wedding tour, part one.

Summertime is here - which means Stephanie's Wedding Tour 2012 is already underway.

I don't know exactly how many weddings I've attended over the years but I know it's a lot. My colleague and I counted once a few years ago and it was in the 60s, which could mean any number of things -- I'm an excellent dancer (true), an excellent gift giver (also true), or I have difficulty saying no to someone when they invite me somewhere (the most true). It definitely means that I'm broke.

I have also been blessed to have made some pretty amazing friends along the way who have allowed me to share in their nuptials.

Going to this many weddings means that I've become somewhat of an expert over the years. Considering this is the season that many of you will be embarking on your own Summer Wedding Tours, here is some completely unsolicited advice I've gathered over the years.

The Do's and Don'ts - from a self-proclaimed wedding professional.

DO wait until you're later in life to get married.

I love the quote from When Harry Met Sally, when Harry says, "When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible." I completely believe it myself. But if you wait to get married, the more likely you are to get better parties and better gifts from your friends who now have better jobs than they did when you were all 23. You might luck out with entire set of glasses instead of just one or in some embarrassing cases, none at all (sorry, Kimberly). You may get your own bed at your bachelorette party instead of searching for floor space at a beach condo with 25 of your closest friends (sorry, Katherine).

Well done, Emily and Jay. Your patience will be handsomely rewarded.

Despite having plenty of friends who have waited to get married, Wedding Tour has certainly slowed down in recent years. But even still, family commitments, work responsibilities have all at one point interfered with my plans to rock the "Electric Slide" all summer long. Attending every shower and bachelorette party isn't always possible.

My advice - DO what you can.

Despite pleading with co-workers, I couldn't get off work to attend my friend Emily's wedding in Florida. But I was off the couple of days before the wedding, so I decided, with her blessing, to celebrate at the beach for a few days before.

My abrupt arrival and departure from the weekend's festivities was awkward - especially when people said, "See you tomorrow at the wedding!" and I had to say, "Well, actually . . .you won't . . . but it was so nice to meet you. Bye!!!!!" I was tired at work on Saturday after getting up early to drive back, but I'm so glad I made the trip to be with Emily before her wedding.

DO kick off the wedding weekend with a bang.

In Emily's case, it was a Thursday night beach party at sunset, but any kind of party that welcomes your guests and gives them an opportunity to get to know each other will work. Your wedding is likely (and unfortunately) the only time in your life when everyone you love will be at the same place and the same time, so maximize the time you spend with them.

When you don't know anyone at a wedding besides the bride and groom, DO find the oldest people there and befriend them. They are not necessarily looking to drink as much as possible in a short period of time and they have the best stories.

Take Carl, for example.

Carl immediately took a liking to me when he saw that we were both the party paparazzi, stalking people with our cameras. When we both took a break from taking pictures long enough to have a beer and enjoy the fire, we sparked up a conversation. Carl told me he was a teacher, with a sincere love of science and traveling.

Carl apparently thought I was a lot more popular at this wedding than I actually was because he kept interrupting his stories about all of the amazing countries he'd visited, insisting that I leave him to go hang out with my, "friends." I had to keep reminding him that besides the bride and groom, he was the only other person that I really knew.

He went back to telling me more about his travels. Then he paused and looked out at everyone standing around.

"There sure are a lot of pretty ladies at this wedding," he said.

You got that right, Carl.

Coming in a close second for coolest new friend I met at the pre-wedding festivities was Emily's Granny. She did a little dance for us as we were leaving to head to a bar, so I said, "You need to come with us!"

She said, "I'd love to go, but I've got to hook up!"

I stopped abruptly and looked at her.

"Hook up to my dialysis machine!," she laughed as she walked away.

I. Love. Her. We further sealed our bond while putting fruit skewers together.

DO hire a steel drum band.

DO take part in the fireworks. Weddings are a celebration.

DO NOT light six of them at once.

DO crash the rehearsal dinner - you never know when one of those bridesmaids is going to fall out and the bride is going to be looking for a back up.

Gotta run, I think I hear the Chicken Dance . . . CONGRATULATIONS EMILY AND JAY!

Day 358: Pop Rocks Rumor Control

I don't remember how old I was when I first started hearing rumors about, "Paul, Kevin's friend from the Wonder Years," but once I heard the first, all of the rest quickly followed.

When the show was still on the air, I heard that he and Winnie Cooper were a couple off screen, and it was actually Kevin (played by Fred Savage) who was really a nerd.

Years after the show went into syndication, someone told me, with such conviction I couldn't help but at least consider it, that Paul had grown up to become Marilyn Manson.

I'm not sure who comes up with these rumors, or why Paul from the Wonder Years was always the main character in them (what did he ever do to anyone?), but by far the most tragic of all was that he was dead, and the seemingly innocent activity that killed him?

Eating Pop Rocks and drinking Coca-Cola at the same time.

I hadn't thought of the Paul rumor and this apparently lethal concoction until my friend Anne suggested that I test the urban legend for myself for the blog. In her email she included the sinister, "dun dun dun . . .")

She was kidding, of course, and all research (i.e. Internet searches) led me to believe that no one had ever died by drinking Coca Cola and eating Pop Rocks. If Paul from the Wonder Years had ever even tried it (and there was absolutely no evidence that he did), his questionable choice didn't kill him. He was alive and well.

But rumors usually have some basis in fact, don't they? What if someone did die trying this? Was I playing with fire? There were just seven days to go until my birthday; should I risk it?

Of course I should! If I'm going down, I'm going down in a blaze of candy and soda! Day 358's thing I've never done before was to mix Pop Rocks and Coca-Cola and hopefully live to tell the tale.

Before work, I drove to Richards Variety Store to buy the Pop Rocks, something that I'd looked for at the grocery store and other discount stores, but couldn't find. Richards is a completely random store full of anything from hilarious greeting cards to hand crank egg beaters to Pez dispensers. I could spend many hours and several hundred dollars there.

Emily happily joined me for this challenge when I told her what I was up to, and I asked Justin to film it.

The video is long, and includes Emily and I willing our personal possessions to members of our families in case the urban legend was true, and this candy soda experiment did make us explode.

I willed everything to my brother, Jeff, and sister-in-law, Katie. Everything except for my car, which I said Justin could have, in light of Day 353.

Emily willed her stuff to her parents, since, "they are responsible for me having most of it anyway," and because her Mom, Joan, is an active Project 29 to 30 blog reader.

I felt badly for having left out my parents completely, so I went on to explain why I left it all to Jeff and Katie. I was actually thinking about my dad complaining, when he can't find anything in his closet or in the attic, "There's too much crap in this house! When I die, it's going to take you kids years to sort through all of it!" (As I've said before, my father talks about his death as if it is happening any minute.) But, understanding his detest of all the clutter that he blames all on my mother, I figured forcing my brother and Katie to acquire all of my things would at least make my dad happy.

So after we willed our personal belongings away, Emily and I opened up our Pop Rocks' packages, tilted our heads back, and dumped the contents into our mouth.

Pop Rocks is a carbonated candy, and the gimmick is that the "rocks" will fizz once eaten. I know that I ate Pop Rocks when I was a little kid, but I didn't remember them tasting so terrible. They're extremely sugary and I felt like my teeth could rot right then and there.

