Alive

I can't believe it's been 32-days since i've written on here. 

The truth is that I haven't wanted to write out the things that have been taking up space in my brain this past month. 

Instead I have been talking about them with the appropriate sources that can help me deal with these thoughts, like our counselor & our core support group, all of whom I couldn't be more grateful for.  I owe you my sanity.

I might be exhausted, but I also feel really thankful.  I see growth when I look back to where I was a year ago, but it's not in the ways that I would have thought I would have grown.  In my head, I see it like a pretty weed poking thru a crack in the cement- this weird combination of pesky and beautiful.  Not perfect, but nonetheless, something miraculous.

I think to sum up the lessons of the 2010 in the tiniest, neatest, most polite way possible... I would have to tell you that I have learned that sticking to my (our) guns is really freaking painful.  And lonely.  But also absolutely necessary.  And i'm glad that it's this 'thing' that we continue to pour all of our energy into (lately), even tho somedays it's a knock-down-drag-out-fight. 

Slowly, i'm seeing this couple that we are, evolving into something that is even just a teensy bit better than what we were. 

It's silly to admit, but i kind of feel like i'm holding my breath til midnight on December 31st... and then somehow i feel like a little load will come off my back when the new days brings a clean slate, and a TON of hope for a better year. 

And let me tell you, my hopes for 2011 are extreeemmely HIGH. 

An honest list of areas where I want to see growth at the end of 2011 coming soon:)

Luv to sweep clean

Work keeps pulling rank on my eggnog latte.  I'm about to pull rank on Work. 

It's time for change.

Speaking of change. I've officially closed my since-seventh-grade-email-account.  It's not really a big deal, but I felt myself breathe a little tiny internal sigh of relief when i clicked 'deactivate' this afternoon.  That chapter is officially closed. 

I'm thankful that the seeds of change started to grow a few months ago when we decided to put roots into our little piece of Florida.  I think that decision has changed a lot for us, even if temporarily it's just invisible change inside myself, inside ouuuurselves.

I have taken baby steps to purge our apartment.  It's no where near finished, but I have lists of things to organize, actual piles to organize, garbage bags of stuff to get rid of, even a handful of boxes in various stages of packing. 

I hope this act isn't "counting our chickens before they're hatched." We still have yet to hear back from the bank. 

They've officially surpassed their November-5th-decision-date, meaning we will have to request an extension.  Which... when Jeff told us this back in September, I assumed then that we would have to request an extension.  I assumed it wouldn't be all: 'wham bam thank you mam, here's your keys." But now that it's November 27th, and we still have yet to hear word... it feels a little more discouraging then I wanted it to.

It's a process i know, i know, i know, i know.

Still.  For myself, I must move forward & hope for the best.  So i continue to browse ikea's website & dream of cozy new spaces...

Up in the air or not... life is oh-so-good.  We had the best Thanksgiving ever.  Well maybe not ever.  But it was pretty dang good.  I've never been so happy & settled... it's been a good six-years since I feel that i've had any sort of roots.. and roots are wooonnderful let me tell you.

We were graciously invited to a couple different places, but we opted to stay in, which is so us.  We are such homebodies, we really are.  Not to mention, days off together are such a rarity, that we tend to be pretty selfish with them.  We also made a pact to have a non-tradish turkey-less day.  We went a little southern actually.  Chicken fried steak/made-from-scratch stuffin'/mashed sweet pah-tay-tahs & spiced hot apple cider (on the stove!) .... among maaaany other deeelish items.  We had all the elements of a good t-day... each other, all-day cooking sesh, house full of smelly goodness, movies & x-mas tunes!!! 

The feeling of acceptance of our *new* life, the saying goodbye to, 'maybe next year we'll go *home* ... it makes for all kinds of warm fuzzies that start from my toes & run laps all over my body.  

