Bog Blogging

I think about this blog a lot. All the time, every day. I miss it, it misses me. This has been a weird, crazy ride of a year, and I keep thinking "I'll write for myself, instead of for work. I'll write... when there's time. When will there be time?" Time has flown by more quickly this year than I'm comfortable with. The list of time-stealing demons this year:

College Research/Visits/Applications/Decisions

I regret nothing about this - participating in this process with Eben has been equal parts grueling and delightful, and I loved every second of the time spent with my boy. 

SIDE NOTE: For those approaching this time in your own life or your child's life - DO NOT BE FOOLED by the supposed "convenience" of the Common Application. There's always a supplemental essay or two. Or three. Or eleven. (a blog for another time: "WTF: How Colleges Determine Wonky and Annoying Essay Prompts").

Asthma

Diagnosed last summer with exercise-induced asthma after several months of trying to figure out why, suddenly, running made my lungs and airways feel like they had an "off" switch. I was told by my doctor that this all has to do with "the normal hormonal changes that accompany a woman's entry into the perimenopausal years." GREAT. 

SIDE NOTE: Asthma is easier to deal with if you can tolerate asthma meds, which give me a hangover-like headache. You guys, I like running, I really do, but it's not my preferred route to a hangover. 

OTHER SIDE NOTE: Despite the asthma hurdle, I noticed something kinda cool while I've been dealing with it... upon receiving my diagnosis, Indoor Recess Nadia didn't make a peep. A few short years ago, she would have shouted "Running gives us ASTHMA?!? Fuck it, darling." Instead, my head went straight to solutions and fitness alternatives. Readers, I think that's a significant "win." Silver linings, silver linings.

Wobbly Work Life

How many heads of school can a school have in a year? Three, apparently. 

SIDE NOTE: This is also not my preferred route to a hangover-like headache.

My head is constantly flooded with
images of Eben when he was the size
of the little guy he's holding in this photo.
*SIGH*

Weeping

My baby boy is going to graduate soon and go to college. I am overwhelmed, and frequently paralyzed, by non-stop waves of nostalgia and excitement and melancholy moods and happiness and panic and planning, and mostly crying because this is MY BABY BOY and where did 18 years go?

SIDE NOTE: where can I buy valium in bulk? Is that a Costco thing? Is there a Costco for insane weepy old women?

So, the blog... the long and short of it is, I've been bogged down. It's hard to blog in a bog, but I'm going to try to re-energize this effort. Wish me luck, and I promise it won't all be "how to distract yourself when your oldest goes away to college and all you want to do is cry and look at his baby pictures" type of posts. I mean, there's going to be some of that, but it won't be all that.

"and you... you ought to give me wedding rings."

Sideways flames courtesy of full force fans.
Serious expressions courtesy of trying hard to
pretend melted wax doesn't burn skin.

20 years ago today, a boy and I stood next to each other in a church and made promises. It was unusually warm for late May, and the ceiling fans were on full force. We were holding candles, and the ceiling fans encouraged a steady stream of hot wax to pour onto our hands. We always remember the candles, how we alternately tried to ignore the wax or discreetly pick it off our hands when it dried. So elegant. Our friends and family stood in the church with us, and watched a ridiculously young couple promise their lives and futures to each other. Leading up to that day, we heard everything from "are you sure?" to "you know, there's no rush..." to  "[insert polite, well-meaning way of saying 'who the hell gets married at 22 and 24']" but we were resolute. One of my favorite literary moms, Molly Weasley, in reply to her daughter Ginny's observation that Molly and hubby Arthur were married quite soon after completing school, said "Yes, well, your father and I were made for each other, what was the point in waiting?" Exactly. The boy who stood next to me in that hot church was and is my Arthur Weasley.

Now, twenty years on, we are asked often by friends just married, soon to marry, or never married, "What's the secret?" Anyone who has "made it work" for a number of years with another person (married or not) knows there's no secret. You just make choices along the way and hope they're the right choices. But when asked, Rick and I generally answer with our best guess at a couple of things that we think have made it work for us. Rick always says "Remember it's a marathon, not a sprint! Grand romantic gestures are nice in the moment, but you can't keep it up. Don't set yourself up for high expectations." (ah, the romance...) And I answer "kindness." And though my answer is meant seriously and Rick's answer is meant to be funny (mostly) -- really, our answers are kind of the same.

