Been gone so long...

Seems a long time since I've posted. Forgive me, neighbors, and please come back! I've been busy with graduations and travelling and pets with pet issues and, oh yeah, work! Swamped, I tell you, just swamped.

But I'm glad to be home and even though I'm still super busy and have lots to do even as we speak, I decided I needed to stop and update before I accidentally find myself completely out of the habit. So forgive the quality if it's lacking--I'm just going to spit it all out.

Last weekend was my sis' boyfriend's grad. I also consider him a friend of my own now. In addition, he's been a great help and definitely part of my support system over the last year; he's been a go-to petsitter and occasional help with larger than one person jobs around the house. So I was very glad to be included in the weekend festivities--and I took on the unofficial role of photographer, taking tons of pics of the sis, the boyfriend, and my sis' best friend from home who was also graduating. We went to my favorite local haunt, Trattoria Lisina at the Mandola Winery in Driftwood, for a late lunch with family and friends, and had a great time eating, drinking, and taking lots of photos.

Throughout all this was pet insanity--Frankie Fat Butt now has Feline Lower Urinary Tract Disorder and he needed a stay at the vet, followed by more meds, and then boarding when I went to Nashville for my sis' graduation. The vet costs killed my ability to rationalize buying a new bike, so I thought hopes for tri-training were lost. As luck and fate would have it my neighbors had an old bike still in decent condition that just needed new tires, tubes, and grips, and a tune-up. So, practically free, I will soon have a bike that's at least good enough to use for training.

I also had my first adult swim start lesson with the tri group's trainer. I can't remember if I've already talked about this...last month I showed up to the pool for the first day of a swim clinic expecting to be able to jump right in and get working on my technique. Instead I had a totally bizarre panic reaction and could not force myself to get in the water. So after talking with the trainer, and several other folks, I learned that (a) the freeze-up reaction is rather common and can happen anywhere to even the most experience swimmers and (b) the trainer could give me a 4 session swim-start to help get comfortable in the water again. I had a great, but difficult, first session. She concentrated on just helping me figure out what was going on--ultimately, concentrating on my breathing helped tremendously since the panic reaction was making me hold my breath indefinitely. [Over the weekend at the hotel in Nashville I hit the pool again and had a great experience! I feel I'm well on my way to being a strong swimmer again and am really look forward to my next session tomorrow.]

I flew to Nashville for my sis' grad from Vanderbilt and met up with the family for four long days of fun, laughter, shopping, and eating. And yes, they were long days. Three days would probably have been best, still we had a good time and I only occasionally thought about my husband...dammit, ex-husband...who was with us when my brother graduated from the same school two years ago. It was a great weekend...but that last thought did leave me a bit out of sorts at times. I think I weathered it pretty well though, and I'm not sure anyone noticed...I was a little crankier than I have been lately.

The graduation was on Friday and despite a cloudy start it turned out to be a beautiful day. I took more great photos and even made it into a few this time. On Saturday we went to the Vandy baseball game courtesy of one of Bri's friends who plays on the team. (Unfortunately, they lost.) And Sunday, we had Mother's Day lunch at J. Alexander's--a niceish chain--after checking out of the hotel and rushing around a bit so that my grandma could get to mass.

My folks and grandmother then left for the airport and my sis, her boyfriend, and I all went to the Frist to see the Monet to Dail exhibit and the exhibit on Tiffany lamps. Both were beautiful and the Frist is a very nice venue, though the gallery size is smaller than I expected it to be. Walking around, it was wonderful to be suddenly struck with a lightning bolt of recognition and the strangest bittersweet sense of familiarity when I saw certain paintings. I recognized many artists by style, and their works took me back to the long day we spent wandering the Peggy Guggenheim in Venice last year. [I love that I can say that now...I'm not name dropping, exactly, it's just that the experience was so much more special than I had imagined it. If you've read my old posts, you know how special the whole trip was to me, and why...]

Ultimately, I was glad to have been gone--glad that I left the house to the elements and the care of the pets to others, that I didn't quite obsess about their well-being and didn't panic on the plane when turbulence hit, that I was mostly able to brush off the occasional cruel words of family members who don't mean to be cruel, and that I made it through what was, in retrospect, a very lonely weekend surrounded by people. So strange, so strange...

Oh, and I almost forgot. For an extra dash of adventure, my sister's roommate's family's dog bit me when we went back to their apartment after the graduation. It was not a bad bite--it's totally tiny--and was more surprising than anything else, but I did have to get a tetanus shot today since it's been more than 10 years since my last.

And that's my update. Here are pics from the second grad just to balance out those from the first...only bigger, 'cause it was my sister after all.