34

Today is my 34th birthday. I woke up to a barrage of Facebook messages, text messages and then the annual early morning birthday call from my Mom in which she sings Happy Birthday to me. Marshall beat her to the birthday song just a minute before as he serenaded me while I was in the shower. We packed up the car, loaded JoJo in and headed off to run a couple of errands before traveling to Charlotte for what will hopefully be the last time until we sell the NoDa house! I am so excited about the prospect of no more trips to Charlotte. First stop was to gas up, then Marshall requested a stop by Target so he could pick up one of my birthday presents. Our last stop was the bank where I had about 30 checks that needed to be deposited. I know it's ridiculous but when I'm working I get 3 checks a week - one for my prep days, one for my shooting days (always the largest of the 3) and one for my kit rental (a measly $50). Needless to say, when you work 65+ hours a week on set, and spend 12+ hours off your weekend prepping the next show you don't have much time to sleep let alone make it to the bank. So my checks pile up when there is nobody around to deposit them for me. I took me quite awhile in the bank to fill out my 2 deposit slips necessary for all my transactions. Marshall only had a couple of checks to deposit so he left me and went to sit in the car with JoJo. When I returned to the car there was a card on the steering wheel labeled Kara and a package behind it wrapped with a small Target bag and secured with my "I voted" sticker that Marshall found in my car. The card was very sweet and inside the Target bag was the Mumford and Sons new CD. It ended up being a great gift to kick off the morning as we could listen to the CD on our 4 hour drive to Charlotte. And so we did. Marshall popped in the CD as we headed down the road, stopping first to grab some Port City Java (decaf for me) and a muffin.

The trip was uneventful, until Marshall called his parents. I thanked them for the birthday card and money they had sent me and Marshall chatted with them about Christmas and what they had gotten the grandkids so we didn't duplicate any presents. Then he told them that we had been thinking and next Christmas we would like to invite them and Marshall's older brother and his family to Wilmington for Christmas. The last two Christmases we haven't gotten together with Marshall's family for Christmas since his parents would go to Lenoir to visit the grandkids and so we thought for our son's first Christmas it would be nice to have everyone in Wilmington together. His mother then asked would we be inviting Marshall's younger brother to which Marshall responded, "not at this time." A lot can happen in a year and if Marshall's brother gets his act together, goes to drug rehab, and apologizes to Marshall for all the awful things he's done to him especially the last terribly inconsiderate thing he did weeks after Nolan's death, then maybe he will be deserving of being invited. At this time, he is not welcome in our house. It's not like it would be the first holiday that he wasn't around. There have been plenty of Thanksgivings and even a couple of Christmases that he was either not invited or didn't come because he was being a jackass. But, Marshall's Mom told Marshall she was not willing to come to any family event unless he was invited. Seriously?! She hurt Marshall by those words in ways I don't think she will ever understand. Instead she would rather see us all individually, she told us. So instead of spending Christmas with 2 of her sons and 5 of her grandchildren she would rather just spend it with one or none! I was having a real hard time understanding that as I listened to Marshall get more and more upset with her on the phone. We certainly weren't trying to cause a family feud by our invite, we were just hoping to get the part of the family together that Marshall has interactions with.

I just thought it would be nice for our son to know his cousins on his Dad's side of the family. There are plenty of people in my family that don't get invited to our family Christmas gathering but that certainly doesn't keep the rest of us from coming. They aren't invited for a reason! Either they have burned the bridges in the past or they have shown no interest in being a part of the family and so they aren't extended the invitation anymore. That's the one think I love about my family. They are a non bullshit bunch. Once you do something wrong, you have to WORK to be let back in. You don't get to just waltz back in like nothing happened and never have to make amends for your wrong doings. My family holds you accountable for your actions, ALL of your actions. We celebrate someone's good deeds and we hold them accountable for their bad ones. That's how you learn to grow up and become a decent person. Marshall retracted his invite to his parents and to be honest he is so mad right now at his Mom I don't know when, if ever, we will see them again. It's a shame, but she should probably have not put demands on our invite. It's funny too because several years ago my Mom invited Marshall's parents and his older brother's family to Wilmington for Thanksgiving without inviting his younger brother and everyone came no problem! Maybe we should have made my Mom invite everyone. Perhaps that invitation would have been better received.

I felt so bad for Marshall as he was really upset and hurt by his mother's dismissal of our invitation. It had also been my idea, so I was worried Marshall would put the blame on me for it all. He didn't though, he was just devastated that his mother didn't seem to show an interest in spending the holidays with us next year. It makes me wonder if our kid will ever get to spend Christmas with Marshall's parents or if they will always choose to spend the time with the other grandkids since we all apparently can't get together. Marshall was still fuming at his mother when we drove up to our house in NoDa. To add insult to injury we walked up the front porch and were startled by the crunch of glass under our feet. It took us a minute to register what had happened. Yep, the window on the front door had been smashed. Fortunately, they weren't able to get in as the window is a steel grated security door window but there was no replacing it. Marshall walked around back to ensure everything was okay back there before he would let me enter the house. Nope, they definitely didn't find their way inside. I'm glad too because with the place empty as it is they might have gotten mad there was nothing to steal and just vandalized the place instead. We didn't end up calling the cops. Since we are putting the house on the market we didn't want there to be a documented break in attempt, especially because nothing was actually taken. Plus, it's not like we could claim it on our home owners' insurance. Our deductible would have been more than a replacement door. So we cleaned up the glass and hooked up the trailer to my car and off we went to pick up a black glasstop stove and now a new door. By the time we got back we barely had enough time to drop the trailer and leave as we were going to my friend Jaime's for dinner. I got so frustrated trying to back the trailer up in the driveway that I finally just gave up and drove it straight into the backyard. After unhooking the trailer, it did take me some maneuvering to figure out how to now get my car out of the backyard, but eventually I succeeded.

An hour later we finally made it to Jaime's house in Matthews for dinner. Her two oldest kids, Jackson and Caroline greeted us at the door. We ended up having a really great dinner and some good conversations. It was mine and Marshall's first time meeting Jaime's husband Kenny and my first time meeting her two youngest children Brody and Caroline. All her kids were adorable. After dinner we went into the kitchen where Jaime put a candle atop of a cupcake tower and they all (including the kids) sang Happy Birthday to me. I think Jackson and Caroline were just happy it was my birthday so they got cupcakes. Shortly after cupcake eating they put all kids down to bed and then we had some alone grownup time. It was great to see them and we both had a really great time. It made the end of my not so great birthday somehow great. We retired back to the NoDa house and decided to muster through a night with a broken door since there really was no way for someone to get in and we were exhausted. Tomorrow we will hit it hard and hopefully tonight our guard dog JoJo will keep any potential intruders away.