It's true that there haven't been many grand romantic gestures between us. We're not a flowers-and-love-poems couple. We roll our eyes at flowers-and-love-poems couples. But Rick is right that it's a marathon, and he's been running it like an Olympian, as evidenced by the following completely incomplete list:

• When we go to rock shows - from the time we started dating in college to now - Rick finds the best place to stand so short Nadia can see the band. He places himself between me and obnoxiously drunk hipsters. He lets me lean back against him when it's a long show and there's no wall space to lean on.
• When babies needed midnight feedings, he got out of bed, went to the nursery and brought the wee one to me in bed so I could have a few more moments to wake up.
• When toddlers woke up way too early on Saturdays, he volunteered for "watch Blues Clues in the living room" duty while I slept.
• When small kiddos needed stitches for various injuries (thank you, Vinogradov genes), he knew to steer me to a chair in the ER room before our tinies noticed their mama was losing it and about to pass out. He checked to make sure all of us, me included, were steady on our feet before leaving for home.
• When my car tires are low on air, he notices and fills them without mentioning it. When he drives my car, it comes back with a full tank of gas. When it makes weird noises or leaks something from somewhere, he'll give up a weekend to make it right. He acknowledges my slightly unreasonable emotional attachment to my aging, dented, cranky car without judgement. I know he'll be sympathetic when it rolls its last mile and I weep buckets over it.
• There is always coffee made by the time I wake up. When we're out of coffee, there's a Dunkin Donuts run before I wake up.
• My Valentine's Day gift this year was crackers and cheese. Because again, no flowers-and-love-poems, and I like brie better than chocolate.
• When I feel like I need a running partner, I have one. Even though for him it's just kind of a slow jog/fast walk. He never mentions the fact that even at my fastest run pace, he doesn't break a sweat. When I mention it, he very sweetly lies and says "I'm totally enjoying this run, it's exactly what I needed today."  
• He has watched more Gilmore Girls than anyone who doesn't care about Gilmore Girls should. The same is true for Downtown Abbey, Battlestar Galactica, The Tudors, all LOTR/Hobbit movies, and cooking shows. (full disclosure: on this point, we're basically even-steven. I know every line of Pitch Perfect by heart, and not because it's my favorite movie. I also know that "this bit with Jason Jones and Har Mar Superstar is the best part!" because I've heard that sentence approximately one thousand times.)
• He has always said he likes my cooking, even though for at least the first decade of our marriage it was mostly mediocre and occasionally awful. 
• He knows the freezer should always have vodka.
• He is my on-call tech support. He knows to give advice/direction/instruction that a two-year-old could follow, but doesn't speak to me like I'm a two-year-old when delivering said advice/direction/instruction.
• I have rarely changed the cat litter in almost 18 years, but the cats I insisted we adopt have clean litter boxes every Sunday.
• Despite my pathetic cat-litter changing track record, two cats joined our family after the first two cats went on to the catnip garden in the sky, and he welcomed them with only a little grumbling.
• He knows what zakuski is all about, and that it's not just about the vodka shots.
• He goes to church in Labelle, despite deep commitment to being non-religious. Other reluctant church goers in our family know what this means, and why it's included in this list.
• I have never had to learn to operate our riding mower. It's possible this is because he tends the lawn rather artfully and I would probably just "mow" the lawn (really, what's wrong with the overgrown-wild-english-garden look?), but still...
• My house is spider free. When it isn't spider free, I know that's a very temporary circumstance. I generally don't have to do the un-spidering.
• He sleeps half-blanketed when I've stolen the blankets in my sleep rather than wake me by tugging the blankets back.

And the list goes on, but you get the idea... a marathon of kindness. I do my best to reciprocate (see above note re: Pitch Perfect), and of course - being human - we both mess up. Sometimes we mess up in spectacular and idiotic ways. But with kindness as our guidepost, and a commitment to do the work, we make our way back to center. Not the stuff of sonnets, I guess - but you get it, right? This is better than sonnets, because this is real life, this is actually love. It's as much about the unseen, boring, tiny details as it is about the deep connection that inspires poetry. It's about knowing that sometimes you hold hands while you run the marathon and sometimes you let go to be the road crew and to cheer each other on. 

Readers, raise a glass in spirit with us today, to marathons and to another many decades. 

Wish us happiness, wish us luck. Be good to each other. 

Love, 

N.

