Last Wednesday the tenants renting our house in Ladysmith were evicted for nonpayment of rent and multiple violations of their lease. We knew the situation was bad, based on dozens of emails and phone calls with our property management company. I’d been steeling myself for the situation to come to a head for weeks, and yet, the moment I saw our house on Saturday morning, I burst into tears. It completely broke my heart. This was not the house we left behind: full of light, clean, tidy and cozy. The one they left behind was stained, mangled, destroyed and unloved. As I walked from room to room surveying the damage, I felt a tremendous sense of guilt – guilt for wanting to leave it, for leaving it to people who didn’t take care of it, for being so silly to think that people are inherently good and decent.

There are many repairs to make, and we’ve already started with the help of some very good, loyal friends. The carpets were ripped out on Friday night and on Saturday the boys started laying new laminate floors. With the help of my girlfriends, I washed down the walls, which were covered in unimaginable things, and later we wielded hammers and crowbars to rip out the hardwood floors that were destroyed. It felt good to do it, like a catharsis. I patched holes and touched up paint. It’s coming along, but there are still so many things to do: replace two broken windows and a few screens, repair the broken porch rails, buy new doors and clean that place back into livable condition. Several items were stolen from us: a grill, microwave, bathroom mirror, light fixtures and even a year’s supply of HVAC filters. Their children were taken away from them by Child Protective Services, thankfully. After seeing the condition of my house, I cannot believe two innocent children were forced to live there. It’s unthinkable.

While our property management company works to file charges against these people, we are making the repairs as quickly as we can and weighing our options. I feel violated. It’s hard enough to rent out your home to someone and emotionally separate yourself from it. You have to approach it as a business property, not a personal property. And to be honest, I don’t know if I can. This has cost us thousands of dollars and we cannot afford to not have a tenant in the house. More importantly, I cannot assuage the guilt and anger I feel over it. These people were screened and checked through employment and income verification, credit reports and background checks, and yet they willfully and negligently destroyed and defaced our house. We discovered they were abusing prescription drugs and engaging in some frightening domestic violence situations. I don’t know if I will ever be able to trust a potential tenant again.

And now, this: A huge part of me wants to move back. As I saw the new floors get installed and as I worked up a sweat to fix that house, I felt something inside telling me to go home, to accept the situation and admit that I tried and failed. I honestly don’t know what to do. There are reasons that I moved away – good reasons. There are reasons I should move back – also good reasons. I’m straddling the line and I feel paralyzed to make a decision.

If I move back, I’ll return to a 50-minute commute each way. I’ll have to forgo my gym membership. On the other hand, I won’t have to worry about finding a quality tenant fast enough. I won’t have to worry that my home is being destroyed without my knowledge or the power to evict them faster than the courts and state laws allow. I also miss my house, at least parts of it: the lake, the big, green yard and the quiet cul-de-sac.

{If you were me, what would you do?}

When the going gets tough, there are two ways to deal with it: Wallow and feel sorry for yourself OR get to living your life and have some fun.

It’s been a hard couple of months – months in which I should have been celebrating and having fun and going to cookouts and visiting friends and saving for a summer vacation. Instead I’ve dealt with several hard situations the best way I could, and I tried to have fun in between. I am so overwhelmed, but I see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I had anticipated this holiday weekend to be full of stressful tasks. Instead I discovered that my hands were tied and the best laid plans don’t always pan out. Sometimes you have no choice but to resign yourself to waiting something out. So when my two girlfriends SaraAnn and Megan offered to pick me up and take me on a wine trail, I said YES. I put on an orange and white striped dress and turquoise sandals and I packed a large bottle of water and sweets for my best girls. And we went out to have some fun.

Over the course of a beautiful, breezy day we discovered five new wineries: New Kent Winery, Saude Creek Vineyards, The Dog & Oyster Vineyard, Good Luck Cellars and Athena Vineyards. We ate snacks together at a picnic table and talked about SaraAnn’s wedding plans. We spoke in ridiculous accents and laughed until we cried. We made fun of each other and prank called my husband. We drank new wines and ate chocolate dipped shortbread cookies. It was exactly what I needed.

The wines of New Kent & Saude Creek were my favorites, without a doubt. The scenery (including the giant wine corkscrew!) at The Dog & Oyster was beyond incredible. The people were amazing. There was a moment (just one – I haven’t lost my mind!) where I thought “Take me back to the country. I want to live right here.” Then I drank my wine and forgot that insanity. This girl has big plans to get back to.

