Back in the Game

Dear Whimsy and all my beautiful readers, I have missed you.

I regret being a lil MIA recently, but here’s the only way I can explain it:

1. Crazy wonderful fun spring break adventures.
2. Back to reality for about 48 hours (so, really, a super-reality of sorts because I had to get things done during that time)
3. Crazy wonderful fun visit from my bestie, Abigail Lee Lunsford.
4. Actual back to reality. And a lot of catching up and work and I was still reeling from aforementioned crazy wonderful fun things that happened, so it was all just a little overwhelming.

But here I am: firmly rooted in reality once more, ready to return to y’all and Whimsy. (Albeit with the disclaimer that said reality is a little bit of a lot busy, so, until the end of May, I may not post as regularly as I have in the past.) But I digress.

In case you were wondering, this is what Abby’s visit looked like:

 

 

It was a weekend chock full of porch chats and touring around Grounds and frolicking through peach trees and getting to see some of our other high school friends (these guys) and wine tasting and hiking up mountains and picnicking at the top of said mountains and just picnicking in general and eating delicious food (homemade and otherwise) and coffee-shopping and hanging out with a ton of people and sitting on the roof, among other things.

But here’s the best thing about visiting with an old, good friend: the way you can switch so easily from the kind of deep conversation you would only trust to the best of friends to funny, trivial things -- remembering your history together. It’s a little bittersweet but beautiful, really, being at the stage where we have our separate lives now in separate places, but we can still know and care for and be involved in each other’s. Does that even make sense? Do you have friends like that?

In other news, I was serious when I said I missed you. I have had all sorts of small, semi-pointless things pop into my head all week that are the kind of things I would have mentioned on here, but I had to store them up in my brain instead. (And, consequentially, I forgot several.) But to make up for my prolonged absence, here are a few of the randoms I wanted to share with y’all:

• I went to a fiction reading on Saturday, which was part of the Virginia Festial of the Book. It was so great! It's funny how real authors are. And now I want to read The Ninth Wife by Amy Stolls and The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown.

• Boy bands (especially British ones) are back in. Exhibit A. Exhibit B.

• This post by Natalie Lloyd really struck home for me. (Read past the part about Jack White – the part about how blogging can sometimes foster negative emotions and comparisons. I especially loved this one paragraph (because I can relate, and because it was so in line with something Abby and I had talked about while she was here!): 

"Instead of taking this unique mix of days I've been given -- matching my gifts and 

talents and dreams up with my hours and minutes and mysteries -- I've wasted lots 

of time wishing I could be somebody else. I'm guilty of trying to make my journey 

look exactly like hers (whoever "she" may be) so I'll have the exact same end result 

she has. Because "her" life looks seriously perfect. But the end result is never what I 

thought; because that was never meant to be my story." - Natalie Lloyd

• Spring is here and it is beautiful. You know what I love? When all the trees get leaves again, and you realize that you had gotten so used to bare branches, you forgot that it was possible for them to look this beautiful and green.

• Most articles on singleness are kind of obnoxious. This one was good. (And we might have read it out loud in our kitchen while cooking dinner today)

That’s all. Oh, except for that it’s good to be back.