TIME TO GO OUTSIDE AND PLAY

It's official, I'm the laziest blogger on earth. Only one post between my end of Daylight Saving Time scribblings and now, when we've started the time change silliness again. I'm baffled each and every year at the start of DST (something I and millions others find pointless and ridiculous) that humans have an insane need/desire to control time. C'mon, kids. It's TIME. Messing with the numbers on your clock doesn't mean you have a TARDIS.

I tried a few bundled-up outdoor runs.
Too. Bloody. Cold.

Anyhoo... the bright side of DST: it also signals the unofficial start of spring, and here in CLE that means we get our pale Vitamin D-deprived faces outside. As I write this, we're in the middle of what is a typical "March in Cleveland" wonky weather week - 50 degrees on Monday and Tuesday, blizzard today, high of 17 tomorrow, 50 again by Friday. I ran outside in shorts and a tank top two days ago and plan to again on Friday, slushy roads and soggy sneakers be damned, because this winter saw some serious hibernation around here. Are we all sick of hearing the words "Polar Vortex"? I have never seen so much excitement among friends and family over being able to see a patch of grass. And rain! You know it's a bad winter when folks who live in Cleveland - a city that averages 155 days of rain per year - can be heard cheering at the sight of rain only because it isn't snow.  Funny how our perspective changes with seasons. Even me, the soulmate of Eeyore when it comes to cheery-ness of outlook - I admit to being totally stricken with Spring Fever. Time to clear out cobwebs and hit refresh on everything, beginning with my running routine. Time for Outdoor Recess.

First appropriately-attired outdoor
recess run of the season. So much
better than running in a parka.

My Spring 2014 running goal: increase my distance. 5k seems to be my wall. A couple of the pieces of my wall:

Motivation: I'm not terribly competitive when it comes to running (but don't let me near a Scrabble board...), so I don't have the motivation of racing to improve my time or distance. I like 5k races - mostly because running with a crowd is fun, even if everyone passes me, and I generally choose races that raise funds for a charitable cause, so I can feed the do-good feel-good part of my soul while enjoying a good run - but I never enter a race to win (or even to finish with a respectable race time) and I'm not fussed about racking up finisher medals for longer distances. Rick is the competitive runner in our family. He really wants a marathon under his belt. He struggles with injury and training schedules to work up to the distance. But that's just not me. I dig my race t-shirt collection, but the medal? Meh. I'm never going to be the person with a collection of distance stickers on my car, though I kinda love this one: 

My one motivating factor is wanting to do more of something I enjoy, which isn't nothing as far as motivation goes, but it's not race training and it adds no urgency. I had planned to work towards longer distances over the winter, but my gym days found me gravitating more towards the hot yoga studio and less to the treadmills (polar vortex, polar vortex... being warm trumped everything else).

Air: When I can run outside, my allergies quickly get the better of me. Ineffective airways make distance running a wee bit challenging. I can feel more energy in my muscles, but my lungs are all "bitch, please." I am committed to a more serious effort in finding a solution, starting with switching doctors. I'll see a new doctor next month, who will hopefully understand that traditional allergy drug treatments make me feel worse than the allergies themselves, and will hopefully not throw another unusable prescription at me. Fingers crossed.

If (when? when!) I can run farther, I'm looking forward to trying some trail running. Anyone have a favorite trail they like to run? 

MY YEAR IN LISTS

The "2013 Year in Lists" articles have been littering my Feedly and social media timelines since late November. Lists of top health trends, top celebrity moments, best films, best books, best songs, most important political developments, prettiest robes worn by the Pope (seriously, he's on some kind of best-dressed list. Side note: I hope anybody running for president in 2016 has hired the pontiff's PR team, because that guy has done nothing more than HIS ACTUAL JOB AS A CHURCH LEADER AND MAN OF THE CLOTH but according to social media and Time Magazine, he's the second coming or pretty close. That's some very strategic work done by one hell of a PR team. Get on that, presidential candidates.)

So, do these lists mean anything to any of us? Probably not much, with the possible exception of political developments, but they do provide something to read while hanging in the waiting room before your dental cleaning. Still, the prolific list-making enhances the general mood of both retrospection and anticipation that accompanies a new year. What were our successes this year? Our failures? Things accomplished or left undone? Are these big things or small things? And in that regard, how do we define a defining moment?

During a recent conversation in which people were sharing news about job promotions, marriages, babies, graduations, anniversaries - the types of milestones by which so many measure the value of life - someone made a (well-intended, probably) comment to me about the fact that it was "okay" that none of these things, or anything really significant, occurred in my life this year.