God bless beautiful days, true-blue girlfriends and a good long drive through the Northern Neck. I feel ready to tackle what’s next.

The entire month of April was a doozy. A few times in my life, in years past, I’ve wondered how many bad things can happen in a short amount of time. Last month I discovered the answer: a shit ton.

You know what gets me through? The people in my life. They are amazing! I’m surrounded by some of the best, most supportive people in the world, and for that, I’m grateful. (Also: for ice cream, because it is delicious and I cannot be sad or worried when I’m eating ice cream.)

I’m still waiting for the results of my biopsy, but I am incredibly hopeful. I feel pretty positive that the results will come back benign and this will all go away like a bad dream. The positive to come out of this event is that I’ll have a baseline mammogram established so that when I resume them at 35 years old, the doctors will have healthy photos to compare them to. There cannot be another outcome. There just can’t.

Last week I let a few things get to me, and looking back now I know that it had to happen sometime, and I feel so much better now. There is a tremendous value in saying your peace. One can only turn the other cheek for so long before they speak out. I was reminded of a few things that I’d forgotten, and I don’t think the person who reminded me of them meant to do me a favor. Regardless, it was exactly that – a favor. I was reminded of all the reasons that I’m here today – all the reasons why I made the choices I made – all the reasons why my friends are my family, and that family is not the end all – be all. I was reminded that boundaries are not only healthy, but they are life-saving and heart-saving. Later, after the dust had settled, a friend who has been through very similar things shared some advice with me that I really needed to hear:

“No one gets to define your perspective on your life.

No one gets to tell you what your memories are or what your story is.”

(Thanks, Melissa!)

We are our own people. We are who we say we are, and we can do anything we tell ourselves, whether good or bad. What matters is what is within us – the story we tell ourselves. No one gets to speak for me, and no one gets to judge me in someone else’s place. Well, they can if they wish, but I’m not going to listen to it. It’s noise, and it means nothing to me.

In April there was a lot of loss. There was a lot of anxiety, stress and fear. In April I was reminded what, and who, matters to me.

In May I want to celebrate all of it. Because I know that better days are coming.

I sat in the waiting room and filled out four pages of paperwork, then paid $50 for my specialist co-pay. I returned to my chair and nervously scanned Twitter and Facebook. I couldn’t help checking out each of the women who were waiting along with me – all in their 40s and 50s. I had a hard time reconciling that most of these women were there for a routine exam, hence, they weren’t nervous or scared at all. I tapped my toes against the hardwood floor and tried to breathe slowly.

“Mrs. Tibbs? Come on back.”

I’d been waiting for 25 minutes. The woman led me to a changing room where I was instructed to remove my clothes from the waist up and tie the gown to open in the front. I stored my jacket and top in a locker and brought my handbag with me. I was ushered into another waiting room, where I continued to nervously check my phone. It was 9:35. I waited and counted down the minutes as they creeped toward 10:00, when I thought I’d have all the answers and be happily headed to work.

***

Finally, at 9:50 a petite, kind-faced technician led me back to the room. She questioned me about my family history.

“What age was your mother when she passed away?”

“54.”

“What age was she when she was diagnosed?”

“54.”

She turned to face me and said “Oh, gosh. She had a quick decline?”

“Yes, she was diagnosed maybe three weeks before she died.”

She led me to the machine, which didn’t look as scary as I’d imagined, but nevertheless, I was freaked out. To be just 30 years old and have your first mammogram is pretty unusual. I was prepared for it to be uncomfortable, but uncomfortable is pretty subjective, don’t you think?

Smiling, she said, “I apologize – I’ll have to be a little bossy for this part.”

She positioned me in such a way to get the best pictures – six in total. I had to hold my breath while the pictures were taken, and I handled the pain pretty well until the last two, when they switched to spot compression, when I winced and bit my lip. A tear came to my eye.

“I’m so sorry. Are you ok?”

“Yes, I’m just ready for this to be over.”