I took a sip of coke, which was difficult because there was so much going on with the Pop Rocks. Even after I swallowed, the fizzing continued down my esophagus. It was all very weird. I could have expected some negative life-threatening reaction and there wasn't one. I survived!

Emily said she thinks the bubbles of the soda negate the bubbles of the Pop Rocks, but I couldn't disagree more. I couldn't even taste anything, all I could taste were bubbles and sugar.

But we lived. Like it or not, I thought, I would make it to 30.

I had to laugh at this ridiculous rumor and how it got started in the first place. I imagine someone retells a story so many times that words and tenses get omitted or mixed up. After having tried this combo myself, I have to believe that if Paul from the Wonder Years tried it, be probably said afterward that he wanted to die.

Which makes perfect sense, because it's weird. And disgusting.

Day 326: Garden Freak Show

I left the hospital on Day 325 feeling overwhelmed with joy for Trish and her beautiful new family. I realize it's hard to feel anything but love for an adorable newborn and brand spanking new parents, but I was also prepared for Will's arrival to remind me of how far I haven't come in reaching the milestones I thought I'd reach by the time I turned 30 years old. But surprisingly, I felt none of that usual anxiety. I was ridiculously happy. Giddy, even.

Maybe it was the trip to Greece that had left me feeling relaxed, content, and void of any anxiety whatsoever, maybe I'd really come a long way in my 29th year, but on Day 325, I just felt happy. I felt grateful; both for Trish's life, and for mine. We're really great friends who have arrived at two completely different places in our lives, but for the first time I can remember, I didn't feel nervous that I wasn't where she was. My life hasn't exactly panned out the way I thought it would, but I'll have what Trish has eventually. Or I won't. But either way, it's all going to be okay. Everything is going to turn out exactly the way it's supposed to.

Yes, that was the feeling on Day 325.

And then, on Day 326, I freaked.

To tell you the truth, I'm not sure why. I know I, like most people, am physically and emotionally capable of working myself up over the minutest thing, but that's not what happened here. I was at work, innocently planning out the next few months when I realized that a mere six weekends remained until I turned the big 3-0. I started thinking about all of the specific things I still needed to do before my birthday (drive a stick shift, dye my hair, finish the blog) and all of the more abstract, less attainable things I also needed to accomplish (fall in love, get married, make $1 million, start a family). And within minutes, real, raw emotion started pouring out of me. Suddenly I became overwhelmed with worry and fear. I felt like I couldn't catch my breath, like someone was sitting on my chest.

On Day 326, the overwhelming thought of turning 30, and completing the goal that I set out to accomplish almost a year prior, became almost too much for me to bear.

I felt tears prick my eyes and I jumped up from my desk, determined not to cry at work (or at least not let anyone see me do it.) I ran to my friend Emily's desk, out of most people's sight.

"I just got really scared to turn 30," I squeaked out.

I realized how strange and ridiculous those words sounded as they were coming out of my mouth, and I almost laughed as I said them. I followed with, "It's so stupid."

And it was incredibly stupid.

I mean, what's there to be scared about? I knew that not a whole lot was really going to change on September 27th, the day of my 30th birthday. Life wasn't going to end. I wasn't going to drop dead. I wasn't going to look different, and much to my mother's dismay, act any differently when I turned 30. I planned on being the same immature, free-spirit that I was at 29.

Telling people that I'm 30, now that's something to get worked up about, and I knew when I had to do it for the first time, it would sting a little bit. But actually waking up on September 27th would likely be painless. I knew I could handle it. Why all the fuss? Why the drama?

The simple answer is, I don't know. Just like I want oatmeal one day for breakfast and scrambled eggs the next, how I feel about my life and where I am and what I have accomplished and haven't accomplished changes each day without any rhyme or reason. I try my best to be positive and level-headed, but the truth of the matter is, my uncertainty gets the best of me sometimes, and while I appear to others to have it together most of the time, on the inside, I'm a big old mess.

I got through the rest of Day 326 taking advice from one of the first bosses I ever had who said, "You gotta fake it till you make it." I put on a courageous, happy face and told myself that I was fine and that turning 30 is fine. People do it everyday, and I had to find a way to do it gracefully (and by "gracefully," I mean without crying at work.) A few deep breaths and a couple of walks around the office and I started to believe it.

Still, I needed a diversion. Emily had plans that night, so I called in for backup and emailed Melanie and Bug to see if they could do either of the two things that I usually use to help quell my anxiety: have a drink or exercise. Actually I went the exercise route first, asking if they wanted to take a walk through the Atlanta Botanical Gardens.

Bug was out, but Melanie was up for whatever. She pointed out that Thursday nights feature, "Cocktails in the Garden" at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens, making them, "not really suited for working out."

"What's your goal?," Melanie asked me. Did I want to exercise? (Yes. Exercise is always a good thing.) Or do you want to drink? (Sure. Definitely. Always.)

My only goal was to rid myself of my sky-high anxiety and forget, if only for an evening, that I was six weeks from turning 30. So we headed to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens for Cocktails in the Garden, Day 326's thing I've never done before.

Atlanta's Botanical Gardens are adjacent to Piedmont Park downtown. We arrived right as the sun was going down, which was unfortunate, because we were able to see very little of the actual gardens before it got dark.

There were cocktails though, and that was my biggest concern anyway. Better than that, they were featuring specialty cocktails made with Sweet Tea flavored vodka, arguably the greatest thing to come out of South Carolina besides yours truly and Hootie & the Blowfish. The bartender was a bit heavy handed, which I also liked. We paid for our drinks and he sent us on our way.

Thanks to the darkness (and the whole camera/pictures fiasco), I can't tell you much about specific plants and flowers that we saw. The Botanical Gardens are certainly lit for nighttime, and there is an air of whimsy about the that I liked. There were pathways leading all around the grounds and it felt a little Alice in Wonderland to me since I had no idea where I was going or what was coming next.

We started our tour on a Canopy Walk 600-feet above the gardens that led us to a tunnel with mosaic art on the walls; we eventually arrived at a cascading fountain with big lit up palm trees. We purchased another beverage and then wandered through some of the gardens' greenhouses. As we moved in and out of rows of orchids that reminded me of Yaya and Greece, I could feel myself starting to relax.

Melanie and I took a seat on a bench in a gazebo overlooking the gardens with a glorious view of the Atlanta skyline in the background. We sipped our drinks, caught up on each other's lives and gossiped for at least an hour. I know I sound cliché when I say two liquor drinks and a walk through some gardens is all it takes to soothe my nervous energy, but in this case, both were a huge help. I felt so much better. Peaceful, even.

Isn't that what gardens are for? To bring people beauty and peace?

Sitting under the lights of Atlanta tucked away in the flowers of the gazebo, I felt small. And my impending birthday felt terribly inconsequential. The world will keep turning; flowers will die and bloom again. And all I can do is soak it all up, one day at a time. There are far bigger problems and triumphs going on around me. I knew that when the actual birthday came, I’d never be able to predict how I'd feel about it – I could cry, I could laugh, I’d probably do both.

But I would survive it.

And as long as there are flowers and sweet tea vodka, everything was going to be okay.

