The Lovefest 2011

This is how Rick, Matthew’s dad, has so affectionately referred to our family vacations.  Matthew and I just returned to Atlanta on Saturday from our oh-so-wonderful, went-too-fast vacation in Isle of Palms.  The week was seven days of pure relaxation. 

Matthew and I got a head start on the vacation by leaving on Friday evening.  We had hoped to leave mid-day on Friday, but this annoying little thing called work held Matthew up.  Leaving later Friday, though, let us to miss the weekend traffic and we got to our hotel just outside of Charleston late Friday night.  On the way, we watched No Strings Attached, the movie with Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher, on my iPad.  If you haven’t seen it and you’re not offended by a little crude humor, I’d recommend it, as would Matthew.  As far as romantic comedies go, it’s pretty cute.

The next day, Matthew and I spent the day in Charleston.  I have been to Charleston several times, but I have only driven through the Battery once.  Having read all of Pat Conroy’s books, I feel like a South Carolinian that knows the ‘South of Broad’ in and out.  I figured I could give up a day of shopping, my usual Charleston pastime, for a day of more cultured activity.  It turned out to be what I told Matthew was “my perfect day.”  We walked through the streets of magnificent homes, read plaques about the historical sites and marveled at the enchanting gardens.  We walked along the water and through the parks and spotted artists at work and did some great people-watching, all while holding hands.  We were in no rush to be anywhere and at no risk of having someone ruin our day.  We decided on lunch at the rooftop bar of a restaurant downtown and then headed toward the coast to meet up with our families.

This year was the sixth time that we have done a combined family vacation – my parents and brother and sister and Matthew’s parents.  Now, I know this seems a little strange if you do not know our families.  When I tell people how our moms are friends and our dads are friends and we spend holidays together and vacation together, they seem surprised.  Some are even a little skeptical that marriage can be this easy.  But we are very lucky that everyone gets along and even, dare I say, enjoys each other’s company.  Even so, how do you spend a week with anyone without getting a little annoyed, right?  Other years, I’d say, yes, of course, we drive each other crazy sometimes, but it’s all in the name of love.  This year was different, though.  I think each of us said in the last couple of days that we thought this was the best vacation we could remember.

                       

I have tried to pinpoint what was the difference in this year’s trip that made it so much better.  The only thing that I can come up with is that everyone is old enough (my little sister, Mollie, is 20 this year) to appreciate and enjoy each other as adults.  We did not try to avoid certain topics of conversation for her sake.  On the contrary, we talked about some things that would embarrass even the worst teenage boys.  I could go into detail about these particular discussions, but to save face, I’ll avoid the specifics.  Suffice it to say that we covered everything from our waterboy’s hotness to substance experimentation to sheep’s bodily fluids.  Those of you that know my mom know that she will be mortified that I just mentioned these conversations, but I will also mention what she said at lunch one day.  She said that, first, she can’t believe her sweet children can talk about such things and she just hopes that we have the good sense to avoid such topics in the presence of other people.  Secondly, she said she is glad that we have a good enough relationship to be open about even the most off-color things.  In addition to good conversation, we read for hours, took long walks, listened to good music and enjoyed amazing meals.  We golfed, fished and shopped in groups.  Our dads watched a lot of tv (Swamp People, Big Break and wartime documentaries), and it seemed like Matthew and Ben were always off getting in trouble somewhere….will they ever grow up? J  

                                                                                                              

I’d bet other young couples approaching the five-year mark would agree with me when I say that the question of “getting pregnant” is one frequently asked.  To be fair, our families have always known our anticipated timeline on having kids and understand our desire to wait and live a little first.  One discussion that never fails to come up, though, is what the future little Spiveys will be named.  I used to tell anyone who cared my baby names, but everyone has an opinion and I usually don’t appreciate it.  J  Matthew and I have four names picked out and our lips are SEALED!  Some family members even tried bribery to get the names!  Everyone will just have a wait a few more years!

I feel so fortunate to have such a great family and the opportunity to go on a wonderful vacation.  As the week came to a close, we were already talking about next year’s vacation.  Until then, we’ll work hard, play some and enjoy life!

Until next time, sending love,

The Spiveys

Need Another Margarita, Please!

Matthew and I just got home from an enlightening dinner.  Those of you that have been fortunate enough to attend the lovely establishment of Las Margaritas know what kind of enlightenment I may be talking about.  Cheshire Bridge Rd. in Atlanta is a heavily gay populated area, and Las Margaritas is a hotspot right in the middle of it.  It has been one of our favorite Mexican restaurants since we got married because it’s a great atmosphere and the margaritas are unbeatable.  (Just don’t ask for the wine list, right, Charles?) 