***

A few minutes later I was lying on an exam table while the technician rubbed an ultrasound probe across my chest. I kept my eyes glued to the screen, but all I could see was varying shades of light gray, dark gray and black. She told me before the ultrasound that ultrasounds provide an easier reading because cancer shows up white against dense breast tissue, which shows up gray. I didn’t see any white. The mammogram is trickier. Cancer shows up white against dense breast tissue, which also shows up white. Trying to detect suspicious tissue in a white-on-white image is more difficult.

The doctor, a well-known and highly respected expert in breast imaging, came into the room and looked at the images.

“I’m going to do a quick exam of your left breast to see where the tissue is that your doctor identified from your physical.”

I tried to breathe normally.

“Yes, I can feel what your doctor wrote about. And you say your mom died at 54?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know if she had cancer in both breasts?”

“I don’t know… I was very young when she died.”

“OK. I don’t see anything suspicious on your mammogram or on the ultrasound. However, given your family history and your very dense breast tissue, I think we need to have a biopsy done, just to make sure there’s nothing abnormal.”

I stared at her. This was not what I expected her to say. I was prepared for her to say “Nothing to be worried about! You have dense breast tissue, but we won’t need to see you again for another 5 years.”I said nothing. She explained further, while I nodded along.

“The needle will be very small. We’ll numb the site and extract cells to check for abnormalities. It’s very routine for someone like you, given your history and the denseness of your breasts. The chances of the biopsy coming back completely benign are about 98%.”

I continued to stare at her and say nothing. Eventually, I squeaked out a high-pitched “ok.”

“Please understand, Stacey. I’m not recommending this because I’ve seen anything. I’m recommending this because of what I’m feeling in the exam. I’m sure it’s nothing, but we should cover all our bases.”

After I dressed, I sat down with a scheduler to book the biopsy appointment for Wednesday, May 1. Then as I walked to the car, I called Billy to tell him.

I think I had a mild case of the flu this weekend. I say “I think” because I didn’t have enough energy to get to the doctor and have it confirmed, but sometime on Friday in the midst of my delirium I Googled “symptoms of the flu” and was surprised to see that I had many of them. Most notably, I had a fever and was suffering from intense exhaustion and body aches with a throbbing headache, congestion and dry cough. I haven’t been that sick since I was little. If we’re being real (and why wouldn’t we be?), it scared the hell out of me. I did nothing but sleep from Thursday night – Saturday morning, except for small amounts of time where I would wake up uncomfortable and manage to eat and hydrate or browse Twitter. At one point, I started to cry because everything hurt and I felt like I’d never get better. On Saturday morning I woke up and felt half-human again. I went to the grocery store with Billy so I could get fresh air and circulate the blood through my body. I was moving quite slow, but I was moving. When I got home, I had to lay down from the exhaustion, and I passed out for a solid four hours. When I woke up at 8 p.m. I felt like I was emerging from a coma.

Today I woke up after another 6 hours of sleep and felt almost-great. I had enough energy to shower, do laundry and make breakfast. Throwing caution to the wind, I baked peanut butter chocolate chip muffins. When in doubt, always, always bake the muffins. They’re never a mistake.

I take my health for granted. Aside from the occasional recurring migraine, I’m pretty healthy. I don’t get sick very often, and when I do it’s usually a sinus or allergy thing, which is easily handled with over-the-counter medication. This thing I had – a bad cold, the flu, whatever – flat out knocked me on my ass. I wasn’t able to take care of myself or cook for myself or hell, pretty much do anything at all. All I could do was sleep.

I’ve been really great about working out over the past couple of months. I got into a routine that puts me in the gym for an hour four mornings each week at 6 a.m. doing a Cycle or Body Pump class, and I round it out with an hour-long Yoga class on the weekends. My eating has been all over the place, but is mostly healthy when I’m acting with a little discipline. Being sick really showed me just how much I take my health and my body for granted. I’m looking forward to getting better and resuming my routine this week. For now, I’m going to eat a muffin, drink some lemonade and prop up my feet while I finish my book.

Happy Easter, friends!

I live my life pretty openly. I wear my heart on my sleeve and I share a lot about myself. But it’s mostly the big things. These days I’m really stopping to savor the little things, so when I saw a post on Little Miss Momma’s blog titled Things You Should Know About Me if We’re Gonna be BFF, I thought how fun! A chance to share the teeny-tiny snippets of myself that  maybe you don’t know. So, without further ado…

St. Maarten, November 2012

My favorite things to splurge on: Soy Chai Lattes, M&M Sugar Cookies from Panera and random home purchases from Ross.

