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Here's a list of why it's nice to be at Nashville-Home.

1. They had cake upon my arrival. It wasn't for me. It was for Michelle because it was her birthday, but it was still cake.

2. Extremely long talks with Michelle while I should be working.

3. Jesse (3) waking me up in the morning after I get home by switching on my light and saying "Airwn, I'm ahWAKE!"

4. Wesley (12) today super excited to show me that he can play the solo from Hotel California.

5. Trin (11) is watching Xanadu as I type this.

6. After hearing that I was going to take the kids to the Opryland Hotel to get pizza Jesse says "That would be SOOOOOOO AHmaZING!"

7. Jordan's (14) awkward I don't know if I'm emo, goth or scene phase where his t-shirts have to be a specific size and black and his overuse and misuse of the word apparatus.

8. Dinosaur hugs and kisses on the cheek from the man in my life, Jesse, and the phrase "I missed you SOOOO much. Yeah I did."

9. Much warmer weather and cooler coffeehouses (they would be even better if their wifi would work)

10. Cake.

While sitting at Midway

It is 6:30 pm and I am currently sitting at Gate B22 waiting for my 8:35 flight. I never time these things right no matter how hard I try. All throughout the terminal people are spilling out of the pubs trying to catch a glimpse of the Bears game. They must be doing well because every once in awhile I can hear cheering above the music on my iPod.

So here I am my last night in Chicago sitting in a very crowded airport eating the turkey sandwich (Thanksgiving leftovers of course) that my mother made me cursing the fact that I didn’t buy a bottle of water before I sat down and got my laptop out and feeling self-conscious about the piece of turkey that I know I have stuck in my front teeth. My “lunch bag” also has a bag of those Christmas shortbread cookies with red and green sprinkles on them and a note that says “Don’t Forget! Love Mom” on a napkin. Now I’m going through the check list in my head wonder just what the crap did I forget?

This weekend has been great and weird all at the same time. I’m so extremely glad to be home and see all my friends and family. I missed everyone to the point of insanity (no joke), but at the same time I’m starting to feel like my place in longer in Illinois. Everyone has new crazy stories that don’t include me (of course they not nearly as good), they’ve moved on with their lives and that’s totally to be expected. Although EVERYTHING is way more familiar than Nashville, it feels foreign at the same time. The little town that I lived in has exploded and changed in the 7 months that I’ve been away. I feel almost as out of place here as I did when I first moved to Nashville but at the same time completely comfortable like I never left. I don’t know how to describe it.

So here’s a brief recap of the weekend starting at Friday night.

Britney and I did end up hanging out, but I didn’t get to watch my detrimental to my emotional wellbeing girl movie (that’s okay I watch plenty of those in Nashville). We ended up acting like geeky boys that live in their mom’s basements and played Wii. Believe it or not I’ve never played and I’ve decided that I shouldn’t be allowed to play ever again. I got a little to into it and am still feeling sore today. Somehow I got my foot caught in the arm of the futon and almost face planted on the floor. I’m sure Jake, Britney’s husband, had no idea that we would be playing Wii and acting obnoxious (mostly on my part) when he left. In your face Jake!!! We’re not nearly as predictable as you thought.

At 9:30 my friends Matt and Bethany picked me up for the swanky party. I did end up wearing my cowboy boots. I didn’t know that no one knew that I was coming or the fact that it was above a funeral parlor (hilarious) and when I walked up the stairs past the grave stones for purchase I was greeted by shocked looks and people screaming my name. One of my friends picked me up and spun me around. It was amazing and most of the night people kept telling me how glad they were to see me. Too much attention was spent on me and I feel like a real jerk. You guys are great!

Saturday my family and I boarded the train and went downtown. Most of the day was spent at Daley Plaza at the German Christmas festival. It was really, really crowded and when you are a short as I am, it's hard to see anything at festivals or concerts. For some reason the tall guy always picks me to stand in front of.

At this very moment I accidentally caught eye contact with this dude and he just sat down next to me. Out of the corner of my I keep catching him looking at my laptop. Anyways back to this weekend.

While downtown I got to eat Giordanos so my Chicago experience was complete. It was cold, there were tons off people, Christmas lights, and amazing architecture. I could have done without the cold and the tons of people, but it was still awesome.


This morning I went to church. Oh gosh I forgot what it was like to have absolutely everyone know you at church. During the meet and greet portion of the service I think I received more hugs than I have in the 7 months that I have lived in Nashville. Randy announced that I was here from Nashville and a cheer went up. It’s crazy how great these people are to me. The worship team consisted of 4 long haired middle aged men playing Sabbath sounding worship tunes. I couldn’t help but smile through the whole worship thinking about how weird Warehouse is and how much I love it and all the people that go there. I realized looking around the room that I knew almost everyone there and knew all of there stories and they knew mine. I really miss that familiarity with people.

After church I went with my friends Benjie and Amy to Mandy and Ryan’s house and we all sat around, chatted, and ate leftovers from meals that I wasn’t a part of. Amy and Benjie like always had something very wise and profound to give me. I don’t know how these two know me as well as they do, but I swear they are the most perceptive people that I know and I think they understand my quirks better than I do.

Late afternoon I got to spend a couple hours with my best friend Julie and things picked up right were they left off. Nothing had changed. We just had a little bit more to talk about and as always a ton to laugh about.

So here I am at Midway, the boy that was next to me has now boarded another flight because unlike me he wasn’t 2 ½ hours early. Hey Nashville, Chicago didn’t convince me to stay. I don’t know why, but it didn’t. Guess it’s just further proof that this was God’s plan for me.

Sweet Home Chicago.

