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. 

new home owners!

I could be awarded “Worst Blogger of 2010” at this point, though I am trying to change my ways. Please bear with me as the past month has been a swirling whirlpool. Big news: This afternoon at 1:00 on the dot, Mark and I signed our names over thirty times to CLOSE ON OUR NEW HOUSE. That’s right, beginning March 1, 2010 Mark and Ginny Evans reside at 2337 Walker Avenue. That’s in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Can you believe it?? I can’t. So whereas I had become pretty adept at spinning too many plates (jobs, writing, Young Life, etc.) they just about came crashing down these past few weeks as we approached this most fateful day. And even now, as I sit in the airport in Raleigh, NC waiting to fly to Chicago (a whole other story), the relief is washing over me like a cool shower after a long summer run. It’s beautiful. For the first time in a week, it’s even sunny outside.

We closed with an attorney named Steve who looks like a skinny Santa Claus with a shorter beard and when he walked out to the waiting room where Mark, the owners, our realtor and theirs, were waiting, I thought he was someone there to fix the roof. He wore jeans and a camouflage fleece vest, has a giant gap between his two teeth and sort of stared at us with this bewildered look on his face. He used expressions including “wild ass guess” and “you can sign this, we’re just killin’ trees.” Made us laugh a lot and explained the ins and outs of the documents we signed. All told, we sat there for about fifty minutes and walked out of the office on Knollwood with a set of keys to our new bungalow!

Flying out of Raleigh (1 ½ hours away) at 5:30, we had to beat it out of there, but decided to detour to our NEW HOME, find a bottle of champagne at the front door, unlock the doors, cross the threshold for the first time (I was carried) and run through every room screaming. It was a moment to remember and now we’re home-owners. You are welcome to come visit! Yes, you!

As we have approached this day, furiously packing boxes and cleaning out the freezer, buying large expensive appliances and changing our address on important documents, there has been a small bit of sadness at leaving 519 Lockland Ave. And though there have been times I was so mad at the broken sink for the eleventh time, the flying June bugs, and the thin walls, neighbors pumping the bass I could have spit, we have loved that little apartment. So long as it isn’t ever condemned, I will treasure some day taking my kids to see the 700 square feet where Dad and I once lived for 11 months when we were first married… the yellow scaffolding and crumbling porch, the sloping driveway halved by stones and the great maple in the sideyard that turns firey orange in October.

That said, 2337 Walker, here come the Evans. Please make room for us and open your arms because the life that you are about to witness is going to be something else.

following up...

... we sign on our house, 2337 Walker Avenue, on February 26th and move on March 6th!

snow storms and buying houses and growing up and things.

Winston-Salem has been hit yet again by a substantial snow storm. It moved in on Friday and stayed until Saturday. Today, Monday, our little southern town is trying to figure out how to lower the plows and clear the roads. It seems they have the salting down, but not the plowing. It has been a surprisingly cold winter down here and these snow storms (the first just before Christmas) pretty much knock everyone on their backs for a few days. What is more, we're supposed to be blasted again on Thursday and Friday.

Last weekend I took the high school girls from church to Winterplace, WV to ski. Monday morning, Mark left for a four-day business trip in Lubbock, Texas. Lubbock, you ask? You've never heard of it. Me either. Mark described it as the setting of an old western film. Also the home of Texas Tech. And wouldn't you know it that Texas, for the first time in about ten years, had a massive ice and snow storm and Mark was snowed in there for an extra day. Fantastic. We finally got him home, though, when he flew into Charlotte during our massive ice and snow storm, thanks to Doc's 4 wheel drive truck.

Saturday we plowed forged through the snow to visit a house we've been scoping out for a few weeks with our realtor Chad, Mark's parents, and trusty old Kyle Welch. We love it and today... we'll make an offer! We also found out Kyle has been accepted to UNC Chapel Hill to complete the North Carolina trifecta (Adams, Evans and Kyle).

Seems we're growing up, all of us. I'm flipping through my memory and trying to figure out when it began and I can't quite find a starting point. But... so it is.

Happy snow!

latest top ten.

Here are my latest top ten things. If you know me well you might be familiar with a game I like to play called "Top Fives," where the players (aka the bored people in the room) list their top five of any given category: Movies, books, desserts, vacation spots, dishes, sweaters, shoes, etc.

