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How To Grieve

Today, Chrissy Teigen and John Legend announced that they had lost their pregnancy. It was a boy and they have named him Jack. I don’t know these people, but it is interesting how social media and interviews can make me feel like I do. I was heartbroken. I always wonder when I comment on someone with so many followers if they even read it, but still, I needed to put out into the universe that I…

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Remembering Ms. Peggy Hi.  My name is Becca Devens, but I’m right now I am representing Webecca Boys circa 1991 and when I talk about Peggy Reeve, I am mostly talking about Peggy Lamar who lived on Commerce street in the red house behind the pond next to the nursing home. 

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What's The Point, Mama?

What’s The Point, Mama?

“Why are we here and Hobbes is in Heaven?  Why do we have to go to school and boys and girls in Heaven don’t? Why are we here if the Earth is not that great and Heaven is perfect?” my five year old son asks me with tears in his eyes.  I would usually say he was doing his usual bedtime filibuster, but we did just lose our precious dog, Hobbes, a little over a month ago.  The terrible understanding…

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Cinderella Isn't Real

Cinderella Isn’t Real

I think Rom Coms are based entirely on people’s fantasies of how love and marriage are supposed to look.  Boy and girl meet, fall in love, have some drama, resolve said drama, and live happily ever after.  While I enjoy a good fairy tale, the repetitiveness of this exact story is incredibly dangerous to modern marriage.  It doesn’t show Cindy and Charming then learn to live together, figure out…

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A Few Thoughts After Survivor

A Few Thoughts After Survivor

I have barely had time to see my friends lately. Life has been insane and I am so grateful for the quiet after this incredible journey. Amyre and I were talking and totally ignoring the boys (something we used to do regularly) and at 9pm they came into our room and told us it was time to go home and go to bed. They were right. Jack PASSED OUT on the 5 minute drive home and I feel like things are…

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Messy Mama

I am a messy person. I’ve been messy since I was born. I’m not kidding. I popped out and grabbed twelve swaddling blankets and threw them about the room. Then, I politely asked the nurse for another one because I had lost the others. Coming home from school, I would violently kick of my shoes. They landed where they landed. The only time I cleaned my room was when my mom would say I couldn’t (ins…

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It's Okay To Be Bored

It’s Okay To Be Bored

Picture yourself in a small white house, in a pink room with white wicker furniture, lying on a bedspread covered in a signature 1990’s rose pattern.  You are 7 years old.  Your best friend can’t come over this weekend, you are sick of the same old toys, you’ve been staring at your ceiling fan for 20 minutes, and you are bored out of your little mind.  You walk into your parents’ room and…

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So, I haven’t mentioned this amazing visit yet because a huge part of it was the fact that my husband was gone for several weeks hiking the Appalachian Trail.  That is a story in itself, but it is important to mention as this blog is about nurturing friendships and providing self care-specifically when your world has been temporarily flipped upside down.  I was excited for Rick to live out a dream of his and having young children with easy schedules made this one of the few appropriate times of our life to go on such a wild adventure.  So…just to set the scene…Sarah, my BFF since childhood knew I was going to have some long weekends without my husband and planned a rescue visit for a long weekend in June.

I’ve blogged about Sarah before here.  We’ve known each other since we were four.  She has since moved to Durham where she works as a pediatric acute care nurse practitioner because she is BOSS.  To me, though, she’s just Sawah.  And I’m just Rebecca.  And we’re just the same kids we’ve always been, but with grown up jobs and homes and husbands and all that weird stuff.  Here is a picture of us from childhood to remind you that we weren’t always the perfect goddesses we are today:

Anyway…we’ve been listening to this podcast called Forever 35 and were even featured on their show through a voicemail we left during our AMAZING FOREVER 35 PODCAST SELF CARE WEEKEND.  The link to that podcast is here.  Our podcast debut starts in the last 7 minutes or so.  Needless to say, we were FREAKING OUT about this.

