High School Reunion

So High School! An interesting experience. I suppose we learned a lot, or should have, but never would I really actually want to return, even though there sure are a lot of movies about just that.

There are the jocks, and the theater kid, druggies, student counsel group, the "cool" kids, the socially awkward, (who strangely enough function as a normal group when they are together) the band geeks, the key club, etc. Then there is the nerdy girl, always awkward and no confidence or self esteem, and she feels like she has no friends at all; never really fits in, but doesn't have any idea what to do next anyway. Yes, that was me.
So you spend those four years trying to impress everyone; seeing everyone else as having the "cool group" and never really sure of why that is so important, but you know that you at least should want to be "cool."
Finally, you graduate and you move on from high school, maturing into a reasonably nice, intelligent and confident person. Then they think that it would be fun to get together again after ten years. Do you know what really happens? It's like going back.
First of all, you have to dress up. You cannot wear just anything. Then you get there and immediately search the crowd for "your friends," because heaven forbid you talk to anyone that you don't already see regularly. You suddenly feel uncomfortable and embarrassed talking to these people.
You awkwardly eat a dinner that you paid way to much for and does not taste that great, and they don't even have dessert! The least they could do is provide dessert.
You finally make your way around to talking to those old buddies. You slowly say your good byes at the same time you say your hellos. Why do you feel the need to impress all of these people? Who really cares? You won't see any of them for another ten years, and if by some chance you do, it is because you are friends; and haven't we moved on from believing our friends won't like us if we don't impress them? It's silly; like a circus, and it kind of makes me laugh.

So in case you hadn't guessed, I went to my high school reunion and this was my experience. All of those times I said "you" I actually meant "me"! It was funny though, because the next day I thought to myself, "I really did want to talk to those people. I genuinely wanted to know what ten years had proved to make of their lives." And even worse yet, so many of those people that I really wanted to see were not even there.
So now we wait for another ten years to pass and to teach us, and mature us even more. And then, we have another High School Reunion ... Go THS!

Gardening

Sometimes my husband and I play "The Farming Game." I'm pretty good at it so I told him that I must be a natural farmer. Well, come to find out, that is not true.
I decided that I wanted to plant a little garden this year. I thought I'd start out small, so I planted two tomato plants, one squash, and four different kinds of pepper. Then I also planted two spices -- cilantro and basil, plus I threw in a few flowers for the flower box on the porch. I planted my plants in buckets/pots because we don't actually have a garden. So when we bought my plants, we bought buckets and bags of Miracle Gro soil. I got them all planted, with the help of my little neighbors -- two little boys, eight and three.
I watered them faithfully. I checked them every morning before I went running. The plants grew really fast (I was getting pretty excited when things started to grow. I had cute, tiny, adorable little peppers growing, lots of little green tomatoes and a handful of squash blooms. How wonderful!
Then the days and weeks moved on and one day as I was checking my tomatoes, I saw some red! That should mean that I really could be a good farmer, right? NO! This is wrong, because when I took a closer look at the little red ball, as well as all of the many green ones on both of my plants, I found that the top 4/5 we beautiful and red, the bottom 1/5 was black -- BOTTOM ROT! Oh no! I can't successfully grow things after all.
Well, since then it's only gotten worse. After I pulled off all of the bottom rotted tomatoes, which was pretty much all of them; the leaves started turning yellow and dying. Next, all of my little squash turned black, shriveled up and fell off. My peppers stopped blooming and then the nice round, shiny bell peppers that were growing turned really funny looking, and not healthy.
My cilantro is a disaster. It started flowering, so I cut all the flowers off, but then the few leaves that remained started flowering. Then they grew pods. So my cilantro is completely hopeless, but I at least have successfully grown coriander pods. My basil was my one hope. It was doing pretty well, but then I looked again today. It's flowering too. I guess I just don't cut it enough.
My flowers are a complete joke. I planted small yellow daisies, a few geraniums and some marygolds. The daisies were the first to dry out. The geraniums never really looked healthy and even though I thought that marygolds were the easiest of flowers; I have killed them. I water them every day, just as I do my pepper plants, but I guess this has been a really hot summer, and they just aren't going to make it.