So we walk in tonight, anticipating a low key dinner with some cheese dip and tacos, and say we want to sit out on the porch.  It was pretty crowded (which, by the way, is one of my favorite things about going to a weekday dinner out in Atlanta), and as we walk outside, we see what appears to be an MC on his MacBook in front of a projection screen.  We immediately see that we are only the second ‘couple’ table; the others are groups.  We sit down, Matthew orders a margarita and the reality of what is going on hits us.  There is a game (cleverly called ‘Crazy Bitch Bingo’), similar to trivia, where each player has a Bingo card, and the MC, named Bryan, plays a theme song to a tv show.  The card has the tv shows, and the first player to get five in a row wins.  By this time, I realize that I need to order a margarita, too. J

Right from the start, Bryan says, “Everyone check out the straight couple that just walked in and is wondering what’s up!”  (There were a couple of four letter words in here, too.)  It took me a minute to realize he was talking about us.  I just laughed it off and thought that was that.  Oh, how wrong was I!  Every couple of minutes, the dude called us out!  He announced to everyone that Matthew’s “body language” made him “definitely straight” so no one “get any ideas.”  Round 2 was called ‘All Things Gay’ and consisted of pictures (i.e., Cher, Subaru, Madonna, etc.) that filled the Bingo card boxes.  During the showing of one particularly crude picture, I was laughing and talking to Matthew, and Bryan called out, “Straight girl knows what it is!” and then followed up with, “This is 2011, girl, there should be none of that going on!”  I’ll let you guys use your imaginations as to what he was referring.  He insulted every race, gender, preference in the hour and a half we were there.  He kept referring to this ‘date’ Matthew and I were on, and finally, I lifted my hand up to show him we were married.  That just got him going more.  He said, “You just wait until Round 3 – I’m going to have to come on over to yo’ table!”  And on and on it went….  As much fun as we were having being the center of attention, we decided to pay our check quickly (which had gotten pretty high after the margaritas we had to drink!) during the break after Round 2 and squeeze on out as discreetly as possible. 

Tonight was one of those rare times that you enter into a situation with low expectations and life pleasantly surprises you with something so much better.  In high school, the infamous barn dances were always so much more fun when you went dateless and were just going to make an appearance (if you’re not from Kingsport or had the opportunity to hear about these dances, I’m sure I’ll get around to them at some point).  In college, the nights you went out ‘for just a couple of hours because you have a test tomorrow’ often turned out to be those nights you’ll never forget (Ring a bell, JRoller?).  Sometimes I’ll be laying in bed on a Sunday morning and have to drag myself up to get to church, and then those are the mornings I am most moved by God’s message.  Even an awkward baby shower can prove you wrong.  Most recently, with school winding down, I was at an awards ceremony, and I was feeling bored before it even got started.  Then, I felt as if the keynote speaker’s remarks were directed right to me; they grabbed my attention and made me even more excited to get going with my career.

The downside of this whole idea is that you never know when it’s coming – you can’t plan for these times that you’ll laugh and tell stories about for weeks.  On the other hand, how great it is that we can never plan for what is in store for us – in the big life picture or dinner at a Mexican restaurant. 

On a different note, my hooding ceremony is tomorrow and graduation is Saturday.  I’m praying for safe travels for my family as they travel to Atlanta, and selfishly, I’m praying for pretty weather (or at least non-raining weather) on Saturday as graduation is outside. 

Until next time, sending love,
The Spiveys

  

Let's Hear It for Our Mommas!

Thank you, everyone, for all the positive feedback on the blog!  The pressure’s on now, though….I have to keep this up! 

So this weekend Matthew and I went separate directions from Atlanta – him to Birmingham and me to Knoxville.  I decided last-minute to go see some of my bff’s in Knoxville because life is about to get crazy with board exams and residency, and I just needed a little TLC that only those girlfriends that know you best can give.  Overall, it was a great get-together.  As we were winding up a Mexican dinner last night, we were comparing our relationships with our moms.  Some of us had the blowout fights with our moms during those awkward teenage years, some of us took passive aggressive to the max, and some of us just thought it was too much of the same personality for one house.  As I was driving back to Atlanta today, I was thinking about my group of closest friends and about the women we have become.  While dads undoubtedly play an irreplaceable role in our lives and we have all met individuals that have changed our ways of thinking, MUCH credit goes to our moms.