So, day one of our spectacular self care weekend starts with not just one, but TWO BFFs.  My BFF Maggie was on her way to our hometown and picked up my BFF Sarah from the airport.  We met for lunch and drinks.  Having these two in the same place at the same time is like having a character breakfast with Mickey AND Minnie at Disney.  It’s kind of a big deal for me:

Then, Say came with me to get the kiddos from school.  Motherhood is weird.  It is something I often talk about with Sarah, but because we live so far apart, she doesn’t often get to spend time with me and my kids.  They both love her so much.  Juliet goes straight to her and Sarah entertains any and all of Jack’s ideas.  She even took them to Walmart and got Jack a new Lego Iron Man and worked on it with him.

One of the things I love most about Sarah is how different, but the same we have always been.  I feel like people wouldn’t necessarily put us together on E Harmony Friends Edition.  When you grow up with someone and enjoy playing the same things and share the same memories it really doesn’t matter if you end up having incredibly different interests.  We support each other’s dreams and always have.

One thing we have in common is our womanly craving for self care.  I have never been one for makeup and fashion and all of that, but I am 100% on board for anything that makes me feel good.  What makes me feel relaxed and healthy is self care in the way of epsom salt baths, face masks, anything skincare, smelling good, manicures, pedicures….all that stuff.  It just makes me feel clean and fresh and ready to face the world.  This is where Forever 35 comes in.  Sarah recommended this podcast to me because the two hosts conversations reminded her so much of us.  They’re just random and unimportant and fun talks like the ones we have at least weekly.  I took a listen and now I’m hooked and convinced that Doree and Kate would just LOVE Sarah and me.  Since we are both fan girls of Forever 35 Podcast and self care, we decided to make an uberly embarrassingly obsessive creepy creepers weekend out of it.

The weekend included facials at a local spa from a super nice lady named Betty, foot masks that promised to make our feet disgustingly (and satisfyingly) peel off dead skin like a snake, under eye patches to reduce our puffy stressies, binge watching Queer Eye, shopping at Ulta, religiously spraying rose water on our faces, and of course taking notes on what we wanted to say on our voicemail to our favorite podcast.  We rehearsed, yall.  We did.  And then we left TWO voicemails.  Because the first one cut us off.  Because we are still teenagers in lady bodies.  We squealed when we hung up.  I promise.

When I had to drop Sarah off at Groome (because I have two kids, y’all), I cried.  I waited until I drove away from her and I bawled my eyeballs out like a little baby.  As I get older, I realize the value of true friendship like this.  We are so good at staying in touch.  In fact, I just got home from visiting her in Durham a few days ago, but when you get to spend that time together, it is so easy to flashback to childhood when we really could see each other whenever we wanted.  We just rode our bikes on over.  We had even cleaned out my childhood closet that weekend and found loads of diary entries that included Sarah because there was a time when no one else was more important to me than her.  She is and always will be one of the great loves of my life.  Her and the co-hosts of Forever 35, of course.  😉

  P.S. That foot mask took a week to work, but it worked.  And it was so wonderfully gross.  You’re welcome.

Friendship and Self Care So, I haven't mentioned this amazing visit yet because a huge part of it was the fact that my husband was gone for several weeks hiking the Appalachian Trail. 

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Mother Of Two

Isn’t it weird how we’re always in some specific phase of life that we don’t exactly acknowledge until it’s passed?  That sentence felt complicated.  What I mean, though, is kind of complicated.  Okay, so right now, I have two kids, right?  Yes.  Yes, I do.  I am aware of that, but because I am going through this right now, it’s hard to appreciate it.  There are the little moments when Jack is…

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It’s kind of crazy that I was just writing about friendship last week when I got a message from my old pal (and elementary school fiance’) Ari asking if we would like to join him and one of my dear high school BFFs for a day at The Museum of Aviation.  Um.  Yes.  Duh.  What time?

Ari and Anna were two of my very good friends in high school.  Ari and I go WAY back to literally learning how to speak in speech therapy at elementary school.  I knew Anna as a kid, but we didn’t become super good friends until my mom forced me to stop hanging out with the bad kids in middle school.  Luckily, the good kids were also entertaining.

