Thanks Giving

My uncle Bob, Myself, My aunt Karen

Goofing off with my brother Sam

Clay, Blush, Sam, Carissa, Cailey, and Danica.

Also Known As: The Cousins

Me and Clay. Goofing off runs in the family, apparently.

The chicks in my family are beautiful.

Oh and there's Sam in back to support us!

Down The Rabbit Hole (Just Ask Alice)

Hey kids! I've been bored. On Halloween at work we dressed up as Alice In Wonderland because kids trick-or-treat in our small town mall on Halloween. So I worked baking cookies and giving them to kids as Alice, pictured right. (Blush as Alice, Meredith as the White Rabbit, Jenae as the Queen of Hearts, and Alex as The Mad Hatter. The results were fairly trippy. Me as a Blonde!) As I was making my costume I thought, I am getting too old for this...but the end result was enough to tip the scales into the fun-after-all column. The Boss is sending our photo into the Corporate office in Atlanta.
Austin is away. He is in rehab at this hardcore place in Central Texas. I rarely get to talk to him, though I did see him recently for a short visit. I spent the night with his mother and rode up there with her and then back to College Station to meet my own mother and get back home. He is 5 hours away from here, his mom lives about halfway in a small town called La Grange, Texas. So you see the difficulty for me in getting to and fro without a car. It was so worth it when I looked into his eyes and in an instant remembered why I wear this man's ring. He held my hand and apologized. I am proud of him regardless. I've done the same stupid things for the same stupid reasons. The warmth of his hands was the warmth of my best friend's hands and I knew I loved him. Regardless.
I was very nervous to spend so much time alone with my future mother-in-law, but she just loves me for some reason and I love her back. We got pedicures and ate out and had a wonderful time. She even likes Bright Eyes so we jammed in the car. She is an awesome lady. Given all circumstance, he looked good when we saw him; I think his short stint in county jail, this place, and his recent conversion to Christianity will straighten him up, and I am really much more nervous about my own fate.
After I finish my Relapse Prevention Plan, I will be discharged from my own outpatient rehab program. It's been a rocky road for me here in ye olde hometown, and living at home like I did as a teenager can be a bit overwhelming. I find myself in a constant identity crisis. This is a ghost town of sorts. Last weekend at the mall I saw an old friend from high school, a close one even, that I hadn't seen in ages. I missed her wedding. She has twins now. It's all so surreal. I feel the need to get out of here but I don't have the means yet. I've finally found a good way to get my bipolar medication for free from the manufacturer because I can't afford insurance on the cookie girl's salary.
Insurance. Speaking of, I've made a friend, Misty, through outpatient whose family owns an Insurance Agency here in town. Her brother is the manager. She's been working for them since she's come home and told me that she's about to get her own license and she wants me to be her assistant! This job would be a dream come true. Fuck minimum wage man. As much as I like making cookies and decorating cakes, fuck minimum wage. Plus, the Insurance Store seems like the premier place to work for people desperate for insurance, like myself. So I'm preparing my resume, in hopes that after the beginning of the year, I'll have a career change. And I adore this girl--she is just so awesome, and in recovery, and I think we'd be great friends. And she wants to give me a job where I'll never have to dress up for Halloween at work again. I may have fallen down the rabbit hole this year, but I'm thinking, just maybe, there's a light at the end of that dark tunnel. And it's looking like it might just be a bright one.