Great Things Go Together

... like amazing food made by great friends. And I'm not just talking about your run of the mill good meal appreciated by a friend's not-so-amazing palate.

My good friend, Sheila Dalton Neal and her husband, Matt, started Neal's Deli in Carrboro, NC (The Paris of the Piedmont!) a couple of years ago. They make tasty seasonal and locally sourced food that anyone would love. Including, it seems, the food critic from the The New York Times. Yes, THAT New York Times!


So, the article seems to conflate Durham, the headlining Southern town, with it's neighbor (and my old stomping grounds) Carrboro - two very different locales - but it's still plugging gourmet Southern/homestyle food so I can't complain too much.

I just love it when my amazing - and deserving - friends get what they deserve!

Oh, and this isn't Neal's Deli's first literary mention. Take a look at their previous mentions in Gourmet Magazineand Bon Appetit as well.

Now, if only I could get me some of dat right now!


Photos courtesy of New York Times

ROFLMAO!!

You know those people who are just too funny for their own good? The ones who make you cackle like a witch with laughter because their snarkiness makes you forget there might be people listening?!

I have a friend like that. LoRay, you know who you are!!

If she wrote a blog - after deciding to chuck the Orange County country life and go live in Sudan of all places(!) - she would be Facts Are Strictly Optional.

Stop making me laugh, damnit, I have a stitch!

Unlike the A-Team, I can't seem to make this plan come together

I love birthdays. I think it’s a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the lives of others… and to be celebrated of course. Everyone needs to feel special at least one day of the year.

Historically, I’ve had a close group of women friends who made it a point to get together to mark each other’s special occasion with dinner, drinks, funny cards, and great camaraderie. Then, as each of us reached our 40th, we would get a special ring. Not all of the group have reached that milestone yet but, once we do, I’m planning to nominate we change our unofficial name from the Friday Night Girls to the Fellowship of the Ring :-)  I know, I’m a geek.

Reaching even further back beyond what feels like half a lifetime of the FNG fellowship, there’s the unique bond I’ve always shared with my sister (aka C.B.). Our family is weird. For many reasons, but one of the best is that she and I have the same birthday a year apart. (My mother’s is the day after… I know, weird). All my life I’ve shared birthday celebrations with my sister. If it made for fewer gifts for each of us, I don’t think either of us ever cared even when we were young and selfish. We’ve always felt like odd sort of twins, despite my being the older sister and taking massive pride (and advantage) of that fact, and have hung on to our family birthday traditions as much as we can as we’ve aged and moved away… and away… and away.

So, birthdays have always been a good time for me. Well, almost always. I can only remember one year that I hated it. Ahhh, 27. Drama, emotional angst, wallowing in self-pity. Picture this dear reader: me lying flat on my back on my living room carpet with a huge glass of red wine in my hand and music blasting from the stereo loud enough to bring my upstairs neighbor down to bang on my door.

Why the patheticness? It had hit me that The Plan was shot. Girls, you know the plan! Most of us had something just like it. I was to have met Prince Charming sometime in the my early 20’s (despite the distractions of grad school and establishing myself professionally), married Mr. Right, and had a couple of years luxuriating in our marital bliss before proceeding to have our 2-3 children all before I turned 30. This was so all the kiddies would be grown and gone before I got “too old”.

Hitting 27 with no man in sight crushed that plan like a ton of bricks – a growing career, supportive family, great women friends and a couple of good male friends as well to feed my need didn’t count. It was clear that I would have to re-imagine my future, my goals, my self-image. Thus the pity party.

Thankfully I was able to scrape myself together well enough that future birthdays were again causes for celebration rather than self-pity. And, as my new picture of myself solidified, my confidence grew. So much that I hit 40 last year with a freight train’s worth of satisfaction and conviction that the 40’s were going to be My Decade. After all, hadn’t I made a new life for myself? I’d left my job, my home, my friends and family and hauled myself all the way overseas in search of adventure. I was high on a sense of accomplishment.

Now with a month left till 41, I find myself with the urge to pour a large tumbler of something alcoholic and play Linkin Park as loud as I can. Not so much out of self-pity as of sober realization that no matter how young I feel inside or look on the outside, I’m about to fall over the crest into the second half of my life. Right now that feels more like a downhill slide – single, alone, making a new life for myself at a time when it feels like everyone else… isn’t.

Ok, so there’s some self-pity there. The truth is 41 is the suck. I think I’m just going to have to wallow here for a bit before strapping on my boots, sucking it up, and coming up with The Plan 3.0.

