Sweet Catastrophe

My last concert was in June 2008. Some of you probably gasped ’cause that’s a pretty bfd for me. Butch Walker will be back in Atlanta May 26 and while I hate driving that far, I’m freaking going. I missed the pre-sale, but luckily tickets didn’t sell out in 45 micro seconds this time so I got mine!

I’m positively itching for good live music. And I’m awful about seeing local bands ’cause part of the lure for me is singing along and just feeling the music I already love.

And love is certainly what I’d use to describe I Liked It Better When You Had No Heart. I can’t wait to hear this all live.

It’ll be general admission so I’ll figure out a little closer to time if I wanna get in line earlier, or push my way toward the front. I don’t need muscle supplements; I’m short, I have no problem making my way through a crowd. I may take it easy and just chill wherever I land though. I’m just so damn happy to be going. Not only has it been two years since my last live show, but it’s been even longer than that since I fell for Butch and decided I wanted to see him live. Can’t wait!

It’s amazing how good a few hours in the dirt with babies can be for your heart. I got dinner time, play time, and bath time tonight. I adore being Aunt Dade (We haven’t found the J yet, haha) I get to be fun and have secret food fights while Mommy sits in the other room talking about diet pill reviews for this summer and doctor visits. Of course, I also have to clean up those secret food fights before Mommy sees it, but it’s worth all the giggles!

Just watching their little imaginations is made of awesome! It’s especially adorable to watch them when they actually play together. Jesalyn ‘cooks’ in the dirt and Joshua picks out pretty leaves to put in her pots and pans. Sweetness.

Of course it always has to end but I guess since they just saw me last weekend they think I’ll be back really soon (they might be right, addictive little buggers) so instead of flipping out like we thought they would, I just got tons of hugs and waves and ‘bye bye’ and ‘be careful’ and ‘come back soon’….Nana Pam (my mom) was playing dirty and trying to get me back to town sooner! lol It probably worked ;)

Ryan’s sister Vanessa is engaged! Happy for her, but the bigger news is where she plans to get married. They’ve set the date for next September (I think that was it) in Italy…. So you’d assume they have some tie to Italy, right? Maybe something to do with his family, their past together, anything? Nope. Or maybe this is just a rich family on one side or the other and they can afford it all? Again, nope.

Yes, Vanessa can afford the wedding she wants– she works at a casino and makes great money, but neither his or her family can really all afford to travel to Italy for a wedding. Especially immediate family since they’ll be involved in the wedding plans and will need to be there for a significant amount of time. Plane tickets, hotels, food, travel, not to mention the amount of time everyone would be losing at work with or without vacation pay, and then when you’re traveling outside of the country there are extras you have to add into travel expenses like passports, calling cards, electrical outlet adapters, and you’d certainly want to check out travel insurance online for such a big adventure, ya know?

No one understands her thinking on this. There’s just virtually an unlimited number of places more accessible to everyone that would make for an absolutely beautiful wedding and they could honeymoon in Italy.

And bless his heart, Ryan keeps coming up with possible ways he could get the money and make it happen, but the bottom line is that he’s working on paying student loans right now, how can you really justify spending so much money on his sister’s whim? How can she ask this of people when she knows they can’t afford it??

We’ve actually known about this for a little while and I still just can’t wrap my mind around it…

I’m enjoying my little vacation so far. The drive over here was absolutely awful though. Travelling so late in the evening was bound to suck considering how little sleep I had gotten all weekend and I was really on edge, like I was ready to have a panick attack at any second.

So as soon as I give in and decide to get some sleep, all hell breaks loose. In no particular order, we ran over a huge (already dead) dog, a bag of trash and huge tire treads. There were also those little moments when Ryan would veer just a tad and hit those little grooves on the side of the road. All startling enouhg when you’re wide awake, but these always came just as I was falling asleep and the fright they gave me was literally painful. With my chest already tight, it was just terrible.

So miserable as I was, around 4am I couldn’t last any longer without food so we stopped at a McDonald’s. We got back on the highway to discover that my hashbrown was colder than the air in the car, and my Egg McMuffin was just bread…..time for Jade to have a tiny emotional breakdown and cry for twenty minutes!!

Aside from the drive, things have been pretty relaxed. We’re not doing anything too exciting, ya know, just visiting and playing it all by ear.

