Erin Shaw Street

Christmas 2007

Here are just a few of the photos from our Christmas. A full listing is on the right in the "Christmas 2007" album.  Nate loved the lights, sticking bows on his head (it must be genetic) and spending time with both sets of grandparents and his Aunt Megan, Uncle Ricky and Uncle Ryan.

The highlight of  Christmas was watching Nate enjoy the festivities, including sliding down on his new Kangaroo Climber (pictured below) head first! feet first! Everything first! Now we are dealing with having to explain why everyone is taking their lights down, which is utterly perplexing to him. But to keep his spirits up I am still drinking eggnog and singing Run DMC's  "Christmas in Hollis" during "Pop Up Video" reruns, which he strangely gets.

My hometown, #1 retirement destination

I've been meaning to post this for a few days. Turns out my hometown, the lovely Clearwater, Florida, has been rated the worst place in the country to retire. Apparently there are too many old people there. Clearwater, let's show the rest of the country that we know how to rock. We have 1)An awesome Cuban restaurant on East Bay Road (and there are others) 2)The chance to say we are home to Hulk Hogan and the Mary that appeared on the bank building 3)A beach with the softest sand in the world, home to the Palm Pavilon, #1 best place to eat a hot dog and watch the sunset 4) Killer garage sales and consignment shops 5)Clearwater Central Catholic High School. It's Catholic! They have an IB program! Uniforms! 6)The Dairy Kurl, home of the world's best soft-serve ice cream (a must post-beach)

After spending 18 years there I am biased for sure, but come on seniors -- don't fear us! The Carolinas are just filled with trees and dirt. Ew.

Clearwater City, Florida: Too Many Fellow Seniors

This Tampa Bay area hamlet has the highest percentage of seniors of any city in the United States. The 2000 Census found 21% of Clearwater’s population was 65 or older, the highest of any city of 100,000 or more. Floridians as a whole are 17.6% seniors, compared with 12.4% for the United Sates as a whole. With 3.6% of its population 85 and up, Clearwater also has three times the national share of that age group.

The graying of Florida is just one reason many retirees from the Northeast sometimes abandon their first retirement destination for somewhere mid-way up the coast. These “half-backs” are increasingly turning to the Carolinas, fleeing the bland culture, extreme weather, and high real estate and homeowner’s insurance prices of Florida.

Second sentence

Nate has added several words to his vocabulary in the two days since I last posted, including "deer," "bunny," and a charming sentence:

Nate: "I pooped."
Us: "What?"
Nate: "POOP! I pooped."

Nothing like straigtforward communication with strong action verbs. (His first sentence was "I'm stuck," which I thought very existential.) 

Counting down the days

Here are some pictures of us earlier in the week at the club, where we celebrated a lovely Christmas dinner with my parents.

Shane and I are both looking forward to celebrating Christmas. I can only speak for myself in my eagerness for 2007 to end. There were many great things to this year: Megan's wedding, our trip to Greece, my Boston trip with Dad, and  the joy of watching Nate grow to be his own little self, a sweet boy who loves trucks and balls and said his Aunt Megan's name for the first time today (!). It's just that the last part of this year is one that I will easily leave.

The past three months have been an exhaustive blur. I went back to grad school, took on monumental projects at work, and Shane was diagnosed with cancer  and treated. Cancer is everything you imagine and more. It quite literally knocks the wind out of you, takes the puzzle pieces of life and throws them up in the air. For all those who say it is a blessing, well one day maybe  I'll get there, but for now ... well it just is.

Today our bed broke. The bed that I've had since graduating from college nearly 10 years ago. The one that went from my first apartment in Birmingham, to second apartment in Florida, back to Birmingham and then to our first and second homes. The one where I wrote, read countless novels and slept curled up with a pillow feeling the yet unnamed Nate kick inside of me.

Shane was reading this afternoon and I was working in our office when I heard him shout a variety of words as the mattress toppled beneath him. We took it down, piece by piece, till there was nothing but a box spring and mattress left. And here we are, with a few days left of this year. We have each other, piles of books all around our bedroom, and a little tow headed boy the room over.

Tomorrow we'll start looking for a new bedroom set.

Christmas 2007 Album has been started -- to the right -- E

Why the 90s were good and bad

This week the third season of "Beverly Hills 90210" was released on DVD. I am not going to lie, sometimes I wish I could go back to a better time called the early 90s.

Case in point: the two people in the photo at left. I have no idea what their names are (Ashley something?), but they are actual people, not just the models that come in the picture in the frame. They went to my high school, and this is the photo from when they were voted "Most Popular." I got to take it for the newspaper.  Twelve years later I interpret this photo as "Most Likely To Appear on 'Intervention'." I mean, who poses like that?

Then there's me, at the right, with my intepretation of "Blossom." When was it alright to wear a hat like that?

I unearthed these gems during an excavation of my closet.  They are deeply disturbing on so many levels.