What's in a name?

I've been mulling over how I want to refer to my nearest and dearest in my blog. I could avoid the use of proper names entirely, but that can make for dull reading. I could provide the preferred monikers of my friends and family, but everyone is a little different in what they are comfortable sharing online, and, since I tend to be an over-sharer, it seems wise to build in some limits before I go spewing people's social security numbers all over the internet. I could use initials, but I know way too many J's for that to be practical.

So I've decided to go with nicknames. Sometimes it will be a person's pet name, sometimes a celebrity they resemble, sometimes the resurrection of a long unused inside joke (I have a memory like an elephant.)

For starters, I will introduce you to my daughter, Petal. Yes the nickname is a bit overly precious, but if you can't be sappy and sentimental about your baby girl, then who can you be a sap about?

Petal's daddy and my hubby reminds me of the star of one of my favorite (now sadly off the air) TV shows, 24. So he is Jack, for Jack Bauer.

And my gorgeous sister has often been compared to Shakira, so Shakira she shall be in Fairweather New England.

Memorial Day Weekend

The New River, West Virginia, May 2009

I usually start planning what I want to do for Memorial Day weekend months in advance. I've hiked the Grand Canyon, gone white water rafting, taken a babymoon in the Outerbanks and partied on Cape Cod.

So today's trip to Home Depot couldn't help but feel a little anti-climatic.

A tech guru, I am not

So a few things to address. 1) As brought to my attention by the asthma sufferer mentioned in the last post, who happens to be a life-long friend of mine, the comments section was not working correctly. I messed around with the settings a little, but I don't know if that fixed the problem. 2) I don't know how to insert pictures into a post. I hope it involves photobucket, because I already have a photobucket account. 3) I have no idea how to do a RSS feed, but I'm not sure if that's a blog issue or a personal problem.

Clearly still a work in progress. But aren't we all?

Web of Life

This week, the week before Memorial Day weekend, was the highlight of the school year when I was in second through fifth grade. This was the week we had the ultimate field trip, five days and four nights staying overnight on Cape Cod. Our hippie-leaning alternative school participated in a nature-based learning program where we did things like eat sea pickles we found growing in the marsh and sing songs about bugs such as "Head, Thorax, Abdomen" to the tune of "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes."

I have clear memories of each year I went on the trip. In second grade, the most popular girl in the class was mysteriously ill for days before disappearing in the middle of the night. The rest of us speculated that she had died, but it turned out that she was suffering from undiagnosed asthma and had been sent home. Third grade was the year the temperatures dropped far below average for the time of year and we shivered in multiple layers of sweatshirts and shivers. In fourth grade, I spent the week with my right arm in a blue cast, my limb broken from a fall from my swing set a few weeks earlier. And in fifth grade, the girls in our cabin followed the annual tradition of sneaking out to meet the boys. We were a little on the lame side and had the have the "sneak out" facilitated by our adult chaperones. We played a very tame version of Spin the Bottle as our teacher looked on.

Good, good times.

But aren't you a little old to spend summer vacation at Mommy and Daddy's?

Yes, yes I am.  So why am I doing it? There's not really one reason, more like a bunch of factors that all happened to coincide.

First and foremost, as I alluded to in my last post, the DC region is unbelievably yucky in the summer. I often feel like I missed out on summer entirely because it just isn't enjoyable to be outdoors. So the opportunity for my daughter to get to play outside in the grass instead of hiding from the heat in the air conditioning is quite appealing.

Also, my mom is a teacher and doesn't work in the summer. My dad has a flexible work schedule and lots of unused vacation days. And my dear dear sister, who lives in Madrid, will also be visiting during the same time period. So there's THAT.

Finally, the classes my husband needs to complete his Master's degree have a condensed schedule during the summer, so there will be multiple days during the week where he will leave the house before 7 am and not get home until 9 pm. And he will have plenty of reading and papers to keep him busy on the off nights and on the weekends. So we really wouldn't be seeing much of him anyway. Instead, he's going to take a 3 or 4 day weekend midway through our stay in Massachusetts and fly up for some quality family time.

Not to mention the opportunities to hang out with my Boston-based buddies, my Connecticut-based extended family, and my Massachusetts-based in-laws.

Also, in case you haven't gathered, I'm quite fond of New England in and of itself. I'm looking forward to seeing the sights with a vacationer's eyes and to making memories with my daughter in the places that form my own most treasured childhood memories.

Introductions

I am: 30 years old, a new mother, happily married, a work-at-home contractor for a consulting company, a resident of the Baltimore-Washington Corridor and a native of New England.

You are: Sufficiently interested in my life to check out my blog. 

So let's begin, shall we?

My parents both spent the majority of their formative years in the NYC area, my mom in Brooklyn and Westchester and my dad in Queens. They met at Syracuse University and moved to New England in the late 70s.  I was born on the last day of 1980. I left New England only for brief stints until I got married a month before my 26th birthday. I then moved to Germany, Arizona and Maryland within a year's time. My beloved had a nomadic childhood spent partially in New Jersey, partially in Kansas and partially in Massachusetts. His familiarity with the inside of a moving truck made the Army a natural fit, but, tired of deployments, he hung up his beret after seven years and is back to civilian life.

So here we are, displaced New Englanders growing softer each winter as we rarely brave a morning colder than 20 degrees. Our daughter was born in Baltimore and only wore the adorable puffy pink snowsuit I bought her for a photo op. And summer has begun to become synonymous with battling the humidity with 24/7 air conditioning. But this July, my offspring and I are headed Northward for six weeks, ready to soak in the mild breezes and gently warming sun of a perfect New England summer. I can't wait.