summer vacation on a sailboat.

Today feels like October in Annapolis. The rain last night pressed the humidity into the ground and this morning it was windy and cool, the sun shimmying through the leaves of the great oak tree in the back yard that leans over lazily on the roof of the back house. It even smells like Annapolis, the wind smells like water. I am curious where this day came from, where it's headed.

After a week of sailing around the British Virgin Islands on a 47-foot catamaran last week, it's taken my brain several days to congeal to a point of operation and effectiveness again. The week nearly feels like a dream - the dream trip. 6 days. 1 boat. 7 passengers. 1 British Captain, Andy. 87 degrees. 2 storms. 5 pina coladas. 30 SPF. 2 novels. 10 o'clock bed time. 6 o'clock wake-up with the sun. 500 combustions of laughter and 2 perfect parents who took us on the trip. I could write a lot about it, but I'll just let you see...

may 2, 2010.

Our anniversary was yesterday, May 2. One year ago I walked down the long pathway through the courtyard of the Mill in Greensboro, around the fountain, and up the stone steps to the trellis where Mark was waiting, smiling that tilted smile, and we said we would. And yesterday we could not believe a year had passed. It's felt like the best month of my life, not year. The fact that twelve months have passed is startling. Being married is the most fun thing I've ever been half of.

The bakery that made our wedding cupcakes, Maxie B's, made us a fresh 4-inch mini-cake pillar for our anniversary. We opted for pumpkin chocolate chip cake with cream cheese icing, which will actually change your life if you take a chance, one of the flavors of our cupcakes last year. On Saturday night Mark and I swung by the bakery in Greensboro to pick it up before spending an evening with Hannah and Josh, then heading home to Winston.

Our cake...

On the way home, as we were reading the fifth Harry Potter, I opened the gorgeous cake box to sneak a sniff of the masterpiece and my jaw hit the seatbelt. The cake had fallen over, to the left side, and was smooshed and broken against the edge of the cardboard box. The perfect cake had succumbed to the damp heat of the premature summer night and tumbled. So did my resolve. A deep frown accompanied my "OH NO" and Mark, driving, looked over and said, "Baby! What's wrong?" I had tears in my eyes.

Flashback: It's June 2, 1992. My sixth birthday. A low-budget birthday party at the park is made magical by my mother who has fashioned the most incredible, impeccable, beautiful, white, yellow and pink princess castle cake. Guys, this cake was a work of art belonging in a museum. She spent hours the day before building this cake half a foot tall with four spires made of upside-down ice cream cones, a drawbridge made of licorice and windows outlined by gumdrops. It was a real castle, my 6th year birthday cake, and I could not have been any more enraptured.

Let me reiterate that it's June. It's almost 100 degrees. The red minivan most certainly doesn't have AC. Mom says, "Ginny, wait here in the car with the cake. I'm going to go get the decorations and we'll go to the park." I'm put on guard with one responsibility: GUARD THE CAKE.

I can't quite remember the turn of events, how it all went down. But it did. Literally. Suddenly the cake was sideways on the backseat of the van. Broken spires, turned over bridge, castle walls that look like they'd been sieged. The cake fell and I.fell.apart. Can you imagine? The great crowing joy of my birthday crushed. I was hysterical.

My mom returned to the van, heard the tears, saw her eight hours of work splayed out across the plush red bench seat. She gasped, doubtless devastated at the crumbling of her masterpiece. But then she saw me and remembered how much more devastating this all was for six-year-old me, believing this to be my own palace, and in this moment she achieved her mom crown.

"Ginny, it's okay. It is better this way. Do you remember in the Narnia books when Lucy and her brothers and sister go back to Narnia and it's many many years after their first visit and they find the castle at Cair Paravel, but it is the ruins. It is long after the castle has been seiged and crumbled. But it is magical, still the castle. This castle, Gin, is the ruins."

And somehow, she convinced me.

So on Saturday, when our anniversary cake crumbled, all I could see was the Ruins from my 6th birthday. When we got home I put the cake back together, haphazardly, and smoothed the frosting over the sides. Felt like I was six. The next night, Sunday, our anniversary, I set the cake out on our breakfast table and lit candles around it. The cake was perfect, delicious, pristine.

See it? Sort of tilted and beautiful?

the rest of the story.

Mark is Boris Pleshenko, the Siberian FigureBlader. Blake, High Top, and I, Low Top, are gearing up for the World's Greatest Three-on-Three Basketball Championship. Discovering that Boris is actually Slipper, our third man who ran away to Siberia when he missed the game-winning shot in the Show Down at Cape Town in 2004. That's the rest of the story.

mark as 'johnny riptide' at windy gap.

That's right, we did program. Along with Blake Hill, the mastermind, also pictured. I don't have my costumes on... be thankful.

reconnecting.