Just sit with that for a second... took me a minute to get over the unintended condescension before I spoke.

No, readers, I didn't lose it. I was very polite in replying that the small adventures that made up the whole of my year were a thousand times better than the catalog of clichés that Hallmark makes cards for.

So, as it's Year in Lists time, here you go. The List of Small Adventures and Perfectly Imperfect Moments That Made Nadia's Year Actually Pretty Wonderful (in photos):

New Year Trip to Miami/Key West for Rick's Ragnar Race.
Exploring Key West with E & M was amazing. We raised adventurers!

Family Running. A fair number of 5k races, some blizzard running,
a marathon relay, a Color Run, and the best race number ever (see bottom center pic).

Eben Moments: driving, NHS, Rock Off, recording and playing out with his band, being adorable.

Mad Moments: Winning Power of the Pen, finding field hockey ferocity,
crossing a signed Neil Gaiman book off the bucket list, being adorable.

LABELLE!

Citizenship, conquering the rock band mom life, time spent with cousins between summers,
dressing up with my favorite fella to celebrate a milestone at my school (and the culmination
of a huge project for me).

Whole Life Challenge, Beard Adventures, first college visit with the boy,
two kiddos going to Homecoming, some good CLE fun (Captain America filming!)

Friend visits. 2013 saw a lot of old friend love. We're hoping for
more in 2014.

...and I knitted three scarves. The end. 

WINTER IS COMING

First, a note about why no blogging recently:

...sigh.

So, Daylight Savings Time ended recently, and for me that day marks the official beginning of Gym Season. I live in a sidewalk-less burb, so that means a post-workday run is either in the park, running loop after loop on a pretty, tree-lined and very short path, or on the street - less boring but you take your life in your hands with all the texting moms. 

(Yes, I'm singling out the moms. Mini-rant: this road runner has observed that the teens around here - the ones who get all the billboard and tv-ad blame for texting while driving - are actually driving with hands at 10 and 2 and are paying attention to the road. The minivan mom, however, has added texting to the already unforgivable distractions of opening juice boxes, pressing play on the movie on their kid's iPad, passing back a container of raisins... seriously, you can let your child be bored and hungry for a few damn minutes, wait until you park to text your BFF about meeting up for Mommy and Me Pilates, and ARRIVE ALIVE. With the added benefit of not plowing into your friendly neighborhood runners with your Town & Country). 

Our cute little park is pretty much unavailable for a run after work during fall/winter months (it officially closes at dusk, and while you can still walk there - there are no gates - the coyotes tend to take over at dusk. I don't recommend a turf war with the coyotes), and the streets around here get dark. We have no street lights, except a few driveway lamp posts, so dark is DARK. If you want to live to see spring, outdoor runs from November through April are relegated to weekends.

An autumn sunset run in Ohio
can be the prettiest thing in the world.

I figured out in years past that the couple of weeks after the early-November time change are critical. Suddenly, it's dark when I go to work and dark when I come home, and I just want to hibernate. "The sun is down, it must be SO LATE, there's no possible way I can work out, I have to eat comfort food and curl up with a book." The only way for me to combat the hibernation instinct is to hurry up and embrace the night owl life, forcing myself to be active every single day. I take gym clothes to work, and head straight to the treadmill instead of going home first, where books and couches are waiting to swallow me whole.

There are stages of lost summer grief to get through, of course, before the transformation from summer babe to arctic fox can be complete:

Denial: "I can still run outside after work because I am a schedule management ninja. I am going to plow through my work today, skip lunch, leave early and go running outside while there's still a glimmer of daylight!"

Anger: "How is it EFFING NOVEMBER already and why do I live in EFFING OHIO instead of the tropics?!?"

Bargaining: "If only I had spent more time outside this summer. If I promise to run faster/longer, can I have a time machine and go back to July?"

Depression: "Cleveland. Is. Death. The. Sun. Is. Gone. Forever. And. So. I. Die."

Acceptance: "It's okay, Nadia. You are a Clevelander, toughen up! Treadmills are your friend, they keep you sane until spring and there are no allergens in the gym. You will see the sun again in a few months, and in the meantime you look adorable in sweaters and boots."

