Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday

Today I turned thirty.

Five years ago, I took the time to reflect on my life at that point, and I was pleased. I was in Georgia, celebrating the birth of my first niece a week prior. I was in graduate school, working on a PhD, and starting to develop serious feelings for the man who is now my husband. I was a healthy weight and had a pretty healthy frame of mind. Life was good.

In the intervening years, I've wished many times for the clarity and sense of calm I felt on the morning of my twenty-fifth birthday. I wondered if I'd ever feel the same way and had pretty much come to terms with the idea that I might not.

This morning, I decided to take stock, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I am at a place in my life where I could feel the same sense of peace and clarity. I'm not one of those people who dread turning 30. As the youngest of most of my friends, it's a bit anti-climactic, really. What I do dislike, however, is the feeling that I'm not moving forward to a healthier and happier me.

Perhaps it's a lucky coincidence that my birthday falls in the middle of Lent--itself a reflective time of the church year--because I've been rather reflective these last few weeks. For me, this reflection has brought about great appreciation for the path I'm on today. In the last year, I've become a much healthier person, having shed right at 20% of my body weight (48 lbs), become a recreational runner/walker, found faith in the community of St. Raphael's, and made great friends. There's a bit of peace in realizing how very blessed you are, and age doesn't really factor into it.

So today, I can say that even though I'm living a life I couldn't imagine five years ago, I feel much the same. As I say to J, I'm a lucky girl.

Title: Happy Birthday, by Stevie Wonder (A co-worker and I both turned 30 this month, so we threw ourselves a birthday party at School, a local french/sushi place with a karaoke room. Among the songs we discovered for the first time was this one by Stevie Wonder--not at all what we expected when we typed in Happy Birthday!)

Trapped in the closet, Part 1

First, I know I start more posts by apologizing for the lack of posts, but I'm going to do it again. J and I have both spent this winter fighting off sickness and treading water with regard to everything else. Luckily, Spring is finally arriving (I noticed our dafodils peaking through the ground just last night!), and we're getting back on track!


This weekend, we're participating in our first race of the year, the 3K Shamrock Shuffle. This is a huge race in downtown Lexington, and I'm really looking forward to it! While I've continued to exercise on my own, this is my first race since the Snowman Shuffle in early December. Hopefully this gets us back on target of a race a month!


Now to the title of the post--the Melton Point was built in the early 1970's, apparently before builders discovered that closets sell houses. We have a total of five closets in our house, and two really don't count (they're located upstairs and filled more with boxes than clothes). Up until this house, every closet I've had since my teens has been large, and I'd allowed my wardrobe to expand to the space.


Two years ago, negotiating closet space became the biggest issue in my new marriage (somehow, living out of three wardrobe boxes in the living room just wasn't doing it for me). This wasn't helped by the fact that the closet in our guest room had no rod or shelf, or that my new husband had spent three years making the master bedroom closet completely his own. In addition to these sorry excuses for closets, we have a coat closet that also serves as a the main utility closet for the main level of our house.


For your viewing pleasure, and to show you what amazing progress we've made since January in our closet struggles, I took pictures this week to demonstrate just how small our closets are--


First, the Coat Closet--

Stats: 40" wide and 18" deep; one rod for coats and one shelf




Master Bedroom Closet--


Stats: 75" wide and 25" deep; one clothes rod and one very deep shelf



Guest Bedroom Closet--
Stats: 58" wide and 24" deep, with an oddly offset door; originally, no rod or shelf. I added two hanging rods turned sideways, and a closet unit on the other side to create something like a walk-in closet for J


So this is where we started and what we've worked with for the last two years. I learned to purge (because apparently I didn't need most of the clothes I'd kept from high school), and J made do in the guest room. Then we went to Ikea and J got the great idea to buy the wardrobes I talked about in this post. It's still a work in progress from a finishing standpoint, but we've been using our wardrobes for several weeks. I'll post pictures soon of our wardrobes and then (eventually) I'll get the room finished and share those pictures, too.


Title: Trapped in the Closet, by R. Kelly