amidst it all, i turned twenty-three...

Nothing peeves me more than an inability to update my blog ... especially in the two weeks that I fail to find time to update my blog ... my life changes dramatically (again!)!! I can't find my camera cord amongst the chaos I currently call life (its probably vacuum sealed in a bag somewhere like the rest of my belongings...) and I hate blogging without pictures to add effect. Although, I have a to-do list a mile long and the three devout readers (Grams, Auntie Linda and Kara) are currently in LA with me, I decided the top thing on my list would be to update my blog on the entire month of September where amidst it all, I turned twenty-three...

thank you roomies-for-life for an extra-special bday celebration!

harriette potter.

For the past month, I have been living under the staircase rather Harry Potteresque like
in this fabulous home with three fabulous roommates - Sydney, Rachel and Nicole! They are all nurses at CHLA and I went through the residency program with Syd (which is how I got to know her)! While I have flown back East three of the four weekends this month, I have had so much fun living with them in the few weeks I have been home! They remind me of being in college when I lived with my 3 best friends for 4 smashing years! My days under the stairs has been the perfect in-between phase transitioning from living with my besties to moving in with a boy! I'm getting an extra strength dose of girlieness before I am stripped of 3 extra closets to chose from (Mitch and I don't really share the same size or style.), deprived of wine-sipping, theatre-going girls nights (Mitch is more into a beer-guzzling, sports-filled kind of Saturday night!) and I am soon to be removed from all quasi-decent shopping (Winnipeg isn't quite the most fashion forward place in the world.) All the inside jokes and reminiscing of college life made me want to go back .... so I did just that the weekend before last.

swagger of a college kid.

I was on the phone with Kara a couple of weeks ago and she was saying how she was going to Gainesville for the weekend for the UF vs. TN game... our biggest rivalry! I have been trying to figure out a way to get to a game this year anyways before I move North so when she reminded me that the weekend before last would be the perfect time to go, I booked a flight and hopped on a plane 3 days later! I had a free flight from when I willingly gave up my seat on a plane in an effort to prolong returning to LA on one of my vacations recently (in which I ended up getting my seat back and keeping the voucher so the effort was lost but the free flight made my return to LA a little more tolerable! I digress...) It had been an entire month since I had seen Carly (keep in mind I have seen her almost everyday for the past 5 years, including when I was Italy.. she was there too and when she lived in NYC for the summer ... I went and visited her!) so you can imagine my excitement when she picked me from the airport and I got to spend the entire weekend with her and Meg! I got to see her new job and then we headed to Gvegas for the weekend! In true collegiate fashion, we stayed in her sister's "luxury dorm" for the weekend and had a blast being back on our stomping grounds! While gameday was even more exciting than I remembered it to be, the club scene was not. We attempted to go out (with a slight touch of sun poisoning from tailgating all day in the Florida humidity!) but after an hour of being "in da club" we all looked at each other and unanimously agreed that it was not nearly as exciting as it used to be so we headed back to our blow-up mattress and had way more fun in our 2-night slumber party! Reliving life in Gainesville would not be complete without a playdate with Kate... so I spent all morning Sunday doing just that!

playdate with Miss Kate

The highlight of my weekend was getting to spend Sunday with Kate! I went over to her house early in the morning where she showed me her new cat, Abigail, that she picked out all by herself from the animal shelter. Then we went on a treasure hunt in our dresses and found acorns and fungus. It was super exciting to hear just how smart she is pointing out the smallest details along the road while informing me that she often stays up late watching the news with Mum and Dad! She is more beautiful than ever, still has that little button nose and even still twirls her hair when she's tired. She talked a lot about her friends at school and at ballet class. Rhonda and Kevin are doing wonderful as well busy planning the remodeling they are doing to their home and looking up answers on the internet, per Kate's suggestion, to questions they don't know the exact answer to. She still has that witty silliness about her that being so intelligent allows her to have. I miss having them in my daily life but my morning with her brought me right back to that little place inside me that will always be a kid.

trash the dress.

One of Carly's last days in LA we spent "trashing the dress". We had a lot of fun galavanting around the metro station, in a fountain, down train tracks, etc. with our friend/photographer Mindy.

nation's capitol.

