Shake it out

It's always darkest before the dawn...
It's hard to dance with the devil on your back
So shake it out

Thank you Florence for once again putting my life to music.  The last couple of weeks have been rough, with ups and downs that I could not control.  But a little time with family, old friends, and new friends helped me to shake it out and become re-energized about my life.  I'm taking control and moving forward.

Tuition in the School of Life

I could not be more thrilled that my life has settled down after my first day at work. I could not imagine a worse way to start out my work life in Louisville. There's definitely a story...

I came home last weekend and had a wonderful reunion with my family and got to rock out at the greatest kickball tournament ever. It was a great weekend. My flight landed in the Ville an hour late and when I reached into my purse... I immediately called my Dad:

"Dad, this is kind of an emergency. I need you to go downstairs and look on the coffee table and see if my keys are there."

"Yup, they're here."

"[Explicative]"

The next 12 hours of my life we arguably some of the roughest and most logistically complicated of my recent past (even Tanzania was easier than this!). Here's the sequence of events:

11:15pm- realize my keys are gone on the airplane, lots of frantic, worried phone calls with my Dad.

11:30pm- take a cab to a crummy airport motel where I would never want to go again

12:15am- in the motel room, take off my kickball outfit which I wore straight to the airport

12:45am- bed (kind of)

5:00am- wake up alarm for my first day

5:45am- cab back to the airport

6:00am- rent a car

6:45am- go to Wal Mart and buy a new outfit for my first day of work

8:00am- coffee, strong coffee

8:30am- begin first day of work with people who are building their first impression of me. I legitimately looked nice and presentable and my perk was only slightly off-kilter. Lots of continued frantic phone calls between me, my dad, my landlord, etc.

4:30pm- get the maintenance man to let me into my house

6:00am this morning- keys arrive via FedEx on my doorstep

8:00am- return rental car

8:30am- get Stella out of the parking garage and all is well again. Off to my second day of work...

My Dad likes to call situations like this "tuition in the School of Life" because crummy things like this happen to all of us and there's nothing you can really do to prevent them. They are costly, unpredictable, and unpreventable. Sometimes you learn a life lesson, sometimes you're just frustrated at all of the inconvenience. It was an unfortunate mistake (like many others I have had in the School of Life), but being home made all the difference to me. I think I got a last little bit of lovin' that I needed to be able to come up here and start my life (it should last me a week or so haha).

Dad was joking that this was a bit like those MasterCard priceless commercials. I laughed and told him that I could easily put a price on not having to go through that fiasco again. But I did love the North Carolina love ;)