Not to get too universal, but our moms, and their moms and their moms, have paved the way for my generation of women.  I am the person, the woman, I want to be at this point in my life, and I am proud to give credit to my mom. 

Back to my group of best friends….we have good jobs, a plethora of graduate degrees among the 11 of us, boyfriends, husbands, house payments, leadership roles in community organizations, impressive passports….by today’s standards, we are a successful (and fortunate and very grateful) bunch.  But even with these tangible success measures, it is our attitudes of which I am most proud.  We REALLY believe that we can do anything.  If we want to be president of a company, we can do it; president of the United States, we can do it.  We want to have four kids and be a CEO, of course we can, why not?  We speak our minds loud and clear, in conversation or against something we know is wrong.  We put effort and time (and Matthew would probably say too much money) into how we look, but don’t you dare make any assumptions about us based on that.  We work out (or try to, at least), but we know that the way we live and the way we treat others is what really matters.  We talk openly about sex and too-fun nights out and can tell a dirty joke with the best of them, but we don’t let those moments define us.  When life throws us a roadblock that knocks us down, we stand up, brush ourselves off and are more determined to get what we want.  We do what we can to help those less fortunate, but we don’t feel guilty about the occasional spa visit.  We strive to live life to its fullest and push ourselves to our personal limits.  We expect a lot of ourselves and a lot from others, and we don’t apologize for it.  Let me clarify….I understand that we are several decades past the women’s rights movements; the difference is that today’s girls don’t give a second thought to not being a man.  Even the implication that being a female is a drawback gets a furrowed-brow, skeptical look and a “What the hell?” 

Don’t get me wrong, us modern girls have our faults – i.e., we choose to watch repeats of Keeping Up with the Kardashians or Sex and the City (which we have, of course, seen at least four times) rather than any news broadcast; we diet like mad women until Friday late night when we scarf down 4 Krystals, 3 Pups and fries (with a Diet Coke, naturally); we use technology for almost everything from setting up dates to making hair appointments to keeping up with our checking accounts but would take an embarrassingly long time to remember how to use the Dewey decimal system.  But because of our moms, we do these things without shame.  What the hell?

And we can’t forget the moms of the men (or boys, depending on the day).  We owe it to you to setting the example for your sons.  You have raised them to find strong, independent, smart women attractive. 

So in honor of Mother’s Day 2011, raise your glasses to the women that have made us who we are.  To my own mom, Jimmie, you rock my world, and I’ll never be able to thank you enough.  To Sandy, thank you for raising the man of my dreams – I am a better person because you were an incredible mom.  To the moms of my best friends, thank you for raising smart, positive, FUN girls that have shown me the meaning of true friendship.  To the moms of little girls and little boys, let’s keep up the good work.  You comforted us when we down, bandaged skinned knees and encouraged us through trying times, but most importantly, you taught us that this life is ours for the taking; and watch out world, us girls are here!

Until next time, sending love,

The Spiveys

To clarify....

I wrote my 1st blog post about a month ago (after a couple of glasses of vino), but I've just gotten the nerve to post it (again, after a couple of glasses of vino).

Actually....I just finished my LAST class of school EVER (hence, the wine)....so I'm officially starting a new part of my life now.  I feel so fortunate to be where I am right now and can't wait to see where life takes me from here!

Until next time, sending love,
The Spiveys

Here goes nothing....

So I’ve decided to start blogging.  I have nothing mind-boggling going on in my life right now, but I’m feeling moved to blog so I’m trying my hand at it.  My name is Rebecca Miller Spivey, and I am a 26-year old almost-pharmacist living in Atlanta right now.  I am married to Matthew Spivey, my hot husband and bff.  We have two dogs, Sadie and Stella, and a cat Darla.  And here’s our life…..

I am about to finish at Mercer University with a Doctorate of Pharmacy and Masters of Business Administration.  Only 2 more weeks of rotation, 1 week of capstone and 4 business classes left (eek!!)….not that I’m counting.  In June, I’ll be starting a pharmacy practice residency at Grady Health System in Atlanta.  I did some of my fourth-year rotations at Grady and absolutely fell in love with the pharmacy department and found a passion for Grady’s patient population.  It will be a challenging year, but there is nothing I’d rather be doing next year than working and learning at Grady. 