So Tuesday I got a late start. Really late. My alarm failed me, so I woke up about two hours after I should’ve been on the road so instead of going to Katie’s, I drove straight to Best Buy in Alpharetta.

The drive was pretty uneventful. I didn’t miss any turns or anything and made really good time with one stop for gas. If it hadn’t been so damn hot I wouldn’t have needed to stop for gas, but my air conditioner had to go full blast since there’s a little issue with that.

We had no problem at Best Buy walking down and aisle to make it front row. You can read a quick bit about the show here.

We left there to go to Ruby Tuesday for the worst service, but the best food. They had it way too dark with the blinds drawn and the lights way too low. If I hadn’t been so hungry I could’ve slept. Our waitress pretty much forgot all about us after she brought our appetizer so we stopped her and pointed out that we’d been there for like 15 minutes since she’d brought out the appetizer and she hadn’t taken our order yet. From then on she tried to make us feel guilty and instead just made herself look like a bitch who shouldn’t be in food service. Come to think of it, I really shouldn’t have left a tip and I don’t know why I did….I don’t care what the situation is, you should never make your guests feel guilty….She even came back and said something about not wanting to make us feel guilty and when we said we didn’t she said something along the lines of, “well I just feel like you guys are being all nice now,” REALLY? Sorry we were assholes before for asking you to take our order when we’d already been in the restaurant for almost 30 minutes…

Tangent, sorry! Anyway after that Kristi rode with me back to Katie’s and we got stuck in a parking lot forever when we missed a turn and tried to turn around…it was pretty crazy. We got all settled and sat around talking for a while and promptly passed out ’cause we were all pretty tired.

And I need to play some Super Paper Mario right now so the rest of my oh-so-exciting trip will come later ;)

So tomorrow I’m heading out for the week. As stands, Tuesday I’m heading to Katie’s to meet up with her and Kristi so we can head to Alpharetta for a Lifehouse in-store performance at Best Buy there. On Wednesday we’re going to Atlanta for their full concert at the Tabernacle. It’s been decided that we’re just gonna hang out in the back for this one so we can actually go talk to Matt Nathanson after his set since no one has been coming out after shows this tour.

If everything works out, Thursday I’ll leave and head to Alabama to meet up with Ryan there. He really wants me to see one of his shows and was talking about how he wished I could come with him one of these weekends so he could see me between all the work–well, I had taken off extra time this week so I could have a few days of nothingness when I got back from Atlanta, so this is probably the only shot I’ll have at going with him. It’s not set in stone yet since it depends on some of the final arrangements Kenn will be making for the weekend (there’s been talk of flying instead of driving) but I’m cool either way.

So yeah, that’s why I’ve been doing all this running around. I just didn’t realize how much I still needed to do in preparation for being gone for a week. I’ve gotten used to the stuff that needs to get done before Ryan leaves, so I kind of forgot that I needed to do some things for myself as well!! That’s why I had to rush to Douglas yesterday–to borrow the Garmin. Now I’m going nuts trying to do the little things around here that I’ve been putting off on top of laundry for both Ryan and myself and video conversions for both Ryan and myself and trying to remember everything I need to pack! I need to go over my list again…I know I forgot to write down usb flash drives so I can empty my camera memory onto one so it’ll be open for tons of new pictures this week….

Honestly, my vacation may end up being more of a hassle than anything…we’ll see!

Late last night, Ryan’s work schedule for the week changed and it was decided that he’d take my car to Jacksonville today. Well, they changed again in a way that had he taken my car, he’d have driven to Jacksonville, picked up a truck, left for Orlando to pick up equipment, stopped in Jacksonville to get my car, drove that back to Valdosta with someone following him to take him back to Jacksonville etc, etc….Well that just didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me so I just said I’d drop him off. He wasn’t terribly keen on the idea since he was trying really hard not to inconvenience me, but it just seemed too illogical to me for him to do all of that extra driving just to save my day off. So we got up and headed out this morning to make it to Jacksonville by lunch. I meant to grab some food before I hit the road again, but I got so freaked in traffic I just forgot until it was too late.

