So Much News

First of all, you should know that I'm putting random photos into this post and that Ari is here for the whole month of July. So there.

She arrived on the first Wednesday of the month and I’ve neglected most other things since. Have I mentioned she's my platonic soulmate? As soon as that next Tuesday rolled around we booked it to the Surf Bar and spent a night catching up with a few old friends who were right where we left them and definitely noticed that it had been over a year since either of us had come to visit.

We’ve had a number of pool parties and spent the Forth of July eating homemade peach ice-cream on her dock, watching fireworks and waving our own sparklers. If we both weren’t straight females it would be such a romantic story.

Brett's dog, Grace, looks just like Buddy.

Ellen has had her last day in the Real Estate world and this week started her classes that teach her to teach. She has been given a list of the classes she will be teaching first semester and they are Web Design and some kind of Integrated Business Thing. She’s nervous but excited and dare I say, happy.

Ellen tried to leave our family dinner early so I hung her car keys in a tree, just out of reach.

Dad made me get them down.

During the Keys trip I had a poorly timed and even more devastatingly executed phone interview. I was caught off guard see and I screeched out “umm”s and staggered over everyday words. I’d applied weeks ago for a long-shot job as a floral designer in a swanky hotel and I never heard from them. I had already given up hope and still felt no sense of relief to be talking to them while my father waddled by in scuba flippers just outside my window. “Everyone go outside” I hissed. “I can’t do this with y’all listening.”

Mom, Dad, Ellen, and Chris reluctantly sat on the porch during my interview. Ellen tormented me, standing right outside the window with a creepy smile plastered across her face while I talked intelligently about my current position “I’m an assistant, you know. I assist. “haHAha!”

I didn’t expect hear from them again.

Low and behold, twenty minutes before the of end of the seven day window in which the “supervisor might call” I was asked to come in for a second interview. I prepared a booklet of my best flower arrangements, put on a professionals costume and I endured an hour and a half long interview that included making a "romantic arrangement of a dozen pink roses". The supervisor was a really nice lady and sent me off from my interview feeling like she liked me a lot but also knew something sad that I wasn't aware of. "You'll hear from me by the end of the day." she said and I anxiously carried around my cell phone all day, still rationalizing that 10:30 pm wasn't too late to call. But my phone never rang so I pictured my romantic arrangement and thought about my distaste for sappy things and decided she could tell that I'm put off by feelings and romance.

Just when I’d given up hope, at 1:00 the next day Elizabeth called and offered me the job saying, “I love your individual style” about my alternative flower arrangement which I saw as being the outcast of the flower cooler. “What a freak!” the other roses would sneer at my funky arrangement.

Dad teaches Mom to use her new iPhone.

And so I am Charleston Place’s newest floral designer. I have a golden name tag and a pair of sensible, rubber shoes that the hotel bought for me so I don’t slip while wandering around in the bowels of the hotel. It’s very big and confusing back there. And slippery.

I will work 9-5 four days a week and one Saturday a month. This is because my focus will be designing and making any arrangements that go into the hotel while the other designer is in charge of wedding and event arrangements. I believe they have given me more credit than I deserve and I’m now spending my evenings reading floral books and taking mental notes. I must change all hotel arrangements once a week. This includes the conference pieces and every little bud vase on the tables in the hotel’s two restaurants. That’s an awful lot of new designs. Even on the website the first photo features the giant lobby arrangement. I can't do dat!

We found Wilhelmina lounging in our yard after our most recent HonBon visit.

So I’ve been busy you see, training for the new gig, finishing up the old gig, preparing for my South Pacific adventure, and trying so hard to see Ari when possible.