Ergo, I present to you my current top TEN favorites. Of any genre.

10. Lord of the Rings. I realize it's pretty far behind the times because the LOTR craze happened about five years ago. Before the trilogy was very recently crowned as movie event of the decade, however, I developed an itch to watch them over again and Mark and I began with the extended version (four hours) of The Fellowship of the Ring. It took us two nights, we took a couple nights off to build our anticipation, then dove into The Two Towers, extended version, also over the course of 2 nights. Just finished and we're heading toward number 3, The Return of the King, on Saturday. I can't wait. I almost whisper with anticipation even though I have seen all three movies at least twice and know the end! I wonder how it feels for Orlando and Vigo to know that their trophy performance, most likely of their life, is already finished.

9. Google Chrome. I didn't know what it was either, until I called Apple because Dora (my beloved MacBook) was trudging terribly slow from webpage to webpage on Safari, Apple's own browser. The gentleman techie told me, without telling me, that I should try Google Chrome, a browser created by Google. Of course I downloaded it. Of course it's superior to Safari, Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. Of course Google, once again, proves its capacity to slowly but surely take over planet Earth.

8. Pop music. Seriously. It started when I went home for Christmas and my brother, yes, my 18-year-old brother made me listen to Lady Gaga and Chris Brown and that girl that sings "Tic Toc." And ever since I've been home I can't quit listening to all this stuff. And now I've got "Empire State of Mind" constantly in my head. I don't want to be a pop head, but I can't help it.

7. Editing The Peach Street Girls. Writing the novel was very fun and very emotional and very difficult. It also very much made me question my life calling to be a writer. I dreaded the editing process even more, however, based on the things I've heard from people who have attempted to write a book and, furthermore, make it fly. But, to my delightful surprise, editing is quite fun. Step one: Read the entire book aloud and make notes in the margins each time a sentence is written poorly, you think you must have been sleeping when you wrote, or there is no direction. Also make notes of brilliant lines and hilarious moments. I don't know step two because I'm still on step one.

6. Real Simple Magazine. This is a refreshed favorite because Real Simple is my favorite magazine, but my sister and brother in law gave me a YEAR LONG SUBSCRIPTION for Christmas. The magazine doesn't fit through the brass mail slot on the old wooden door of my apartment so the mail lady leaves it propped against the door. I come home, once a month now, to a smiling Real Simple calling out for me to flip through it ten times or more. The magazine is precisely what it claims: simple articles, stories, recipes, new uses for old things, pictures... delightfully thick pages to flip through and read. No junk. I love it.

5. Our new original oil canvas. That's right, Mark and I have purchased a 2 foot by 3 foot oil canvas of a landscape in Tuscany that resembles about a dozen places I used to ride past on the bus while living in Siena. Once a year in January there is a Starving Artists painting sale where nothing costs over $59. Fabulous. That's where we got it and it is gorgeous.

4. Edamame. That is, soy beans. I almost hate to admit that I have fallen victim to the very granola, very hippie protein source. It just feels too... earthy. I don't know why I feel the need to avoid this rap... like it'll make me suddenly turn vegetarian or something. But here's the truth: Edamame is delicious and filling and perfect for a salad. It's healthy and packed with nutrients and you can buy a bag of the frozen, shelled soy beans for $2.79 at Harris Teeter.

3. My new, way too expensive but absolutely worth it, Citizens of Humanity bootcut jeans. I was not a supporter of astronomically priced designer jeans... until I put a pair on my body. I hate shopping for jeans because they usually don't fit just right and, if they do, then they stretch or shrink once you leave the store. However, after saving up for SIX MONTHS I finally bought my perfect jeans. And they are. Perfect. I know they cost too much, dad, but it was worth it.

2. The moment Mark gets home from work. For so long our work schedules were all kinds of chaos and half the time I didn't even see him get home from the restaurant. But now, when he gets home between 6 and 7 o'clock and I hear that key in the door and I see that devilishly good-looking man I love walking up the narrow steps to our little apartment in his pleated khaki pants and that button up shirt, with his brief case and his dear, dear smile, it makes me know I am going to be happy for the rest of our lives.

