Life jumped out and smacked me on the face w/ a big pile of awesome...

Some folks know that I've had a fairly stressful past few months or so (or maybe past few years, I'm not sure anymore). I have no clue why, but my stress level has been thru the roof for a while now. Anyway, for that reason, I'm planning on taking a week and a half away from life (off the grid as much as possible) to finally relax. I made that decision in the midst of craziness, going non-stop, wearing myself out (actually, my doctor told me to cut the stress asap, hehe). The break begins a week from today, almost two weeks after my 29th birthday.

Another little detail I should add is that I love to make new year resolutions on my birthday. The way I see it, the calendar new year means nothing...June 11th is when the new year begins for me. The past few years have been a bit of a mess. Most seem to start off messy as well, somehow. This year, I totally forgot to make a resolution because life jumped out and smacked me on the face with a big pile of awesome. In the past less than a week, so much has happened to put a smile on my face for the first time in a long time.

I rang in midnight of June 11 by having almost my entire family on stage in a karaoke bar full of old people (and Goblers, of course) singing "Happy Birthday" to me. Awesome! This was after many of us took turns rockin' the karaoke stage (some of us not bold enough to do more than white-girl-rap/talk the lyrics). I spent my actual birthday at a family reunion having a blast in South Florida...seriously, I'm blessed. Even though I was miles from home, I still felt loved by all of the "Happy Birthday" messages I kept seeing pop up on my phone/facebook...yeh, I'm blessed. If that wasn't great enough, after flying back to ATL on Sunday, I was planning to meet up w/ a few friends for Unplugged in the Park at Piedmont Park.

Thanks to better planning than I'm capable of, we had a great table up front full of 10-12 smiling faces! We had good beer, good food, cupcakes (including one smashed in my face, thanks Heather). The music (Bess Rogers and Rachel Platten) was awesome too! They were so awesome that two evenings later, I was chilling out at another show of theirs at the Artmore Hotel w/ my roomie. Once again, it was great and the singers and their whole crew are some of the nicest people. We hung out w/ them for a while, and we all walked down to a pub for more live music, food, and drinks (I should point out that the two New York guys were drinking mojitos as Heather and I downed our beers). There was a lot of laughter, and it all made me forget how stressed I've been lately! Who knew that the cure for stress was a lot of time surrounded by extended family followed by hanging out w/ and getting to know some total strangers?! Well, it worked for me.

I began the next day (Wednesday) by thinking that being 29 seemed to be going pretty well so far...maybe this year will finally be a year I can look back on and think, "that was a good year!" Shortly after having that thought and hoping that by simply thinking it I wouldn't jinx my "luck," I got an email. I had an answered prayer that I'd honestly all but given up on hearing about. FINALLY, I got a response to the offer I made on a not-yet-finished renovated house that I'm in love with. It was better than the counter offer we expected. A month and a half after submitting my offer, I am looking at a counter offer that I'll probably accept. The delayed timeline actually has been a blessing that opened up doors that were not open before. I've been smiling since the moment that email came in.

So, in one week my vacation begins...and in about 2 months I'll be closing on my house (unless something somehow goes wrong, and we all know that I fully expect something to go wrong).