This week I'm down in Fort Myers hanging out with my parents and brother for a week of reading books, laying by the pool in the intermittent clouds and sunshine, drinking Mirassou Pinot Noir, celebrating my dad's birthday and helping my mom weed the garden. It's deleriously relaxing and my body is reverting to my 8th grade self that wants to sleep all the time. Usually when I'm down in Florida I want to crawl into my hermit crab shell and not talk to anyone outside of the Ficker 5. However, this evening I have had the delightful pleasure of talking to a few great friends... including, but not limited to

Amanda Fair, previously Miller, who was married in early February of this year. I will always call her "Miller," though it kind of no longer applies, but also will always apply. Brickies, you know. Anyway, a great forty-five minutes of a few hearty laughs, catching up, and making dreamy plans for the future. A sweet conversation to fill me up for weeks to come with the presence of great memories and warmth from the days we lived together in the Brick House on High Street. What is it about a good friend and her voice that changes a moment from regular to sparkling?

Sam Boro, an old friend from high school, who is teaching Social Studies to inner city kids in Baltimore. Though his job is literally sapping the life out of him, he sounds like his old self. High school seems so far away from me, though it isn't. But when he said, "Hello?" this afternoon, I just laughed! Remembering his voice in countless wonderful moments from when I was fifteen to eighteen.

Kevin, in an e-mail. Told me he was writing, sipping coffee, which reminded me of the days he worked as a baristo (?) in this little coffee shop on Benfield Road in Severna Park. Told me about living in Boston with his beautiful Susan and thinking of moving to the UK.

Sam and Kevin pictured below...

And then Kaili, sweet sweet bestie, who makes me know I'm home every time I read or hear a word out of her mouth or mind. She made me get on video chat in Gmail, something I've steered clear of for fear of not knowing how to use it, until now. And we sat, she in her cubicle three hours behind me, and I on my mom's sofa under the oil painting of the egret. She showed me the nick nacks on her desk because, "I feel like I should show you things in my life." Including a doll with a unibrow, flowers made of paper and a pair of scissors with a plastic blue handle. She's coming to visit in June, with Ben, and we made plans for Mark and Ben to be friends. Fingers crossed.

It's 6:30 now and I'm listening to Explosions in the Sky off and on with some Patty Griffin and the breeze is coming in through the great sliding doors that wrap around the back of the house like invisible fences, listening to the palm trees bend back and forth feeling like today I am happy.

annie dillard and 'the writing life.'

Writing is a funny thing, like an addiction the way it haunts you until you have your fix. Sometimes when an idea flies into my brain I can't stop thinking on and around and through it until I quit the thing I am doing, sit down, and write it out. Sometimes it has to be typed. Sometimes I have to turn several pages back in my writing notebook to be sure the page is completely white and free of text, and write it there. I have to use a Pentel R.S.V.P. fine point black ink pen...I will run around the house scouring for one until I find it. And it's a race, you know, to get the thought down on paper or Dora (the name of my Macbook) before it flies right on out my ear. I literally forsee the winged thought on its way out. All the while the muse, strangely a diminutive Scottish man with reddish sideburns, sits up on the edge of the laptop, kicking his little shoed feet and smiling. Sometimes his smile is reassuring and comforting. Other times he mocks me. In my head, in my world unspoken imagination, this all seems quite normal. But when I think about it, really, it seems lunatic.


Annie Dillard wrote this brilliant book called "The Writing Life" wherein she discusses this state of being--the mental and actual lifestyle of the writer and the way writers think and operate. She talked about how she would lock herself away in a cold cabin overlooking the ocean to write, how she would subsist on Coca Cola and chocolate and how when she wrote in a small room in the library she would close the blinds so she wouldn't be tempted to distractions of the outside world. She says, among so many other things, "the fanaticism of my twenties shocks me now. As I feared it would."


I have a friend who always asks me how my writing is going and I appreciate her for this because she forces me to believe and own the fact that I write. I am a writer. We were discussing Annie Dillard's philosophies and how I could never do what she does--commit myself to isolation for the sake of writing. Because I view her from an apprentice standpoint this made me feel hopeless at first, as if I don't sell my soul to the muse I won't be opening myself up for true success and brilliance. Allison talked me down, assured me that people with very busy and integrated lives cannot become an island.


That being stated, if I could meet Annie Dillard I would thank her for writing her book because of the great comfort, wisdom and humor ("why people want to become writers I will never know"...AMEN SISTER. Pure torture 85% of the time but the 15% of near heavenliness...maybe that's why). I would tell her that every time I read a paragraph in her book it gave me fuel to gun across another two-hundred miles of story.


Toward the end of the book she tells of how Michelangelo, at his death, left a note to his apprentice that simply said, "Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw Antonio and do not waste time." And this has made all the difference to me... Write, Ginny, write, Ginny, write and do not waste time.

passports.

