I bought a house!

When I was in college and even living on my own, in my one bedroom apartment, I never dreamed of buying a house by myself. I figured that would happen once I got married. I thought that would be a first I would do with my husband. However, real life happened completely differently than the picture I had in my head (funny how that's usually the case). I had lived in my apartment for almost 4 years, I was ready to move on. I wanted a change. I needed more, something else. I think the real problem was boredom. I was tired of paying so much in rent and then have nothing to show for it. I also wanted a new project. So......house searching seemed to be the answer.

I looked at townhouses and condos. I quickly decided that a condo was not for me. I don't think Ellie would have done well going in and out of an elevator just to go outside to do her business. So those were out. They were also much smaller than my current apartment, and I was not about to downsize. There were several townhomes that I "liked" but didn't "love," until I found the one with the backyard. It was so cute, so cozy, so ME! It was a cute neighborhood, a cute brick house, not too big, not too small, and had a small fenced in backyard. It was perfect.

At this point, I think I was still deciding if I really wanted to buy a house on my own, but if I was going to, it was going to be this one. My mom loved it. We brought my dad back to look at it and he loved it. We were discussing what and if I was going to put in an offer, then headed to brunch to think it over. Afterwards I got a call from my realtor who gave us the news that there were two other offers on the table. That was the moment everything became a whirlwind. Next thing I knew I was making an offer, signing papers, emailing things back and forth, and having many freak out moments. Tears were involved, second guessing myself was also involved. Could I really afford this? Could I really buy a house all on my own? Did I really want to be that committed to staying in Atlanta? You can't change your mind after something this big! I guess you could say I got a little panicked. I said a lot of prayers, and waited. The following day I found out my offer was the lowest of the three, but my closing date was better for them, so they accepted my offer. The closing date was exactly two days before my lease was up. What were the odds of that? Everything worked out like it was supposed to. I was going to be a homeowner.

That was in January of this year, and I closed on March 17, 2014, St. Patrick's Day. It was a rainy Monday. A day I will never forget! It was a long process, but I am very glad I did it. I extended my lease a few weeks to get some stuff completed at the house before I moved in. It needed new carpet desperately, and I wanted to get some painting done as well. So at the end of March I left my first apartment full of so many wonderful memories, and headed to my very own house to make a million more. I have been here seven months, and they have flown by. They have also been a very exciting seven months. Nothing about my home projects have been dull, that's for sure. I have faced many challenges along the way, but I have learned a lot! I will share pictures soon!

xoxo,
Maggie

Life’s Simple Pleasures

This past weekend was yet another wonderful weekend spent with new friends and family. Unfortunately it flew by too fast and it’s Monday, again…Ohh, how I miss the days of college that included long weekends and frequent vacations. Adults really should get more time off. I think everyone would be happier and maybe a little more productive…just sayin’.

Friday I went to a shower for a couple I had only met once (I was attending as a date). I felt a little out of place because I didn’t really know them. There were a few new friends I have made there which made it better, and there were a few old acquaintances as well, which was unexpected. There was friend from high school that I cheered with, don’t think I’d seen here since right after graduation. There was also a friend I used to hang out with in college and her husband, they were friends of my ex, which was a little random and awkward, but fine. It’s funny how life brings you to people from your past sometimes. It really is a very small world. We spent the rest of the night just hangin’ out and laughin’; telling stories and dancing in the kitchen. Just chill and relax, that’s the way it needs to be. I came home Saturday to spend the day being productive, despite the multiple invitations to do something fun. I said no for once, which I rarely ever do, and decided to be responsible and get my long list of to do’s done, but I only really put a dent in it. I passed on tubing down the Chattahoochee River and a Brave’s game. Just this once though, next time I’m all in. I love tubing down the river, we went so many times last summer and it’s just something fun to do. There are few things better than relaxing and floating in the sun with a beer in hand!

Yesterday I spent Father’s Day at my parent’s. We just hung out and played backyard games. We played a little crochet and corn hole. My sister, Andy, and I got my daddy a corn hole set, which he has always wanted. He was so excited. We grilled out dinner with my grandparents, my Aunt, and my cousin. It was a nice relaxing day spent with loved ones. Those are the best moments in life. I’m truly blessed with a family that I am so lucky to have, and the greatest friends in the world.

Now, I just gotta get through this busy week and get things done for the baby shower I’m throwing Saturday and I’ll be 8 days from my beach vacation!! I. Cannot. Wait!! I’ve got lots to do and figure out between now and then! I should start packing early…because we all know it always take me way longer than it should to pack. I always seem to over think it…oh well! Can’t say I’m never prepared! :)

Here's to Possibilities!

So I have had several thoughts the past few weeks about things I wanted to blog about, but I have just been too busy to blog (what's new, right?). So again I'm putting those things on hold and blogging about possibilities instead. 


I came home tonight and on the news was a story about a new college grad who went to Yale, graduated last week, and died in a car accident this week. Such a tragic story, and it sadly happens all the time. Now what made this girl different was that she wrote for the school paper and published an essay to her graduating class that stuck with many people around the nation. Her words are very near to my heart, she was able to put exactly how I have felt at so many points in my life into words and on paper, when I was never even sure how to express what I was feeling. I feel like everyone should read her words of wisdom. Below is her article:

UNIVERSITY | 3:10 a.m. | May. 27, 2012 | By Marina Keegan

KEEGAN: The Opposite of Loneliness

Marina Keegan '12. Photo by Facebook.

The piece below was written by Marina Keegan '12 for a special edition of the News distributed at the class of 2012's commencement exercises last week. Keegan died in a car accident on Saturday. She was 22.

We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life. What I’m grateful and thankful to have found at Yale, and what I’m scared of losing when we wake up tomorrow and leave this place.

It’s not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it’s four a.m. and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night we can’t remember. That time we did, we went, we saw, we laughed, we felt. The hats.

Yale is full of tiny circles we pull around ourselves. A cappella groups, sports teams, houses, societies, clubs. These tiny groups that make us feel loved and safe and part of something even on our loneliest nights when we stumble home to our computers — partner-less, tired, awake. We won’t have those next year. We won’t live on the same block as all our friends. We won’t have a bunch of group-texts.

This scares me. More than finding the right job or city or spouse – I’m scared of losing this web we’re in. This elusive, indefinable, opposite of loneliness. This feeling I feel right now.

But let us get one thing straight: the best years of our lives are not behind us. They’re part of us and they are set for repetition as we grow up and move to New York and away from New York and wish we did or didn’t live in New York. I plan on having parties when I’m 30. I plan on having fun when I’m old. Any notion of THE BEST years comes from clichéd “should haves...” “if I’d...” “wish I’d...”

Of course, there are things we wished we did: our readings, that boy across the hall. We’re our own hardest critics and it’s easy to let ourselves down. Sleeping too late. Procrastinating. Cutting corners. More than once I’ve looked back on my High School self and thought: how did I do that? How did I work so hard? Our private insecurities follow us and will always follow us.

But the thing is, we’re all like that. Nobody wakes up when they want to. Nobody did all of their reading (except maybe the crazy people who win the prizes…) We have these impossibly high standards and we’ll probably never live up to our perfect fantasies of our future selves. But I feel like that’s okay.

We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time. There’s this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lay alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out – that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. That it’s too late now to BEGIN a beginning and we must settle for continuance, for commencement.

When we came to Yale, there was this sense of possibility. This immense and indefinable potential energy – and it’s easy to feel like that’s slipped away. We never had to choose and suddenly we’ve had to. Some of us have focused ourselves. Some of us know exactly what we want and are on the path to get it; already going to med school, working at the perfect NGO, doing research. To you I say both congratulations and you suck.