Day 303: Googie-Spiked Fountain Fun

Day 303 had been in the works for a while, and the idea came courtesy of my friend Amanda (of walk the mall, workplace romance, and online dating fame).

"Have you ever run through the rings at Centennial Olympic Park?"

"No," I said, and I'm sure I made a face too. She asked me this question in the middle of winter and the idea sounded terrible.

"Well when the weather warms up, we should do it."

I agreed. It's cheap, it's fun, it's something every Atlantan must do.

And on Day 303, the weather was plenty warm enough. It was downright hot. Time to put Amanda's idea to the test. Only thanks to her work schedule and a mid-summer sinus infection, she couldn't actually join in the fun.

Emily and Mo could, though. Day 303's thing I've never done before was to eat at Googie Burger, drink a spiked milkshake, and run through the rings at Centennial Olympic Park.

After some discussion at work ahead of the trip, we decided that we'd eat first and then run through the fountain. Emily and I met Mo at Googie Burger, a new walk-up burger joint inside the park. We stood back from the ordering counter and eyed the menu, which was short and sweet: Classic Googie Burger (Cheeseburger), Beefy Pig Burger (Bacon Cheeseburger), Flying South Sandwich (Fried Chicken Sandwich), Veg-Out Burger (Black Bean Burger). They offered a Kids Meal and fresh-cut French Fries.

Emily got a kids meal, Mo went for the Classic, and I opted for the Veg-Out.

I paid for my meal and the attendant slid me my receipt.

"You're Googie number 69," she said with a smile. I turned and looked at Emily and Mo and we all burst out laughing, proving that though our birth certificates say we're adults, our sense of humors still rival teen aged boys.

My Googie number was the number that they shouted down at the loud speaker when my order was ready, so we got to hear them say, "69," several other times. And we laughed every time.

"69, your drink is up."

"Googie 69, we've got your food ready."

"69! 69! 69!"

I swear the teenagers in the back were making up excuses to say it on the intercom, I felt like they said it so many times. The almost-30 year old in me wanted to march up to the counter and tell them to stop, reminding them that there are kids in this park.

When I did my retrieve my food and walked it to our table, I was completely overwhelmed. The portions were huge. Not too huge that I didn't wolf it all down, but I probably would've been equally satisfied with Emily's Kids Meal portion. And her meal was served in a frisbee!

I honestly cannot say enough wonderful things about Googie Burger; their black bean burger is one of the best I've ever had. Their fries are perfection. The flies were all over us and our food while we ate (there are only outside tables at Googie Burger) and that was annoying, but a small price to pay for the delicious meal.

Plus, after dinner, we went back to the counter to order dessert: a spiked milkshake. "Spiked," as in alcoholic. "Spiked,"as in awesome. "Spiked," as in I love you.

Admittedly, a milkshake with alcohol was a definitely the reason we went to Googie Burger in the first place, and had the food been terrible I would've still said good things about it for having come up with a concoction so ingenious. But the food really is good. And the milkshakes are so good.

There are just two flavors: Twinkie (Vanilla Vodka and Creme de Banana) and Red Devil (Vanilla Vodka, Creme de Cocoa, Maraschino Cherry Juice.)

Emily and I went for the Twinkie and Mo got the Red Devil.

When I went to retrieve my shake, (again, after they called "69" loud and proud over the intercom), I saw two regular cups full of milkshake, and two smaller cups half full of milkshake. I was confused. The guy behind the counter could tell, so he explained.

"That's the leftover," he said, "I just wanted to make sure you got all your vodka."

I love you, 16-year old kid behind the counter. I love you, Googie Burger.

Benjamin Franklin said, "Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." Spiked milkshakes are also proof of God's love, and could serve as evidence that God is probably a woman.

We walked our shakes over to the fountain and surveyed the very large, very lively, very young crowd. That's pretty standard for summertime. Centennial Olympic Park is a popular tourist attraction as it is, but the Fountain of Rings, a water exhibit in the shape of the Olympic rings, draws a crowd of locals all summer long.

After watching the pure joy on the faces of the children frolicking in the fountain, there was nothing left to do but get out there and do it ourselves. But I knew the "run through the fountain" I had imagined and that Amanda had suggested was not going to happen. There was just too much going on, too many people to do so without seriously injuring ourselves or the little kids.

We took our shoes and socks off and set some ground rules. We'd go in pairs, each of us had to go twice, and each pair had to walk (not run) through each of the five rings. The person not walking through the fountain would take pictures with my horrible camera that had a five second delay and took terrible pictures, few of which turned out.

Who makes up rules for running through a fountain? We're lame.


I should've guessed by the children wearing just bathing suits who had come there seeking relief from the dog days of summer that the potential for getting soaked was high. It's why Emily and I didn't change out of our workout clothes and why Mo was wearing a t-shirt and shorts. I didn't quite understand, however, just how completely drenched we would get.


Granted, we could've avoided it, by timing the bursts of water and only running to the next ring afer they went off. But what's the fun in that?

On our last run, Mo even ordered me to stand over one of the water jets until it went off and I was completely drenched. This decision helped turn, "running through the Fountain of Rings," into a Tuesday afternoon wet t-shirt contest for all of downtown Atlanta. Seriously. It was embarrassing. And no, I do not have pictures of that, dirtbags.

Before we left the park (to get towels at Mo's house), we took one last look at the group of kids still playing and saw some funny stuff. Lots of pushing, lots of standing over the water and getting sprayed directly in the face, and one girl who was doing some pretty provacative dance moves that she probably saw in a rap video.

I hate to be a downer, but watching the little kids splash though the fountain was way more entertaining than doing it myself. I think this might be one of the few activities not suitable for adults.

But alcoholic milkshakes, on the other hand, I'm definitely young enough (and old enough) for that.

Day 297: I'm a Crazy Wino

Months ahead of Day 297, my friend Emily informed me that she had just purchased a Fusebox wine blending kit during a Woot Off. She suggested I buy one too and blend my own wine as the thing I've never done before.

A now-seasoned "Wooter," I didn't ask many questions. I like wine and I like Emily and I like parties. Clearly I had nothing to lose. The next thing I knew, we'd planned a hypothetical wine blending party, time and place TBD.

Websites like Woot.com and Groupon have been so helpful in my journey to try new things. Unfortunately, since they've also encouraged me to make a lot of impulse purchases (wine blending kit, wha?), they’ve not been so helpful in keeping me debt free and financially sound.

Allow me to answer the popular question I’m always asked: "Is doing 365 new things expensive?"

Without a doubt, hell yes.

“Oh well, who cares, I'll pay my bills when I'm 30,” is what I usually tell myself. But at the rate I'm going, I could be 40 before I pay for all of my 29th year adventures.

But the wine blending kit sounded like a fun activity, so I bought it. It arrived at my apartment a few weeks later, and I did what I was doing with all of my mail at that time, and I put it on my kitchen table. And that's where it stayed for weeks, months even. The box, that was large and heavy, was like a centerpiece on the table. I’d stack my other mail on top of it, prop my purse up against it. And before long, I forgot the kit was even there.

That is, until Emily reminded me at work that we needed to start working out the details for our party. So we settled on a date, sorted out a guest list and began to plan.