I suffer from the worst buyer’s remorse. Unless it’s an absolutely necessary purchase, I’d say at least 25% of the time I buy something, I end up returning it.

I’m 5’7 and 3/4″. When people ask me how tall I am, I say 5’8″. I think 5’8″ is neither tall nor short, but a weird in-between height.

I hardly ever wear flats to work. I feel like it comes across as unprofessional. I spend so much of my day running around, so my feet are pretty much always sore.

At work I write a lot of copy: brochures, email marketing, direct mail campaigns, letters, bios, etc. I love it!

I also do a lot of proofreading. It’s the best way for my inner perfectionist to have a field day.

I have no idea what I want to be “when I grow up.”

Women role models are so important to me. It took me years to find women that I admired professionally and personally and that weren’t afraid to share their knowledge with me. It’s invaluable.

I have a thing for elephants. I have elephant jewelry and little figurines throughout my house. My favorite is a hand-carved ebony wood elephant from Africa that a dear friend gave me.

I no longer have cable. I canceled it because I was tired of paying $100 per month for cable TV that I never watched live. I DVR’d everything. We have a membership to Amazon Prime and we signed up for Hulu. Never looking back!

That being said, I’m very much addicted to Bravo: the Real Housewives franchise, Vanderpump Rules, Tabitha’s Salon Takeover, The Rachel Zoe Project. Bravo is stingy with online episodes and airings on Hulu, so it’s been an adjustment to say the least.

I have really bad skin. I’m always looking for something to fix it.

My only tried and true makeup product: Maybelline Great Lash Mascara.

I only eat and cook with real butter.

My favorite thing to eat is carbs: pasta, bread, cookies, etc. I have a really hard time exercising self control around them.

I have to put lotion on every day after the shower, as well as several times throughout the day. If I can’t put it on after washing my hands, I freak out. So uncomfortable!

Favorite errand: taking my car to the car wash. Least favorite errand: grocery shopping.

I love all wine, but particularly in this order of importance: white, rose’, red. I usually only drink red in the fall and winter. I never drink moscato or white zinfandel. My liquor of choice is tequila, if we’re talking shots. For cocktails I prefer vodka. I never drink gin or bourbon. Just never developed the taste for it.

I must have half-n-half in my coffee. 2% or skim milk won’t cut it.

I carry on full conversations with my pets. When I leave for work in the morning, I give them all a hug and a kiss.

I’ve lived in six places in my lifetime, but Richmond is my most favorite of all.

{Your turn! Share 3 things I may not know about you!}

Today is my 30th birthday.

In the lead-up, I felt very surprised - how did I get here so fast? - and reluctant - wahh, my 20s are disappearing! I woke up this morning and I just felt happy. I felt it way down deep, from a place that has been dark and sad recently, so this was a welcome surprise. I just feel good, for the first time in a really long time.

On Friday I had drinks at Hardywood Brewery with friends from the Associated Press. It was a great mini-reunion, and we drank delicious beers and had tons of laughs and “remember when?” moments. Saturday morning I had brunch at Lulu’s with some of the best gals (and husband!) a girl could ask for. We drank Bloody Marys, belly-laughed and took pictures for once. I wanted to remember it – all of my closest girlfriends gathered together. These are the girls who get me through my darkest hours and who I have the absolute most fun with. I was showered with most thoughtful and generous presents. It was too much! (Thank you all!) Afterwards, most of us headed back to my house for homemade purple velvet cake (yes, I meant purple!) and champagne. I don’t think I stopped smiling or laughing for 99% of the day. When everyone was gone, I looked at Billy and said “I just want to remember this amazing day.” Then he took it one step further by giving me my birthday present a couple days early: a rose gold Bulova watch. I was stunned and rendered speechless, which is quite hard to accomplish! Just when I think I’ve got him figured out, he surprises me and sweeps me off my feet. As silly as it sounds, my girlfriends did too. They completely swept me off my feet with their love and friendship. I had a moment where I realized just how lucky I am to be surrounded by these beautiful, funny, strong, amazing women. My husband might be my romantic partner, but these girls are my soul-mates.

