Yesterday (Friday) was my mom’s birthday. I was not sure exactly how to begin this post, because whereas I began the post about my birthday with the words “Yesterday was my 18th birthday,” I believe that Mom would like me to be less forthcoming with her digits, so I will just say that “Yesterday was my mom’s birthday upon which time she reached an undisclosed, definite age.”

Let me take a moment to tell you what a remarkable woman my mother is. She and I have had our fair share of scuffles, especially in the last few years, mostly because we are so darned alike. And, as a result, I rarely give her the respect that it is both my duty to give her and that she deserves. But the fact is, my mother is one of the most admirable people I have ever met.

Her life, like every person’s who is willing to admit it, is not neat. She makes mistakes. She makes choices she knows she doesn’t want to make when she makes them. But Mom has always modelled humility, honesty, and graciousness of character for my brother and I in her everyday interactions with other people. She is always thinking of other people before herself—a fact that, to my great shame, I often do not recognize as she provides for me. She also has real wisdom born of experience, and has shared it with me to my great benefit on many occasions. (Not to mention the fact that she is insanely organized and has done a fantastic job of making sure our household runs smoothly for decades.)

I do not think my mother is a perfect person. And sometimes, all that my blind eyes can see are her faults, perhaps because I know so many of them are also my own and I am afraid to own them. But when God opens my eyes, I see that she is a true woman of Character and Virtue, who has been faithfully doing her best to serve God and her family through the years.

I talk a lot about what a big deal this period of transition to adulthood, of starting college, of moving on and growing up has been for me. But it has been just as big a deal to Mom. She has watched me grow and struggle and learn. She has watched me prove what a selfish sinner I am time and again. She has watched me succeed and fail and encouraged me to look at what things are really important in life. Heck, she even faithfully reads my blog (and all your comments, FYI ).

And I know that she is proud of me, but I can also see that as she watches me prepare to leave the nest, her heart aches with that bittersweet mother-ache that I suppose I can’t yet fully understand.

I don’t know if I can possibly make that ache better, but I hope that letting her know how much I appreciate her will help. Thank you, Mom, for being a role model, a teacher, a comfort, and a friend. Thank you for sharing wisdom and caring and endless patience. Thank you for supporting my crazy ideas and interests, and for always being there for me. Please forgive me for the disrespect I have showed you and the pain I have caused you. I really do not think I could have had a mother better-suited to me. God knew what He was doing. I love you. Happy birthday.

(Update: I apologize to the people who were startled by this post’s title and opening sentence. I really didn’t intend to worry anyone. Perhaps it was just a stupid idea for a post. So just forget about that part and scroll down and watch those videos about Gutenberg!)

I am sorry to report that Erin Julian, the highschooler, along with all associated free time possessed by her, passed away Monday morning, September 18th, at approximately 9:00 am. She was last seen walking into the classroom in a small but fantastic Great Books college tucked away on a street corner in Eugene, Oregon. Friends and family members were unavailable for comment, but Erin Julian, the college student, had this to say about her former self: “There were good times, there were great times, there were crying-myself-to-sleep-awful times. Also, I have a feeling that Gutenberg is about to rock my world.”

She will probably not be very missed.

But anyway.

Now we have experienced two days of orientation. But, in all honesty, it feels more like TWO MILLION YEARS. I think that feeling has a lot to do with the fact that Monday morning I sat down with a group of seventeen mostly-strangers, and with every hour that has passed since then those strangers look a lot more like friends. I would love to tell you all about them, but since I haven’t really discussed my blog with most of them yet I don’t feel like I have permission. But someday, perhaps.

Since I am spending my week getting to know Gutenberg even better than I have ever known it, I figured it was only fair that I give you the opportunity to do the same. In the last few years, a filmmaker who is a friend of the college graciously took on the project of making short films to educate incoming students and interested parties about Gutenberg College and its institutes, Mckenzie Study Center and Art Project. Those films have recently been posted to Google Video, and I invite you to watch any or all of them if you are interested in learning more about my school:

(Because I am a n00b when it comes to embedding video, I am going to be weak-sauce and just link you to each one. Sorry.)