For Emily, this party would be an opportunity to host a party at the condo she had just bought (which is so fabulous and wonderfully decorated and one of the reasons I am always contemplating buying my own place), and an opportunity for the both of us to introduce our friends to each other. A precursor to the “World's Colliding” birthday party I'd planned in my head.

Oh, and also an opportunity to blend wine, Day 297's thing I've never done before.

Emily and I laughed on Days 295 and 296 about how completely unprepared we were to host a party. We had barely talked about food, and I hadn't even checked the Evite to know who all was coming. But I know me, and I knew Emily and I wasn't concerned; I knew we'd pull it off.

We met at Publix after work, and shopped for food for our guests. The kit suggested we provide the wine blending participants with plenty of crackers and other bread so that they can cleanse their palate between tastings, but made no mention of what other foods might be appropriate for a wine party. So we bought what we liked.

Cheese, crackers, summer sausage, tomato, mozzarella, and basil sticks, grapes, brownies, chicken fingers.

Who said chicken fingers can't be paired with wine?

We rushed back to Emily's house to start setting up and I marveled her wide array of serving platters and decorative dishes. If we'd had this party at my apartment, we'd be eating food off of a broiling pan or a cookie sheet. Thinking about that, as I was chopping vegetables and sticking toothpicks in tomatoes and cheese, I began to feel a wide array of emotions, none of which had anything to do with a wine blending party.

When Emily told me a year ago that she was buying a condo, I remember feeling so proud of her, and so impressed that she, two years younger than I, had made such an adult-decision. And standing in her kitchen looking around at all of her pretty things, I couldn't help but smile that her home is such a perfect representation of her personality. It's elegant and classy, but welcoming and homey. I wouldn't be surprised if I walked into her home unannounced and found her wearing a fabulous outfit and posing for a Southern Living magazine spread. But I also wouldn't be surprised if I walked in to find her in lying on her couch eating ice cream and wearing her pajamas in the middle of the day either.

Being at Emily's house forced me to consider why I, in the almost six years I've lived in Atlanta, have yet to muster to courage to lay down roots in a place of my own.

A few years ago, I almost did. I made up my mind that I wanted to buy a place; I looked at dozens of houses and condos with some of my real estate friends, and found several that I liked. I spoke to mortgage brokers about home loans and was almost ready to make an offer on a place, but flaked at the last minute, letting someone else swoop in and get the house. Looking back, I know I wasn't ready for the financial and personal responsibility of home ownership, but I also know that wasn't the only reason I backed out.

For reasons I haven’t completely identified, I have been reluctant to establish financial roots in Atlanta. Buying a home of my own makes me feel anxious, like as if doing so means that I’ve trapped myself in a place I’m not sure I want to be, and one that I’d never be able to escape. But why, I wonder? I have so many friends here, a good job, and there’s tons of stuff to do. Yet, when I look at my own place I can’t help but feel ashamed that, while full of charm and character, my apartment hardly looks like it belongs to a girl who has established herself in a city; no, shamefully, my place looks like a college dormitory, full of hand-me-down, mismatched furniture. So why not settle into a nicely decorated home that I own, with matching utensils and decorative serving trays? Doing so would make my mother so happy.

I'm suspect that some of my reluctance to bite the bullet and buy something has to do with the expectation I had that when the time came for me to settle somewhere, I would be doing so with another person; and the seemingly overwhelming decisions of whether to stay or go, rent or buy, would be all be shared ones.

So there's that.

But shouldn’t “that” be a good thing? The power, the freedom and the wherewithal to do whatever I want, whenever I want, wherever I want? I suppose, but for some reason, knowing that the sky really is the limit, is crippling me. I’m afraid to move, leaving everything and everyone that I know, and I’m afraid to stay, settling on my own and giving up on ever living anywhere else for a while. So I teeter that line of never really planting my feet, but never really exercising my wings.

I realize that what I’m about to say will likely set the woman’s movement back 50 years, but there is a part of me that finds having so much power debilitating. I’ve been in the driver’s seat of my own life for 29 years and I’m exhausted. And there are days when I'd gladly relinquish the keys to the right person and happily ride shotgun for a while. But not for the whole trip. And I get to choose where we eat. And what music we listen to.

Speaking of driving somewhere, I've lived in Atlanta for six years, and I feel like I’ve been thinking and talking about leaving for five of them. But if I was going to go, wouldn't I have gone already? I feel like I’m waiting for a sign that will tell me it’s time to move on, or time to stay, and it’s not coming. Why is it that the older I get the harder it is to identify what I want and go after it? Shouldn’t it be getting easier?

I recognized these are not party preparation normal people thoughts, so I tried to shake them out of my head and focus on the tasks at hand, feeling eternally grateful that this was a wine party and I’d be drinking with my friends very soon.

I don't know how, with our complete disorganization and my crazy internal commentary, but at 6pm, the time the party was supposed to start, Emily and I had everything set up and ready to go. White wine chilling, red wine sitting, hot chicken fingers plated, and our faces fixed, hair brushed.

And we waited.

And then we waited some more.

I went upstairs to Emily's room and posted a blog while we continued to wait.

We chuckled about what we were going to do with all of the food if no one showed up. Luckily we didn't have to because just as we started to consider our options, Emily's friend Elizabeth arrived. And then my other friend Emily came. And then Maribeth.

Shelley and Kyle were the last ones to come, arriving straight from their tennis lesson. We'd all already had some wine, so we were appropriately loosened up. I could sense apprehension coming from them, though, so I poured them each a glass of wine. They grabbed some food and then joined us at the table.

"So," Shelley said, taking a seat, "Is this like some sort of pyramid scheme?"

I almost spit my wine out onto the table.

"What?!," I laughed, "No! Why would you think that?"

"Oh you know," she went on, "People invite you over for a 'wine party' and the next thing you know you've signed up to be a distributor and they're making tons of money off of you."

I knew what she was talking about; I'd been invited to parties like that before too and I did not appreciate it. Certainly Shelley didn't think that I'd get involved in something like that. But I'd like to think if I was, I'd at least be a little more transparent about it.

I had anxiety for the rest of the night that some of my friends thought that I was dumb enough to get involved in a pyramid scheme, and terrible enough to get them involved in it.

Emily and I together tried to explain what we were going to do, which was a challenge, since even though we forced ourselves to read the instruction manual minutes before the guests arrived, we didn't really understand. We knew right away that we didn't have enough wine glasses to do it the exact way it was intended, so we made up the rules as we went along.

The Fusebox kit included several bottles of wine, recipe cards of blends, pipettes and a mixing cylinder ala chemistry class. The idea was to blend and try some of the recipes to determine what flavors we all preferred before going on our own and creating our own blends.

Going to wine country in northern California is on the list of things I cannot wait to do in my life, but I'm starting to wonder if the experience for me would be more about the gorgeous scenery than about the wine. Because after a couple of tastes of our concoctions, everything started to taste the same. They all just tasted like wine.

In front of each of us were paper place mats, provided in the kit, so that we could write down comments about each of the blends pertaining to their aroma, taste and finish. I don’t think anyone wrote anything down and the chances of us ever being able to recall what we drank or how we blended it are pretty much non-existent.

After a few recipes, we abandoned the blending and did what we do best when it comes to wine: drinking. And talking, mainly coming from my crazy friends. Poor Elizabeth and Emily. My friends dominated in numbers, and in volume, and everyone left with gray-stained teeth and purple lips.

