I got my mandolin back!! I wasn't sure if it was going to survive the broken neck, but it did! I will tell you what happened and by you I mean no one because no one reads this. I was playing a gig at a little church and as soon as I took my bow and walked off stage, the crowd's applause deafening, I went to put my mandolin away. I have a cute little zip-up back pack for it that 6'5 got me. Adorable. Well, I put it in the back pack and someone asked me a question. I was sidetracked and swung it up over my shoulder not realizing I had failed to zip it up. Yikes! My mandolin flew out of the backpack and landed on the floor, shattering into a million pieces. Ok, just the neck broke, but some other stuff popped off too. I fell to my knees in shock and immediately began to weep. Mascara is running down my face, people are scrambling to put all of the pieces back in the case, and the audience witnessed the whole thing. Lucky for me there were only about 15 people there and that is pushing it. I drove home bawling my eyes out. I called my mom and of course she thinks something terrible happened from the blubbering noises I was making. Well I took it in to the shop and didn't get it back for a month!! It is here now though and I love it. Even more with its character! I will just have to be a little more careful! Speaking of, while I was picking it up, the guy that fixed it was like "we can fix anything! This guitar's neck has been broken three times!" I was like, great. Well hopefully that was the only break my little mandolin will have to endure. That was nothing compared to the break of my heart while I watched it fly through the air in slow motion. Oh well! Good as new! Well, good as new with a piece of felt I will always have to put on the strings to keep them from vibrating. I don't care! I love you mandolin!

An evening alone (again)

I am off work for a three-day weekend. Yay! That is great, except that my only two friends are unavailable this weekend. I spent my day today talking to no one, eating, and watching TV. Finally my good friend Mamafabulous came to my rescue with her mothers computer which has skype. We skyped into the wee hours of the night (roughly around 12:00, 11:00 central) until she had to go to bed. Then I was back to myself. Boring! I managed to entertain myself with a glass of champagne and two glasses of wine. Then I got the bright idea to work out which consisted of jumping around for ten minutes. That was great. Then I drank a 32oz cup of water, filled it up again, and came upstairs to talk to 6'5 for a little bit before I go to bed. After i got off the phone with him, I got lost in the black hole commonly known as Facebook. After an hour or so I think to myself, "why am I looking at Amanda's pictures at 4 o'clock in the morning?? Then I decide I must blog about this. Now I am going to bed.

Goodnight.

I hate mornings

So.  (You know it's serious when I start something out with so, then a period) I try to make ends meet by working as a hostess in a restaurant.  My ends never seem to meet.  I get paid a modest hourly wage of course and I hate work of most kinds so I take off sometimes....a lot.  The reason I am telling you about my day job is I have something to complain about.  I had a meeting this morning and I was told it was at 9:00 am which is waaaay before my get-up time.  So I set my alarm for 7:30 am and I am pretty sure my alarm clock chuckled.  Because Atlanta traffic is obscene, I am pretty sure that it is going to make my 10 minute drive closer to a 35 minute drive. So I drag myself out of bed at 7:40 after hitting snooze twice. (It's a five minute snooze.) I get out the door at 8:20 and plan on doing my make-up in the car while parked in the traffic.  I get on the road and realize, there is no traffic at all.  I am at first very confused, then my confusion turns to anger when the 10 minute drive took me 10 minutes.  Well that is fine. I am 30 minutes early to my meeting. I will sit in my car and do my make-up.  So I do.  Then it is finally time to go in and there are a couple other people waiting around in the restaurant we are having our "training" in.  9:00 comes and goes. Then 9:10, then 9:20. FINALLY at 9:25 the manager guy comes in and says "the meeting is at 9:30".  I am not happy. I could have slept another whole hour! Then we have the meeting and I eat an unsatisfying doughnut, then go straight to work.  I hate meetings in the morning, and I hate being an hour early to them even more.  I hope my alarm clock never sees 7:30 am again.

So I have noticed recently that I only have one follower. That is okay. I also only have one post. So I have decided to make another post and hope for another follower.  Since my last post, I have left all of my friends and 6'5 to follow my dreams and move to Atlanta.  I seem to follow my dreams everywhere, but never actually catch them. I hope this will change. I would like to catch my dreams instead of follow them. We will see, I can sometimes be described as "butterfingers" so I may try to catch them and watch them slip right through my butter-coated hands.  We will see.  The good news is, I have made several musical contacts in my short time of being here. Several musicians and some booking agents and many others.  I am really starting to enjoy Atlanta too. Besides meeting people, there are so many cool places here! There is this place called Urban Flats and for $20 you get an all you can eat amazing pizza buffet, and all you can sample (fancy word for drink) wine! Wow! I think that is a pretty cool deal. Now I can go there and get great pizza and wine and there is live music to boot!  Amazing. I hope to play there one day.  Well I will let you know more amazing and exciting things about Atlanta soon.

So here it is, my first post. Stop Traffic.

Let me tell you a little bit about my life, or lack thereof.  I am a 25 year old single gal, (not by choice, well the single part, well I guess the 25 year old part too) and by single I mean not married. I have a boyfriend of five years, yes I said five, and we are a very happily unwed (by we are I mean he is).  I will call him 6'5.  6'5 likes his freedom. He likes to be spontaneous and have no schedule, plans, or obligations.  That is what drew me to this tall dark and handsome man.  It was wonderful!  We would stay up all hours of the night just talking (and other stuff), not worrying about work or other conventional things.  He could work when he wanted or not work because his father owns his own business (another plus).  We spent much of our time talking about politics and religion (by that I mean drinking and making out).  The only problem was, I had to go away to college down in Texas.  We spent our month glued together like gum to a shoe, then I left.  We talked about how it was silly to have a long distance relationship at 20 years old.  That is nonsense.  We decided to make no decisions.  Two weeks after I left, 6'5 bought a plane ticket and stayed with me at school for a month. (Another plus with having no obligations.)  His heart could not take the distance and would sooner explode than spend one more agonizing minute without me.  While sipping slush's at Sonic,  we decided to decide what we should do.  The decision was stay together.  Taking him back to the airport was agony. We listened and cried together to our song, Ben by Michael Jackson (RIP).   We then began our journey as a long distance couple.  That was two years of music school for me, and what a great idea that was because now I have an Associates Degree in Vocal Performance.  I am now qualified to vocally perform and I have a piece of paper to prove it.  I am not too qualified though because I do not have a bachelors degree.  I am just the right amount of qualified.  So "what have you done with the other three years?" you are asking.  You should be asking that if you are not because if you remember I said I have been with him for five years and two of those years were long distance so that leaves three.  It's simple math, keep up.  Since graduating, and by the way while all of my friends were getting thrown these awesome graduation parties, I got nothing. I guess an Associates in vocal performance is really not worth celebrating.  Since graduating, I have spent the past three years trying to "make it".  Not sure exactly what it is I am trying to make, but I think it involves lots of money.  6'5 is an avid hunter/fisherman and by avid I mean that is all that he does.  He eats, sleeps, and breathes fish, deer, turkey, ducks, geese, pheasants.  You name it, he catches or kills it. Brutal I know, but before you go thinking he is a crazy killing maniac, I want you to know that though he does not eat the meat himself, (he is a vegetarian. Weird, I know) he donates it to a program called Share the Harvest which gives the meat to people who are in need.  So I am sure he wouldn't kill if it weren't for the fact that these people need him.  Well he got a great opportunity to own a hunting lodge in North Dakota! It kind of fell into his lap and his dad helped him with the finances.  The point of me telling you about 6'5's outdoor love affair, is that have been going up to the lodge to work.  Every now and then hunters would hear through the grape vine that I am a singer/songwriter.  Basically I told everyone that looked at me.  They would sometimes be polite and ask for a serenade after dinner, so after I did my dish duties, I would play for them.  The last group of the season had one guy in particular that really liked my stuff.  I write about what I know which is my boyfriends obsession with things that are not me, like bass boats and tree stands.  The client could relate obviously because he was there hunting.  He knew some people in Atlanta that heard my stuff and loved me and they signed me and the rest is history!!  Well, not exactly.  We did sign a contract, but we are still to this day working on getting my songs out.  That leads me to where I am right now.  I am heading down to Atlanta on Sunday to start my adventure as a starving artist. (Not starving too bad,  just enough) I am going right now to get ready to hang out with my friends.  I have no idea when I will be back to Missouri.