Students talk about Gutenberg College (This is my favorite one.)

About Gutenberg College

About Gutenberg College as it relates to its Institutes

About Mckenzie Study Center

About Art Project

There you go! I know not all of you may find those videos riveting, but that’s okay. I figure if you’re not interested in it you don’t have to watch it.

(Oh, and before anyone asks me why the music in some of those videos is the score from The Village, the answer is: I don’t know.)

Yesterday was my 18th birthday.

This means I can now…

• vote.
• get married.
• gamble.
• smoke.
• get a credit card.
• go skydiving.
• buy things from infomercials.

… and generally do whatever the heck I want all the time. Right? That’s how this adulthood stuff works, right, Mom and Dad?

In all seriousness, it is blowing my mind a little bit that I am actually eighteen. Being eighteen was one of those things—you know the ones—that is always in the future and will never actually happen. But here it is. I can’t argue with the date on my birth certificate.

I was very close to—don’t laugh!—getting my nose pierced yesterday. There’s a tattoo parlor in Eugene that gives free piercings on one’s eighteenth birthday. I had actually been planning on doing this for a year or more… but I realized, as the day approached, that I actually did not really want my nose pierced. What I wanted was to feel eighteen. I wanted a tangible mark upon myself that would make me feel older and more capable of handling the world, I guess. But I didn’t really want my nose pierced.

… So I decided to start smoking instead.

Just kidding! Actually, I gave myself the gift of an eighteenth birthday portrait sitting. It may not have left a mark on my face to let others know that I am now “an adult,” but it did seem like a fitting way to comemmorate the day. I’m still me—it’s (sadly) not like I’ve changed into a magically more competent person overnight—but I have reached a milestone of sorts, and I think that’s worth remembering.

My dear friend Natalie indulged me in this endeavor and performed the role of photographer, using my camera. Unfortunately, because I am quickly being swallowed whole by the gaping maw that is “Gutenberg/all the stuff I need to get done before Gutenberg starts ON MONDAY” I have not been able to edit the portrait shoot yet.

Instead, here is a picture my brother took of the evening cake festivities:

So. Growing up, moving on, becoming a college student.

Yikes.

One year ago today, I brought this beauty home:

Between then and now, it has…

… had its first snow…

… had its hood stolen (!) and then replaced…

… had its stereo’s faceplate stolen and not replaced (sigh)…

… and taken me on multiple road trips, carried me to and from work and school, and contributed a great deal to my growing feeling of independence.

For our anniversary, I gave it an old, half-broken tape deck/radio combo that Elijah took out of his car when he got a new CD player. It appreciates not driving in silence all the time anymore.

Thank you, car, for being the (fairly) reliable companion that you have been. Please don’t get stolen again.

(P.S. I still haven’t washed it. As in, not once since I got it a year ago. The Oregon rain kept it clean in the winter, I swear!)

Last time I wrote I was sitting amid piles of clothes waiting to be packed. Tonight, a week and two days later (oh dear!), I have barely finished unpacking those same piles. Of course, Mom and I have been home in Oregon for three days already. But, unlike my Mother the Mightily Organized, I do not possess an innate desire to unpack and sort and fold and put away all my clothes and accessories the moment I arrive home from a trip.

My unpacking method is a bit more subdued—I tend to pass by my half-opened suitcase, abandoned unceremoneously on the floor, ten or twelve times, thinking that if I will only believe hard enough, my shirts and socks and pants will grow legs and crawl themselves back into their appropriate drawers.

Suffice to say, my room stays messier longer than Mom’s.

I meant to write a blog entry every night that I was in California. But every night Aunt Annette and I ended up talking or surfing the web together or watching a movie into the wee hours of the morning. (Or all three, often. ) I decided that quality time with my Aunt (who I hardly ever get to see) was more important than regular blog entries. (Besides, one can never see A Knight’s Tale too many times!)

On the first night (Sunday night) I wanted to tell you about the long car ride down during which we only stopped once and during which we had to endure an audio book that sounded like it had been recorded by a chipmunk on crack.

On Monday I wanted to let you know about my early 18th birthday present from Grandma, which was a new lens for my camera (picked out by my uncle the photography buff)! (It was an EFS 17-85 mm f/4-5.6 IS USM, for those who care. They also gave me a UV filter, a polarizing filter, and a lens hood to fit the new lens.)

Tuesday I would have written that I loved my new lens and that we visited the beautiful mission at Santa Clara University to take pictures, but that I made the mistake of switching to RAW format on my camera for half the afternoon, only to discover that I could not download the RAW pictures onto Aunt Annette’s computer with any of the software that she had (or if I could I couldn’t figure out how).

On Wednesday I would have mentioned our visit to Hakone Gardens in Saratoga, and maybe Uncle Tom’s book on portraiture that I found very helpful to peruse.

And on Thursday, perhaps I would have told you about the haircut that Aunt Annette gave me, or the photoshoot of me that she orchestrated in order to practice lighting and camera operation. (She is thinking about getting into professional photography… professional pet photography, to be exact, but I am choosing not to draw any unsettling conclusions about her choice of model on this particular day. )

But though I would have mentioned all of those things, you all probably would have seen right through them if I had not admitted what was really on my mind: my grandma.

In a lot of ways, this trip down to see her was not as difficult as I imagined it would be in my exhausted pessimism the night before we left. Imagination is often worse than fact in these situations. But, it was still plenty hard.

I think this anecdote sums up the experience pretty well:

One evening, we were stopping by a pizza place to get dinner. Mom and Uncle Tom had walked inside to get the pizza, and grandma and I sat outside in my family’s station wagon with the windows rolled down. For the first few minutes we sat there in the slightly awkward silence that has come to characterize my time with Grandma in the last few years. Whether because she is lost in her own thoughts or because she is too disengaged from her surroundings to make meaningful conversation, I don’t know. But I made a few attempts nonetheless.

“It sure is hot out.”

“I wonder how much longer they are going to be with the pizza!”

She would chuckle a bit at these pronouncements, but then she started to become more engaged in our conversation.

“I like your shoes!” she announced at one point, looking at my tennis shoes.

“I bought these shoes for work, because I have to wear close-toed shoes there, even in the summer time!” We both chuckled. She started asking me questions about work, and I explained my job. Then we talked about some of the people going by the window and a few of the shops we could see.

Among the many things about my grandmother’s body that are shutting down, her memory is failing. I knew this. I have known this for quite some time. But I could not stop myself, knowing that this might be one of the last times I would ever talk with her, from bringing up things that used to be meaningful to both of us—phrases that she used to use, and stories that she used to tell.

After a remark about food, I said, “You know, Grandma, you always used to say that you were not a picky eater; you always said you would eat anything except snails and frogs’ legs!” I had heard this phrase at least once a visit from her my entire life. “And it’s still true!” she said through her almost-toothless grin. It hurt, because now she can only eat liquids and she rejects most things set in front of her. But I was still glad I said it.

“Grandma,” I said, “do you remember Brian (my brother) when he was a little boy? Do you remember him splashing through the mud puddles?” She had told me the story of Brian in his slicker and boots splashing through the mud puddles so many times that I knew it by heart. Now, her eyes became distant as she fought to bring this memory back to the surface. “Yes,” she said, finally. It hurt, because I did not know if she was telling the truth, and this had always been one of her dearest memories. But I was still glad I said it.

“Grandma,” I tried next, “do you remember when you and I would go shopping together? Don’t you remember, we called our outings “adventures”?” Before my grandmother’s health declined so much, she would take me on a trip to the mall every time she visited. It was a highlight of her trip. This time she was really struggling to remember. “Okay, if you say so,” she said. And it really hurt, because I knew she did not remember, and those times together had been precious. But I was still glad I said it.

“Grandma,” I said, “you have been a fantastic grandma. I’m so glad you are mine.” She turned and looked at me. For a moment, her eyes were not distant or staring. They were fixed on mine with a clarity I had not seen in them for quite some time. I saw in them a spark of the stubborn, spirited personality that has carried her through life and made her the person that she is. “Thank you, Sweetie!” she said, sounding genuinely surprised and grateful. And that moment hurt and was sweet with all the bittersweetness I could bear. But I was very glad I said it.

I may not have typed out all the stories and emails that I meant to while I was in California. But, in real life, I think I said exactly what I needed to say.

One year ago today I rode crammed in the back seat of a retired airline shuttle appropriated by Elijah’s church to be used as youth group transportation. Along with me rode twenty-some fidgety teens and preteens and several harrassed adult supervisors. None of us had gotten very much sleep for the last few nights. (We started our journey at 3:30 am, June 17th, 2005—and Elijah and I, in particular, had stayed up the entire night beforehand watching Star Trek episodes.) So as we jostled down the freeway towards Nogales, Mexico, we spent a great deal of time fighting over gameboys and seats and taking things too personally. Two and a half days is a long time to be cooped up in a bus.

I used to brag about the fact that I had never been off the west coast of the U.S. in my entire life. (And by “brag about” I actually mean “justify by making into a joke.”) I live in Oregon, and I had visited California and Washington a few times, but before last summer those were the extent of my travels.

When the opportunity to join Elijah’s youth group on their mission trip to Mexico last summer presented itself, I knew the trip would include a lot of “firsts”: first trip without my parents, first time in a foreign country, first visit to Arizona, first stay in a place where the possibility of seeing a live tarantula in the wild was frighteningly likely (this almost stopped me from going). But the trip proved to be far more than the sum of the various new adventures it provided. It became an experience that taught me lessons I didn’t even know I needed to learn, and it opened my eyes to a whole other world out there.

After the afore-mentioned bus ride, we arrived in Nogales. We slept and ate at a seminary in the city; we also helped with the construction of a new building they would be using for more classes. On my favorite day of the trip, we visited (for the second day in a row) a church started by one of the alumni of the seminary. This tiny church sat perched at the top of a steep hill. The road that we traversed to get there was lined all the way up one side with “houses” made out of cardboard and car doors or, if they were particularly nice, wooden planks. The other side of the road was a sheer dropoff. On one of our visits to this church, the old schoolbus we were traveling in (not our youth group bus) was having such difficulty getting up the hill that we had to get out and walk the rest of the way on foot. A lot of Mexican children peeked their faces out of doorways to watch us and smile at us. I’m sure we looked very out of place to them.

I’ll let my words from that day speak for themselves. I wrote the following paragraphs in an email to my parents on June 22 of last year:

So after lunch, we all crowded into the same dirty old school bus that carried us to the church we visited yesterday. I don’t remember if I told you, but we invited area children to play soccer at 2:30. We got there, and kids started arriving. Little boys and girls approached cautiously from all directions… eager and yet obviously a little nervous. Virginia quickly won them with her vibrant personality, however. As we were standing around talking, we heard some muffled thunder in the distance, but didn’t think much of it. Then we all walked to the soccer field. (I use ‘field’ in the broadest sense possible… it was a high up, wide open space covered in… red dirt and rocks. It did fine, though.)

(We soon dicovered that only the boys wanted to play soccer. The little girls who had come were either bringing their little brothers or just wanted to meet us. So Virginia, one of our translators, led some activities with the girls.)

Virginia had made out cards with our Spanish names on them to give to the kids… our first activity was for them to try to find their American ‘buddy’ by asking our names. (My Spanish name is ‘Juliana’, btw. It’s pronounced ‘Huliana’. They just can’t get their mouth around ‘Erin’. ) The little girl ‘assigned’ to me was very shy at first… I used the few phrases I knew.. What’s your name? My name is… How old are you? That was basically it. But I played with her by making faces and stuff, and she started to have fun. …

… That’s when we noticed the thunder and lightning were getting closer. A little girl sitting next to me kept saying ‘Agua!’ (water) over and over… we thought she was thirsty, but then we began to feel the raindrops too. Virginia and a few of the girls from our group decided to walk all the girls back to the church to continue our little lesson in there, out of the rain. Well, we got the key from the pastor of that church and walked back. We stood in the rain for five or six minutes while Virginia tried to unlock the door… but it was no use. She couldn’t get it. There was a little overhang over the door, but the church is at the top of a hill and the wind was blowing directly toward us. So while Virginia tried the door, I led the group around to the other side of the building, in the lee of the wind. We kept fairly dry there, but Virginia determined she had to go back and get the pastor for help.

So she left me in charge… of ten or fifteen children who couldn’t understand me, and two or three American junior high girls who were terrified of the lightning. I put my arm around the little girl who was ‘mine’ to keep her out of the rain, and tried to reassure Hannah that the metal poles around the church would get the lightning before we would. Virginia and the pastor were back soon… but that was a very interesting moment. Standing there, trying to stay out of the rain, in charge of people whose language I did not speak… yet, I felt very empowered.

Once we got in the church, we had a fun little lesson, teaching them a few English words and singing some little songs. We could hear the thunder growing. When it was time to leave, we walked out into POURING rain… and ran to the bus. Our trips in the bus yesterday were a little scary, because the bus is rickety and the streets are bumpy and the drivers are crazy. BUT today’s drive was INCREDIBLE…. As we got a little farther away from the church, we saw STREAMS of water flowing through the gutters… and then we turned onto the DIRT road on which the seminary is. It was amazing… the street was transformed. It was a RIVER of red mud… We all gaped out the window, taking pictures and exclaiming as the bus plowed uphill through it. Our driver told us that the road is sometimes closed because of all the water. The whole afternoon was a great adventure… what wonderful memories. =)

I should be honest: I was very reluctant at first to go on this mission trip. Although I am not shy about or ashamed of my faith, I seriously dislike the idea of shoving it into people’s faces and saying “Say uncle or you won’t be saved!” Christianity is not a one-time decision. It is a total recommitment of your life, and that kind of change can’t forced by any number of brightly-colored pamphlets in Spanish. (Just to be clear: I don’t think that the church group I went with believes this either. I just feared that they might before we left.)

I have this theory about youth mission trips. Perhaps it is terribly self-centered and near-sighted of me to say this, but I do not think the main value in youth mission trips (or at least the one I attended) lies in the work done through them. Of course, it was great that we could help out the Nogales seminary and make friends with those kids; goodness knows God can use any tool He wishes to bring people to Himself—even clueless, pamphlet-toting teenagers who don’t speak a word of Spanish. But although I have no way of knowing whether God chose to work in the lives of those children through us, I do know how He used that whole trip to work in my life—and, I suspect, in the lives of the other kids who experienced it.

The trip taught me responsibility by forcing me to deal with things outside of my comfort zone. It forced me to not be so lazy. It forced me to get along with people. It forced me to consider the fact that my needs are not the most important needs in the entire world. It even forced me to be brave, in a lot of ways—just as much when I was standing on the top of that hill during the lightning storm as when someone told me that tarantulas lived all over the area where we were staying. On that note: I never actually saw a tarantula, thank goodness. But I believe I reached the point where I would have been able to deal with it. That was a breakthrough moment for me—when I realized that I didn’t have to keep nervously searching the floor every time I walked into a room, because if I happened to find one of those creatures I would just DEAL with it. If you know me very well, you know how significant that is.

Of course, none of that means that I retained any of those valuable lessons… merely that I have now learned them at least once. I’m sure God will have to use other means to remind of them time and again.

Suffice to say, my trip to Mexico with Elijah’s youth group made a big impact on me. A year later, I can still remember the stuffiness of that bus and the dusty heat of Nogales and the huge smiles on those kids’ faces when we sang songs with them. Last year on Father’s day, while I was busy trying to nap in the back of our noisy bus, Mom took our first Father’s Day picture that did not have me in it. (Well, actually, she took a picture of Brian and Dad holding a picture of me, but that hardly counts. )

This year, as you can see, I’m back in the picture. I’m very glad I was able to spend this Father’s Day here in Oregon with my family; but I wouldn’t trade the opportunity I had last year for anything. I hope I never forget it.

Tonight I had the opportunity to spend a good chunk of time working on a client’s upcoming site. It was really great to just spend the afternoon and evening designing and problem-solving; I haven’t had the chance to do that for a while. I’m really excited to show you this design when I’m finished with it, too.

As I opened up my web design folder to begin working tonight, I found myself hacking my way through woefully overgrown folders full of ancient psds and moldy html files and who knows what else. (Don’t worry Andrew, you won’t be charged for that time. ) After finally installing some sensible organization (A folder each for “Clients,” “Blog,” and “My old sites,” with clearly delineated sub-folders for individual sites), I poked around a bit in my old websites folder. Sadly, most of the designs hidden in this folder never even saw the light of day… well, not so sadly, in a few cases. But the fact is that a large portion of my portfolio never made it to the web, making me wonder if I should cite them as examples of my work.

Even if they were never actually published, however, I know for a fact that each and every one of those shoddy old designs for fanlistings and Star Wars sites contributed a little bit to my development as a designer. So I don’t really feel like I can let them go. They’re a part of my design legacy, if you will! (Even if a few of them did feature typewriter fonts and poorly rendered lightsabers.)

If for no other reason than to amuse myself, I plan to post a few of these designs here sometime in the near future. But that time is not now, because I need to go to bed and am too lazy to take screenshots of them. I will, however, leave you with a glimpse of one of my newest “old” designs. This one hails from a year and a half ago, back when I still had Lylium.com registered and was planning on using it as my portfolio site

Click on the image below to see the full screenshot. The text in the design is just a paragraph from some essay I wrote that I grabbed to use as filler. Also, my intention in highlighting “WEBSITES” in the nav bar was to demonstrate how all of the links would look when rolled over.

Sure, it’s not perfect. I would definitely tweak things, were I to work on it again now. But there are a lot of things I really like about this design: it’s simple, clean, and fun, and it delivers impact. I’m almost tempted to adapt it into a template for my blog. But then again… designing a whole new template sounds like more fun.

So there you go. Since my portfolio is apparently never going to be updated, there is a glimpse of some of my other design work. I hope to share more soon.

Just in case anyone thought I made up the whole thing about my brother getting married, here is indisputable photographic proof (Click on it to see the full picture on Flickr):

… unless, of course, I just had them dress up like that so I could take this picture and trick y’all. So I guess you’re just going to have to trust me. IT HAPPENED. I SAW THEM KISS. (Oh, and by the way, I obviously survived the road trip: both ways!)

This weekend, as you might imagine, was a whirlwind. It felt like an entity unto itself–like it was somehow surgically removed from the day before it and the day after; because I forgot what schoolwork is due this week and what I was doing last week or anything like that. Time stopped for Brian and Melanie’s wedding.

It didn’t really hit me until I was standing up there on the stage watching our pastor perform the ceremony: My brother was actually getting married. Melanie was going to be his wife now. After so many years of being friends, and of being more than friends, now they would be husband and wife. And that was my brother. The one who held me like a sack of potatoes when I was a baby. The one who went through a phase of liking no colors other than blue and black. The one who once kept a dust collection. The one who makes me laugh all the time and shows me that he cares about me in a hundred different ways. There he was accepting the hand of a woman who had already become a part of our family in so many ways, and who would be his loyal partner for the rest of their lives. I was so happy I could have burst.

