adulthood

Darling, I've missed you.

My sister-in-law has two beautiful children whom she so invites me into their lives through her blog, and the more I enjoy hers, the more guilt I feel about neglecting mine. So I'll add a few posts from the past year and try really hard at keeping up with it.

Last fall I got an email from Southwest and had some inspiration about taking a trip by myself, and took the cheapest flights to Norfolk, VA. Booked a hotel in Virginia beach, and tagged it #adultvacay. Approaching the weekend, I was excited about getting away, and to a place I'd never been before, and a little apprehensive about not having any company with me. A lot of people questioned going to a "northern" beach in October, but that only means I got to walk along the beach barefoot in a SCARF! (don't miss the arm reflection in that selfie!)

This scarf belongs to my roommate Lindsey (see: adorable blonde in second post) and was her first Clemson orange gear after being raised a gamecock fan, and getting her acceptance letter to the only University in South Carolina that matters. Beaches in the fall are hopefully sunny, and terribly windy, so this chunk of a scarf was perfect for my weekend on the coast. I think I took it off once to eat shrimp & grits, only to save it from the possibility of taking some unwanted grits home with me.

The weekend in VA Beach was perfect - I ate well (s&g / coastal sushi / duck foie gras/ Whole Foods lunch x3), drank well (martini dry, clean, with 2 olives / manhattans on manhattans / bottle of wine, hold the glass), stumbled across the show of a Nashville friend, ate dinner with a former Nashville friend, climbed a lighthouse, drove through a underwater bridge...check out the instagram, and read 2 books, cover to cover. I also rented a Tahoe, which is the way to my heart. But I was really lonely. I've always thought of myself as an outgoing introvert - that I get my kicks from being alone, but love to entertain people, as long as I got my kicks. Three days of real aloneness showed me that I'm probably wrong about myself. I think I'm still going to use the phrase outgoing introvert, because it sounds right, but I need people. And after I got back, I realized that people need me.