Home Again

I don't think I told you (my lack of Internet is still getting in the way of anything but the most basic blogging - this update is via iPhone), but I just arrived home to the Triangle (NC) for a friend's wedding and general having of fun. I'm looking forward to seeing loads of friends (I've had to resort to writing out my schedule 'cause it's packed full!), a quick jaunt to Miami to see family, and taking care of a few errands.

I got here Friday afternoon and the wedding was yesterday at Fearrington House in Chapel Hill. It was beautiful, but relaxed and fun. A total success! Weeell, except for the grooms's aunt tripping and dislocating her shoulder, but aside from that....!

Today I get to see my church family at CHBC and lounge around at Weaver Street in Carrboro, before meeting up with my cousin and her daughter later this evening.

I LOVE vacation! :-)

Out of context

Ok, I was mad. Wait, I'm still mad. I'm so freakin' angry I could spit! But (because I don't have access to the web much... and whose fault is that?!), my Eircom rant went out without me having had a chance to blog earlier about all the cool things that have happened lately.

In the space of a week at the beginning of April, three great events occurred which made me very pleased with life. First, I passed my Irish driving test with flying colo(u)rs. Woohoo!! Then, the next day, I moved into my new apartment. Not quite enough space for my clothes (or my shoes), but it did prompt me to give away all the stuff that doesn't fit anymore, which is probably also a good thing. It's a great apartment and, despite the above mentioned drama, I'm glad I did it. I'm now right in the city and can walk to the gym, salsa classes, shopping (that I don't have space for), the English Market, etc.

Third, on Monday the 6th, the UNC-Chapel Hill Tar Heels male college basketball team showed why they're a DYNASTY and won the NCAA national championship. GO HEELS!!!!!

All in all, loads of good things happening lately. Including an upcoming trip home to the states for a friend's wedding and general having of fun :-)

Doesn't mean I'm not still pissed though.

Flashback or Deja Vu?

Tonight felt so familiar. A group of hysterically funny women having too much fun together to worry about whether they're being too loud. Only instead of my Friday Night Girlfriend posse in the Triangle (Raleigh-Durham, NC) drinking Maker's Mark or wine and lounging around one of our houses, it was a group of 50+ year old Irish women and I lounging in the pub next door to the church where we'd all just finished choir practice drinking hot port, hot whiskey, and tea.

Surreal.

(Sort of) Wild At Heart

My friend L.K. from NC made a teasing comment today about how "wild" I've gotten over here in Ireland. I know she was (mostly) joking, but the fact is that there is a kernel of truth in what she said. There's something about having made such an earth shattering (to me) life change that makes it that much easier to try things and contemplate possibilities that would never have fit with my old self.

The pre-Ireland, pre-blogger me was caught in a rut of her own making, and she knew it. I could have stayed in my mostly comfortable, largely happy life and kept on doing the same things on and on. Eventually, my sense of being boxed in and living inside skin just a size too small may have faded away and left me, and that probably would have been ok. But, you know what? I like doing more than ok. I like finding myself chancing things that I would have pooh poohed or talked myself out of (I'm a great overintellectualizer) or just been too darn scared to imagine before. The box, the limits, I'd created for myself and talked myself into accepting was very familiar and very comfortable.

This? Isn't comfortable. Not at all. And sometimes I really feel it. I miss my townhouse, family, friends and the other great things that surrounded me in Raleigh. I find myself flashing to the most random images sometimes... being in my car driving down the highway at 74 mph (if you keep it less than 10 under the speed limit, the cops probably won't stop you); meeting up with the Friday Night Girls for Maker's Mark and random conversations about bodily functions; spending a quiet Friday night till late in Barnes & Noble with a truckload of books and something sweet from their cafe (a bookstore open till 11 pm!); long, reflective conversations with E.J.; the final moments of the Maundy Thursday church service before Easter; getting my semi-regular massage from John (best hands ever!) while Narada-ish muzak plays in the background. But, the happy truth is that I'm still glad I made the move. On the face of it, my life here is pretty normal, but just being forced out of my routine and forced to examine my assumptions and beliefs about myself has been incredibly liberating.

So yeah, pre-Ireland me would never have put her thoughts out on the web for anyone to see, hosted strangers in her house, chanced making friends online, flirted madly via text, or considered getting inked. Considering my previous comfort zone, that is pretty darn wild. But then, as I face the last few weeks before the big 4-0, I'm thrilled I took the chance to see what life could be like outside the box.

Saga of the Monkey Cat and other updates

I can't believe it's been so long since I've posted an update. Sorry folks, I've just been busy, busy, busy!

