Off to New York

My daughter and I are off to New York tomorrow for ten days. We are going to visit with my mom, go into New York City for the day and go to the beach to see several aunts, uncles and cousins for a long weekend. I also have plans to see three or four of my BFFs from high school and college. My husband may fly up to meet us at the beach but those plans are still up in the air at this point. Busy, busy, busy!!
I am both looking forward to and dreading this trip all at the same time. I know I am trying to cram a whole lot into ten days and some of it is going to be stressful. There has been a bit of drama between one of my uncles and myself over the past six months and I am dreading seeing him at the beach. I hate a confrontation and am going to do everything in my power to avoid one but I know at best it is going to be very uncomfortable around him. So that part of the trip stinks and I think the anxiety I am feeling about that is kind of overshadowing any excitement I may have. I also feel bad because my beach portion of the trip has been cut short for many reasons (spending as little time with said uncle being only one of them) and some of my extended family members have made it known that they are upset about this fact. I have encouraged them to just enjoy us while we're there but I'm not so sure they are going to be able to let it go. Ahhh families - probably one of the reasons we moved as far south as we could.
I am looking forward to the portion of my trip that I will spend visiting with my mom and old friends. We are taking my daughter into NYC and making stops at American Girl, Dylan's Candy Bar and maybe Central Park Zoo. We are going to definately stop by the plaza again as my daughter is hoping to get a glimpse of Eloise. We were there in October and the doorman was so sweet - he went on and on about Eloise and told my daughter that we had just missed her. He answered all of her questions and made her feel as special as can be. While at American Girl my daughter will be forking over her long saved money for Rebecca Rubin, the new historical doll. I am so proud of her for working for this doll all summer and saving her allowance and birthday money(and any other money she was able to squeeze out of unsuspecting friends and relatives). We counted her money today and she has just enough. Until now, my mother has been suppying her with all of her dolls (six so far) and I thought this would be a good opportunity to work towards something that she wanted. I don't think we are going to have lunch there. We did it in October and it was cute but I think there are other places we may enjoy just as well. I'm really just curious about Dylan's and thought my daughter would get a kick out of it so we will stop there. We are going to catch up with a friend of mine quickly and then we may try to go to the zoo. That will probably be it for us and then we'll take the train home. I would like to take her to see a show but I think that's too ambitious - especially since whenever we go to the city my mother likes to be back home by dark. Don't ask me. I don't fight it because it has only been in the last six years I've gotten her to even agree to go into the city.
We are also going to be in NY on my mother's birthday so that will be fun. I'm going to make all the desserts for her celebration so that will probably take up a day. We are going to go pick plums which I think will be fun. We tried to pick apples in the fall but had a whole entourage of family members with us who were very over apple picking. They all live in NY and the novelty has worn off I guess. We've got dinners planned with friends and I intend to eat all of my favorite foods while I am there. All of the yummy things I can not get here in the south will be consumed I'm sure! Many other little activities planned too. Actually writing this is taking away much of the anxiety and now I am anticipating a good trip. Better get some sleep and print my boarding pass!

So when did we get a social life???

This is what my husband wanted to know a few minutes ago. So when DID we get a social life. I don't know. I guess we've had a social life on and off for years now but we have moved so frequently that sometimes we forget. In the past we've moved just when we've assembled a nice litle group of friends that we all enjoy. You know the kind I mean - the friends where everyone involved actually enjoys one another - you like the wife, your husband likes the husband, your kids play nice together - not the kind where you like the wife but really the others not so much and your husband reluctantly goes to a cookout at their house but you have to hear about it the whole drive over. Sometimes it takes a while to assemble a nice little group of friends. For us it seems to take about two years or so and up until now at about the two/three year point, we seem to be moving on to another city thanks to my husband's job, thus leaving behind our nicely assembled group of new friends. The good part is that we have friends that we keep in touch with from all of our old homes but the bad part is that we find ourselves without much of a social life for long stretches of time. In some ways that can be nice and we do try to make the best of it because my husband and I actually enjoy each others company (how strange is that!) and we really like our daughter (amazing) - so we do things together on the weekend like swim or play tennis or sit on the couch watching HGTV (sad but actually true) and we just relax together. At times we have even been smug about it as my brother and his wife are racing around to no less than 3 birthday parties each and every weekend followed by dinner at her parents house and some function or another with church friends. Or as my husbands sister and her husband shuttle between her parents and his and all of their required social functions - not really staying at any one long enough to enjoy any of it. We have sat back and chuckled to ourselves that we are so happy to be able to do what we enjoy with our time and not have so many social obligations. But, the truth is that I grew up in a very social family - lots of last minute cookouts; my mother's friends stopping over for coffee, neighbors coming over in the evening to sit in lawn chairs on our front lawn and watch all of the kids play, etc and I tend to miss that type of thing. So, I am never truly content until we have a full social calendar and it seems that we are once again filling up our weekends and our evenings with good friends and people we enjoy. Let's just hope that doesn't mean that we are approaching another move. I guess the one good thing about this economy is that since selling our house at this point is unlikely, we are going to be staying put for awhile. Good thing we have a social life to take our mind off of it!