I came to grips with the fact that “hosting a dinner party,” is probably not going to happen for me as one of the 365 things I’ve never done before, since lack a place large enough, and nice enough, to host outsiders. But thanks to good friends who are far more emotionally and financially responsible than me, who are willing to help me co-host parties, I still have a little bit more time to figure out where I’m going.

Or if I’m staying. Or going.

Day 248: Silly, Silly, Silly Bandz

On Day 248 I walked over to my friend Emily's desk and saw a plethora of new toys on her desk.

"What are those?," I asked Emily, pointing at the oddly shaped figures on top of her computer.

"Silly Bandz," she replied, as if I should've already known.

"Oh, that's a Silly Band?," I asked, picking one up. It reminded me of the jelly bracelets I used to wear in elementary school, only sitting on Emily's desk, the bracelets looked like a football, a helmet, an elephant. Emily's Silly Bandz were Alabama football themed.

I first heard of Silly Bandz from my most favorite celebrity Kelly Ripa, who thanks to her own kids, sometimes wears and talks about them on her show.

Mo gets the credit for the bringing the plastic bracelets in animal shapes into my life, however. I'm still not sure why Mo knows so much about the most popular accessory in middle schools, but he outfitted some of our co-workers with their very own.

"Do you want one?," Emily asked me, almost childlike, proving that we're never too old to participate in trends meant for pre-teens.

"Sure," I said, happy to take part in the craze.

Day 248's thing I've never done before was to wear Silly Bandz.

I wore the two Silly Bandz Emily gave me off and on for about a week. In that time, I'd often forget that they were on my wrist, but when I did glance down I couldn't help but be reminded that Mo actually paid for these colorful rubberbands.

And that's all they really are. Rubberbands.


Rubberbands that have been banned from some schools because they cause such a distraction. They are, according to Time Magazine, 2010's version of Beanie Babies and Pokemon cards.


True, they form into the shape of animals, and I suppose that is the draw for children, but why so much hysteria over a plastic arm band? I'm not trying to be a downer, and crap all over Silly Bandz, I'm just trying to express my frustration over the fact that I didn't think of this idea. My brother used to wear a rubber band on his wrist all of the time, and my friend Greg still does. Why didn't it ever occur to me when looking at either of their wrists, "Now if I made that rubber band mold into the shape of a monkey and then painted it red, I could make kids go crazy and be a millionaire."

Later that month, I also wished I'd held onto my Silly Bandz for my family's annual trip to the beach in North Carolina. Those bracelets could've earned me the street cred I so desparately needed around my cousins' kids, who spend half of the short time we are together unsure of who I am and therefore scared to talk to me. Had I come to the beach with an arm full of Silly Bandz, I may have made some progress on these relationships.

Silly bands are just as their name suggests. They're silly. They're downright ridiculous. But damn I wish I would've thought of them.

Day 247: Spicing Things Up

"Today's the day," I announced to my friends at work. "I've got my reservation for Spicy Chicken."

In the weeks leading up to the unveiling of its newest menu item, the Spicy Chicken sandwich, fast food restaurant Chik-fil-a began a marketing campaign encouraging customers to make a reservation to try the sandwich for free.

Since there is a store in the food court of my office, it seemed fitting that I would sign up for one of these free sandwiches and try one as Day 247's thing I've never done before.

"This is history in the making," Mo said, when I told him it was time.

I don't know if I would go that far. True, this was the Spicy Chicken sandwich debut, but I'm not sure anyone will write about it in history books. I don't see myself ever turning to my children and saying in my most earnest voice, "Kids, you know what today is, don't you? The 25th anniversary of Chik-fil-a's release of the Spicy Chicken Sandwich. Let's all pause for a moment of silence in remembrance of this day."

On the other hand, the day the Spicy Chicken was made available to Chik-fil-a customers is exactly the kind of useless information I always seem to remember, so maybe I will.

Regardless, with my reservation form in hand, Mo and I headed downstairs to the food court in our office to pick up my free trial sandwich.

"I'm here for the Spicy Chicken," I said triumphantly to the man behind the counter, handing him my form.

He was friendly, and he smiled when I said it. Meanwhile, Mo was behind me snapping pictures of the entire encounter behind me on his iPhone. For all this guy knew, this could've been my first ever trip to a fast food restaurant.

Just before he handed me my food and drink, the Chik-fil-a guy started looking a little shady, like he had to tell me a secret or something. I was not at all following what he was doing.

"For mi amigo," he said, nodding his head towards Mo as he slipped a second spicy chicken sandwich into my bag.

We're not sure if it was our friendly conversation with the guy, or the fact that Mo was wildly snapping pictures to the point that it made him appear mentally challenged and therefore deserving of a free sandwich too that made our new friend so generous, but we got out of there with two free sandwiches, a drink and a salad for $4.10.

We thanked him profusely, like he had done us an enormous favor, realizing on our way back upstairs that free Spicy Chicken sandwiches were fairly easy to come by that week, reservation or not.

When we got back to Mo's desk, we handed the camera to Justin to document our reaction.

Since everything Chik-fil-a makes (with the exception of the carrot raisin salad) is pretty much delicious, I knew that I would like it. I just didn't know how much I would like it. I did not know that they would knock a spicier version of their already kick-ass sandwich out of the fast food ball park. It's just like the regular Chik-fil-a sandwich, only it tastes like it's been dipped in wing sauce.

After discovering how much I loved the Spicy Chicken, I asked around to see what others thought about it. The reviews were mixed, which for some reason really offended me.


Justin shrugged his shoulders and said, "It's ok. I just think it tastes like their regular chicken sandwich covered in wing sauce."

"I know!," I said, excitedly.

The very reason I loved it is the same reason Justin wasn't at all impressed.

My friend Emily's boyfriend Jay works for Chick-fil-a and he said they've been working on the Spicy Chicken sandwich for ten years. At the time, I was 247 days into this year-long project and completely exhausted, I can't imagine working on the same sandwich for TEN years. I suspect Chik-fil-a takes this much time with all of their new menu items, meaning if I started working on something now, I'd be almost 40-years old before anyone in the general public ever got to try it.

Though I wouldn't want to devote all of that time into a spicier version of the original, I am so thankful that someone did. I'd say it was time well spent.

Day 237: Flood Recovery, Lake Therapy

My friend Emily sent me an email ahead of Day 237 that her church was organizing a team to go to Nashville to assist victims affected by the recent flooding. She had already decided to go and asked if I'd like to come along.

Volunteering in Tennessee for flood recovery sounded like a perfectly wonderful thing to do for Day 237's thing I've never done before. So I did.

We met early on Saturday morning at Emily's boyfriend Jay's house, and stopped for a quick breakfast, then gas, then coffee before getting on the road to Nashville. I joked that the trip was starting to feel like some of the road trips I've taken with women when it seems like it takes forever just to get on the interstate.

When we finally did get on the road, it was Emily, Jay and their friends Kyle and Lauren in one car and me following behind in my car. They had elected ahead of time to drive up to Tennessee and return the same day. I decided to stay in Nashville for the evening, so I drove separately.

