’d like to let the peace of Thanksgiving extend into the next day.

Today we slept as late as we wanted. Got up. Ate leftover. Then slowly got ready to get out of the house.

We went to visit friends for awhile (what better tag to Thanksgiving with family is there than visiting friends!?). Then we headed out to do… just whatever.

Did we do a little shopping? Yes, I admit it. We did pick up a few things while we were out. Things we absolutely needed, and we got to the stores well after dark, when they’d cleared out and back to “normal.” Oh okay, some of the employees at the stores were grumpy and the stores were picked over pretty good. But for us, it was fun and not the least bit stressful!

We had a lovely dinner out, then took our time coming back to the house together. Not a single stressful second in the day.

And I loved it.

—–

*Okay, so not everyone is violent with it. And I have heard of several people who do the whole Black Friday midnight shopping this as just a way to spend one-on-one time with certain loved one. And I can totally get behind that.

*Photo taken with my camera by Rose Jonas*

Most of my Nashville Family in one photo. Celebrating 15 years of our “home away from home.” A family that began in 1996 and has grown over time. SO thankful to call all of these people friends.

If you’d asked me before this weekend if I was afraid to go on a long ride on the back of a bike, I’d have probably not given you much of an answer. Or, I’d have given you a much longer answer than you wanted.

I’m not afraid. Its just not high on my list of things to do. As in, not even on my bucket list to be knocked off it.

HOWEVER.

I married a man who happens to love motorcycles. Who has had bad accidents on them, and yet still wants to get right back on. There’s something admirable about that… not letting anything stop him from doing something he loves.

Not even a wife who practically wanted to burst into tears over plans to go riding yesterday. Because that “just not interested” turned out to be, “Scared to death.”

When a friend offered us his bike for the afternoon, my husband became more excited than anyone’s kids after Halloween, staring at a big bowl of candy. I couldn’t not go. I couldn’t deny him this excitement. He wanted to share this big part of himself with me, and I appreciated that more than I could share under the quivering, shaking, terrified child I became.

We went to pick up the bike. We got bundled up (since even though it was upper 60s, it would be chilly on the bike), my husband plopped a helmet on my head and… I swung a leg over and had a death grip on my husband as we took off.

We hooked up with some friends to go riding together, and off we went hitting back roads around Nashville. It took awhile, but I slowly released the death grip I had on Hubby’s jacket. I even got confident enough to dig out my phone and take a few photos.

Half-way through our travels, we stopped to have a light lunch together. Fighting daylight, we didn’t linger long before we took off again. Getting back on the bike, I figured out a more comfortable way to sit, and my confidence went even higher.

As the sun started to set (darn time change), it started to get chilly. We stopped to stretch our legs for a moment and come up with a plan. We headed for a local bar for a post-ride drink before calling it a night.

I faced a fear, and I conquered it. I have to thank my husband for being so adamant we were going, despite my fears. I didn’t fall off. We didn’t crash. We only  had ONE vehicle ignore a Yield sign and pull out in front of us — but then, that happens ALL THE TIME here, so it was just annoying versus scary. I didn’t freeze. And… dare I say it? I had fun.

Yes. I had fun. There. I said it.

I. Had. Fun.

And I will be happy to do it again sometime.

Oh Facebook. Your constant updates drive me insane. You’ve seriously missed the boat in areas. You got rid of sorting your wall by post type, and you still haven’t figured out how to let me merge a group into a page. Your latest update has made it harder for me to figure out if I am seeing what I want to see. And I’m a bit leery of this timeline change still coming at us.

However, I have to confess. I’m not leaving Facebook anytime soon. The latest update as kept me from being on it as much as I was, but its not run me off completely. Because I like to know what is going on with others. No, not in that creepy stalker way. In that genuinely interested way.

I have almost 650 friends on Facebook.Of those, maybe 50 of those people are people I don’t really know or have known in the past. Those the people on that “restricted” list and that I have friended purely for networking reasons. (Or, in a hand full of cases, just to be polite.) The rest are people I know now or who I’ve known in the past. Old college acquaintances. High school classmates and peers. A few people I know back in elementary school. Several old message board and LiveJournal friends. Etc.

I am genuinely interested in all of these people’s lives. I love to see the hundreds of different paths that life has taken us all. Parents. World travelers. Military. Blue collar workers. Many in different states now. Others settled right where they grew up.

At the end of the day, we all come back down to the basis of relying on our friends. A bad day, we turn to each other for support. A prayer request reaches many at one time. A good day, we want to share our joy.  A birthday… you get a smile at the birthday wishes from all over the world, from all over your past.

I have to work a lot harder now to keep up with all my friends. I’ve been forced to create more friend’s lists than ever before just to sort through the posts easier (and I am still missing things, I know). New updates will surely be met with grumbling. But… I’m going to keep doing it. Being able to keep up with old friends and new means I’ll adjust to the changes, because friends are worth the headache.