Featured Friday: Guest Blogger and Blog Love

I had a friend of mine IRL, Miss Bliss, that blogs with her husband, Mr. Wonderful -- I've known them both since, well... I was born -- She graciously asked if I wanted a guest blogger because I've been going crazy so darn busy! Of course I said yes! She's a professor at the University of Miami, a writer and a Newlywed! As women... I'm sure we can all relate to this post! Enjoy!!

Hi, lovely girls,
This post comes to you from Miami Beach, Florida, my on and off home. Reflecting on what I worried about or dreamed about at different ages lead to the following age summaries:

Age 0-10: try to be good so you don’t get in trouble, who are these strange people who are staying at my house? Why are the church people so good at happy faces there but so mean at home? Swim with friend one day and feel the best day of my childhood. At age ten, I go with my pregnant-with-twins- but-thinks-it’s- one- baby-mom and my five-year-old sister to the airport. My mom has our birth certificates and report cards in her purse. We have our favorite dolls. We fly one-way under assumed names from Philadelphia to Cincinnati and I experience culture shock in my own country.

Age 11-13: food stamps and WIC and United Way and private education loans and grants and my grandmother helped sustain my (now) three! sisters and my mom and I; my mom was now the sole source of income and provider for us all… she went to an intensive 2 year program to be able to work a job with the highest salary and quickest graduation to be able to support us. Madonna and Michael Jackson are just entering the scene and breakdancing is big and girls just wanna have fun. Help raise my sisters.

14-18: Mom rebounds. Marries older man. From Russia. This is how I start ninth grade. Ninth grade is hard enough for anyone. I had a new stepdad who is 20 years older than my mom, who I am helping learn English vocabulary. I enter a new school. Again. This one is nicer and richer than my previous school. The kids have known each other since birth. I wish I had nicer clothes. I wish I were prettier. The weekend before tenth grade starts, I have one new shirt from the mall in my nearly empty closet. My visiting step-sister’s luggage does not arrive, and she wears it first. Tenth grade: mom leaves the guy. Change high schools. Change right back. 11th and 12th grade: the teachers and guidance counselors at this amazing high school prepare me to apply to college and ace my SATs. (at least the verbal!) I fall in love with a guy who my mom thinks is the wrong color. I secretly see him anyway, and we never do what she was so worried about.

Age 18-23: Mom remarries again right before I start college. My shit is in garage of their new house before she drops me off at my college dorm room. I never have my own room at their new house, where my sisters and mom and her new husband now live. I never have anywhere to put my clothes when I come visit, either. My college professors suggest things to me like, “when you work on your Master’s degree, and you could do your Ph.D…” concepts I’ve never heard of… Leave college in the middle of a semester one day with my best friend and we drive her Miata from Cincinnati to DC, and move in with her parents. Return to school when I am ready. Spend a lot of time feeling very sad, and looking for love and mistakenly thinking sex creates and guarantees love.

Age 24-33: Apply to grad schools if they have an ocean nearby. Move to Miami for school, knowing nothing about Miami and never having been there until deciding to go to school there. Succeed on paper, in resume format. Date the wrong guy—a walking temper. Waste a lot of time breaking up with him and giving him “one more chance.” Finally understand it is nice to have a weekend off work without fighting the whole time. Knowing nothing about financial management, proceed to screw my finances up completely. Begin Ph.D. Leave that program and then teach at University of Miami. Head to work and laugh that I am in charge of a college course. Spend some years here locked in anxiety and one day while teaching at UM, realize I am free to enjoy the rest of my life. Teach at a high school for two years and wonder how in the hell high school teachers survive their administrations and boards of education and some parents. The students were great. Return to teaching college. Begin deciding to dream and create and enjoy every day of my life. I do wonder why my family does not call each other to ask: how was your day? And really really listen, just to ask and to listen. The idea of sisters who talk on the phone daily always appeals to me. Even briefly--- but—life is busy, I know. It’s busy and then over.

Age 33-35: Have stupid crush on guy at work. Later realize I only had a crush on him and thought he was funny because I was that sad when that feeling started. Realized he is not that funny. When I feel better, I marry the love of my life, the boy I swam with on the best day of my childhood. Live in Boulder, CO and cry for six months straight because I am so well loved and it is better than I could have dreamed. Move back to Miami Beach, with him, to return to job teaching at UM, and for him to go back to school. Our future is starting now, with the ocean swirling right next to us

THANK YOU, MISS BLISS!!!

Now... for my Weekly Blog Love!!!

She is new on the blog scene {well, at least to me} and she lives in Germany! She's a hairstylist, to which I could reply "You had me at hairstylist" -- I have a secret obsession with creative people, but let's keep that to ourselves -- Oh. I'm back. I just got a little carried away there. -- She is really well traveled and it's SO fun hearing about her adventures through Foreign countries! She's down to earth, sincere with every word in her commenting, SO FREAKING CREATIVE! and is all around inspiring!

She's Steph! From The Adventures of Jon and Steph! Thanks for all your sweet and sincere comments and being a great "blog friend" -- Let me know when you travel back to the states so you can do my hair and we can chat about photography :)