Winter is Coming and the CLE will soon be as grey and frigid as Winterfell. Gym Season has challenges, to be sure - I'm trying to reacclimate to the strangeness of an evenly paced and quiet run, as treadmills don't automatically accommodate my outdoor running uneven pace and other oddities (stop to take a picture of a hawk, stop to dance when the park is empty, run super fast for 20 seconds with arms flailing like a cartoon character begin chased by a bear because why not, sing at the top of my lungs because even if someone hears me I'll be down the street before they can notice how bad my singing is...) but the upsides are plenty - no allergens, more frequent yoga classes, heated indoor pools on freezing days, propping up a book on the treadmill (reading AND running! happiness, happiness...). Cleveland, I am ready to be in you when winter comes.

Cleveland, I'll meet you here on
a January Saturday morning.

AMERICAN WOMAN

Citizen Nadia, reporting for duty. You guys, are you ready? My vote will change everything. EVERYTHING. Ok, maybe not everything, but it means I can finally put my money where my mouth is and while that isn't everything, it's something huge to me.

So, the oath ceremony... for anyone born in the US, I recommend attending one of these. It was at once everything and nothing I expected, and I think everyone should understand how important American citizenship is to people who aren't born with it. Rick, Eben and Mad came with me, and I'm so glad they did. 

Upon arrival at the ceremony, applicants have to check in with USCIS officers and hand in a questionnaire that is mailed to you ahead of time along with your oath ceremony date. It's a fairly straightforward list of questions - basically, USCIS wants to know if you've done anything since your interview that could affect your citizenship. I answered "no" to everything, including this one: "Have you practiced polygamy, received income from illegal gambling, been a prostitute, procured anyone for prostitution or been involved in any other unlawful commercialized vice, encourage or helped any alien to enter the United States illegally, illicitly trafficked in drugs or marijuana, given any false testimony to obtain immigration benefits, or been a habitual drunkard?" Geez, no. I'm a one-marriage-at-a-time kind of girl, and I'm not in SAMCRO.

The ceremony started with a local school choir singing the Star Spangled Banner. Snarky Nadia was thinking "seriously, this is the most poorly composed piece of music in the history of music, can we PLEASE pick a different song for the national anthem?" but then I looked around me. The auditorium was filled with people whose stories were vastly different from mine. I moved to the US as a small child and grew up here with all the benefits of a middle-class citizen - education, food, safety, medical care, a chance at a fair (or almost-fair) trade of work for pay - but my fellow about-to-become-citizens had different stories, different journeys. Hard journeys. And they wept. This song that so few Americans even know the words to - this song meant the happy end to a long road. This song meant they traded hopelessness for hope, impossibility for possibility. 

Listen, I'm not a naive romantic, I know this country is broken in many, many ways. But we get some things right. We get to have a voice. Our voices are not always heard, and sometimes we get in trouble for using them (EXAMPLE: read this article, folks. A father arrested for asking unscripted questions at a public meeting about Common Core State Standards in Maryland. As if we needed more evidence that Common Core is bad news. But this is the stuff of a separate blog post...). But those moments become a chance for debate and conversation, and that in itself is a privilege. We always, always have the chance to learn more, and we have the right to vote. So many people in that auditorium came from lives where those things just are not possible. So my fellow new citizens wept. And I shut off the voice of snark and let the mood take me. As Americans, we are luckier than most.

The ceremony proceeded with a blessing from a pastor, a speech from USCIS folks about Constitution Week (apparently last week was Constitution week), and a welcome from the mayor of Akron - the Cleveland ceremonies scheduled for that day were already full, so I went Akron -  who was late to this gig because it's super hard to find your way around the city you're the mayor of (!?!). Lateness aside, his speech was actually pretty great. This guy has been mayor of Akron for almost 30 years. He's a cantankerous democrat who has a reputation for ruffling feathers. He complained about the federal government cutting too many taxes, and said the great thing about being American is that he gets to have that opinion and say it out loud. He basically told us we were already a step ahead of most Americans, who will never bother to learn a thing about American history and government, as we had to as applicants. His overall message: get off your asses and get involved. Vote. Rally. March. Volunteer. Teach and learn. Participate in being an American. I liked him.

All smiles after the oath.
(Captain America shirt
was neatly tucked
away under a sweater
during the ceremony.
Superheroes are secret.)

So then we arrived at the oath. We stood, raised our right hands, and swore to uphold the Constitution, to perform armed or civilian service for the United States, to renounce previous national allegiances - the expected things. I gotta say, it was weird as someone so firmly anti-gun to swear to bear arms. Yes, I understand that defending one's country is a far different thing than packing heat just because "I'm 'Merican and I get to." (An important distinction that too many ignore, sadly.) But it was still weird to swear I'd do it.