For Labor Day Weekend, Mitch(ell) met me in DC to spend the weekend with Megan and Danny. We had a fabulous time! Friday, we metroed into the district and saw all the monuments and memorials. The one thing I learned about US history is that I know nothing about it... and I would be completely content if I never do. We met Danny for lunch and then spent the evening drinking flights of beer in Georgetown. It was perfect.

wino.

I saw a wino eating grapes and I was like, Dude! You have to wait!

- Mitch Hedberg

After spending Friday in DC and the weekend in Virginia Beach, we spent Monday tasting delectable wines at a nearby winery in Maryland.

run like a rockstar.

Rock n' Roll Virginia Beach Half Marathon 2009

sequence of tiny miracles.

I've gotten a lot of random e-mails, fb messages, texts, bbms and pulls aside at work (but surprisingly not a single phone call!) asking me what I am doing with my life at this very moment.. and if you asked me two weeks ago (right around the time I stopped blogging) I would have said I have not an effing clue (just like that too because I was quite perterbed my unknown future) and then a sequence of tiny miracles took place in a seven day time span that led me to current day. Let me take you back to the beginning.
6:01 am, Friday 8/20: Carly is returning to grad school in Atlanta this fall and her and Tammy depart for Florida after a farewell so-LA evening at Spamalot. Let the hysterics begin. Approximately twenty minutes later (fate?): the manager of the NICU at the Health Science Centre in Winnipeg called to ask me a few questions regarding the application I had submitted 4 days prior and then offered me a job in a level 3 NICU!!! Let the waterworks stop and the bouncing off the walls begin. Literally. That afternoon I began searching for a place to live online ... realizing I'm not that tech savvy when all that came up on my search engine were basements ... Mitchell (I don't think blogging about this counts as a public display of affection?) sent me the link to mosaicrentals.ca... by Tuesday afternoon, I {or should I say we!!! okay, that might be considered PDA! =) } signed a lease on a condo in the city for this fall!!! That's like 6 weeks away!! My last day is yet to be announced but in my one year evaluation at my current job that also took place this week I mentioned to my manager that I would be leaving and because she is fabulous, she was completely understanding and really cured any apprehensions I had about leaving! I love my job and will be sad to leave the people but I am sooooo excited to move home!! In addition to completely rearranging my future I have also completely rearranged the present. I switched from night shift to day shift this week and have worked seven straight days in a row! I have moved entirely out of Carly and I's apartment in Studio City and partially into my new temp home in Glendale with my 3 new fabulous roommates and partially into my car for lack of time/energy to unpack! California is currently burning which is horribly contributing to the heat wave that has taken over the Valley... You better believe I am using the heat/smoke filled, already smoggy air quality as an excuse not to train! ... and now I am unpacking so that I can repack to fly to DC on Thursday where Megan, Danny, Mitchell and I will be spending Labour Day weekend together!! If I didn't have insomnia before, do you know how hard it is to sleep when reality is better than your dreams?! =)

right back where you started from.

Sometimes right back where you started from is right where you belong.

My days in LA have really come full circle. As each day passes (and one more piece of furniture in our apartment is sold on craig's list and one more article of clothing reminiscent of college is traded for cash) my life is slowly starting to fit back into my car and I'm beginning to find humor in how much I am essentially right back where I started from arriving on the West Coast last year ... just a little bit older and little more cultured perhaps.

I was reading a post I wrote around graduation when I was having to make huge life-altering decisions last year wondering what life would be like outside of college. Not having to study? Not getting a spring break? Not living with your best friends? ... and if I can tell you one thing, moving to LA was the perfect bridge to transitioning from college grad to quasi adult because all the little idiosyncrasies that make college life wonderful that I feared would not be conducive to the real world is... when you move to the surreal world of LA that is!

There's a reason why the city of angels bears the nickname LALA Land because it's exactly that: a state of mind characterized by unrealistic expectations; a place renowned for it's frivolous activity. Feeling like my life in LA could easily be the screenplay to a coming-of-age indie film defined by discovery, there's so much to tell but I can't seem to find the words to describe it; in which case I usually just make them up but even then I am at a total loss for lexicons. The amount of frivolous adventures I have embarked on the past few months have made the time fly by incredibly fast. I've boarded a plane at least once a month, seen a play or attended a concert almost weekly and amongst all the adventure I allotted just enough time to fall in love with the art of neonatal nursing!

