chapters in life.

‎Sunday, ‎May ‎25, ‎2014
4:30pm

it's a weird feeling that's settled into my subconscious lately.
the first six months, i was focused on our newness and goal of enjoying and learning all we could from the phase of newlywedness and the fact that it was finally just us two, alone, starting life from square one.

the last six months, the utter fear of the next part of life has fallen away. it's still big and unknown and frightening to me...being responsible and losing sleep for small, needy humans that are constantly in my care; never catching a break; all the change that life will go through as we adjust to it all...
but i'm more excited and anticipating the challenges than i used to be.
it outweighs the fear now.

70% anticipation, 30% wondering, freaking out.

i know life throws wild cards, i feel like we have the beginning of understanding each other and how we work and disagree and cope and process things...in this relationship called marriage.
i'm no longer scared that i'll look back and wonder about what it would've been like if we'd gotten to know and experience ourselves, alone, in this life just for a while...to know life before children, before our family was started...so we'd know the difference between the two, and be able to savor the one before, and then step into the new one knowing we'd explored the level of 'game' before.

and hey, i might have this all wrong. i might have all these thoughts backward, and all my friends who are parents are shaking their heads and sighing at my writings. but this is all part of my life, my thoughts, my wonderings. and in time, i'll learn through life and its experiences, and as it always --constantly-- happens to every one of us, my perspective will change. i might read this someday, 2-10 years down the road, and just smile at it all and how different my mindset was. who cares.

i guess i didn't want to just skip ahead.
each chapter is important, isn't it?
childhood. teenagehood. single young adult-ness. newly married. becoming parents. grandparents. done.
i wanted to make sure we enjoyed the heck out of details inside the present moment of newlywedness.
and boy, we have. life was busy and weird and full and boring and exciting growing up and becoming who i am so far today, and wedding planning was enjoyable but there's no denying the relief that comes after the day has been lived through, and everything began and ended well. then, this first year of marriage, getting to know the quirks of living with and communicating in real life with my friend turned boyfriend turned fiance turned ohmyword we're married and sleep together and wake up together and i'm a morning person and you're not and i need my coffee before i can discuss this and let me help you get ready for work, what do you want for lunch.
there are so many sweet, lovely firsts in our first year of marriage; especially because we were long distance from the beginning; 6 hours kind of long distance.
and it's not that the sparkle or sweetness has gone away; it's just that the canvas of life pulls at the soul to explore the meaningful future things that are in any unique heart of each of us. hard things, dreamy things. both things, twisted together, making something so worthwhile you love it more than when you started.

i find myself feeling like life has wound down a little...and it's waiting for us to turn the page to the next chapter. i feel so excited thinking about it. the sense of it being the right time...i like it. it's not the Perfect time...but it feels like we're close to the Right time. by no means is everything perfect and lined up in stellar condition and that's the reason why i feel so at peace. nope.
heck, we're about to go on our first anniversary trip this tuesday till saturday, and because of the weekend night shifts that he's going to need to take off regarding our not being home yet, there have been sudden up-croppings of complications from different supervisors and he may not get his extra holiday paycheck for the time off. so we're going to eat and drink a bit more frugally when we're in Portland. but that doesn't stop the ability to enjoy ourselves. it's the knowing we'll be together and exploring a whole new city, a whole new part of the nation we've never been to. i can't wait to experience the west coast.
and i can't wait to see what our second year of life together in this marriage brings.

in which i write about sibling bonds.