I made it home, starving, but instead of coming home to eat I went ahead to run my errands for the day. I knew once I got home it’d be unlikely I’d go anywhere else. So I hit the mall to pick up a Ruby Tuesday gift card for Daddy and to get some more Wallflowers for Mom–I haven’t seen her since before Mother’s Day so I’ve been putting off that purchase. I got lucky to find that not only were they on sale–2 for $20, but they’re also in the middle of their big summer clearance. They’ve got a ton of older scents at 75% off, making them $3.12 each! So I started rifling through those and found Gardenia! Gardenia has been Mom’s favorite and they discontinued it after the first one I got her so I was excited to see their excess stock out for this sale, and at only $3.12 each, well, I had to buy her 5 ;) She’ll be covered for the rest of the year. Now I’m really thinking I might go back and get some for myself. They had some of the wall units for 50% off, so they’re only $6. I’d love to have something like that in the apt.

Anyway I did some perusing for new flip flops with no luck and grabbed some Subway before heading back this way. I think I’m done with outings for the day, unless I decide to suck it up and go ahead and hit Wal Mart tonight.

I’m not done being productive though; I’ve got some cleaning I want to get done and after laundry, I think I’m gonna get Ryan’s stuff together for him for this weekend. He was complaining earlier about how he needs to go find his bag and actually get it organized so I think I’m gonna do that for him and just leave it waiting for him when he stops by tomorrow.

I’m multi-tasking right now too, watching an episode of Popular, checking out some diet pills reviews, and eating ice cream…..though I guess that might be more considered as counterproductive! My bad!

I finally got off my arse and got my hair cut yesterday. There are a couple of new places that just opened in the same little area. One of them offers a basic adult cut for $6. I thought that’s where I went.

Of course not! I went in and she washed my hair, cut it, put a little extra effort into it. I just wanted a blunt cut, but she ended up doing a little layering for me. Even blow-dried and styled it. It turned out really cute! But it came at a price. 20 bucks!

I hadn’t budgeted for that! And of course, she did such a great job I wanted to tip. I gave her $3. Is that an appropriate tip for a $20 job? I really have no idea!

I dunno…I’m happy with the cut and the service, but I didn’t really see any prices up front. It was really slow at the moment so I sort of got the impression that maybe she was doing all the extra because she wasn’t busy….If $20 is the normal fee for just a quick cut then wow….they’re overcharging for this area, and if that $20 included extra fees for the washing, drying, & styling, then she really should’ve asked if I wanted those things for the extra fee. I mean, I had just finished drying my hair before I walked out the door and I was planning on just pulling it back so the styling wasn’t needed either.

I’ve got their business cards so I’m thinking of writing for a pricing list. I’d like to go back in the future, they offer a lot of other salon services like tanning and acne treatments, but when that time comes, I’d like to know upfront how much I’m paying and what that’s covering.

I think I’ve decided against going to Milwaukee, as previously discussed. It’s somewhat doable, but it’d be a solid financial burden that I’d be bringing on myself. Everyone else working on this trip has a backup–either they’re still financially supported by their folks, or they’re at least in an easy position to turn to them if they need help. I’m not. Not that my parents wouldn’t help me, I can’t just expect that either of them would be capable of helping me without putting a strain on their own assets. Bottom line, I’m just not comfortable with taking the risk.

Now, Kristi is still waiting on Katie to check into some things, and if they fall into some amazing flight deals, and can really help me out, well, then I’m not against the trip. I guess I’m saying I’m not trying to talk myself out of it because it’d be an anxiety-causing new experience for me, I just think I’m kidding myself if I think I can really afford to do this…responsibly.

Damn the life of living paycheck to paycheck.

So I got sick earlier today…I have no idea why and I seem to be pretty much over it now for the most part.

Combine that sickness for the completely irrational anxiety when it comes to taking ‘long’ drives on my own and here I am at home instead of getting ready to watch Lifehouse perform in Jacksonville.

When I get insured again, I really think I wanna talk to a doctor about finding some anxiety meds I can take when I need/want to take trips like this. It’s really holding me back and I hate that! I wanna save up for a good gps system too since part of that anxiety is in regards to getting lost.

I went ebay-ing to make myself feel a little better. I found a lot of cute comforter sets but I talked myself out of them in favor for some cheaper impulse buys. I bought a few pairs of earrings for myself–dinosaurs, grenades, wrenches and pistols, all cute little studs and some little witches on broomsticks for my mom. I favorited the seller so I can go back and buy a bunch more. I think there were like 11 more pairs I really wanted to get. I love weird earrings.

Now I think I’m gonna study Spanish and just keep my mind off the concert I’m missing.