I thought I'd changed my name to "Evans" on everything of consequence and had peacefully put the thought out of my mind. However, due to the fact that the Fickers/Adams/Evans clan will be sailing out of United States waters in May in honor of Kyle's graduation, I realized that my passport still says "Virginia Leigh Ficker."

Tuesday after work at 1:00 I drove straight to CVS for new passport photos ($6.99), then on home to find my marriage certificate. Tore the flipping house apart, couldn't find it. Literally sweating, with papers out of every file in the filing cabinet, I sat down with my head in my hands and asked for grace to find the piece of paper. Had the sudden idea to look in the glove box of my car...where I found the certificate. Eureka! It's 2:45.

Drove to my office to fill out the Passport Renewal form after realizing the one I had was not completely printed and I needed to photocopy the marriage certificate. Also needed to print draft two of my novel. Nilla, bless her, the administrative person told me that a photocopy would not do, that I would need to drive to the courthouse for a certified copy of the thing. Ten bucks. So what can I do but go?

Drive downtown, park on the street a block from the courthouse only to realize...I don't have a quarter to feed the meter. Ughh.... oh wait! There are 35 minutes left on the meter. I get out of the car and speed-walk (Olympic style) to the courthouse. Get up to the right office, walk in, get everything in order and then... "Cash only," says the nice lady behind the counter.

"What?"

"We only take cash."

I even brought my checkbook dang it.

"Where is the nearest ATM?"

"Three blocks down Second Street."

Off to the races again...run/walking to the ATM to make it back to the courthouse and to the car in what is now 22 minutes.

Pay the $3 fee at the Wachovia ATM and run back to the courthouse. Get the certificate. Get a second one for good measure. So far we're up to $29.99. Take it all, look at the clock: 3:47 p.m. What time does the post office close? 5:00? Okay. To the post office.

Standing in line at the post office where the clerk always flirts with me in this kind of cute way, saddened by my rings, he is waiting on a woman who, suddenly, falls to the floor and has a full blown seizure. True story. Who calls 9-1-1? Me. I do. Captain Ginny Bug. Deal with the woman having the seizure, mail my passport to Philadelphia ($3.74) along with a $75.00 check made out to the Department of State. $108.73 simply to change my name from "Ficker" to "Evans" on my stupid passport.

This.is.the.story.of.my.life.

a little tour...

Welcome to our house! This is the writing room, graciously named so by my husband who believes I really am a writer...

And the living room...

And the last remaining piece of the first Claire-a-Bell's Chocolate Chip Cake ever baked at 2337 Walker Ave. Things will never be the same...

And the bathroom. Look at that...shower curtain!

usually i hate rain.

I do. Not even the writer in me can make lemonade out of rain. Every time the sky is cast gray and the air is unusually damp and the whole day passes without ever showing the light of the sun, I am depressed. I believe this is called "Seasonal Affective Disorder" but I call it Rain Makes Me Blue disease. It is so real, in fact, that on gray days Mark calls home a few times just to make sure I haven't jumped. My mom will see that the forecast in North Carolina is dim and call to make sure I'm okay. Usually I'm not.

So today when I woke up to a dismal sky above, I had that feeling in the pit of my stomach assuaged only by the sheer fact of waking up in our new house (which I would rather frolic about inside of and never leave). The high of living in this house carried me through the day, along with a good long walk. By four-thirty I was surprised I didn't feel the rain angst.

Here's the amazing thing: When it started to rain at 4:45, I was strangely... delighted! It's warm in here, and all the little table and floor lamps are turned on against the windows and the crisp, pretty walls. It's warm and cozy in here and even in spite of the chaos of boxes, it is very charming and the bricks have me fortified from the weather. Mmmmm, I love my house.

just in case you weren't tired of hearing about the...

NEW HOUSE!  We've moved in, water is turned on, power is on, bugs/rats/ants have been baited and poisoned, washing machine and dishwasher christened and all is well on Walker Avenue.  Not that there haven't been bumps, like the water main bursting down the street yesterday and the fact that the power at the apartment was turned off before I had emptied the fridge and freezer. Yikes.

The actual epic transfer of oversized furniture from one itty-bitty upstairs apartment to our bungalow took place Sunday after church.  Returning around lunchtime after teaching Sunday school to a husband who had cleared out almost everything small from the apartment, we exchanged a quick kiss, then parted ways to pick up pizza and beer, make a few Home Depot runs, dump trash and pick up laundry.  Our hired help (unpaid, that is) was to arrive at 2:00.  At 1:45, as Mark was running out the back door and I out the front, he said, "Hey, hang on a second. I have a house warming gift for you."  My first thought was that if he has bought me a puppy I'm not going to be happy camper.  He went out to his car and came back in with a hilariously wrapped box too small for a puppy.  

It was a Nikon D-40 Digital camera which I have been saving for for several months and still had quite a distance to go before purchase could be made.  "You had to have it to capture this day," he said.  I cried. It's in these small moments between us that I remember we're just these two little people and I'm so so grateful for him. Love him.