I didn't mind at first, because I actually enjoy solo car rides, as long as there are plenty of good tunes to keep me occupied, which there were (Thank you Rolling Stones, and Exile on Main Street). After a week of inconsistent sleep, however, the long, mountainous trip by myself wasn't fun forever, and I was very happy when we finally arrived at our destination. Nashville is not as close as I thought it was.

I wasn't sure exactly what we would be doing as volunteers, and I wasn't exactly sure what kind of damage we'd find. I've seen the aftermath of tornadoes and hurricanes and the destruction is usually apparent right away with roofs ripped off homes and debris littering neighborhoods. I wondered if flooding damage looked the same. I've seen pictures on the news of houses and businesses under water, but what's left when the water dries up?

Though a lot of the cleanup effort had already been going on for several weeks, I still expected to see neighborhoods in ruins. But flooding damage, I came to find out, is not as easy to spot. In fact, had it not been for the volunteer tents set up along the way, I might not have noticed when we had entered the flood zone.

We checked in at the church and then drove ourselves over to the neighborhood where we were going to be working. Volunteers peppered the streets wearing gloves, carrying various tools, so I knew we'd arrived at an area affected by the flooding. I was surprised, however, that most of the houses, from the outside at least, looked fine.

Jay and I parked our cars and let the site manager know that we had arrived. He was very friendly, and thanked us for coming. Then he motioned towards one of the houses, and told us our group had already started working inside tearing down dry wall. When I looked over at the house there were dozens of men and women, some wearing surgical masks walking in and outside of the house, throwing dry wall out of windows, and stacking items from inside the house out on the side of the street.

Among the items by the road included furniture, desk lamps, school art projects, a plastic jewelry box. Looking at the stack of personal belongings made me sad, and I thought of the family that was forced to leave them, and their home, behind. Was there time to grab any of their belongings, or did they evacuate before they had time to think about any of that?

We walked over to the house to lend our assistance by picking up the drywall they were throwing out of windows and carrying it to the front of the house to stack it with the rest of the items that were to be thrown away. I caught a glimpse of the activity going on indoors and was amazed at what I saw. Inside this home that from the outside, appeared to be fine, was not just a frame of what once was.

It took five minutes for the five of us to assist with the drywall, and we were all starting to feel like our help could be better used at another location with less people, so we grabbed a rake and a shovel and took off down the street in hopes we could find someone else to help.

The site manager had instructed us to simply go door to door and ask anyone if they needed anything. He also explained that a lot of what was needed was simple yard cleanup. Yards and sidewalks had been littered with debris that needed to be raked or swept up and bagged so it could be hauled away.

For the most part it was an easy task, but one that really opened my eyes to the impact of flash floods. Pill bottles, kitchen tiles, makeup brushes, television wires were just some of the personal items I collected. The rising water had ravaged these homes, picking up sheds and flipping them upside down; in one case, a house's add-on had been ripped up from its foundation completely and moved from the backyard to the front.

When I asked anyone who lived in the neighborhood what would become of the homes in the neighborhood, no one could really tell me for sure. Some were still waiting to dry up all of the moisture inside to make a final assessment, others were unsalvagable and would likely be torn down, leaving the occupants to find another place to live.

In my own little sick game of, "What natural disaster is the absolute worst?," I always thought I'd rather suffer a hurricane or flooding simply because, I thought, at least there would be time to prepare, as opposed to earthquakes and tornadoes, that strike without warning. But after talking to people and seeing the condition of their homes, flooding often happens a lot more quickly than many realize and once it happens, the results can be devastating.

At midday, our team leader drove by where we were working and said lunch would be served on the next street over in the next few minutes. The news was exciting because I was starving. We walked over and saw the rest of our team sitting on the side of the street with paper sack lunches strewn about them. We looked around for a box or a bin where we might also find a sack lunch. But we couldn't find one.

That's because there weren't any lunches left.

When they saw us looking around, the project leaders darted their heads to the left and to the right as if by doing so, they might magically make new sack lunches appear for the five of us.

They apologized profusely for running out, and other volunteers who became aware of our predicament offered to share their lunches with us. One of the leaders even jumped in his truck in search of food for us. I was gracious and smiled because I could tell everyone felt badly, but inside I was freaking, certain that if I didn't eat something soon I was going to have a meltdown.

I'm not sure if Emily could tell how I felt, but she tried to call my nerves by telling me that she packed snacks and they were in the car. So we walked back and dove into her plastic bag full of snacks, including crackers, peanut butter and gummy candy (Emily's favorite food group). I was thankful she was willing to share her food and was trying to convince myself that missing one meal is a small disappointment compared to the tragedy that the folks in this neighborhood have suffered.

Just when I thought I was going to eat Swedish fish for lunch, a woman and her son drove by and rolled down their car window.

"Are y'all hungry? We've got hamburgers and hot dogs!"

Say whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

Emily gathered up the various snacks in her lap, threw them in a bag and stepped out of the car blowing right past me towards the woman in the car who made the offer. I don't think I've ever seen her move so fast in my life.

A lot of the people in town, so touched by the kindness of strangers coming to help them out, had decided to make it their job to feed the volunteers. Some of the volunteer tents we walked by had snacks, first aid items, drinks, all free for the taking. They were even making deliveries!

Missing out on the paper sack lunch ended up being the best thing that could've happened to us, and that was one of the best hog dogs I've ever eaten.

After lunch, we continued down the street and came across a house where several people were standing in the front yard around a huge pile of gravel.

We approached them with all of our tools in hand. Jay took the lead, told the family who we were and what we were doing there, and then asked if we could help them. There was a bit of a language barrier, and therefore some confusion, I think, as to what we meant by "help," but after a brief back and forth exchange, we understood that they needed the pile of gravel loaded on to the bed of one of a man's pickup truck. So we grabbed shovels and began.

Not long after we began, I looked around and noticed that we, Emily, Jay, Kyle and Lauren and I, were the only ones shoveling the gravel. The family members were either standing around watching us, or had returned to inside the home.

I considered maybe there weren't any more shovels. But there were plenty of shovels. Jay even handed one of the shovels to one of the men who I don't think understood the subtle nudge.

Pardon my, "God helps those who help themselves," moment here, but we were offering to help them, not offering to do all of the work.

Perhaps it was again the language barrier, or perhaps they've been working so hard themselves and under so much stress that at the first sign of help, they opted to sit this one out, but regardless, we were a little turned off.

Apparently I don't do enough manual labor and my dainty hands can't survive one afternoon of hard work, because in the curve in between my index finger and my thumb, I developed two nasty blisters that stuck around for a week.

"Did they not have any gloves?" more than one person asked me when I returned to Atlanta and showed them my wounds.

"Yeah, they had gloves," I responded. "I was wearing gloves."

I think I could stand to do more projects like this. My hands could too, apparently.

On our way down the street, we came across a volunteer tent with snacks, drinks, and plenty of first aid items. I asked a woman for a couple of band-aids for my hands and she whipped out peroxide and Neosporin and band-aids, making sure my blisters were well taken care of. Nashville women have southern hospitality down.

We ended the day near where we started, sweeping and bagging more debris for the trucks to come by and pick it up. And then we gathered for some words of encouragement by the team leader and a group prayer.

I'm not sure how impactful our service in Nashville was; I never got to demo anything (much to my dismay) and the place really didn't look all that different from when we arrived. But I'd like to think that we freed some of the residents up to do more of the bigger cleanup by assisting in their yards. And hopefully our presence helped them feel less alone in their journey to recovery.

And just like it always does, giving back to this small community made me feel a lot better probably than it made them feel. Doing something nice for someone else is always a winner.

I certainly didn't need to drive to Nashville to witness devastation like this to understand how insignificant material possessions are and how quickly they can be taken away, but being reminded certainly didn't hurt. I am so blessed to have the things that I do, but they are so temporary; it's the people and experiences that truly enrich my life.

After leaving the volunteer group, Emily, Jay, Lauren and Kyle all headed back to Atlanta, and I drove to Percy Priest Lake to meet my friends Jeremiah and Lucia, who had spent the afternoon boating. I planned to make them feel badly about themselves for spending an afternoon on the lake relaxing while I broke my back doing manual labor.

Jeremiah and I worked together in 2004 for Country Music Television, driving a truck and trailer across the country to different fairs and festivals promoting the network. We traveled full time for a year, and basically lived together at Hampton Inns all over the United States. Lucia was our boss, but became our friend.

They, along with their friend Amy, had been taking advantage of another CMT friend, Anthony's boat club membership. I just started hearing about boat clubs, and I'm completely in love with the idea. Basically Anthony pays into the service monthly and then can use boats from the fleet associated with the club whenever he wants. Plans are in the works for me to live in a place where I can be a member of a boat club, or better yet, just own my own boat outright.

They arrived at the dock to pick me up and two of their friends jumped off. I hugged Lucia, Jeremiah, and Anthony and met their friend Amy, who was enjoying her first day off in several months having lead the volunteer effort for flooding recovery for Hands on Nashville.

"You've been volunteering all day?," Amy asked me.

"Yes!," I responded smiling, feeling really great about the day.

"And now you're here? In resort wear?," she asked me.

I had to laugh, because her surprise was not unfounded. I started the day in Atlanta, drove to Nashville, and now was here, in a swimsuit, ready to enjoy the last few hours of daylight with some old friends. Her confusion made perfect sense.

Packing a swimsuit and being ready for summertime activities at all times is a strange, but classic Stephanie move. During the summertime I almost always travel with a beach chair and a bathing suit in my car for moments like these when I summoned to the lake, beach, pool. I just want to be ready.

We stayed out on the boat until the sun went down, catching up, and listening to some of Anthony's favorite Lady Gaga hits. Day 237 also became a day when I got to use the bathroom in a bucket aboard a boat, a truly memorable experience that Jeremiah captured on film.

After docking the boat we headed back to Lucia's to clean up and then to Edgefield Bar and Grill for some much needed food. Everyone was so tired, there wasn't a lot of conversation. We focused on our meals. That is, until Lucia got the bill and realized the waitress had rang up our orders for $8257. There was a lot discussion about that.

The free-spirit, live it up part of my personality wanted to hit the town and enjoy Nashville. Every other part of my personality and all of my body was screaming, "Nooooooooooooooooooo."

So when Jeremiah suggested we go home and make a pallet on the floor and watch movies, I said, "Yesssssssssssssssssssssssss."

So that's what we did. I think I saw less than five minutes of the movie before I drifted off, exhausted. Not exactly the rocking time in Nashville that I was expecting, but I wouldn't have had it any other way.

Day 235: The Price of Progress

Any time a house or building goes through construction, there are growing pains. My office is currently undergoing a massive renovation that when completed, will bring our facility into the 21st century. I think I speak for all of my coworkers when I say we are excited about the finished product. We're less excited, however, at sharing our workspace with a construction team that works around the clock.

Day 235's thing I've never done before was to go to work in a construction zone; I was forced to wear winter attire in the middle of the summer, I wore a hardhat, and did business over the phone with chainsaws and drills in the background.

My co-worker Jackie comes into work before I do, and keeps me abreast of the temperature, especially when it reaches an abnormally chilly level, which it tends to do. Nobody's really sure why, in the dead of a hot Atlanta summer, our office can get so cold, that we need Snuggies and fleeces, but on Day 235, the subzero temperatures forced me to raid my friend Emily's drawer for the fleece she keeps inside.

My work environment wasn't ever "quiet" to begin with, but now we're forced to contend not just with each other, but also with the sound of drilling, sawing, and hammering on the other side of the wall the construction team erected to separate us from them. On Day 235, I realized just how bad the noise could get when I picked up the phone to call one of my clients.

"Hey, Lawrence? It's Stephan-"

(Drrrrriiiillllllll, Ssssssssssaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwww)

"LAWWWWWRRRRRRRRENCE," I yelled into the phone, "It's STEPHANIE!!!! CAN YOU HEAR . . . me?"

Right as I was yelling, "HEAR," the drilling abruptly stopped, causing everyone to turn and look at what the shouting was about.

"Whoa," Lawrence said, on the other end of the phone, reacting to the fact that I was suddenly shouting at him.

"Sorry!" I said, embarrassed. "It's the drilling. The construction. Nevermind."

Luckily Lawrence and I are friends so I didn't have to go into too depth of an explanation. This scenario has played out with others I'm not as friendly with and it's not always as easy to explain.

To their credit, my company has done an excellent job at alerting us about days and nights when the drilling might be especially loud. They've even bought us food to compensate for our troubles.

Still, when the noise had reached headache level, I jokingly cried out, "I can't work under these conditions!" I was kidding, but I'm honestly not sure I can. By day's end, my ears were ringing and my heart racing, and I fear that Day 235 was just the beginning of a long road ahead.

Of course, there is a good possibility that part of my tenseness came from the fact that after work, I was going on another first, my first second date with FF (remember him?), which also turned out to be my first trip to Hob Nob, a restaurant specializing in high gravity beers and pub food. We had one of those second dates that I thought only happened on Match.com commercials. We closed the restaurant down, then we closed the bar down, and then we sat in my car until 5am and talked about nothing until we realized Thursday night had turned into Friday morning and we both had to be at work in a few hours.

This still isn't a dating blog, but I thought it was worth mentioning, especially since the day started with me wearing a hard hat.

The price of progress, then?

For my future state of the art office space the cost seems to be predictable room temperatures, a relatively peaceful work environment, and consistent, normal phone conversations.

Getting to know an interesting guy and pretending like I'm still in high school for a night cost me $8 (the price of two beers) and a productive Friday.

Not a bad deal, I don't think. On either front.

Day 230: Bayou Cooking School

Weeks before going to Panama and embarking on the juice fast, I'd planned what I was going to do on Day 230.

Actually, it was my friend Tray, a Louisiana native, who decided that for Day 230's thing I've never done before, I was going to learn how to boil crawfish. And he was going to teach me.

Of all the activities to welcome me back into the world of eating solid foods after a 72-hour hiatus, I'm not sure this was the best one. Not because I don't love crawfish, but because presuming I was successful in learning how to cook them, I wasn't going to be able to eat them since I was still only permitted to eat things that were raw. I wasn't even supposed to enjoy the second best thing at a crawfish boil, ice cold beer.

Damn you, Arden. And your stupid garden.