The things that made my world turn in the little bubble I called college slowly faded from my everyday life and was replaced by an equally exciting chapter of my twenty-somethings era marked by endless possibilities -the possibility to arrange my schedule so every other week is a 'spring break'. The possibility to make road trips (not to attend football games but bet on them in Vegas). The possibility to have mountains and ocean side by side. The possibility to find a culture that still deems it socially acceptable to have a roommate. The possibility of being amongst a sea of people feeling like none of it matters unless you have someone to share it with.

As this fantastic residency into adulthood draws to a close, I've officially ended my complicated relationship with Carly on the facebook and I am ready to enter the real world, for real this time. I've finally figured it out. Who I need in my (daily) life to feel whole again. What matters more than the glitz and glam, I realized what means the most. When now is just the perfect time to let go of one thing to cling tighter to the next. Where life and love and laughter perfectly align. Why sometimes right back where you started from is right where you belong.

keeping up with the hofers.

When I did my practicum my senior year of nursing school, my very first day I went back for a delivery. We brought the baby to the NICU and stabilized him with Dad right by his side. This was my very first moment shared with the Hofers. Over the next eight weeks, I shared many more milestones with Charlie and Kelli and their tiny baby, Weston. Their graduation from the NICU took place not long after my grad from UF last spring. Kelli has been wonderful about keeping us updated on Weston's progress! When in Nashville last week, they graciously met me downtown so I could see just how wonderful he really is doing. He is just perfect. Bonding with fabulous families like the Hofers confirmed for me that the NICU was my niche in nursing! =)

beautiful new additions.

In addition to one husband (Anna's Chris, who we got to meet briefly saying our goodbyes!) there are also two new babies in the family - Courtney's son Zane who is turning a year old this month. He is such a happy baby!

He took some of his first steps while we were there!

all smiles!!

And our newest first cousin - Dresden Thomas Kirk - who was born on July 14, 2009.

It was so wonderful getting to meet Stormie and Phaedra too!

cousins in carolina.

In the Carolinas for a Coldplay concert, Kara and I miraculously got to see all our cousins in 2 days!! It was the highlight of my trip! =)

We had lunch with Meghan and Kirby and stopped by Monika's office to make plans for our next reunion in December.

We stayed the night with Uncle Kevin and got to meet the tiniest member of the Kirk family - baby boy Dresden, who was born 2 and half weeks before our arrival! He is beautiful!

And we couldn't plan if we had tried ... all the Overbys in one place in a matter of an hour!! It was absolutely amazing to see everyone!! I miss ya'll! It had been four years since we had seen each other (at Courtney's wedding) and it doesn't look like any of us will be getting married any time soon so we will have to make a point to not let it go this long again! =)

do one thing a day that scares you.

chimney tops.

I have been enjoying southern comfort this week visiting Kara in Knoxville. I've had sweet tea everyday! Yesterday, we went hiking 2 miles straight up along the Tennessee/North Carolina border on a trail called Chimney Tops. It was incredibly strenuous but an awesome work-out with amazing views at the top of the Smokey Mountains!!

they could not remember a time -

Until now, that Forever didn't seem long enough.

One year ago today, I was trolling in the middle of Dauphin Lake when Megan called to tell me she was engaged!! Only 25 days until I get to see them again and only 3 months and 13 days until the wedding!! So excited!! =)

blonde bombshell.

Meet Carly. She is Megan's little sister and because growing up Megan and I were inseparable, her parents adopted me and I've spent my summers laughing with her, Carly has always been a little sister to me! Carly attends architecture school in Miami and in her free time puts that stunningly gorgeous face to work! She started modeling when she did a runway show for charity last fall. I can hardly believe the little ten-year-old that always ran around naked (refusing to put on clothes!) has grown up to be such a beautiful, blonde bombshell. Love you, Carlita!!

countryfest 2009.

My posts of past country fests are never very long because it's incredibly hard to put into words what five nights of drinking and dancing with my favorite people entails but here are my highlights from this year's country fest: