Sometimes I feel like I’m being watched.  Not in the creepy “I Know What You Did Last Summer Way,” but in the – the world is my stage – kind of way.  I am living the life every single girl in every single romantic comedy leads in the first hour of the movie.  You know, the first hour is what gets you hooked – it’s what you relate to.  They do this so that in the second hour – when the man with the perfectly white teeth and recently plucked eyebrows appears on the scene - and because they’ve made you believe that you could be her in the first hour, you believe you could be her in the second hour.  But I’m not here to talk about the second hour.

I came home this evening and perfectly timed – it started raining just as soon as I set my foot out of my car door.  I made a dash for my apartment, tripping and almost falling over the neighbors toy car.  I waved hello to my other neighbors, who I don’t know, but we both pretend to, and finally let myself inside.  It was the best feeling – walking inside, hanging my perfectly white coat on the hook that also holds an apron that I never use and a purse I bought to make myself feel better after a long week. 

My day hasn’t been stressful much, just long, and was one of many just like it.  I come inside and immediately throw off my (ridiculously cute) heels and change into sweatpants that are too big for me.  I walk through my (ridiculously cute) apartment and plug in the Christmas lights that I’ve hung, even though many people won’t be through to see them.  My apartment tells the viewer much about who I am – what I love and who I love.  It’s at this moment the viewer thinks, man, that place looks like I could live there. 

It’s quiet as I sort quickly through my mail and hope for something other than ads and bills, but there is none.  As I wash my hands, I hit the soap dispenser too hard and soap flies across the sink right onto my pants and on the floor, and, in a moment of comic relief and a moment of realness, I have to catch myself on the sink to keep from slipping on the soap I forgot about. 

And as I’m microwaving my Lean Cuisine (ravioli – it’s the best) and curling up in one corner of my large leather couch with my dinner in one hand and glass of sparkling raspberry champagne (because, why not?) I’m at home and I feel like it, too.  The cozy Christmas lights and Charlie Brown tree in the corner make the viewer feel the same, and for an instant, they think,  I could be that girl. 

Too often I remember only the second half of the movie.   But if it weren’t for the first half, the second half wouldn’t mean a whole lot, now would it?

It’s hard to believe how long it’s been since my last post.  I was counting the days to the kickoff of the Browns season, and now I’m counting the days until it’s over. 

No, but really.  It’s hard to watch.  It’s ugly, it’s pathetic and it’s embarrassing.  But I can’t not watch.  I watched every minute of the Ravens game on Monday night and held out hope that it would get better. 

But that’s not what you want to read about, now is it? 

In updates from previous posts, my first ‘garden’ ended as a pretty big fail.  My peppers turned black, I only got about 2 small tomatoes before it snowed and my plant froze, and my beautiful beautiful hybiscus only bloomed the week I was in Vegas.  I heard it was gorgeous, though.  So point for me.

I promised myself I wouldn’t think about my ‘future’ until after our Young Life banquet was over.  I had too much going on this fall and too much work to do for the banquet to spend time worrying about something I didn’t need to be.  It was easy to put it off.  It gave me an excuse to focus on being more ‘in the moment’ and I didn’t worry if this is where God wanted me, because I knew it was, and I could rest in that.

Banquet’s over.  Cue anxious nights and an unsettled feeling in my stomach. 

I plan on blogging more regularly through this winter season – with the shorter days and students on break, I have more time for reflection and my personal space.  It’s time that I should set aside all throughout my year, but tend to let myself be distracted by everything for everyone else. 

I have (even more) thoughts on singleness and community and Christianity, and look forward to finally writing them down, instead of letting them stew in my head. 

But in the meantime, please enjoy this.  It never ever fails to make me smile.

It’s here!!  I LOVE football season!!

Last summer I feared.  That’s it.  Not a complete sentence, you’re thinking?  In my head it is.  I feared.  Moving out.  On my own.  No friends.  New job.  Small town.  It had all the makings of me in the fetal position in the corner of my apartment eating Ben and Jerry’s and watching non-stop episodes of Extreme Makeover:  Home Edition.

But I think because of that, I fought against that fear.  Before it even happened, I fought it.  I knew my homebody tendencies and I knew my history with anxiety and depression and so I fought it. 

And nothing happened.  It was great!  I painted my house bright green and aqua blue and obnoxiously orange and I put a picnic table in my dining room.  I planted some flowers and I rode my bike wherever I could.  I ate whatever I wanted for dinner.  I learned why mom always told me to eat my vegetables.  I repainted my house light gray and tan. I opened my doors to old friends and we spent nights on the front porch reminiscing back to our lives when we all lived in the same mile circumference and ate dinner together every night.  You know, reminiscing back to 2 months before that…and if any time was spent indulging in my Ben and Jerry’s, it was only out of pure joy.

I remember being so, so thankful to God that he brought me through that summer alone and now that the fall was here, students were back and there were things to attend and plan and decide and I think, that just for a bit too long, I let my guard down.  I started worrying about my role as not a student, not yet an adult.  (Cue Britney Spears).  And all of a sudden I lost my focus.  My fears became a reality and I experienced some of the hardest few months I ever have.   I would set foot in my house and tears would immediately come.  My birthday was the worst of them all.  I worked 12 hours that day, got pulled over by campus security on my way home, and spent the rest of the night crying and watching the Gilmore Girls.  You know, that episode where Rory is so overwhelmed and she can’t get a hold of Lorelai and ends up weeping on Dean’s shoulder?  That is my go-to episode when life is more than I think I can handle.  And that night I connected with Rory.  I connected with that feeling of not thinking you can deal with life and just needing your mom but she’s not around anymore.  But I didn’t have my Dean.  And I was alone.  On my birthday.   And that fact circled in my head more than I should have let it and the next day I realized that I had given up fighting.  I had lost the battle with my fears.  But at that point, I didn’t really care.  It took a few more months to start fighting again.

I started figuring out my place and tried hard to focus on the fact that God had called me here.  What a blessing to know that I was where God wanted me to be.  I held that in front of me as a badge of honor and leaned on it like a cane when life got trying again.  I repeated one verse over and over and over until I considered getting it tattooed on my foot as a forever reminder of this time in my life.  That verse carried me through the darkest of days. 

Do not despise the day of small things, for the LORD rejoices to see the work begin. 

Do not despise the day of small things.  My life seemed to be a chain of days of small things.  But the Lord was rejoicing over them. 

Somewhere around Christmas or maybe later in the winter I broke.  After a night out with friends, I was driving 2 of them home and they asked a question about my life this past year and I lost it.  2 of us spent a couple of hours in that car that night and I unloaded.  I was already coming out of that funk from the fall, but the pain was still fresh in my mind.  He told me I should never have gotten to the point of walking into my house and crying.  I should lean on my friends, he said.  He said God was doing great things in my life and I was surprised to find that I believed him.  God had called me here for a clear purpose and I had to rest in that. 

It’s a year later.  A new school year.  I already know I have been complacent and I have put my guard down.  Summer is safe.  But this fall I must keep fighting.  And now, I’m excited for the fight.  Because I know I can win.

Never doubt in the darkness what God has told you in the light.

Dear Cleveland,

Are you honestly surprised? 

The recent trades of Cliff Lee, Victor Martinez, Ryan Garko, and Ben Fransisco have put a damper on our plans, sure.   But why all of this negative energy?  If you’re a Cleveland fan – not a lightweight fan – but a real, honest, bleed orange and brown (or wine and gold, or red and blue) take-it-to-the-grave sort of fan, you’ve gotta let this one go. 

I’ve only been a Cleveland fan for 23 short years.  And honestly, most of those I was more consumed by *N Sync’s dance moves than I was with Oral Hershiser’s MVP.  I like to call those the dark years.   But I watched J*$e M&#a blow the ninth inning.  I heard the cheers when Tim Couch went down.  And I covered my face in shame as LeBron stormed off the court.  I know Cleveland.  I know that we’re more than The Drive or The Fumble or The Shot.

For reasons beyond my reasoning, people fall in love with this town.  CC Sabathia, Victor Martinez, Omar Vizquel, Brady Quinn, heck, even Manny Ramirez love this town. 

My point here is not to say that you shouldn’t be frustrated.  The sign of a Cleveland fan is constant frustration.  I mean, Cleveland, we’re nothing if not frustrated and angry, right?

No, no.  My friends.  This talk I hear about finally giving up, about not attending another game, about teaching your newborn children to root for another team, is bologna.  You can’t teach your child to root for another team.  It’s in your blood, remember?

If you give up now, all these years of heartache and anguish over your teams will have been in vain.  But, if we dig our heels in, maybe, just maybe, one day it will happen and you’ll be able to lean over to your possibly grown child and say, “I never doubted them for a second.”

My trip to Vegas was planned for months and months.  For a while I was nervous.  Really, really nervous.  What would I do for a whole week in Las Vegas by myself?  Until one night when I said, “Hey Julie, want to go to Vegas with me??”  and later that week she bought her ticket. 

Then I was excited!  What would we do for a whole week in Vegas???  The sky was the limit, and the more I researched, the more I was confused as to what was actually fun and safe and worth seeing.  So I gave up the search and decided we could figure it out once we got there.  But there were certain things that I HAD to do when I was there, no excuses.  They were:

1.  Get our picture taken in front of the famous Welcome to Las Vegas sign.

2.  Meet Elvis.

3.  Be in/witness a Las Vegas wedding.

I’ll be honest, I was starting to fear the third wouldn’t happen.  And even more honestly, after we traveled for an hour in the wrong direction looking for the sign, but instead finding the end of the world, I started to fear we may not even see the sign. 

But we did not give up.  The concierge, after he stopped laughing at us, told us to take the Deuce (no, now you stop laughing, that’s what it’s called) to Mandalay Bay, and it was a short walk from there to the sign.  He lied his pants off.  After a monster long walk in the rain, a stop at McDonald’s for some liquid energy (AKA sweet tea), and a daring dash across the highway (something we got pretty good at) we saw IT.  In all of it’s Las Vegas lights glory, the sign sat in the median of the aforementioned highway with a small astroturf section built in to stand on and make ridiculous poses. 

In front of that sign, everyone feels fabulous. 

One thing we could’ve learned a bit more quickly is that, in the desert, everything is closer than it appears.  Just because you can see it doesn’t necessarily mean you could walk to it (learned that lesson while crossing approximately 17 highways trying to get to In-N-Out).  But the sign was in our sights and we starting running/walking quickly/skipping towards it, and that’s when I saw her. 

“Julie!  That girl is wearing a white dres!  Is that a wedding party??”

Cue ohmygoodnessohmygoodness squeals and skipping higher until:

“Meg!  It’s Elvis and Marilyn Monroe!!”

We had (finally) made it to the sign and there in all their sequined glory stood Marilyn Monroe, with darker, bushier eyebrows than I would’ve imagined, and Elvis Presley with foam hair. 

This is when we became concerned.  Would we have to pay them to take a picture with us?  Is this their job? 

No, no, we reasoned.  The two guys in suits standing around them didn’t fit into that formula.  OK so why were they here?  And what the crap is the Suit #1 taking pictures of?  (And then I briefly entertained the thought of moving to Las Vegas, investing in a floaty white dress, and standing in front of that sign to charge a dollar per picture.  Like I said, it was a brief thought, but it was a definite thought.)

So we kept our distance as Elvis, Marilyn, and Suit #2 seemed to be engaged in a deep conversation in a foreign language, and a small family of Midwesterners posed their children and attempted self-timed pictures.  Why you would bring your children to Las Vegas, I still don’t know.

And then.  It happened.  Looking back it feels like slow motion.  The family packed into their rented minivan and Elvis and Marilyn took their place on the astroturf and Suit #2 joined them.

“MEG!!  THEY’RE GETTING MARRIED!!!”

Had I been still drinking my McDonald’s sweet tea, I would have spit it out of my nose.  But I left my cup in front of a wedding chapel we stopped at during our Journey to The Sign.  Julie was first to realize that Suit #1 was the photographer, and Suit #2 was the minister. 

Julie and I were left standing there, in the middle of that desert highway, as witnesses to their wedding.  Julie dressed in black and I in white, we made the perfect wedding party.  We were silent as they vowed their love in a foreign tongue, and we yelled and hooted for joy when they were prounounced man and wife.  Suit #1 continued to take pictures, and included us, as well. 

We said our goodbyes to Elvis, Marilyn, and the Suits (I’m assuming that’s what they said), and as a large tour bus unloaded its passengers all around us, Julie and I stood in front of that sign amazed at our good Las Vegas fortune.  We stayed for a while longer, visibly elated, and then cursed the time change that wouldn’t allow us to call any of our friends back home.  About halfway home, we stopped and took this picture:

This is our “holy crap, that just happened!” face.

All that to say, set almost unattainable goals.  You never know what you might walk into.

I prayed more on my first day in Vegas than I have in a really long time.  I prayed when stepping onto the plane.  I prayed when the pilot came on and said, “this desert air is going to make for a bumpy ride.”  And I prayed anytime I walked by someone in a wheelchair playing blackjack or someone with an oxygen tank playing the slots.  I worried that sights like those would depress me through the week and by the end of the week I would be begging to get me out of this town.  (Begging to get back to western PA?  who knew?)

That first day in Vegas was a long one – waking up at 4am Eastern time and not going to bed until about midnight Pacific time can really mess a person up.  But at about hour 20 of that long day, something happened.  Something inside of me just snapped.

I fell in LOVE with Las Vegas. 

Julie and I like to say that there is a certain “spirit” to the people of Las Vegas.  No one is from there, but it’s home for everyone.  They have absolutely no shame, and it was refreshing.  I didn’t feel concern when Bizarro Mike Rowe came and sat at our booth during dinner and I laughed when people made comments about what two single girls in Vegas could get into. 

We didn’t drink, we didn’t go to a single club, and between the two of us, we gambled away a total of $4. And that’s only because neither of us knew how to use a slot machine.   But we had the time of our lives.  Proof that Vegas is so much more than what you may think.  

I kept praying for those people at the slot machines throughout the week.  It broke my heart to think that those people may be pinning their hopes on something so temporary.  But I also prayed and thanked God that he allowed me to have these experiences – to spend a week with a great friend making memories we won’t ever forget. 

Like that time Elvis and Marilyn Monroe got married in front of the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign, and we were in the wedding. 

But that’s a story for another time.

I’m seeing a trend now.  When I should be packing, I blog.  For a while I just thought that packing worked me up into such a tizzy that I needed an outlet to express my packing rage, and so I blogged.  Now I’m thinking it’s more of an excuse to NOT pack. 

This week has been a full one – and has left me with dark circles under my eyes, but a great excitement for the future.  God has answered prayers, faithfully, again.  And I, once again, am surprised at how, well, surprised I was by that. 

Dustin has moved into his cabin in the woods for the rest of the summer, and I’m loving having a place outside of my small town where I can go and enjoy the sounds of trees and water and birds and not hear the trains rolling through or my neighbors yelling at their kids to come inside before they have to start counting to three.  I’m also enjoying have people to cook for, and am slowing finding out that I do actually like the challenge of creating a meal, I just don’t like doing it for myself.   I like listening to Dustin playing the guitar and am dealing with all the dude movies I watch when he and Clinton are around.  One of these days maybe I’ll get them to watch You’ve Got Mail. 

And with that said, I’ll leave you with this quote from that movie, a quote that resonates with me at times like these.

Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life. Well, not small, but valuable. And sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven’t been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn’t it be the other way around? I don’t really want an answer. I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. So good night, dear void.

PS I’ll be in Vegas all next week, so follow my trip on twitter   http://twitter.com/mchochola

I am sorry that I haven’t been posting much.  I have so many ideas in my head of the things that I want to say and creative ways to say them, but it seems my life currently is a mess of packing, unpacking, laundry, repeat.

The title for this blog “venture beneath the skies” comes from a quote in one of my very favorite books – On The Road by Jack Kerouac.  I fell in love with it my freshman year of college when I had to read it and write a paper comparing it to Huck Finn.  I fell in love with the idea of life on the road – driving wherever you darn well please and meeting characters and life-long friends along the way.  The quote is below:

“What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?- it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”

It is a running theme of my life – saying goodbye and leaning forward to what’s next.  I love this quote, I really, really love it.

All that to say, Monday is a new adventure – driving to DC and back in one day with my best friend and college roommate (all 4 years).  Why we’re doing this is a long story, but needless to say I’m excited to spend some time with Kim, and I’m excited to see what kind of trouble we can stir up in a day.  I’m sure there will be pictures, and I’ll be sure to share when I’m home.  And I’ll also be sure to be a consistent blogger.  Promise.

I’ve blogged about this before, but honestly, it’s so true.  Here again I find myself on the eve of a weekend trip writing letters on my hand in hopes that in 4 hours I’ll remember what they stand for.  This is precisely why I wanted an iPhone…so that I wouldn’t be scribbling notes on receipts and stuffing them in my purse or accidently tattooing myself with the words “cell charger” in Sharpie on the back of my hand.  Old habits die hard, I suppose.

In other news, try this recipe, I know you’ll love it.  I made it up this week and am still enjoying the rewards

Tiramisu Cheesecake

Either buy a graham crust premade or make your own (I crushed Stella Doro cookies and melted butter and threw some Kahlua in there for good measure…it kind of worked – tasted good, but I think more butter would’ve helped it set up.)

3 8 oz. cream cheese packages
1 cup whipping cream
2 eggs
4 tbs flour
1 cup sugar
Kahlua ( to taste! – i probably added more than i should’ve

The filling will make enough for either a 9×13 pan or 2 pie pans.   then drizzle melted chocolate all over the top and enjoy!