And although today was a holiday and I still had to work (and sit through FIVE meetings – groan!), it was a great day. I awoke to tons of social media love, including a surprise from a much-missed West Coast friend. A girlfriend surprised me with the cutest prints for my kitchen that I’d been coveting. I treated myself to a soy chai latte and sushi. For a Monday, this one was pretty spectacular!

To my girlfriends, my husband, my sister, my friends who read my blog: Thank you from the bottom of my heart! Life is so much better with you all in it, and I’m so grateful for your friendship and love. I don’t know what I’d do without you.

Cheers to this new decade! If I’d known that 30 would be this fantastic, I would have gladly turned 30 a long time ago. This was my best birthday yet.

If I had to pick a word to describe January, renewal would be the perfect choice. The calendar flips and automatically you’re given a clean slate to begin anew. I had no idea where this January would find me, but this month last year was when I decided to take control of my surroundings and pursue change. It was on January 29, 2012 that I decided to do something about where I lived. We all know how that went, but I sit here now, realizing that I did accomplish a huge goal in moving to Richmond.

January was for…

New leases. Becoming a landlord. Moving. Unpacking box after box after box in record speed. Marveling at more space, natural light and convenience. Decorating and repurposing. Buying a new bed. Diving down the Pinterest rabbit hole. Envisioning and planning and scheming.

Gym classes – Body Pump, Yoga and Cycle. Sweating it out. De-stressing and decompressing. Finding new strength and old loves. Tears in yoga class. Fighting comparison and finding my feelings, which were buried deep. Stretching and giving in. Pushing myself and knowing when to let go.

Photo shoots and work challenges and really tough days. Screwing up and owning it. Redemption and new ideas. Honest conversations. Feeling lost and figuring it out. Defining what success means to me.

Connecting with friends. Sushi and sleepovers and gifts from Africa. Brunch and Bloody Marys. Confiding and laughing and Sonic Diet Cherry Limeades. Fondue with lady-loves. The perfect birthday card and belly laughs. Finding my truest, bluest buds. Bottles of red wine split with old friends – the best kind. Tears and hugs and hand squeezes. Being there for each other when it counts the most. A visit from my sister and furry-niece. Real hamburgers and french fries and chocolate chip cookies with Nutella. Cooking for lady friends and ridiculous chocolate cake.

Snow and ice and 5 straight days of rain. The return of sunshine and 75 degree days. Dogs playing outside and wiping off muddy paws. Sweeping and mopping and husky hair tornadoes. Cobwebs and creepy basements. Flowers in vases. New recipes and culinary adventures.

January was for change, ambition and reconnection. It’s never been my favorite month of the year, but 2013 brought me a new perspective. February has a lot to live up to! Next month I will turn 30. Just how, exactly, did that happen?

I just fell down a Twitter black hole, and what I saw was frightening.

It started off with a little house-cleaning. I was following new people, unfollowing others and considering a brief bio update. Then I somehow landed on an anonymous Twitter account that pokes fun at my hometown and my brain exploded.

See, I much prefer to live in a misguided world where I believe that no one from “home” is on Twitter. Occasionally I receive a notification that someone from high school has followed me on Twitter, and my method of coping is to cringe for 5 seconds and forget about it. But today, that black hole had me following account after account after account of people that I used to be friends with, cannot stand, or simply would rather forget they existed. If I could scratch my own eyeballs out right now, I would.

The Internet is a funny place. Obviously I know that by being on Twitter (and doing it the right way – as in, I do not protect my tweets) and being a blogger (albeit, sporadically), I’m putting the details of my life out to the public for any person in the entire world to see. I’m also not vain enough to think that only the cool kids are doing it, or that I can escape the inevitable moments where my path crosses with someone from the past. Still, I can’t help feeling mortified when I realize that I’m sharing information publicly with people from the past who can easily access it with the click of a button. First world problems, I know.

I remember when being anonymous was a thing and it was accepted and possible. I remember when practically no one I knew was on Twitter and I could keep my own Twitter use a secret. It was a slow drip, drip, drip as people signed up and then my online world got a lot smaller and my shared thoughts and stories got a lot more exposed. It was a kinder, gentler time back then.

As my online world closes in around me and more and more people can easily find out anything they want to know about me, I wonder: how long can I keep this up? How long do I want to keep this up? Until I figure that out, I guess my only saving grace is a healthy dose of avoidance, humor and the ever-handy unfollow/unfriend/block feature.

{How do you cope with the size of your online world?}