That was the day she broke out. I opened the door to the garage, and there was the big white dog standing there wagging her tail. I was flabbergasted to be completely honest. Before then, I’d always be paranoid that I forgot to completely secure their cage or that one of them would break out. Sure enough, that fear became reality real quick.

Over the past six or seven months, Krissy and I have really stepped up our knowledge surrounding black people and our struggles, politics, and tactics used by other groups to keep us down. While today is considered a major holiday by others in our society, over a hundred years ago our ancestors were lied to in a vicious game of keep away. Today is just another day for us.

I remember going through puberty and not struggling with acne. I never had those huge red boils on the sides of my cheeks and I never had the Crunch candy bar chin. Even during my later teenage years and into the early years of my 20’s, my skin was relatively clear most of the time. After I hit about 24, that’s when my skin really started giving me woes.

Over the years, my hair has gone through a whole bunch of transitions. From fully natural, to always being in braids, to having damaged, broken ends, to being completely chopped off, my hair has evolved with the various stages of life that I’ve gone through.

You can think of songs like tiny, personal time capsules that get released each time we press play. Every song that’s on repeat in your library is building a nostalgic feeling that you won’t experience until some years down the road.

Personally, there are few things that I despise more than the HOA in my neighborhood. For those of you lucky to not know, most homes built in subdivisions today have a Homeowners Association that you can’t opt out of. My biggest gripe is that the HOA isn’t run by the actual homeowners, but instead run by an outsourced community management company that’s usually far removed from the neighborhood itself.

I have never in my life slept through an alarm, thankfully. Usually, I’m a pretty light sleeper and the slightest sounds can wake me up. That works in my favor if I accidentally doze off after turning an alarm off, but works against me if there’s ever a bump in the night. I have to be exhausted to fall asleep with lots of noise around me.

Even though our wedding was a beautiful day and ceremony, I can’t say I would love to plan another wedding. While I refused to allow the moment to stress me out, it was a lot getting family and friends together in Athens as we celebrated our nuptials. I understand why getting married is a once in a lifetime event. From dress shopping to cake tasting to deciding the tuxes for the groomsmen to picking flowers and everything in between, it’s definitely a marathon and not a sprint.

However, you can’t describe the feeling of being in a packed stadium with loud, obnoxious fans during a huge moment in a game. The feeling of being on the edge of your seat when you play an equally matched opponent. The pure joy of getting a stop on defense and then scoring on offense. The chants, the cheers, the band, the music all combine to make game day its very own special experience.

At the end of the day, my blog is a passion project. If one day in the future it’s able to get monetized and be a passive money maker, cool, but that’s not why I consistently write these posts. I write because I genuinely enjoy getting the words out of my head in a creatively engineered sentence, paragraph, passage.

We started off down the trail and immediately spotted the difference between this moderate trail and the easy trail from Fort Yargo. It was waaaaay rockier. There was barely room for people to pass since the trail itself wasn’t as wide. The inclines and declines were super steep and there was no way anyone would be able to complete that trail unless they were in decent shape

For someone who was determined to go out of state for college, I’m a huge UGA fan. It was the only university I applied to in Georgia, and not once have I regretted that decision. Fun fact, I applied early action to UGA but since I actually misspelled my name, I had to wait on pins and needles until the regular decisions went out. My initial mark on UGA will always be Jesssica.

Talk about embarrassing lol.

And with that much content to read, we are pretty much locked in for years. We read at a decent pace, but we definitely don’t like speed reading. Back in my day, I had a competition going with myself to read books as fast as possible. I loved getting new books but knew that to buy a new one, I had to finish one.

There’s one tea that I got from Trader Joe’s that has stuck with me for many years. I deeply enjoyed it, but only purchased one box. It was a reddish purplish color and smelled of flowers but had a sweet, light, airy taste. It was a pomegranate white tea with hibiscus flowers and lemongrass but I don’t think it had any caffeine. To date, that was my favorite tea that I’ve ever tried. I could drink it any time of the day and not get tired of it.

Out of all the doctors and health professionals I have to see annually, I dread seeing the dentist the most. Maybe because I have to see them more often than I have to see my primary care doctor or eye doctor. I prepare a whole month in advance by flossing almost every single day to avoid the typical “Your gums are bleeding. You might want to floss more often” lecture that I used to get pretty often.

While some internal timelines are beneficial, some definitely cause more damage than good. For example, an internal timeline can let us know when it’s time to work out again or when it’s time to push ourselves to get a little bit better each day. An internal timeline can become detrimental if we’re using that timeline to compare to other people’s highlight reel. We’re all human so we all wonder if other people are going through the same things at the same pace as we are. More often, the answer just isn’t that simple.

I saw this quote recently that had an impact on me. Someone said “Post your content. It doesn’t matter who is watching or how nervous you feel. It’s valuable.” So often, I get in my head over how other people will view the things I post, including this entire blog. For the longest, I didn’t post anything on my Instagram story because it didn’t seem that anyone cared for the content I created. Truthfully, it still doesn’t seem like many people care, but I’m pushing myself to not let that be a deterrent for me.

I used to be a leave everything in my suitcase and just rumble around for things I need girl, but I unpacked during this trip just to see how it was and I liked that method waaaaaay better. And it makes it incredibly easier to pack when leaving. I used the hour of free time we needed to burn to unpack all of our clothes and set up the bathroom with our hygiene stuff since I seriously didn’t want to do it when I was tired later that night.

My options for the replacement car came down to a Lexus RX 350 and a Honda CR-V. I was initially drawn to the CR-V, but when I thought about what I wanted most in a car, the RX 350 fit the bill better at my budget. The first couple we went to see in person were a bust. The very first one wasn’t well maintained, didn’t have a backup camera, and needed more repairs than we were willing to take on. The second one ended up being over budget once taxes, tag, and title were taken into account and it had more miles than we necessarily liked. The third one was unconventional and maybe a little risky, but it ended up being the best option and the one I’m driving today.

My 8 AM to 5 PM has been working my nerves this week. Okay, that’s dramatic. Maybe not working my nerves, but I’ve been having some conniptions about it. There are major issues that seem oh so simple to fix along with too much information floating around in my head.