Then our names were called, and one by one we walked to the stage to receive our naturalization certificates. This is basically the naturalized citizen's new birth certificate. I'll use this to apply for a passport and to register to vote. It's got a photo of me on it that's even worse than my driver's license photo, and I wish I had thought to wear a little lipstick the day it was taken. Ah, well... I can't always use Instagram filters to hide my flaws. It's probably fitting for this particular document to show the real Nadz.

When we left the stage, we were given Citizen Swag. The USCIS provides a packet with a passport application and helpful information about updating your social security records and the voter registration process, as well as a welcome letter from the President. The Daughters of the American Revolution had some blue bloods lined up to hand us a thousand different printings of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, a flag pin, red, white and blue carnations, AND - my favorite item - a little bag with an apple and the story of how the apple is the "fruit of democracy" (Johnny Appleseed!) with the official DAR recipes for pie crust and apple pie. It's probably good pie, I can't imagine the DAR spends time doing much besides baking pies and being better than you (sorry, I can't turn off all the snark...). The DAR recommends that I celebrate my personal citizenship day every year by baking an apple pie. I will inform the bakery where I usually buy pies to keep that in mind.

VOTE! My New Citizen Swag.

The DAR Apple. If you bite it, you
turn into Laura Bush.

So there it is. My journey to American citizenship has come to an end, and my adventures as an American citizen begin. I can't wait to vote for Hillary.

A final note: to Canada, my birthplace, my first home, my summer home, my love. I am overjoyed that you're cool with me having another citizenship. I mean, dual citizenship means two passports - you're helping me achieve my dream of someday becoming James Bond. My sweet Canada, I offer you a song lyric from an Ohio-born band: "You know you have a permanent piece of my medium-sized American heart."

YOU'RE NOT REALLY MARRIED UNLESS YOU BOTH PAY THE GAS BILL

Citizenship Step 3: THE INTERVIEW

So, last week I experienced The Interview. This was the only part of the process for which I had no idea at all what to expect. I've been reading other blogs about other people's citizenship experiences, and of course each case depends on personal history and situation. Questions can focus on documentation, travel history, family, work, social activity - you name it, it's all fair game. I knew that when I started this process, and was prepared to be an open book about anything and everything.

Still, it threw me a little when the officer interviewing me focused very pointedly on seeing utility bills that had both my name and Rick's name on them. Prior to the interview I was notified that I should bring some additional documents related to my marriage. I didn't actually mean to apply based on marriage, as I became a permanent resident long before my wedding, but I am married to a US citizen, and I guess if you indicate that anywhere on the application then it trumps anything else. (Maybe not in all cases, but it did in mine). So, I read the list of documents carefully and came to the interview loaded with evidence that I married because I love my fella, and not for a green card.

But - for anyone who may be getting ready to do this - utility bills are apparently a bigger deal than your marriage license. We pay all bills online, and like most married people we know, some bills are in Rick's name and some are in mine. We have no paper documentation of co-dependent billing. But the list from USCIS noted that I could bring a utility bill OR tax records. So I brought tax records. Still, the officer really wanted utility bills. Read: "OR" MEANS "AND." Bring everything.

After the officer pointed out that "everyone else's file has a lot more in it than yours" (read: LOTSA PAPER MEANS YOU ARE SERIOUS ABOUT BEING AMERICAN), he conceded that 19+ years and the fact that our marriage produced two additional Americans was probably evidence enough that I didn't marry Rick for a green card. He told me I'd soon receive a letter about "the decision" and - if the decision was positive - a date for my oath ceremony.

The decision letter arrived yesterday, and...

...drum roll....

...I'm in!

Well, almost. I'm not official until I take The Oath. My ceremony is in a couple of weeks, giving me just enough time to figure out an appropriate "brand new American" outfit. The notice I received states the following: "The naturalization ceremony is a solemn and meaningful event. Please dress in proper attire to respect the dignity of this event (please, no jeans, shorts or flip flops)."

I can't believe I don't own anything star-spangled.

What do you think of this... too much?

(Kidding. I will be solemn. My closet is full of black and grey, solemn is my dress code.)

You guys. I'm stupidly excited about this. I'll have my wish - that Eben and I will go to the polls together in 2016 to cast our first vote in a presidential election. Exercising rights, kids. Can't wait.