It was so awesomely strange to see our children hanging out.  Anna and Ari live near each other, so their kids are already pretty good friends, but Jack really did just jump right in.  They all played so well.  Royce and Jack would say, “Come on, Jack!  Come on, Royce!” and follow each other around searching for a new adventure like they’d been a team for years.  Aubrey is the GIRLIEST little thing, swaying her hair and putting her hand on her hip as she points to everyone making sure we have her attention.  “Okay.  Ready?!”  she’d say.  Her enthusiasm reminded me so much of her mother.  Bright eyed and confident.  I was telling my mom how well they got along and she reminded me that the three of US got along very well as kids so it shouldn’t be a surprise.  Wow.  I knew Anna and Ari around the same ages.  That just kind of blows my mind.

The kids were great, but it’s also good to be around people who know you so deeply.  Even though I don’t see them very often, I haven’t changed who I am, and they know it.  I never have to be anything but myself even after all of these years.  Anna and I always joke when we get together that we just always seem to pick back up where we left off.  Yesterday, she said it’s like we hit pause…don’t see each other for 6 months to a year and then press play again.

Anna’s husband, Russ, has always been Anna’s boyfriend, Anna’s fiance’, Anna’s husband to me, but as I reminisced of our day, I realized that he’s been in Anna’s life for so long that he is practically a person from my childhood.  He certainly knew me long before I was a responsible (ish) adult with two kids and a minivan.  We’ve always gotten along so well and I think it’s because Anna and I are ridiculously similar people.  She thinks I’m weird, but she’s weird too.  She just doesn’t broadcast it to the world like I do.

It is so fascinating to see Anna and Ari as parents.  Their kids are so well behaved and so obviously loved and it isn’t like it’s surprising.  I wouldn’t expect anything less.  But when you get to actually see your friend be a parent, be a spouse, be a partner to someone, it reminds you that you’re all grown up.  I am proud of my friends and who they’ve all turned out to be.

  After the museum, we were going to go to Outback and Aubrey decides she wants to ride in the van with us.  This in itself overjoyed me ridiculous amounts.  Anyway, the moment I truly realized what amazing parents she has is when she was answering a few questions in the van.  You know…small talk.  So I ask her what her favorite show is totally expecting Doc McStuffins or Peppa Pig or Sophia the First.  She’s SO girly after all.  Y’all.  This perfect little human looks me dead in the face….

and goes….”Frasier”

“What?” I asked.

“Frasier”

I am searching my brain for girl shows on Disney and Nick Jr.  I swear she just said Frasier.  What kid show sounds like Frasier?

I asked again, “Like Frasier Crane?”

“Uh huh.”

She’s looking at me like I’m an idiot.  Of course she likes Frasier.  She’s a three-year-old independent woman who appreciates the arts and quiet sarcasm.

I texted Anna to confirm.  Yep.  They watch Frasier all the time.  Wow.

Between Aubrey’s love for 1990’s sitcoms and Royce’s request to go to museums for his birthday weekend I’m feeling like Jack is in some pretty cool company.

To top it all off with a nice whopping scoop of adult-ness, we all walked out of Outback because it took 30 minutes to seat us in a half empty restaurant and another 30 minutes to not even get our drinks and we just don’t put up with that because we are GROWN now.  As we all drove off with our own little family units, feeling like total badasses for not accepting poor service because #merica, I looked forward to three things: My cheeseburger from McDonald’s, the inevitable nap my children would take because of their exciting day,  and being able to “press play” again the next time that I get to sporadically see my friends

Happy Birthday, Royce.

Friends Old and New It's kind of crazy that I was just writing about friendship last week when I got a message from my old pal (and elementary school fiance') Ari asking if we would like to join him and one of my dear high school BFFs for a day at The Museum of Aviation. 