Thanksgiving morning I woke up at the ungodly hour of 5am. Yes, I do believe that God has nothing to do with any time before 8 in the morning. 5am is of Satan and is almost as evil as rock music (surely you know that I kidding about rock but I am still quite serious about early morning). Anyways, my wonderful friend Rob came and picked me up at 5:30 (yes believe it or not, I got ready in a half hour) and drove me to the airport.

My guy friends in Nashville are awesome!!! I can't get over what they pick up on and how willing they are to help me. I am EXTREMELY independent and have a really have a hard time letting people do nice things for me because I feel like I'm being an inconvenience. Knowing that I'm like this, these guys call me out on it and do awesome things like putting air in my tires (thanks James!) and in turn I've cooked a couple, in no way culinary masterpieces, meals for them. It seems to work out quite nicely. All this said, Rob picked me up at 5:30 and knowing that my favorite hard candy is Lemonheads, he brought me a huge box of them to eat while waiting for my flight.

The flight went well, better than the last time I flew home when I got stuck in security and they were calling my name overhead and I had to sprint through the terminal and even then once I got to my gate, the plane was pulling away, they had to re-dock it, and I had to walk onto the plane with everyone looking at me, and the couple next to me looked at me like I was of Satan, like 5am. I abhor being the center of attention and walking onto a plane where everyone has been seated for quite sometime and you're the girl that held up the whole flight, made me want to vomit. So this time was great. Yeah, those lemonheads, I ended up spilling them all over the plane. I didn't notice it until we landed and some mom started yelling to her 3 year old "Don't eat those, they have Corn Syrup in them". To avoid being the center of attention again, I bolted off that plane as fast as I could. I recall a time as a child when I spilled my lemonheads at the movies. You could hear them rolling down towards the front of the theatre.

One thing that I love about Nashville (and I guess the South in general) is that everyone talks to you. It really took me off guard when I first moved here. I would be sitting at a coffee shop reading a book and a person would strike up a conversation with me or my banker would ask me out on a date (creep). People are just really friendly. As soon as the plane landed and I saw the snow and when I accidentally bumped a lady in the terminal with my bag and she gave me an evil, evil look, I knew I was home. Oh the North.

Thanksgiving Day my aunt and uncle came over with my twin cousins who are 4 almost 5. There was a lot of food and lots of noise. My mom decided that for Chanukah she would buy the twins obnoxiously noisy toys. I've decided that when I have children (the longer I live with 4 kids the more likely it's going to be IF I have children) they are not going to get toys that play the same sound bite over and over again, or play the same 30 second song clip that only changes octaves and repeats over and over again and if someone buys them toys like that, magical elves will come in the night and clip the magical wires to the magical speaker.

Today my mom and I went to the day after Thanksgiving sales. I don't know why. I don't really like shopping and this is the worst day of the year to go shopping, but we did like idiots. It was nice to spend some time with her though and it really wasn't that bad.

Tonight I'm hanging out with my good friend Britney. She's going to cook food for the single girl that she feels sorry for and we'll probably watch a girly movie that will either A- make me feel awful about my single status or B- make it even harder for guys to win me over. Either one is healthy.

Late tonight, I'm going to Josh's annual swanky cocktail party and going to see a bunch of people that I haven't seen in the 7 months since I moved. I didn't know that I was going to be going to this and didn't bring any of my swanky clothes so I'm going to wear my cowboy boots. Yup. They are comfortable so that's what I'm going to wear and I'm going to just deal with the comments that I will get.

Tomorrow we're going downtown and Sunday is church at the good old Warehouse where I will be asked a million times if I'm dating someone in Nashville, but will get to see the friends that I miss the most. I'm sure that we will go out to eat and then hang out at Caribou where I will listen to all my philosophical friends talk and I will wish that I am as smart as they.

Nashville I miss ya, but it's great to be home. John, so far I don't have Stockholm syndrome.

chocolate like crack

This past month I've learned that I am a dark chocolate addict. I'm not using this term lightly either like most people. You often hear "I'm addicted to chocolate" translation- I really, really like chocolate. Not me. I'm a dark chocolate junkie and this behavior intensifies when I'm under stress.

This past month has been crazy. I have been in the middle of a magazine deadline that has been the deadline from HELL. My job as the Advertising Director for HM is to get X amount of dollars in advertising every issue by a certain point. Well this issue has never reached the X amount of dollars mark. Pretty much anything bad that could happen did - people pulling out, people not returning my phone calls (my biggest pet peeve... don't tell me you want to do something and then just avoid me. Have the guts to at least tell me no), normal advertisers not having any releases to advertise etc etc etc. I had to be the bad guy on a couple occasions and I didn't like that much.

Anyways during all of this I inhaled dark chocolate. I think one day (the worst day) I ate almost a whole bag of individually wrapped Dove candy. The more I got stressed, the more I would need a "fix". At one point I remember panicking as I shook the bag because I didn't think there were any left. The joy that I felt when I heard the last piece hit my desk was sickening. I thought about saving it for another crisis, but no, I ate it. I've been known to keep one piece hidden in case I need a quick fix. This horrible behavior began when I moved.

So this week I was out of chocolate and while picking up a few things at Target (another one of my addictions), behold right in front of my eyes conveniently located at the end of the isle for all nut jobs like me, dark chocolate peppermint mocha frappuccinos. The Angels sang, I ended up walking out of Target with way more than I went in for like always, and today I drank the last one. But don't fret, because tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I'm going home to Chicago where at my parent's house there will be tons of food and I will be spoiled rotten by friends and family because they missed me or something. I really don't deserve it.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Erin