After the reception, and the chatting, and the taking of pictures, and the defacing of Brian’s car, and the bubbles, and Brian and Melanie driving off on their honeymoon, we all made our way home with silly, sappy grins still on our faces. Natalie rode the two hours home with me, and she made the trip delightful. We talked about life, the universe, and everything the whole way. As we drove into Eugene and headed to DQ for some dinner, the sun was just beginning to set, and the whole city was glowing. It was a perfect way to end that long, exciting, beautiful day. My brother was married. The guests were gone. The cake was eaten. I was home. It was time to collapse on the couch and fall asleep watching Food Network.

Congratulations, Brian and Melanie Julian. Your wedding was perfect. I love you both a whole bunch, and I am just thrilled that you’re together. Now please make me some nieces and/or nephews. I want to be an aunt.

In case you somehow haven’t heard about it (which means you definitely have not run in to any of my family recently, because then you would have seen the flashing neon signs above their heads saying “We’re having a WEDDING soon!”), my brother is getting married on Saturday. Brian is eight years older than me, my only sibling, and the best big brother a girl could ask for. I am just so thrilled that he has found such a wonderful woman with whom to share his life. This is an exciting weekend for all of us… but I’m sure especially for him.

It’s funny how the happiest events bring out the craziest behavior in the most involved parties, however. We have all, especially today, been running around like chickens who are desperately seeking to reunite themselves with their heads. Each of us has our loveable idiosyncracies that forcefully manifest themselves at times like these–Brian, for instance, manifested his jitters today by cleaning his car, inside and out, until it glistened with that special “ready to be destroyed by TP-ers” kind of shine. (Just for reference, I believe this is the first time Brian has washed his car since he got it. Four years ago.)

I haven’t seen much of Melanie today, but I heard she was having to deciding which errands were really important and which ones could slide under the pressure. (I’m sure she’s pretty stressed out. But then again, Melanie is usually very good at keeping her cool. So who knows. ) Mom has been in a similar situation: chugging through task after task in preparation for the church setup and rehearsal dinner tomorrow, and having to re-evaluate what tasks really needed to be done.

Me? Well, I just seem to have developed a death wish. Because that is really the only way to explain why I agreed to drive the two hours up to the church with Sarah, another of Melanie’s bridesmaids, tomorrow morning. Not only will this be my first substantial “road trip” driving by myself in my own car (don’t tell that to Sarah before we leave tomorrow), but I have to leave my house at… SIX FORTY-FIVE AM. This may not seem early to you; I am aware that many sane people are alert and functioning at that hour in the morning. I just happen to not be one of them. But I’m usually capable, with colossal effort, of pulling myself together for morning activities when it is absolutely necessary. So hopefully you won’t see a post from my parents in a couple of days saying, “Well, we’re so sorry folks, but this blog is CLOSED because Erin died this weekend. She just crashed right into that oncoming car–must have been too early in the morning for her. (You know how she is about early morning things.) You’ll be glad to know that we stifled our tears and Brian had a lovely wedding, however.”

But then again, maybe it wouldn’t go down that way. The point is, everything is a bit crazy over here at Chateau Julian. Tomorrow I will be helping set up the church and taking pictures and thinking about hair and makeup stuff and talking to people I haven’t seen in a million years and trying to stay perky and worrying about falling on my face while I walk down the aisle in my way-too-high heels. It should be an interesting (and exciting, and special) couple of days. I’ll see you afterwards.

Even back then, I was taking myself way too seriously. My uncle had given me the pictured “stick camel” for Christmas that year. That was all fine and dandy, except that my friend Noah had a stick horse. In a demonstration of my characteristic stubborness, I refused to believe that it was a camel. If anyone asked, it was my HORSE, goshdarnit. Can’t you tell it’s a HORSE, people? Only CRAZY PEOPLE would call this a camel.

… And so began the long road to my parents’ gray hairs.