‎Saturday, ‎March ‎8, ‎2014
6:35pm

"you know something, baby? we tell ourselves we're happy, when what we really are is content.
contentment is nothing but the conviction that things are 'good enough,' and we let our fear convince us that if we try to make them better, we risk losing everything. well, i don't believe that, sara.
we tell ourselves the only reason to make a change is because we're miserable. but change is the natural order. the people who realize that and embrace it, they're the ones who discover real happiness."
- runaway saint
[lisa samson]

in which i write about sibling bonds
what have i been thinking about?

what is true for me right now? what is real? what matters? what am i learning? what hurts? what makes sense?

living six hours away from your family can be hard.

it took a few months (i think 5?) for the missing to really seep in.

i reveled in the sudden room to breathe, the change of pace, the newness of everything that my husband and i had just opened the door to.

and then one day, in the beginning or end of november, either when we were leaving from visiting and celebrating lyddie's 13th birthday or when caleb and rachel were leaving here after thanksgiving and some wonderful and terribly unfortunate events (caleb getting sick and justin sleeping out next to the couch to help him when he woke up throughout the night while rach, jacklyn and i slept in our master bedroom), then one day, i realized: i miss my siblings. (i miss my parents, too.)

my siblings are growing up and changing and becoming wonderful, hilarious, awesome individuals. we understand (or are coming to an understanding) for the place the other is coming into.

all the years of bugging each other and fights and bruises and yelling and shoving and homework races and immaturity have given way, slowly, day by day and then year after year, to a wovenness that we seemed to have woke up to, because suddenly i have no clear memory of the changing, but it appears blurred though definitely changed when i look at the tracks behind us, from childhood until now.

we've hurt each other; on accident sometimes, on purpose other times.

we've celebrated with each other, stayed up late nights discussing current life things with each other, been angered at each other, laughed with each other, talked through easy things and hard things and worrisome things and laughable things with each other.

what do i want to say about siblings and the bond we share?

i wish i could easily tug the phrases and meanings out of my soul and write them in a way worth being stunned by; the rare resounding of truly good writing involuntarily bringing that loud, beautiful tone up in your soul as well, like the simple piano prelude for a favorite song.

i wouldn't trade any one of my family for anything. i cannot imagine my childhood, and my life as a whole, growing up without a single one of them.

i'm just so, so very thankful that i grew up with those people. so thankful for who they are and their presence in my life. i truly wouldn't be the same without them.

i wish i could blame my loss of more words, better words, on the fact that i gave in to sleep at 4:30am and woke up at 10:15am. that could easily be a legitimate excuse for it all, no? weird, terrible sleep hours?

yeah nevermind. (i tend to be an insomniac to a slight level when justin works night-shifts a couple nights a week.)

on another note, growing up so close in proximity and then bond-wise, here's a very odd, heart-stretching concept that we're all waking up to: that life was not necessarily, for every single person and every single family, meant to be lived in one town or one county or one state. dreams and purpose do not kill the love; the love grows the dreams and purpose that erupt after the right amount of years has elapsed for each human being.

the grace we have for one another, the tough love, the encouragement and nudging forward we have given each other through the teenage years and to this day, those things and the heart we have for each other is what waters the seed that resides in every soul, unique all to their own in all, and that grace and heart and courage we have for each other places that seed in an open, freshly tilled, spring-season field sometimes.

i wish i could perfectly, 100% of the time, express my heart to them so they would know that just because i can't be there to spend time with on any whim, or because i'm so, so far from being excellent at communicating and initiating it. time can only teach us these things. our importance to others. it's a deep, sticky subject.

on yet another note:
have you ever tried to think of an idea your mind finds amazing yet scary? something you might someday want to do, but maybe not? but maybe yes, and you're just going to wait until the perfect, over-prepared, well-thought-out time to do so and pursue it?

do that thing.

sure, wait a little longer if you need to summon courage.

but do that thing.

it grows the heart. it grows the trust in our Maker and the thrilling and unknowing one day turns into beautiful lessons that introduce us to new worlds and new points of view. it grows the capacity for feeling, for seeing, for wondering what else you can try in this life before we all reach the end of it.

i'm not speaking this out of the been there and done that experienced mindset.

i'm writing these things for my heart, to see it in black and white ink and reassurance, that earth shaking and things like change, and those terrifying and excited emotions, are good things, and usually precede things worth pursuing.

maybe it's something that will most likely hurt, but hold so much meaning that you can only hope to grasp the very beginning of at this time.

your soul knows this.

your soul knows where you need to go to find space and freedom to stretch into the pain and depth and light, and suddenly there's slowly a transforming coming about that happens as slow and yet as sure as breathing.

pain is beautiful when it leads you to something perspective-growing.

it's so hard to think of that above phrase as a good thing when you're in the middle of times that are especially rough...but it's still true.
<3

what to do on a bad hair day.

tuesday, january 21, 2014

ok this is getting weird.

i get the urge and lines in my head to start writing at the same time two days in a row? WEIRD.

anyhow.

what to do on a bad hair day --er, should i say "a bad hair, don't care day".

because really, in the winter, there are those days --regardless of length of hair, am i right?-- where you just don't want to mess with it. you don't want to put any effort into it. and maybe that's just me this morning because i woke up, showered, brewed coffee, and got the motivation to work out. bicycle crunches, pushups, etc. then i downed a glass of water with a bit of acv in it, and 5 minutes later my had-been empty stomach is feeling the nausea. i took that as my cue to pour a cup of coffee. :P it calmed it, of course. coffee's in my blood or dna or something. maybe that last line was redundant. that's ok with me.

so about these bad hair days...

what to do, what to do?

summon motivation and want-to? nah. just push it behind your ears, don't worry about brushing it (i know i don't; but then again my hair is barely to the shortest bob stage; growing out a summer pixie hairdo takes time, people), don't worry about gel. i mean, who are you going to see today? eh, don't answer that. it's a question for me. the house is neatened once again, shower and coffee and cozy clothes are taken care of, laundry is even started, and after the husband leaves for work i'm heading to my father-in-law's house to watch a chick flick with some sweet sisters-in-law. :) The Vow, if you were wondering. Jen hasn't seen it, and she really needs to. hahah. we're going to go hug our husbands tight when they get home from work later.

bad hair, don't care. i truly don't today. i'm tempted to put a hat on it and just call it a day.

i mean, with growing-out hair (i know, i know; it's my fault, it was my choice to get it chopped), what can you do on a bad day? with longer hair, you can finger comb it back into a ponytail and you're done. everyone does ponytails. no one knows unless you tell them you're having a bad hair day. but with short hair that's growing out and not even past your ears yet? you can't even do anything with it sometimes. i might be paranoid or over-thinking it, but come on. everyone can tell when you're having a bad hair day with not-quite-long-enough-to-call-it-a-hairstyle hair. :P

patience is a virtue, i guess. it's humbling to have nice quality hair but not being able to help the style as it is in the present moment. you have to live with it and let it go. heheh.

20 minutes later, here's my update. i got up from my cozy place cuddled on the couch with this laptop, poured myself another cup of coffee, and set about to pampering this thing at the top of my body. my head, of course. coconut oil to moisterize for those winter-induced dry spots. gel in my hair to guide it a bit. headband to keep it out of my face and behind my ears. i might even go so far as to add some basic makeup to this blank canvas.

happy january 21st.

(when will winter end? please say beginning of march.)

what to do in the morning when your husband has yet to wake up.

monday, january 20, 2014

i'm about to enjoy my second mug of JOY diva-nilla coffee from ben and martha (christmas gift). i've already showered, brewed a pot of coffee, cleaned the kitchen, neatened up the living and dining rooms, and even dusted the entertainment center and t.v. stand. they're both dark colors and haven't been touched by a dustcloth in probably 3 months. i'm not a dusting kind of woman. dusting's for the birds. but once every 3-4 less-than-full-moons, i'll take a damp cloth to the sorry little thing. dust gets gross after a while. i can't stand walking by it once it gets super noticeable when you put a dvd there, remove it, and there's a clear scuffmark in the dust. um. gross.

anyhow. to the subject at hand.

justin has yet to get up.

i've learned slowly --not in the first few months, but over the last one or two-- to let him wake up mostly on his own time. especially on mondays, when he is sleep-recovering from having been up for 24+ hours. in the first few months of being married, i would try all my morning-person ways of waking him. kissing him. bouncing on the bed. tickling him. pulling the covers off.

but then i learned (not a fast realization at all) that he wakes up much slower than i do on a daily basis. :P hah. and he also seems to need more sleep than i do. go figure. well, i can't say that. he works 4 long days a week. i do, in a different sort of spread out way. housewifery stuff, you know. i'm my own boss. my own slightly ocd boss.

so what does a wife of almost 8 months do in the afternoon/morning when her husband is sleeping?

well, i would highly suggest giving in to looking at the webcam photos from your best nannying job ever. you know, the one with the 3.5 month old mostly-bald, easygoing cutie? hahah, that one. and just because your fertile/babyfever times of the month usually only last 4 days, don't think you're past accidentally stretching this time into more than a week. :P looking at baby pictures of your husband will do that to you. flowermama (thoughts & whatnots blog) confirmed it's not an odd thing to get the worst baby fever ever when seeing baby pictures of one's spouse. cray-cray feelings of wanting to reproduce and see what the sweet bebes would look like are absolutely normal.

anyhow.

totes click on that photo folder. enjoy. feel your heartstrings tug and your breath catch at the sweet smiles shared in the pictures between you and the little one. savor the annoying-enjoyable feeling of your ovaries wanting to explode.

yep.

now go get another cup of coffee.

stare at more of those pictures. the cutie gets bigger, your hair gets longer and you see bad hair days and good hair days and take note of them; the cutie has yet to grow any hair to speak of. but the adorableness is undeniable. the good-naturedness of the kiddo is apparent.

you remember your night owl tendencies colliding with his sometimes too-short naps; the copious amounts of coffee ingested to carry you through another 6 hours.

but those other moments...the moments rocking the tired wee person to sleep, and that first moment when you walk into the room after you hear him waking on the baby monitor, that moment as he looks up to see you and smiles in that sweet, perfect way that fills your heart and the whole world with enough sunshine and love to melt the thoughts of tiredness and all the matters on your mind for a little while...those moments are logged with indelible ink on the soft, hard-working walls of your heart, no matter how many years you've seen.

the journeys of our hearts in well lived lives are mostly the same.

there are hard journeys of mourning the empty space in this world left by an early-passing beloved.
there are the thrilling journeys of finding one's love and looking forward to the rest of your life by their side. there are the hiccups, disappointments, frustrations and walls that your run into on that path...and sometimes you  learn how to scale the walls, while other times you have to walk on tired feet to find the end of the wall and trek around it in years of hard work and wearied determination. finding the one whom your heart feels at home in, that is a beautiful journey of loving.

then there's the journey of growing a portion of your together-love and together-life; bringing a small, fresh soul into the world, and sharing the joys and sadnesses and loves and wonders and pains of life with them.

we want to share life with people, no? we don't want to be alone. we don't want to be forgotten. so we bring our combined love into the world, in the form of another life to love and learn from and grow older with.

(i walked away from this writing to do something, and got caught up in other stuff so i didn't make it back while i was still in the certain mojo to keep writing on it. my apologies for the lack of a better ending.)

thoughts about 2013.

2013 was the year i started a nanny job i loved (for a sweet 3.5 month old boy whose birth i attended as birth photographer).

it was also the year i said goodbye to that job. it was a pretty sad day when i rocked him to sleep and laid him down for one of his mid-day naps for my last time. :\

2013 was the year i planned an outdoor wedding, with some special people, to a pretty amazing guy.