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Dear High Schoolers: Be Good To Your Friends

Dear High Schoolers: Be Good To Your Friends

I don’t know at what point I got lucky enough to truly value my friendships.  Maybe it was the summer before second grade.  Our house had burned down and we were taken in by many families in our town.  It is hard to remember how long I stayed at each place, but I was never afraid.  I don’t think it’s normal to worry about homelessness when you lose your home at the ripe old age of seven, but I…

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The Best Time Of Our Lives

The Best Time Of Our Lives

I look back at high school and laugh at myself. Things that were such a big deal then are hard to even fully remember now.  Break ups were the worst.  School was hard.  Getting up at 7:30am was such a nightmare.  Juggling an after school/weekend job with school and band practice seemed overwhelming.  I remember a particular break up where I laid on the bathroom floor crying while my dad consoled…

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I Had A Baby So I Wrote This On My Iphone

I Had A Baby So I Wrote This On My Iphone

My relationship with coffee has changed so much in the past few weeks. I’ve seen all these cliche mom posts about wine and coffee, but once you pop out a second kid something inside of you wants coffee 24/7. It’s just like the SNL spirit animal skit. We instinctively chop off our hair, drink a LOT of coffee and develop a taste for wine. I mean-I haven’t yet wanted wine *vodka cran girl*, but it…

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My Baby Is Not A Papaya And I Am Not Glowing

My Baby Is Not A Papaya And I Am Not Glowing

Every single pregnancy website I read presents me with sugar coated facts and photos of perfectly shaped women with basketballs beneath their shirts.  Today, at week 32, I was warned that I may be having some heartburn due to my perfect little jicama (WHATEVER THE HELL THAT IS) pushing up on my stomach, and that taking Tums and propping my head up six inches “may” help.  The truth is, for some…

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Y2K AND THREENAGERS

Y’all remember Y2K?  If you don’t, congratulations, you are incredibly and luckily young.  I was in 6th grade.  My science teacher, an older gentleman, made it very clear that we were to be prepared.  The computers.  ALL THE COMPUTERS.  Like….Errrrrwhere….were going to shut down.  For some reason, this meant the world was pretty much going to stop working.  Because the computers…um…I don’t…

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So, we made it to Boston.  Once off the plane, we gave each other the usual smiling silent, “Well, that was awkward.” expressions and made our way to baggage claim.  Shortly, we were ready to tackle Boston’s public transportation system and take the bus into town.

My luggage made it safely and did not hit anyone in the face.  Isn’t it pretty?

Our first impressions of Bostonians were not positive, as the guy in the information booth did not seem very excited to tell the two country mice the best way to get to Government Center, but later we had nothing but pleasant encounters.  In hindsight, he was probably from somewhere else.  Kristen took the reigns and pointed her spaced-out friend in the right direction.  A free bus ride to Government Center-the station nearest our hotel.  We were on our way to The Langham Hotel-a swanky place that Kristen and I decided to splurge on since we were only staying in Boston for one night before I had to work.  Once there, we GPSed the best walking route to our destination.  Unfortunately, our iphones had no idea where we were or which way we were going.  Maybe they were used to our usual open spaces.  We made several u-turns in the cold-stopping to touch the leftover snow from the week before.  It was dirty and hard and gross, but it was snow-a rarity where we are from.  I even made a tiny-disgusting snowball.  Because SNOW.

Entering the Langham in my lularoe leggings and tennis shoes, I felt a little out of place.  To the left, a pianist on a grand piano and a tea room.  I glanced at the people drinking their tea and sampling gourmet desserts and wondered if they, too were splurging.  Probably not.  After we checked in and left our bags, I quickly changed into more appropriate “fake it til you make it” attire and we went out to explore the city.

We walked to Faneuil Hall Marketplace where we were told we could find some good eats and ran into one of the Cheers-themed restaurants.

  The placemats conveniently included a map of the Freedom Trail which we were told to follow.  It started outside of Faneuil Hall, so off we went.

The vibe of the city was quickly established as we walked by a man in a teddy bear costume playing techno music on his electric keyboard.  This was also the first of many times that Kristen and I noticed the smell of marijuana.  Later, we had noticed it SO often that I looked up Boston+Marijuana+Trees+Smell on Google thinking their was some sort of tree or plant in Boston that has a similar smell.  It turns out, similar to the conversations of Jules and Vincent on Pulp Fiction, that while it is illegal in Boston, having small amounts of it is rarely punished.  #factotheday 

The other strange thing we kept noticing is the statues.  Kristen and I ended up calling them the death statues.  It seemed that any statue that was not obviously some sort of historical figure/politician was in memoriam of some tragic event.  We literally either saw morbid death statues or historical figure statues.  There was no in between.  It made me appreciate the happy ones at The Shoppes At River Crossing a little more.  Note to self.  If I ever donate a statue in memoriam, make it a happy one.  Speaking of statues, I got temporarily confused and thought Sam Adams and Captain Morgan were the same person, so we took a picture anyway.