For most of us, however, we’re somewhat lost in this sea of liberal arts. Not quite sure what road we’re on and whether we should have taken it. If only I had majored in biology…if only I’d gotten involved in journalism as a freshman…if only I’d thought to apply for this or for that…

What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over. Get a post-bac or try writing for the first time. The notion that it’s too late to do anything is comical. It’s hilarious. We’re graduating college. We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.

In the heart of a winter Friday night my freshman year, I was dazed and confused when I got a call from my friends to meet them at EST EST EST. Dazedly and confusedly, I began trudging to SSS, probably the point on campus farthest away. Remarkably, it wasn’t until I arrived at the door that I questioned how and why exactly my friends were partying in Yale’s administrative building. Of course, they weren’t. But it was cold and my ID somehow worked so I went inside SSS to pull out my phone. It was quiet, the old wood creaking and the snow barely visible outside the stained glass. And I sat down. And I looked up. At this giant room I was in. At this place where thousands of people had sat before me. And alone, at night, in the middle of a New Haven storm, I felt so remarkably, unbelievably safe.

We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I’d say that’s how I feel at Yale. How I feel right now. Here. With all of you. In love, impressed, humbled, scared. And we don’t have to lose that.

We’re in this together, 2012. Let’s make something happen to this world.

from: http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/may/27/keegan-opposite-loneliness/

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I felt this same way when I graduated college. I graduated with that Biology degree that I couldn't do anything with. But I graduated in 4 years! However, I wanted to switch to nursing half way through but I felt it was "too late." I wouldn't have graduated on time had I switched my major. So I didn't. Instead I graduated, then decided to go back to nursing school and graduate again 2 years later. I am glad I quickly realized too that I was still so young, I could still do ANYTHING I wanted to do. So I went back and got that second degree, and I am so glad I did. I could have easily said it was "too late" and then who knows where I would be right now. 

I too have often been so scared of what I was losing when things changed. I was scared of losing the best roommates I ever had, of not living across and next door to my sorority sisters, scared (yet thrilled too) of not living in a house with 12 girls, scared of leaving a town I had grown to love so much, scared of moving further from my family and my sister. I have been scared when my best friends moved further away or got married and started having babies. I felt like everything we ever had would be gone for good. Lost. Irreplaceable. But that turned out not to be true, EVER. I learned things change but they are still good. My friends and I have different experiences together now, but we also always have the past to bring with us, and look back on. We still have so many good things to look forward to also. Yes I am no longer 22, I am now 27 and the past few years have really been some of my best. They are just my best in a different way than my college years were my best years. And I still plan on having even better years to come. As we get older we learn from our experiences and we grow. Yes I am getting older but I am also getting wiser, and yet I am still so young. I can still do anything I want to do. I still have so many possibilities and I am glad I haven't lost sight of that. I hope I never do. 


These words from Marina Keegan came at a perfect time for me. I have been struggling with decisions on what to do with my life. I have been thinking about travel nursing, and probably have done nothing but talk about that for the past year. I'm just too scared to actually do it...right now. I have thought about going back to a hospital job, I have thought about changing specialties and working in pediatrics. I have thought about working in an ICU and going back to school. I have thought about picking up and just moving somewhere I have never lived because I have lived in GA my whole life.  Lately I've been thinking that I need to hurry up and decide before it's too late to do anythign. But Marina Keegan reminded me today that I will always have possibilities out there. She reminded me that I am still young and can do whatever I want. I still have many chances to make a difference and leave my footprint behind. So thank you Marian Keegan for leaving your beautiful, inspirational words behind. You have reminded me of exactly how I once felt and helped me to never lose sight of that.