2013 was the year i got married. (only 7 months ago.) :)

2013 was the year my hair had grown out almost to my shoulders for our wedding, and i got it cut pixie-short again just a few days after the wedding...2013 was also the year i started growing my hair out (again) in august...and it's going to be for good this time. for a while. i know i love short hair, even two times in a row, and i might go back to it someday (like...when i'm a mom? i don't know.) but i'm so ready to have messy buns and ponytails and braids and length to play with a little. :P i miss it so.

2013 was the year we drove to kentucky to buy a second vehicle with great gas mileage--a cute little car off craigslist (from a really nice, considerate guy), a geo metro in great shape and made the same year i was born.
(hah. hah. hah.)

"I learned some hard lessons about friendships and that some need to be let go, and some you need to fight to the death for."
via michmash: 2013

2013 was the year i moved 6 hours away from my family, and joined my husband to make our home here in southern illinois.

2013 was the year i started running. also, the same year that it got so cold (and icy, and snowy, and hey, i've been sick off and on so heck no to the question "don't you want to persevere and go running anyways?" ...hahah. heck no. i can't wait till the spring though. no promises to myself or anyone else that i'll get back to it on any and every above-freezing day...)

2013 was a super hard, super good year. filled with so much goodness, so much hard stuff, things to grow through and learn from, and quite a bit of bittersweet.

2013 was the year my old blog fell quiet and i started a new one. this one. :) 

december 31, 2013, i got to stand next to my husband and watch the ball drop in new york, along with most of justin's family and a couple friends. we kissed as the first part of north america stepped into the first moment of the new year. (i really like that tradition. a lot. after being "long distance" through the beginning of our friendship, dating, and engagement, i cherish getting to be by his side even moreso.)

i'm looking forward to this new year ahead of us.

time to start writing 2014 at the beginning of my journal entries...

my first real post: what i've learned.

they're mesmerizing:
the wet wisps of fog swirling up from my coffee cup --zapped in the microwave because i let it cool earlier on accident; forgot about it...
i've been remembering why i liked ramen noodles when i was a kid. (i know, not the best thing to remember...)

i've been drinking a lot of coffee.
i've been cleaning our house, enjoying weekends with justin, and cleaning the house again when he leaves for work.

i've been sleeping in late with my husband (mostly due to his cray-cray work schedule), enjoying sleep and downtime and life with him.
i've been learning more about the best friend and lover i married, and he's turned out to be more unique, giving, fun, kind, dramatic, grace-filled, and wonderful than i ever knew before.

i've been savoring this season we stepped into a little over six months ago.
i've been thinking about the blogging situation --and the reasons (both imaginary and logical or real) why i should or shouldn't or don't want to or can't.)
i've been wishing for wi-fi over at our little rented house, but instead of spending $50 every month on it quite yet, we're saving for a most-likely-going-to-happen 1st anniversary trip to Portland, Oregon.
i've been beyond excited thinking about it, sketching out mind plans and saving internet links and writing notes in a notebook.

i've been running these past few months; learning to pace myself on the country roads in my pink and grey Merrell's, growing to learn to love the burn in my muscles, growing into a habit, pushing myself past the comfort of speed walking.
i've been taking up handwork in the evenings, fibers in all colors giving the imaginative-creator part of my heart small sparks of joy.

i've learned today that i really like red nail polish and clear coat, my husband's green t-shirt, these $5 noir-wash White House Black Market jeans i found at goodwill the other night with justin, before the sleet and snow hit our southern illinois country road.
i've learned that it feels good to create, it feels good to sit on the kitchen floor with two other women and talk about what we find important and enjoyable, it feels good to savor ordinary moments with the special humans i get to live this life with, whether i see them once a month or once a week.
i've learned that it is highly under-rated to spend time with people who encourage you in your unique life story, people who let you be yourself simply because they accept and love you for the you that you not only can be, but tend to be.
i've found that it's not only easy to let those people in because of the freedom and kindness they give your soul, but it starts to develop in you an ability to encourage and love on them more sincerely.

this is what my life has been comprised of lately.