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…

We made it home to Nashville from Texas yesterday morning. The 13 hour drive seemed longer than usual, and I attribute that partly to our lack of being in any hurry to come back. We just had that fabulous of a time!

Our plans to head to Oregon for Christmas were canceled thanks to budget concerns and the crazy-high prices of flights at the holidays. So we instead headed to Texas to spend the holiday with my family. Amusingly, the weather, for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, was all Oregon. Misty rain and cold. But our visit ended with warmer temps and sunshine.

I have to say… there was just something about this Christmas. It was so relaxed! It was just filled with this wonderful peace and joy. Its impossible to explain, but it was a special trip for sure. And while my husband and I knew we had to make the trip back home to Nashville to work this weekend, we just couldn’t get motivated to actually leave. We put it off as long as we could before making the long drive back.

Now, any time I am back in Texas, I have this little (okay maybe its kind of long) list of places I’d love to visit and things I’d like to do. I usually do good to knock one or two of the items off the list. This trip? I knocked off more than my fair share of things!

I got to see family, of course. Quality time with my parents, brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew is priceless, and always at the very top of the list. I have cousins I’d really like to get to spend time with as well, but those visits tend to be rare just due to time constraints. I got to see one of my girl friends to do a quick gift exchange. But friends’ visits will have to wait until I am down for an extended period of time for tax season. And that’s okay… we can spend more time than the rushed visits of the holidays.

Food: Whataburger! Freebirds! Mexican food in general! Green’s Sausage House! Czech Stop! Hiway 77 Cafe! Blue Bell and Dr Pepper! (Granted I can get both of those in Nashville, too, but they just taste better when actually IN Texas.) Places: Aggieland! Frenstat, where my husband and I got married, and where my grandparents are all buried. Cavender’s Boot City!

I got to do all of these things! Crazy cool, I gotta admit. Oh, I always leave things left undone. We wanted to go for a drive in my old truck from high school. There are various people we would love to go visit. And there are locations we always want to take time to explore, but we rarely have time to do so.

But you know, that’s a good thing. I would hate to ever leave not wanting more time.

Time visiting Texas is precious to me. Nashville is definitely home, but I’m a Texan at heart for life. And a Texas Christmas? Well… that’s just something super special to me. Now I look ahead to a planned trip to Oregon in the next couple of months. Ready to go experience my husband’s home with him and embrace his list of things to do. Bring it on!

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.

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*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.