Monthly Milestones - May

May has been a very difficult month for me; full of pain, drugs and feeling useless and bothersome. My being forced to sit for hours on end cooped up in the house has caused me to dive deeper in this thing they call blogging. It all started over a year ago with my friend Ali’s blog. If you check it out, you will see that she is a very creative and talented photographer who has three of the cutest kids you’ve ever seen. I would visit it every so often and thought this was a clever way to keep loved ones up to date on how everyone was doing. Then my amazing friend Kim introduced me to her blog. It’s just simply about happy thoughts, crafting and friendship. It was those two that gave me the inspiration to 1. Start writing again and 2. Create a blog! So, I went out and picked up Blogging For Dummies and began to think.

My blog was going to be a rant. Simply about stuff that pisses me off. I played with a few topics and then came to the conclusion that this world is already full of negativity. I should follow in the footsteps of Ali and Kim and write of positive happy things. Then it hit me… VERNON! It can be a simple blog about us, how we manage a long distance relationship (LDR) and advice for those in an LDR. I also post about our two cultures, travel, entertainment, pop culture and anything I can think of pertaining to our relationship. It started out kind of slow, I really didn’t know what I was doing. Now, for the month of May I have reached 18 followers and just this month I have written 6 posts. I’ve been trying to think of ways to make my blog better and visiting several new blogs a week, introducing myself and making comments. I’ve managed to pick up a few followers this month and it’s so exciting!

I have a basic goal for June. I hope to have at least two more followers and I will continue to follow new blogs and introduce myself and leave lots of comments. I also thought of a really cool idea to improve my blog that I know Vernon will love, but I’m not going to spoil the surprise right now. You all will see in good time.

The end of a fabulous shopping trip

The stupid alarm clock is buzzing and buzzing so loudly! I can't find the snooze button no matter what I hit. It took me forever to set the alarm the night before so that I would wake up with the soft gentle sounds of music in the morning and not wake up Kim, well, that didn't happen.  I felt terrible. Last night I asked her what time she wanted to wake up and she told me 6:30, so I set the alarm for 6. Stupid ass alarm clock. Well, we got an early start, had breakfast although from the way we stuffed our faces the night before, I wasn't hungry for much. Now is when I start thinking about how much fun I had, and it wasn't where I was or what I was doing, it was who I was with. I really wasn't looking forward to taking her back to Grand Rapids but I really couldn't kidnap her could I? The drive back was fun, again we didn't run out of anything to talk about. We also got to pass through the Village of Vernon. Kim and I stopped to take a pic and couldn't stop laughing.

The entire time I was with Kim I could be myself and we talked about all sorts of topics, topics we agreed on and topics we didn't agree on and it was all good.  I missed her before actually meeting her in person, and now that I've met her I miss her so unbelievably much. I hope that she had as much fun as I did and that she felt comfortable around me. I owe a lot to my sister for helping me make this a super shopping trip for Kim, and it was awesome seeing her and my beautiful niece.

My blog is mainly dedicated to my long distance relationship with my best friend and partner Vernon, but these last three posts are dedicated to Kim, my wonderful dear friend with whom I have had a long distance friendship for a little over a year.  She's been on the second half of her vacation here in the states so I haven't heard from her since I dropped her off last week, but I'm so excited to see her online again and to see photos and hear about the rest of her trip.

I had the pleasure of meeting her boyfriend, and he is simply charming. Very nice looking, great smile, and obviously so good to Kim. It was fun sitting in our hotel room with our bottles of Mike's Hard Lemonade talking about "boys". We are both very lucky girls.  I look forward to the day when she can meet Vernon. I know he will just adore Kim and vice versa. Kim, I'm really going to miss you, I've got tears in my eyes writing this but I know we'll be friends forever and that makes me really happy!

Frankenmuth, Fairies and Fudge

Day two of my visit with Kim was even better.  We went down and tried out the complimentary breakfast. It was awesome! Biscuits and gravy, scrambled eggs, grapes, doughnuts and juice.  I tried to convince Kim that biscuits and sausage gravy was super yummy, but she couldn't understand the concept of gravy for breakfast. I guess when she puts it that way it makes sense.  We went to the gas station to fill up the truck and my genius friend suggested that we pick up some liquid refreshment for tonight, and yes, we picked up a 6pk of Mikes Hard Lemonade.  Now we are ready for our day of shopping and fun.

My sister Liz and her daughter showed up. My sweet niece made a card for Kim reading "Welcome to America" so cute! Then Kim taught her how to count to 10 in Dutch. She did a great job!

Frankenmuth is amazing! What a neat little tourist trap of a town.  I wanted to take plenty of pics to remember this very special day with Kim, and I wanted Vern to see how much fun we had. Kim said she wanted to take pictures in all those character cut outs so we did. We had so much fun sticking our faces in those things.  Total silliness, something I don't do very often.
There were shops for everything, socks, frogs, crepes, purses, toys, creepy looking dolls and souvenirs. Last but not least... there were shops for FUDGE AND ICE CREAM! Wonderful stuff.  I fell behind while in a shopping center because I was buying cookies for later. I made my way around a corner and was startled by the most hideous thing I've ever seen. I looked at it, gave it a second look and really couldn't believe someone made something so ugly and freaky looking.  I looked at Kim and said, "Did you see that?" She laughed and said, "I got a picture of it!" Well, she read my mind because I had to take one too. I can't describe it so I'll just post it here.  What disturbed me the most was that the beard was drawn on, like with charcoal or something. Looks a bit like Prince but with wings.