It's not perfect, or free of worry, and often it's still very confusing... but it's allllllll goooooood, and right now I can't ask for more.

in-between

i feel so uninspired as of late.  i think the 'in-between' feeling of my life is to blame.  i think the only solution is to wait.  i don't like to wait. 

i pick up the camera, and put it down when i realize it doesn't have a memory card.  i know where the memory card is, i just can't bring myself to bring the two objects together.

i pick up my pen to write, and put it down in frustration when i think of the material in my head.

i've talked about school a lot lately.  it's something i'm pulled toward strongly these days.  i see the obstacles between it & me, yet i can't make myself move forward. 

i feel frozen.

i dislike my jobs, one more then the other.  i essentially get paid to surf the internet.  this should make me happy. it doesn't.  i want something real. 

i'm up against a wall at this point.  nothing will feel real until i go to school.  i never thought this would be the reason i would want an education.

still. i'm scared to commit to an education.  it feels like a prison in my mind.  what if i won't get to travel for years?  traveling makes me feel alive.  4-5 years will seem like a blip in the radar someday... but it doesn't right now.  I wish i could get out of my head & out of 'right now.'

in my most optimistic state of mind, i tell myself the process will be just like this house has been.  scarier in my head then it is in reality.  but then i feel foolish for thinking so because the house isn't ours yet.  what if we're still in for some scary twists & turns??

once a pessimist realist, always a pessimist.

i wish i wasn't such a slave to *things.*  i really hate *things.*  sweaters/lattes/magazines/mcdonalds....  so unnecessary.

i feel like i'm waiting to someday magically change. is that silly or what.  so when will i find the strength to be the person i want to be?

at the same time i'm tired of not being content with right now.  i don't want to be unhappy because my photos aren't beautiful enough or that i can't speak another language, or that my house isn't worthy of being in the pages of a magazine, or that i haven't been able to explore all the exotic locations i want to... i want the imperfect me, the unfinished me to be ok. 

& somedays it is... but i want those days to outnumber the other ones.  am i asking too much? sometimes i feel like i am. 

WHHHHAAATEV.

Something Priceless

 

Pictures drawn by my son for "the lady he grew out of."   

Yes he knows about me. 

Fashionably late

but it officially feels like November should feel

The universe must have heard me panicking

We found out on monday that our file had been assigned to an employee at Sun Trust. 

This was after the mini panic attack i'd had the night before where i babbled & sobbed into Zane's knees about many things, but one such rant may or may not have gone something like, "we're never going to get the house, and i don't even care because it's just a stupid house anyway!"

and other such nonsense that i didn't actually mean.   

I had Zane call Jeff The Realtor to get the name of the person who was handling our case so we could harrass begin building a relationship with he or she.  We were denied access to a name.  Guess there were too many people before us with the same line of thought.

More waiting. 

Fast forward to thursday when Zane leaves me this really looooong message explaining how Jeff The Realtor had called and told him that he'd gotten the BEST possible news.  That news being that the bank had sent an apprasier to our house this week & that we would hear from them by mid-week whether or not they are willing to accept our offer.

I breathed a little tiny sigh of relief.  Hoping for  bigger sighs on wednesday-ish? 

Silence

...is so not golden when you're waiting for your house! 

It's a lesson in patience, this I know. 

In the meantime i'm day-dreaming...

Gator

It's hard to tell, but Zane spotted our resident gator when we were walking the dogs the other morning.  It was my first time to see it in almost the full year we've lived here.  All we had was Zane's phone + I was only going to get so close...

What my heart looks like when tipped upside down

It starts out innocent enough.

• The People magazine with the teen-mom-adoption-cover-story earlier this month.
• Then watching the ’16 & Pregnant’ marathon for four consecutive hours. I just sat there, completely unable to move away from the screen.
• A really honest conversation with my husband over dinner that night.
• Just sitting, and letting my thoughts go where they are normally not allowed.
• Opening the photo album that normally stays locked up tight.
• Listening to songs that just add weight to my already heavy heart.

And thaaaat’s when the cycle of strength finally turns on me, and I must surrender to the explosion of emotion which finds me clutching to all that I have; pictures, memories and tears.

The sixth night before his fifth birthday; it’s the longest I’ve kept it together thus far, but still the fall-out takes me by surprise.