Matthew is in his fifth year of practice as a real lawyer in Atlanta.  Like anyone with a job, he has doubts about what he’s doing and the purpose he’s serving sometimes, but I know that he was made to be an attorney.  Anyone that knows Matthew knows that his mix of intellect and genuineness make him perfect for the job…particularly for litigation.   Sometimes I hear him on the phone encouraging a client or giving it to the other side’s lawyer, and all I can think to myself is ‘Girl, you done good!’

So what am I going to blog about?  Good question….but I don’t have a great answer.  I’ve been thinking of keeping a journal of our married life for a while and just cannot make myself get around to it.  I’ll think about it while I’m walking the dogs or doing some other mindless task, but then I can always think of something more important to do, like facebook stalking or painting my fingernails, when I have the opportunity to write.  Speaking of facebook, I don’t post on facebook or tweet very much, mainly because I know that no one cares if I’m ‘Going to bed’ or ‘I’ll never get anything done today because I have a sick child at home today.’  And, honestly, I don’t really expect anyone to care all that much about my blog either.  I want to write about our everyday life together….here’s why….

Matthew and I have been married for over FOUR years now!  That is absolutely ridiculous to me.  That first year of marriage, it occurred to me several times that I should write down some of things that we did together or funny situations we found ourselves in.  You know those times when you’re wishing someone else is with you to appreciate the humor in an unfortunate misunderstanding or laugh at the irony in an everyday situation?  One of my favorite examples from that first year is when we had been married for about six months, and Matthew asked one day, “Hey, do you know where we keep the toilet paper?”  Really?!?  I didn’t know if I should respond with “Thank you for validating my point that you never replace it,” or with “Nope, we have a little fairy that promptly replaces each roll when you tear off that last little sheet….and I think she’s the same fairy that moves your shoes to your closet day after day regardless of where you leave them in the house.”  I think my first reaction was to laugh, and then, of course, Matthew realized the silliness of his question, too.  He’s since learned to look for stuff on his own first. 

I’ll do my best to be fair in talking about Matthew.  There were some pretty stupid things I did that first year, too.  I never really cooked much or worked outside or really did anything domestic before I got married.  We had some good laughs together as I was learning, but all in all, he was very understanding and took it all in stride.  One of the first things I did was take some prints and pictures to get framed at a local framing shop.  I chose this particular place because I had received a $50 coupon in the mail.  Little did I know, you can put a down payment on a car for what it costs to frame four decent-size photos.  That $50 wasn’t even a drop in the bucket.  I know the lady in the shop was thinking to herself, “Sucker!”  That first spring together as husband and wife, we decided to get our back deck ready for the pretty weather.  I spray painted the deck furniture, hand painted a wooden bench, decorated pots, bought pillows and a rug and scrubbed the deck floor.  Then I went to Home Depot and bought an insane amount of flowers for the 8’x12’ deck we have.  I didn’t, of course, even think about which were perennials or about which ones would grow and spread.  I just plopped them all in the pots, filled in with some dirt and sprinkled a little water on them.  They were pretty for a while, but then they just exploded.  The back deck was covered and attracted so many bugs that we could not even enjoy being out there that year.  We haven’t any flowers since that mishap.  I think my ego has finally recovered enough to take another stab at it this year.

At the rehearsal dinner the night before our wedding, my dad said in his toast that when he held me for the first time, he thought to himself that he never wanted to forget the details of that moment.  It was sweet at the time, but it has so much more meaning now.  I want to remember every detail of every day.  As corny as that sounds, even the not-so-good days will probably bring back feelings of nostalgia.  I want to have a record of what we do day to day and the feelings I have about my circumstances or situations I encounter. 

A few disclaimers….

1.     This is my blog.  I’ll try not to be too harsh, but this is my perspective on life.  If anyone feels differently, start your own blog.

2.     I’ll do my very best to avoid using my blog as a platform to b*$@h about work, school, my husband, the lady in front of me at the Kroger checkout line, whatever, but I don’t promise to never b*$@h.

3.     I like to think I’m not too cheesy, but let’s face it, the times I’ll probably be moved to write will most likely be cheesy.  Just don’t read it if you’re not up for the cheesefest. 

4.     Matthew and I are both busy people.  We both work lots of hours and there will be weeks when the only time we really get to talk is for the half-hour before we go to bed.  I can’t promise life-changing, motivating stories.  For one, I don’t think I’m going to be encountering the inspiration for such stories, and two, I’m just not that deep of a person.  This is just a journal of our life together.  I could keep a diary, but blogging is the thing now and I’m trying to be coolJ

So until next time, sending love,

The Spiveys