We all had lunch at the Brewery. It was awesome. Got free hors d'oeuvres because I was a smart cookie and found coupons on the Frankenmuth web site.  The very first stop we made was at Bronners, the Christmas store. Wow, it was absolutely amazing. I really want to go back. They had ornaments for everything, and all sorts of Christmas stuff. I had another coupon for a free item so I let Kim have it and she got an ornament with a picture of fruitcake on it.  It was that or an ornament shaped like a clove of garlic. What's that all about? The fruitcake ornament made us laugh for a while, and now when she hangs it on her tree every year, when she sees the fruitcake ornament she'll think of us. Ha ha ha.

We were totally worn out after all of that walking and shopping. Liz and the munchkin went home and Kim and I went back to the hotel. We immediately changed to go swimming. The cool water felt so good on my overworked feet and legs. Then, in walk a bunch of kids, ranging in the ages from 13 to 17 and a girl that looked like she wasn't a day over 13 was carrying a glass bottle of what looked like champagne. They sat around the hot tub drinking whatever was in the bottle, thinking they were hot shit. I was annoyed because the bottle was glass, dumb asses, don't these kids have parents that teach them anything? It wasn't much longer when an older gentleman in blue coveralls wanted to take the suspected alcohol from the kids and they forcefully stated, "This isn't alcohol". Thinking they were off the hook, like I said, they were dumb asses. He told the kids they couldn't have glass in the pool area. They didn't understand that concept and reluctantly left.  They came back later on and the two girls who were 12 and 13 had the tiniest bikinis on and lots of makeup. They looked so trashy. I'm glad I'm the kind of mother I am and that I taught my daughter class and respect.  These two girls are teenage moms waiting to happen. Where the hell are their parents????? Oh well, not my problem. More kids were showing up and Kim and I really weren't in the mood to deal with other peoples rotten offspring so we left the pool and ordered pizza, cheese bread and mozzarella sticks. It was so very good! Hardly touched the pizza though, our eyes were bigger than our stomachs. We ended the night with Mikes Hard Lemonade, a fabulous pizza dinner and cookies from our day out shopping.  

I really needed this day out with the girls. I was relaxed, stress free, and enjoying the company of my friend, my sister and my niece. It was tough saying goodbye to Kim. Now that we've spent time together, I'm really going to miss her. Maybe next time I see her it will be in Europe. That would be fun.

Smirnoff Green Apple Bite and New Slippers From Holland

I have recently spent two days in lower Michigan. Frankenmuth to be exact. I drove all the way down to the Grand Rapids area to pick up my friend Kim who is visiting the States from Europe.  If you read my last post, my truck is ok. I think it was misdiagnosed by the first mechanic who only looked at it a little because of paying jobs that were coming in that day. I took it to another one who didn't really have time for me either but they squeezed me in and said I had nothing wrong.  I do need a new muffler though. It completely went during my drive down. Anyway, before leaving for our destination, Kim and I had dinner with her boyfriend and his grandparents.  What sweet people, and what a nice dinner consisting of the best hot dogs I've ever had.  The break was nice considering I had been in the truck for the last 8 hours.  I did make a couple of stops to take pictures. The reason for this is that when I go on a trip, I take Vernon with me. I think of him while I'm driving, I see places that I would normally stop at if he were with me, and try to keep my eyes open for places to go with him and the kids in the future. I appreciate more of what Upper Michigan has to offer and its beauty because I try to see it the way Vernon would. It would have been nice if he were with me, but that would take the entire purpose out of our girls getaway. 

Meeting Kim was weird at first. I've only seen photos, chatted, sent/received letters and gifts and talked on the phone.  She was in 3D! Once we began talking, it was like meeting up with an old friend. We had an hour drive ahead of us. We never ran out of things to talk about. We got to the hotel and were greeted by a tall young guy standing in front of the counter. He was smiling at us. We thought it a bit odd and started giggling. He went around behind the counter and proceeded to check us in, gave us the low down on schedules, amenities and stuff and we went to our room.  I freshened up, and the second I came out Kim was pulling gifts out of her bag. She's so cute when it comes to presents. She can't wait! I got the most awesome slippers! They are shaped like wooden shoes.  They are soft and comfy too.  She also brought over a ton of Dutch chocolate. I can't wait for Heidi and I to give it a try.

Everything was wrapped in that cute white and blue Dutch paper with the little windmills that she likes to use.  We were both dying for a drink so we went down to the bar and had trouble deciding on what to have.  The bartender suggested Smirnoff Green Apple Bite.  Holy crap is that stuff awesome! We both had two and that was enough.






We were tired from a long day, me especially, so we went through a stack of coupons I brought for shopping tomorrow and we talked till about 1am and then finally went to sleep.  Tomorrow is going to be a blast!