A Lobsterman's Wife

I think I'm becoming an adult.

• I find myself talking about the weather. But for real...summer in Florida. Ugh.
• I sometimes take a longer route to drive somewhere so I can "see some nice houses."
• I can't seem to sleep past 9am.
• I'm going on vacation!

I don't know if #4 is actually an indication of adulthood or not, but, for the first time in my life I feel like I actually NEED and DESERVE a vacation. A time to get away. Time to do whatever the heck I want to do while using my brain as little as possible. I'm finally adult enough to have a job that gives me days off -- that they officially declare as "vacation time."

The goal was to get as far north as possible within a reasonable budget. Is that not the way everyone else plans their vacation days? The winner of this game was Portland, Maine. Farewell, Florida heat and humidity! Bring on the scarf weather! I leave on Monday with one of my roommates and BFF's, Rachel Hale. I'm not entirely sure Rachel has realized that we aren't going to Portland, Oregon...but I'm not sure either of us would know the difference.

Who cares? Look at what comes up when I search for images of Portland, Maine:

Um, hello.

So far, our plans include kayaking to tiny islands, renting bicycles along the coast, hiking in the nearby mountains...and eating enough butter-dripping lobster to make up for all the health-conscious activities popular to this area. I also purchased a Groupon for an obscene amount of crepes at a local fancy-pants restaurant. I think the root of the word "vacation" is "Nutella," so it's not technically a vacation without that glorious chocolate hazelnut spread. Right?

Side Note: Is it acceptable to bring home a pet lobster? I would rubber-band his claws and everything... Worst case scenario, a pet lobster would be horrific enough of an experience that you would eat him and end up feeling much better about life overall. I'm just weighing my options.

Thanks to the wisdom of Shawn Grant, I believe that every trip needs a good soundtrack and at least one good theme song. Whenever you hear that song later in life, the memories of those moments come flooding back. I've been working on a soundtrack for when we hit the road in Maine. Perhaps I shouldn't use the word "hit" when referring to what will happen with our rental car?

Our theme song....(drum roll please)...is "Far Away" by Ingrid Michaelson.

What other song in the world talks about lobsters?! Seriously. The lyrics pretty much sum up my wildest dreams for this trip:

I will live my life as a lobsterman's wife on an island in the blue bay.

He will take care of me, he will smell like the sea,

And close to my heart he'll always stay...

Far away far away, I want to go far away.

To a new life on a new shore line.

Where the water is blue and the people are new.

To another island, in another life.

Most of the Maine soundtrack is made up of any song in my iTunes library with the words "Boat," "Road," "Mountain," or anything similar somewhere in the title. I even added the song "Seaglopur" from Sigur Ros because it came up when I searched for "Sea." It's an Icelandic word that means "lost at sea."

I'm really smart.

Well, smart enough to use Wikipedia and Google Translate to decipher Icelandic song titles.

If I never come back from this vacation, now you know where I am. With my rugged, New England man-of-the-sea who looks like he belongs on a box of frozen fish sticks and our pet lobsters.

Social Awkwardness

My assumption is that there was a day in middle school where my teacher taught the secret to relationships and how to achieve success in social interaction. Surely it happened, and surely I was sick at home on the couch that day.

Meeting new people does NOT come naturally to me. I count myself lucky that I have a good amount of friends who stuck with me through the initial awkwardness and are now all entertained by my shortcomings.

Back when I was a professional Christian (i.e. "missionary"), I knew I needed to get over some of my social fears. The way I started was by committing myself to go to the grocery store at the same time of the day...on the same day of the week...every week...to get in the same lane...so I could see the same cashier lady. I wanted to become one of her "regulars" that she looked forward to having a short chat with. I don't know if I ever made an impression on her other than "wow, this girl buys a lot of cheese," but I do think she helped me work through some of my fear of small-talk awkwardness. Or at least embrace it as part of my personality. I really need to get back to finding those sorts of people that I can encounter during my week. For right now, that group probably includes the guy at my local Starbucks drive-thru, the breakfast shift girl at my Chick-Fil-A, and the window girl at my favorite food truck in Orlando. Trying to slowly build intentional relationships with strangers is giving me diabetes.

Another way I've tried to challenge myself to meet new people is by taking a class at my favorite local art store. So far, I have only attended this class twice...but I'm killing two birds with one stone there. I get to challenge myself creatively and challenge myself socially. I'm going to murder those two birds.

Sometimes I take colloquial phrases too far.

This is some of the stuff I've done after learning basic Zentangle patterns in class. My new goal in life is to sell an original textile at IKEA. That's right. I see you, Sweden.

I just realized that I'm wearing 23 buttons today (15 on my shirt, 8 on my pants). Twenty. Three. That seems excessive, right? Both my shirt and pants are in the genre of "fashion" where it's as if they created flaps just so they could button them down. Why?! This reminds me...when I was in 5th grade, I wanted SO BADLY to glue a bunch of buttons onto a shirt and write "cute as a button!" on it. Yeah...a shirt like that would at least give people a head's up on social awkwardness heading their way.