I think about so many things.  I map them by writing them down.
I think about your thoughts as you watch your belly grow. The bigger it swells, the more your heart swells with love for your unborn child. I know. I’ve been where you are. I feel you judge me. You think: “how could she possibly walk away from this?” I know you don’t want to think these thoughts but you can’t help it. You think I must be some kind of robot. You tell me: “I could never do that.” Possibly the most biting words that you could say to me, but you taught me to love people even when they can’t understand.

I think about the time you tried to talk me out of my decision. You told me how much I was going to regret this. You have meeting in your home but still you couldn’t hear me when I told you about the peace I had in my heart with my decision.  The peace I told you I knew could only have come from God, but you taught me never to question what somebody has peace with from that day forward.

I think about the time you argued with me outside of a class a couple years after the adoption. You told me I should be trying to ‘undo’ what I did, that I shouldn't be standing here doing nothing to take him back. I cried the whole car ride home, but you taught me that I don’t owe anyone an explanation, even if I want to shake them to make them understand.

I think about the time you should’ve made conversation about the weather, and instead you chose to ask me if I would do it all over again if I could go back four years in time. Over breakfast. With no warning. But you taught me that miserable people seek to make everyone else miserable with them.

I think about the time that you called me and told me that you made a mistake, and that you wished you wouldn’t have left us. I’d waited for those exact words but it was three years too late, and I never hated you more. Those words could’ve changed my whole life back then. But within a few months of that conversation she was pregnant, and now you’ve broken her too.  You taught me to search words, and to follow my heart.

I think about the time that you made your daughter leave convention because you didn’t want her to be with the pregnant me. I never felt so dirty, but you taught me to accept apologies. And I can’t recall many days where I ever felt more love.   

The tears come harder as I remember the people who reached out to me that day with their stories about times when they made the wrong choices, and the rejection that ensued. And then I was invited to sit with the sister workers at Post Falls convention, six-months pregnant and all. I will always be humbled by the love I was showed that day.

Intense pain interwoven with equally intense feelings of love is repeated again and again thru my story.

When I really look at this picture I can feel his tiny fingers squeezing my finger, like he’s still in my arms in that hospital bed.

It’s about now that Zane comes into the room to find me curled up in a pitiful ball, and scoops me into his arms, and just rocks me. I hear,

“… I was a heavy heart to carry/my beloved was weighed down/my arms around his neck/my fingers laced in a crown…”

I think about the patience my beloved has had, and how ‘lucky’ doesn’t begin to touch the surface of how I feel to be cared for by this man. I cry into his neck and tell him that I miss somebody that I don’t even know. He understands my pain.

The patio door is open to the sound of the rain, Junebug lies beside me, Johnny cries on the floor below us, and my headphones slip down around my neck, but still I can hear Norah Jones drift up.

“…I wanna wake up with the rain falling on the tin roof/while I’m safe there in your arms/so all I ask is for you to come away with me in the night…”

Sometimes you just have to cry, but still all is well because a happy boy turns five in a few days, and he has everything a five-year-old could ever wish to have.

 love at first sight in it's truest form.

random life

the sky on sunday evening

our wire portraits from the keys

reppin' my fave city

carpets gettin cleaned today- YAHOO!

Saturday

face. book.  there were lots of status updates...

guacamole. which i couldn't make myself eat.

i ate a lot of these tho! deviled eggs are so delish!

'the army people' - our given names for the evening.

julez- aka trashy teen mom/jerry springer guest

aw... her pugs weren't too sure about it all

My co-worker on friday nights at the gym - aka Brit invited us to a costume party + they happened to be our neighbors. 



i love the sky

the sun last night.

the moon this morning.

Thursday morning by the sea

“We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain.”

                                   ~Henry David Thoreau

An open letter to my son

Dearest Landon,

It’s that time again already. From the second I see my first pumpkin of the season your face flashes into my mind, and I know that in no time at all you’ll be another year older. This is year number five, and I can hardly wrap my brain around that number.

Year number five means that you are attending pre-school now. Your Mommy told my Mommy that you are so shy that you have to whisper what you need to say to your teachers because it’s too scary for you to speak out loud right now. I think that is pretty much the sweetest thing I can imagine.