OK, so as of our last installment, I was happily anticipating the end of work at the Job From Hell (JFH) and of starting to get packed up to make my move. Thankfully, the end of work came quickly enough for there to be no dead bodies, though it has been pretty surreal being unemployed. It's only been 3 weeks, but I've never been out of work for so long before! It's been a real battle to not wallow in self-imposed guilt for not packing fast enough and for "wasting time". In my own defense though, it's pretty hard to push myself to pack consistently when I haven't known exactly when my leave date is. This also makes it hard to deal with people's excited but frustrating (because I just don't know!) and inevitable question - "So, when are you leaving?"

My understanding of the time frame had been that I would be getting my Irish work permit just about.... oh, like NOW! And, had been expecting to buy a ticket to fly out at the end of June. However, I've fallen afoul of the bureaucracy gods, and I can't even blame the government this time! I got a call from the recruiter yesterday letting me know that the Work Permit Authority didn't receive the application till June 7th and so anticipate that it will be another month!! That is so not what I was expecting to hear. What this tells me is that my new agency's HR department sat on it for almost 4 weeks (!) between when they got it from the recruiter with all of my information, accompanying documents, and Fedexed signature and when they deigned to submit it. What the heck were they doing with it all that time?

So, I'm probably not going to get the work permit for another 4 weeks!! What do I do with myself that long? I certainly didn't plan for this long of a "vacation" and, if I'd known they were going to sit around scratching their ***, I would have stuck around at the JFH for another 2 or 3 weeks and made some much needed money! That's the other big problem, I thought I was being cautious in my estimates, but did not budget for this kind of delay.

So, long story short, yesterday was a bad day. Today is better - I vented to my sister and cousin, and did a not so quick and quite intense supplication to the man upstairs for some major guidance (and maybe a nice lottery windfall). No windfall yet, but I have decided on a couple of things. I'm going to take some friends up on their invitation to their beach house for a couple of days next week, will now be packing like a madwoman to completely clear out my house by the end of next week and leave it available for new tenants starting July 1st (I'm already selling off some stuff through Craigslist - the dining room table goes tonight), and plan to trek down to Miami for the week of July 4th (Independence Day) to hang out with family and friends and eat cheap :-) In the meantime, there's still a million and one things to do. I think I'll be taking up my friends on the offers of packing help in the next several days and making a few trips to the storage place.

Thankfully, my sweetie, the above referenced Monkey Cat (as a kitten, she looked just like a lemur), does have a place to stay for the 6 months before I can bring her over to Ireland. It's not free (my cousin's daughter "decided" to get asthma, so no free family visitation for the MC), but is still cheaper by far and a whole lot more humane than the worst case scenario, which would have been placing her in a kennel. Small wire cages and once a day free time, what a nightmare that would have been for her! In the meantime, I've gotten the initial microchipping and extra rabies booster done (more money draining from the overloaded wallet) and we're now waiting a couple more weeks before I have to take her back to the vet to get the blood sample, which I have to pay to be sent to a special Kansas (?!) lab to verify that her blood levels are optimal. After that, nothing to do but wait out the 6 month holding time before I can finish up the paperwork to bring her over.

Here's a picture of my baby. It's a little blurred, so it doesn't really do her total and complete cuteness justice!



Pretty much the last thing that's still hanging in the air for me is my car. Still no takers for assuming my lease, so I went ahead and listed it for sale yesterday. I would probably make enough to cover VW's payoff amount. Even if not, the remaining amount shouldn't be higher than it would be for me to continue to pay for the lease for several more months. We'll see.

Thankfully, not everything has been stressful. I have had a couple of extremely fun Bon Voyage parties (yeah, me!) and had a chance to hang out with some great friends at the local Irish pub "practicing" :-) I actually have another party on Saturday. Eating deep fried whitefish and hushpuppies while sitting out on the deck in the middle of the country. Darn, I really love the South sometimes! :-)

What friends are for

Encouraging. Holding your hand. Telling you that you can do it. Not blaming you when their car explodes!

It's been brought home to me even more sharply this week just how great my friends are. Whether they're far away or near, in touch with me daily, weekly or just every few months, blood or just "as good as" blood. Every time I've told someone new about The Big News, I've gotten only positive affirmations and expressions of support. Not to say there haven't been some jaws hitting the floor, but not one person has pooh poohed my decision or told me I'm crazy. Quite the opposite, I've gotten offers to help me pack, to sit with me while I'm sorting through crap I should have thrown out long ago, to send me care packages once I move, to come out and visit me once I'm there (I've gotten LOTS of those!), and to help me build up my tolerance by trying out various Irish pubs in the area (a friend's gotta do what a friend's gotta do, right?). That's not including the especially longsuffering friend who willingly got into her own car, admittedly one on it's last legs and not in use, to teach me how to drive a stick shift. She was kind enough to tell me I did quite well for a first-timer, even after the poor car started smoking and giving up the ghost! :-)

So tell me, who could ask for better friends?!