It's a new day...

Today is a new day. It is not raining and there is blue in the sky. My heart feels a little less heavy as does my daughter's. I'm still feeling sad and I gave a good bit of thought to leaving the blinds drawn on that side of the house. But, I decided that we need to move on. Onward and upward. We have to let go of the past to move forward. I was going to have her write a note to her friend so there would be something waiting in the mailbox when she arrived at the new house but I decided that it was not a good idea. I am not going to bring up the friend unless she does for the next couple of days to give her heart some time to heal and her head some time to process. If you knew me, you'd think I had clearly gone off my rocker! You see, I am a talker. I talk about everything and I have always been a firm believer that in order to really work through an issue or problem it must be talked about, disected, rehashed. I was a psychology major and a counselor. It's what I do!! I listen. Everyone of my friends has called over the years with a late night problem that they needed to talk about and they needed my ear to listen so they could work it out. Then I met my husband and after him along came my daughter and they are just not talkers. For years I have thought this a bad thing. I have thought that maybe my husband wasn't really in touch with his feelings or that he was ignoring things that he needed to deal with. After almost nine years of marriage and even more years of being together, I finally realized a few months ago that while I thought he wasn't dealing with things because he wasn't talking about them, he was dealing with them in another way. Gasp!! Could there possibly be another way besides my own tried and trusted method. I think there is. Yesterday when I brought up the friend my daughter said please don't talk about her, it doesn't make it better; it makes it worse. So, I am going to respect that. I am going to keep a close eye on her and I am going to try to find things to take her mind off of the friend. Yesterday afternoon we went to Build-A-Bear and made a new friend (stuffed but a friend none-the-less) and followed that up with dinner at The Cheesecake Factory and a stop at Target where we got some school supplies. I know this is aweful but somehow Target always makes it a little bit better. Today we have a playdate scheduled with an old friend. We haven't had her over in a while and sometimes they play nice and other times they need a lot of help working out their differences. Let's hope today goes well. My daughter is super excited to play with this friend and has a tea party planned for snack time. She requested scones "because you can't have a tea party without scones, Mommy!!" Love it. She may not like to discuss her feelings but there's no denying that she's my girl!

It's so hard to say goodbye...

I have issues with change. I can freely admit this and although it is something that I have learned to put up with because, well, I have no choice in the matter, I still loathe it for the most part. Today our neighbors moved to Texas and I am having a really hard time with it. As upset as I have been about it, you would think they were my best friends in the world. They weren't. We were friends, yes, but our lives were very different and until very recently, their lives have always been super busy. We got along great and spent time together trick or treating, doing neighborly things, etc but it's not like we were sitting at each other's kitchen tables every week having coffee (or wine). But, our daughters were friends - best friends. They started playing together three years ago when they moved in and other than the occasional tiff, have been playing together nearly every day since. They would play for hours upon hours almost always at our house (they have four kids to our one so that was completely understandable). They had their first sleepover together this year, the little girl went on part of our vacation with us, she went to family parities with us, to dinner, the store, she ate at our house some weeks for nights on end. At times it was like having another child and I must say by and large, I loved it. She seemed like if not another daughter to me, then a niece. I have watched the girls grow up together and today I watched them say goodbye and it just broke my heart. There will be no more running next door to see if the other can play while I watch out the window, followed by watching them skip down the sidewalk together holding hands. No more overhearing their sweet little conversations as they work out the daily trials of their lives. It is just so sad to me. My heart breaks for what my daughter is losing and there is no way for me to fix it. She may meet another best friend, I'm sure she will but I just don't know for certain that she will have with another person what she's had with this child. So, today was a very sad day - for my little girl, for our sweet little neighbor and for me!