Zane asked me the other night what I wanted to get you for your birthday, and I told him I still didn’t know. Target, Wal-mart, and two toy stores in Seattle didn’t have quite the *right* thing, so I was still holding out. Some reliable sources told me that you like Lego’s so Zane looked on http://www.lego.com/ the other night, and found you this combine harvester under the “hard to find items.” It’s green so I think it’s perfect. A little earlier he’d found a red planter tractor, and we knew it just wouldn’t do.

I feel stronger this year. Don’t mistake that for me caring any less. I just feel strong enough to be happy that you are happy and healthy instead of continuing to mourn my loss of seeing your “every-six-monthness” in pictures + words instead of seeing your “everydayness.”

So many people around me have started having babies. I dreaded it before it happened, especially someone in my family, but it happened this year, and its okay actually. It’s not as bad as I thought it might feel. I feel genuinely happy. Tho I have to admit I was “secretly” relieved to find out it would be a girl. I told my Aunt that I didn’t know how I felt about the next great grandchild/great niece/nephew in the family being another boy. She set me straight and told me that Grandma tells people that,

“this will just be the first great grandchild who lives close enough that she can hold.”

 I felt instantly better to be reminded that the people that I love so dearly love you so dearly too.

Sometimes I wonder if this is the year that you will be told about me. I don’t let the thought linger for too long tho. I’m happy with the knowledge that when the time is right you will understand. You won’t remember this, but when you were three you said ‘Hi Anna’ on camera because your auntie Malia told you too. All the same it made my heart drop out of my chest to hear you say those two words.

I’m so thankful for all the people that connect us and love you in person in the ways that I can’t yet.

Until we meet again, know that you’re always in my heart...

It takes all kinds

I'm a dog lover. 

I get that not all of us are. 

But my co-worker just told me she laughed when she found out I was leaving work friday night because I thought my dog was dying.

And then she proceeds to tell me that: "i just don't get attached like that, you know?" 

I guess I don't.

Even tho I totally disagree, I will always appreciate brutal honesty.

Vintage favorites

Jane + Ilene + Mom being awesome. 

Another non-update

~the realtor + zane~

“No news is good news.” A popular saying, but I’m thinking more and more that it’s just something that people who aren’t hearing any news repeat to themselves to feel better.


Eighteen days ago we were given documents that our realtor told us had to be signed before I left for Washington State. So we met up late that Saturday night in a deserted parking lot over the toll bridge. It felt like a dirty drug transaction meeting like that car window to car window, swapping so-called “documents.”

They were two affidavits that basically stated that we promised not to turn around and sell this house to someone else to make a profit. Sun Trust is going to get there cut or else! But that’s okay because I’m really not much into making a profit, and I am very much into making this house ours.


Anyway we did all that. Including the part where we had to get them notarized, even tho we received the documents less than 24-hours before I had to fly across the country, and it wasn’t a weekday where people do notary-business-type things.

Luckily we know somebody (who knows somebody… just kidding) that would be okay with not witnessing my signature. I guess I just admitted to illegal activity on the internet, but I’m pretty sure this falls into the same illegal category as jay-walking, or not coming to a full and complete stop when nobody is looking at four-way stops.

After a l l that though we’re officially on our fifteenth day of silence, which is so very typical. But we’ll play that game as long as we eventually get our house. 2011 would be nice tho, and more towards the beginning would be ideal… just saying.

The latest at the apartment

So our entry way was killing me. It's so narrow so there isn't much you can put in terms of cute shoe racks or coat hangers, etc. + the walls were white (ew!) so we decided to do chalkboard paint & make it a guestbook of sorts... plus i've added some of our recent adventures in framed collages.  It feels MUCH homier now.  Tho the paint came out so much darker than we planned.  It was supposed to be a lighter shade of warm grey & it's .... this.  Oh welll.  And then just some shots of the cutest dogs EVER. 

Happy Fall!!!

The end of September arrived & it still felt unbearably hot, so I decided to get festive inside!  Not sure yet what i'm going to do with purple tights buuuut they were annoying me at Banana. They were our last pair (from LAST fall) & they were priceless/sizeless & tagless... so i asked my boss what it would take to get rid of them & she said $2 so now i have purple tights...