1. OmmWriter. Sounds like some kind of Buddhism/Etherial writer thing, but it isn't. It's the best thing that's happened to my writing life in a long time. Please click to find out: www.ommwriter.com

early to tread

In Italy we walked everywhere. It wasn't that we walked from our apartment on Via del Porrione to class two blocks over, or that we walked to the coffee shop down the street. I mean, we literally walked the entire city of Siena daily. We walked outside of Siena too, to the train stop a few kilometers away. And we walked in foreign cities where we visited, like Venice and Rome, the beaches of Viareggio and the coast of the five lands. Without bikes, euros for bus fare or even a skate board, we walked.  It became not only a mode of transport, but our avenue to see the city, experience the shops and meet the people, even if we didn't exchange words. It was charming to walk in Siena where the streets are made of great gray stones and there aren't sidewalks.  The street runs right up to the store fronts and apartment doors and when the trucks drive through delivering meat from the surrounding farms, you press your body against the cold stone walls in order to evade their tires.  

When I look back at my time in Europe, the most impressive memory I have is of traipsing across France, Switzerland, Austria and Italy, and of discovering the exclusive city of Siena on foot.  In Siena the walls, which tower over and close you in, are also the observer's perch, the writer's thinking position.  And beside the picture of the stone streets, I picture the views from the walls looking out over the rolling hills of the Tuscan landscape. 

From my apartment in Ardmore, the grocery store is one mile away, the post office three-quarters of a mile, my office, two miles, and the book store, a little over two. I began walking again, all over town, about two months ago, when the weather turned cold and my seasonally depressed brain began needing as much natural light as possible.  Occasionally my timid self insecurely hopes nobody I know sees me, but I'm getting over it.  It's the strangest thing, though it shouldn't be, but it's wonderful, this walking.  I'm getting to know this city for the first time since I've moved here, really getting to know it.  Its small roads and its strange streets. The houses with red doors and the women who keep great beautiful gardens. I know where the territorial dogs live and which houses have gone on the market, and the ones which have sold.  

It does take longer, I'll admit. Walking. And it's more tiresome. But it's also much more lively and alluring and cleansing.  In this cold winter my cheeks are flushed by the time I make it to the Post Office... but my mama always said rosy cheeks are becoming.

joy.

I was driving through Baptist Hospital on Cloverdale Avenue this week. It was foggy and dark at 4:30, as has been custom in Winston these past few weeks, and I pulled up to the red light in the left turning lane.  All of a sudden I remembered that Christmas is coming, that I'll be in the living room of my family's home with my big old 6 foot 4 inch brother telling me stupid inappropriate jokes, holding a glass of red wine, while my brother-in-law and dad taunt my husband about the recent (pitiful) demonstrations made by his Pittsburgh Steelers.  My mom will be sticking up for him because she thinks that Mark hung the moon and my sister will inevitably be entranced by some Christmas spectacular on the TV while the little Jonathan hangs on Jake, our old golden retriever. 

And when I sat at the light thinking of that scene in my home with my family, whom I love more than anything or anyone on the face of the earth, I actually started to cry.  (Hannah is shaking her head at this, smiling).

That is joy.

Here's another one: our Christmas tree.  It is the most beautiful, brilliant, vivid, psychedelic tree you have ever seen. Colored lights, ridiculous ornaments, "Baby's first Christmas" sled from 1984 (put that one together...) It's absurd, really, and perfect. Six o'clock in the morning is wonderful this month because I get an hour of darkness in the living room with my beautiful bright tree and a cup of coffee and I love it.  

That is joy.

Jonathan. I didn't think I'd ever like a kid as much as I love my nephew. Mark says it's like a drug for me and he is right. I go over there at least once a week to hang out with the kid. He is the best person in the world. Please see the photo posted in the previous entry on the blog.

Friday morning when I was there he was acting drunk, just laughing uncontrollably and stumbling all over the place. I usually end up in laughing fits just being around him.  Anyway, I'm sitting on the ottoman of the comfy chair in the living room and Jonathan waddles over and kind of wraps his arms around my legs and buries his face in my knees, whining.  I pull him up onto my lap and lay my head back into the seat of the chair and he climbs up onto my stomach, flops his head down beside my head and begins to laugh.  His shaking self, stomach on my face, makes me laugh, and apparently it tickles him, so he laughs harder.  Hannah had to come see what in the world was making us laugh so hard because the one-year-old and the twenty-three-year-old literally cannot stop.  

Now that is joy.