So my current routine is the water at night. I water the tomatoes every other night and the peppers every night, because they are in little pots, so they dry out faster. I put some grass clipping on the tomatoes and squash, hoping it will keep the water from evaporating so quickly. I cut all of the dead leaves off.
Today they look pretty good. I have a few new squash blooms to hope for and a new crop of baby green tomatoes. My anaheim peppers seem to be the only ones that aren't having any problems. So send your luck my way. I definitely do not have a "green thumb," but I'm also hoping that it's not completely "black." I mean, I am really good at The Farming Game!!

The First One

All my friends were making fun of me because I'm not on Facebook and I didn't have a blog. So now I have a blog and hopefully they will stop making fun of me!

I think that it is important for me to begin my blogging by noting that I have now been married for one month and one week. That's thirty-eight days! Travis's niece asks me every time she sees me, "You still married?" The answer is yes! We're still married. In case you missed our reception for some reason and didn't get to view the amazing scrapbooks, I've included a few fabulous pics of our post nuptual photo shoot as well as some from the amazing Cancun honeymoon.

So let's just talk about the honeymoon for a bit. First of all, honeymoons are really great and I think that they should be at least an annual thing. It's better than just a regular vacation. You go somewhere, just the two of you and spend money on whatever you want because you're on your honeymoon so you don't worry about it. You eat as much as you want, whenever you want. You sleep in in the morning til as late as you want. You don't feel guilty about any of this and it's just a great time. The only way you can fail at a honeymoon is if you don't have a great time.
Then there's Cancun. Wow! I've seen a lot of pictures and such of so called "paradise" but I guess I just viewed them as pictures, and not real places. But did you know that beaches actually exist that are really that blue?
We stayed in an all-inclusive resort, Xpu-Ha Palace (in case you're not familar with Mayan, you say that [eshpu-ha]. It wasn't just a regular resort though. No high rise hotels with a million other people. No, we had our own bungalow. Okay, we didn't just have our own bungalow. The bugalows were in little clusters of eight called villas and we had our own villa. Honestly, we practically had our own resort. We went to a smaller resort, first off. Then we went during the "off season." And if that wasn't great enough, this crazy pandemic, swineflu thing scared everyone else away too. So literally on the busiest day there were 30 other people and that's only because there was a bus of visitors that came to visit our animal exibits!
Next let's talk about this all-inclusive business. To those of you unfamiliar with this term, this means: 24/7 room service, 24 hour open bar, (virgin pina coladas were my only beverages) the restaraunts, the grill and the coconut ice cream were all included. The tours to the neat Mayan temple ruins and snorkling were all included. We didn't have to pay tips and best of all, they fold your towels into neat animals like swans, dinosaurs and elephants.

So basically here is the rundown of an average day for us in Cancun:
Wake up (whenever we wanted to)
Order breakfast (pretty much we tried about 5 or 6 different options per meal)
About 20 minutes later, sometimes less a very nice Mayan kid would bring up our tray and set it up on our table that was on our balcony overlooking a jungle of trees.
We ate
We showered
We took a nap in the hammock on the balcony with the ocean breeze blowing.
Eventually we made it down to the pool area and even though it was only a ten minute walk, we rode bikes because they have bikes there for you to ride
A the pool we swam a bit
We swam to the swim up bar to order our pina coladas
We ordered a late lunch from the pool grill, followed by coconut ice cream cones
We ate our cones as we walked down to the beach (which was just at the end of the pool)
We ordered another round of pina coladas on the way
We found our shaded beach chairs, drank our pina coladas and took another nap
About this time we took bike ride or a leasurely stroll to look around our resort at the alligators, flamingos or watch snakes eat their lunch of mice
Or we went kayaking
Or we visited the little shop
Or we strolled down the beach
Then we eventually made it back to our bungalow
We soaked in our hot tub
We showered again (sometimes you have to shower 4 or 5 times in a day because of the humidity and because of the beach)
We ordered dinner
We ate our dinner on our balcony as we watched the sun go down
We took another nap
We took a night time bike rided to the pool
Watched a fire dancing show
Went for a night time swim
Made it back to our bungalow again
Went to bed
**On the busier days we squeezed in a tour of the Mayan temple ruins or visited the Mayan cultural park (Xcaret)

So really all there is to say is, where should we go on our next honeymoon, next year?