The weirdest figure we noticed, however, was on top of the Old State House.  This was the site of the Boston Massacre.  As I admired the building, I noticed a unicorn at the top.  “Uh….is that a….a….unicorn up there?”  “Yep.”  TGFG (Thank God For Google).  Apparently, the unicorn was a well-known symbol for the British Royal Family.  I don’t hear about it anymore, so my guess is the royals were worried we would make fun of their Lisa Frank mascot and stopped using it.  I wonder if they thought they were real at the time.

The Old State House sits on a block all by itself.  Figuring out which road on the map would take us to the next stop is a little confusing for a normal person-but for geographically challenged people-it was even more difficult.  We walked back and forth one street several times before finally making it to the next historical site.  That’s when I looked down.  A red line.  It looked so similar to the red line on the map.  Why was this red line so familiar to me?  Red line.  Red Robin.  Batman.  Man. Ma.  Mama.  “OH CRAP!”  I exclaimed as it hit me, “Mama told me that Freedom Trail had a red line all over the city to follow.”  We didn’t even need a map.  She had told me only a week before to find a starting point and follow the line.  Ugh.  It’s not easy being stupid, y’all.

We decided to make one more major stop before we went back to our hotel for the night.  Mike’s Bakery.  We had been told by our friends and family who had visited, and even by Pinterest and Trip Advisor-that all visitors to Boston MUST go to Mike’s Bakery and buy a cannoli.  A very friendly Bostonian gave us “easy” walking instructions.  “A ten minute walk.” she said.  An hour later and we arrived to Boston’s Little Italy.  Finally.  Mikes.  The line-which started in the totally packed bakery-ended around the block.  We had come so far.  We decided to wait.  We yelled our order at the girl over the crowd.  She took Kristen’s twenty and gave her back $10 less that was owed.  Thirty minutes later, we split a Boston-creme pie while waiting for our Uber to the hotel.  It was delicious.  We saved the cannolis for the hotel.

Finally, we were at the hotel.  A man brought up our bags and I tipped him-feeling incredibly sophisticated.  The view, the bed, the bathrobes, the pink accents.  Kristen and I joked about how romantic this trip would have been with different travel partners.  We took showers and got ready for bed, trying to decide if we were allowed to keep the Langham embroidered slippers and whether or not we would be charged for drinking the bottled water.  TGFG, yall.  We could keep them and we could drink water.  *Fist pump!*

We took out our cannoli boxes, ceremoniously opened the twine-tied blue boxes, and got ready to have the true Boston experience.  A cannoli from Mike’s.  In our fancy hotel.  Wearing our fancy hotel slippers.  This was it.  The cherry on top of our incredible day.

Mine was greasy and tasted like an old empanada stuffed with sugar-free chocolate pudding.  Kristen’s was a little better, as it was filled with Oreos (thanks, Nabisco).  It was one of those things where something had been built up too much, like the movie La La Land.  I have no regrets.  We HAD to try it because everyone told us to try it, and I’m glad we did, but I wonder how many people pretend to love it because they are supposed to love it.  #hipsters

Being the party animals that we were, we drank the rest of our complimentary bottled waters and called it a night.  Our first day in New England started off a little awkwardly, but ended well, with turn-down service and famous cannolis that simply weren’t good enough for us.  Isn’t that every girl’s dream?

New England-BoysnBerry In Boston So, we made it to Boston.  Once off the plane, we gave each other the usual smiling silent, "Well, that was awkward." expressions and made our way to baggage claim.  

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New England-The Umbrella Incident

New England-The Umbrella Incident

Blogs about trips are so hard for me to write because so much happens that I don’t know where to begin.  I don’t want to overwhelm you with every little detail of our five day trip, but I don’t want to forget the good stuff, so I am trying something different.  I’m going to make this a series of short stories so I don’t forget anything while simultaneously not boring the heck out of my readers. …