Like it or not, this was the day of Tray's annual charity crawfish boil, so I had no choice but to make this the day that I learned how to cook the little critters. My friend Emily came along with me to the event, for the second year in a row. Last year's crawfish boil turned into an all day affair that ended in a parking lot in the pouring down rain and may or may not have involved splashing strangers in puddles and a dance off. Though we weren't sure we were ready for that kind of fun this year, there is no doubt that Tray and his friends know how to throw a good party.

We arrived at the event, which is in a big yard behind a house in an Atlanta neighborhood called Virginia-Highlands. After a stop at the beer truck (That's right, I drank a beer. I may have had two. This was me giving the middle finger to fasting and to Arden's Garden), Emily and I started walking to a sectioned off area at the right side of the yard where Tray had set up to boil the crawfish. We could see several pots already in progress, but Tray was nowhere to be found. Not surprising, since he is one of the hosts of the event, and has quite a few responsibilities. I imagine it's a labor of love for him. He works his tail off the weeks leading up to the boil and on the day of, but he does so surrounded by all of his friends from Louisiana who come into town to support the cause. I think he manages to have a little bit of fun while working so hard.

But because he was running the show, he was sometimes difficult to track down.

Once we arrived at the cooking area, Emily and I both ran into several people that we knew, but we still didn't see Tray. I knew I needed to be near the pots of crawfish, but wasn't ready to cross the makeshift barrier into an area where I knew no one. Instead, we opted to stand outside the barrier looking longingly, and awkwardly toward the pots, like we were trying to get into a party we weren't invited to.

Finally I spotted Tray and said, "I'm ready to get my crawfish on!"

He shook his head laughing and said, "Where've you been? I've been cooking for three hours."

Emily and I received permission to cross over into the sacred crawfish boiling area.

"Alright," I said, "Let's get started."

Tray handed me a lighter and told me to light a flame on the gas burner beneath the pot.

"Sure," I said, confident this task would be easy. Only it wasn't. I don't know if I was scared I was going to burn my hand off or if my clothes weren't permitting me to get low enough to see what I was doing, but regardless, I couldn't make it happen; couldn't get the flame lit.

He didn't say so, but I'll bet Tray was thinking it was going to be a long day of teaching if I can't even light the burner.

Once he got it lit, Tray instructed me to cut lemons, potatoes, and garlic bulbs in half, and then throw them all in the boiling water for ten minutes.

"How many of each do I need to cut?" I asked, my need for a recipe rearing its ugly head.

"I don't know," he said, as he walked over to another pot already in progress. He lifted the lid and said, "This many."

I shrugged my shoulders and said, "Ok."

I hope you're not reading this entry in hopes that I can give you a legit recipe for a crawfish boil. There was no recipe, there was only Tray eyeballing my work and saying, "Yep. That looks about right."

He showed us where all of the ingredients were and handed us knives so Emily and I could start chopping, a task that seemed easy enough, except that the only table reserved for the preparation of this meal had just a square foot of open space, and we were fighting each other for it.

Not to mention, once everything was cut, getting it all into the pot of boiling water meant putting myself and those around me at potential and serious risk of 3rd degree burns.

I'm not sure if it was safer, but Emily and I turned our crawfish cooking into a basketball game, standing way back and hurling the lemons, potatoes, and garlic into the pot.

Tray had, at that time, disappeared again, leaving Emily and me by ourselves in this sectioned off area that consisted solely of Tray's friends, none of whom we knew. You can imagine, then, I'm sure, the understandably strange looks we received from some of them wondering what two random girls were doing in their VIP section chopping lemons and potatoes. Most of them stared at us, wondering who we were and why they'd never seen us before, and, likely, what we were doing there.

Others had the guts to ask, "Who are you?" or "Do I know you?," which inevitably led to me telling them that I was friends with Tray, and about the blog.

As usual, I said, "blog," they heard, "geek," and quickly walked away. Others were intrigued and wanted to hear more. One in particular was extremely concerned with us getting the full crawfish experience, especially if I was writing about it.

"Wanna see where we're keeping all of the crawfish?," he asked us.

I thought that might've been a pickup line or a euphemism for something else. It was not.

"No, seriously," he said, "They're over there in that truck." He led Emily and me up a small hill, opened the door to the truck and we climbed in to find several white coolers, all filled with live crawfish.

I was amazed by them, crawling all over each other, likely unaware of what was about to happen. I picked one up, feeling mildly sorry for the little thing that would soon meet its death in a pot full of boiled water that I'd prepared.

We thanked our new friend for giving us the behind the scenes tour of crawfish, and returned from our short field trip to find Tray waiting at the boiling pots.

"Has it been ten minutes?" he said to me.

"Ten minutes?," I asked.

"Yeah," he went on, "Has it been ten minutes since you put the potatoes in?"

"Uh . . .uh . . .," I stammered, "I don't know . . .I don't have a watch . . .I just picked up a crawfish . . .with your friend!"

Tray shook his head at me again, still smiling, realizing that I'm not as quick of a learner as he'd hoped, and that I needed constant supervision on this project. I realized that Tray wasn't just teaching me for the fun of it, he was counting on this batch of crawfish to be edible. I couldn't slack off any longer.

Once the potatoes (and the garlic and lemons) had cooked for 10 minutes, it was time for more ingredients--corn, sausage, and seasoning.

A lifetime Lowcountry boil fan, I looked over to where Tray was motioning towards seasoning and said, "Oh, like Old Bay?"

He glared at me like I'd killed his dog right in front of him.

"Fuck Old Bay," he said.

Then he held up a yellow bag of what I can only assume is the real deal, legit crawfish boil seasoning that obviously is 1000 times better than Old Bay.

"Well excuse the hell out of me," I said.

The final ingredient to go into the pot was the most important--the crawfish.

Now, I was there to help and do as much as I possibly could to aide in the crawfish boiling, but when it came to dumping the crawfish, the best assistance I could provide was to get the hell out of the way. That's because the pounds and pounds of crawfish are stored in long, white coolers and require those with a lot more physical strength than me to lift them high enough to dump into the boiling pot.

Tray and his friends took care of that as gracefully as they could, losing only a few runaway crawfish that creeped into the woods behind the pots.

Once all of the ingredients were cooking, it was time for me to stir them with a brown paddle that reminded me of the paddle Ben Affleck's character uses to beat up freshmen in Dazed and Confused.

So far I'd managed to show up late, not light the burner, forget to keep time, and offend Louisiana spices, but I thought for sure that I couldn't screw up stirring the pot. I was wrong. Tray informed me that stirring a crawfish pot is less round and round, more up and down motions. When I was doing it right, I was almost pushing the food into the seasoned water and letting it come back to the surface.

Despite having messed up nearly every step of the way, when it was time to go to work on another pot, I was feeling confident enough to ask Emily for assistance. In other words, I was feeling confident to start bossing Emily around.

"Bring me the corn," I said to her, while I was still stirring the pot.

"Oh, so now you have a sous chef?" Tray joked.

I don't know about that, but thanks to Tray's instruction and our teamwork, Emily and I managed to boil two batches of delicious crawfish for charity go-ers consumption.

We didn't eat any, because Emily hates crawfish and I couldn't eat anything cooked, but Tray gave me two thumbs up on a job well done and to my knowledge, there were no reports of food poisoning.

Anyone that got sick at the crawfish boil did so because of too many trips to the beer truck, not because of me.