Sweet, Sweet Magnolias

There is no better time in the South than spring time! The magnolia trees are in bloom! And they small AMAZING! I love that my apartment complex has so many on the property. I get to enjoy the lovely sweet smell everyday when I take Ellie out for her walk! And I cut a few off the tree and bring them inside on occasion too! It reminds of my of when I was a little girl and we would pick a bunch at my grandparent’s house to bring home. It was my mom’s favorite smell! We would cut down several to bring home to her after our day with PB and Papa….Oh such sweet memories!

EVERYTHING NEW

I have not blogged in OVER a year!! That is not ok! So much has happened (good and bad). But this year is going to be all new! A new me (back to myself!), new adventures, new friends, and new life experiences! I have decided I want to be a travel nurse. Even though I haven't been at my current job very long, like 5 months now. But I am bored and keep wondering if I should have traveled. If I am ever going to do this, this is the time! I will forever regret it if I don't. I have friend who wants to go with me and we have a list of places we want to see! I have lived in Georgia my whole life and I want to know what it would be like to live somewhere else! Who knows where this adventure will take me!

Keep you posted!

Just know.....there is nothing but good things on my horizon! :)

Love ya,

Maggie

Snowed In

So Atlanta got hit with a major snow storm on Sunday night. I can't believe how much snow fell so fast. I went to church then dinner and snow flurries had just begun on the way home. 1 1/2 hours later there were almost 2 inches on the ground...it was CRAZY! I was supposed to work Monday, needed to be there at 6:30. I got up early in anticipation of uncovering my car with snow. But had no idea it would be covered with 6 inches of snow. I thought my hands were going to freeze and fall off. So I get my car mostly uncovered for it to not even start...REALLY?!

So I called them and let them know. While outside I heard a car trying to get up the hill outside of our apartment complex and all I heard were spinning tires. Even if my car did start I probably would have been sliding too! So needless to say I felt bad I couldn't get there, but what was I supposed to do?!

Now I am supposed to go in tomorrow and Thursday...this should be fun! Work called me today and pretty much said you better be here tomorrow and since you weren't here yesterday you gotta work this weekend...great thanks! But hope I can get there. My car started today, I got up the hill only because a path was cleared from those cars with 4 wheel drive. But I almost got stuck twice and I slid a couple of times and that was a 2pm when stuff was melted and it was 33 degrees outside. It will all refreeze tonight and no one will have driven on it. Hope my coworker's husband's truck is better than my car cause they are picking me up. Hey if I can't make it this time, at least it's not my fault and they can't blame me again. They can't say I didn't try (which is what I think they think now).

Why did I pick a profession that can't close!! I need an office job! (then I would have holidays off too)

I gotta feeling, that this year will be a good year...

Yes I am singing that in my head to the same tune as the Black Eyed Peas song!

2011 is going to be a great year! There are a lot of changes that are going to be made in my life and a lot of things I want to accomplish. First I am running my second half marathon on April 30, I already signed up! I will also be changing by diet, for the better of course. I really want to change my eating habits, I will eat healthy foods not only to lose weight, but to also be healthier and prevent problems later in life. This will begin with me learning to cook a lot of different things which is something else I really want to do, cook more! Which will be great with my fabulous christmas present of a cooking class from a special someone...

I am also going to do the great urban race again in Atlanta this year. Last year was just too much fun not to do it again. And I will be signing up for the muddy buddy race as well....I can't wait! So many exciting things to look forward to.

I am hoping to take several trips this year too, but we'll see how my bank account can handle that one. My plan is to go to New York City this spring, I have never been! (I know, it's shameful!) I am also hoping to go to Europe at some point, but the place I would have stayed for free on the French Riviera may not be ready so, it may have to wait until next year....stupid tenants who won't move out! I may have a different job come August, I just can't decide what, either travel nursing and see the country or start in a NICU somewhere....I think I finally decided school is not an option yet, I like having a life too much! I went so many years without one, and well I am just having WAY too much fun! You only live once, I may as well enjoy it! And I don't want to spend it studying....again.

This year is going to be great, I can't wait to see what it brings! Hopefully nothing but happiness!