Fabulous @ 8 pm

Maybe

2012-01-29T20:37:00.000-08:00

Well, it has been almost two years and during that time I never felt like posting. Now, all of a sudden, I do.

I live in New Jersey.
I am in a PhD program, in Religious Studies.
I am five months' pregnant.

So, my plate is full.

What is the difference between a full plate and a running-over cup? I suppose it depends... but when your plate is full of blessings and opportunities, I think the difference is perspective. I am, indeed, taxed. So much is expected of my mind at school and even more, is that possible?, more is needed from me in this pregnancy.

it is not an easy pregnancy.

But it is a healthy one. So I am grateful.

In all this commotion, it is so easy to get overly, crazy-making busy. It gets hard for me to hear my own thoughts! Which brings me here. I want to be here because I have no time to be and every need for it. Because life is moving fast, does not seem to be slowing down, and I don't want to miss it.

{Speaking of missing}
Being so far away from Texas, I miss it. I do not miss what I thought I might. I am not given to missing spatial places, I miss, more often, time periods in my life, that kind of thing. But lately, I miss texas. I miss earthy Texas, the slower, grassy parts, the ones with star-filled skies at night and crickets.
And I miss San Antonio, down by La Villita. I won't try to tell you why i miss that particular place, but i do.

I try to ground myself here, in my new surroundings, but-
I find it so hard to be quiet and centered. Does anybody find that comes easily? Tell me your tricks.

There is so much more to write, but I don't want to do so all at once. I want a month's worth of posts that make me notice...

If you are reading this, I hope you are well.

Monday Morning

2010-04-05T06:13:00.000-07:00

Honestly, Mondays hardly bother me at all. Everyday seems like a Monday to me, in that I feel each day has a certain amount of potential and it is my daily responsibility to answer for each day's possibilities. I am so stern, so austere. I only see it because my therapist would ask me questions like, how do you love yourself? what? or he might point out that I, my actual self, needs some motivation and a break, that I can not expect to just harvest each day with no reward. Whatever. for all that therapy, I am not exactly different now. I still think like i did, but now I criticise my thinking about it. today is a monday. it is, in fact, full of possibilities. these possibilities are not a burden, they are a pleasure, they are a gift, right? right?
we'll see.

What if today is a gift? sometimes I literally plan things that will take a long time so that I can look forward to watching something and falling asleep. I want the day to be over.
and the weirdest thing about it is that, if I thought about it for one minute, I would know what makes me happy, what makes me tick, is doing otherwise.

Let me get lost in the library. let it rain. let me grab coffee. let me look at big black and white photography books, read some new philosophical theory or psychological study. it is easy for me to charm my life...why don't i ever do it?

today is a monday. watch me charm the hell out of it.

Challenges

2010-01-27T07:27:00.000-08:00

I think this will be a mini-post.
I have so many projects going on right now!

While it is a bit overwhelming, I feel happier.
One of them is a little piece of cotton-candy. More fun than anything else, pays nothing, but. . .sometimes the best times of our lives are like that. I started a podcast with two friends. Here is our advert for the second edition, which dropped this morning.

******podcast #2 is available! http://bit.ly/bcegYf you can also pick it up on itunes. smart, sexy, and smells good. it's the perfect 2nd date.******

Everything else is serious!
I am editing a professor's work, looking for a chapter in some of his many presentations... the more I edit, the easier it gets...and I like that... riding the learning curve.

I am working on a presentation that I will be sharing on March 4.

I have my own chapter to write.

All of these projects, they make me so self-conscious. I am out of the practice of turning things "in"--- and in this sense, all of these projects are being turned into peers. It's kinda frightening. The whole process has made me value you all, and your kindnesses, more.

Peace.

Resolutions

2010-01-24T20:07:00.001-08:00

The time, it gets away from me.

Where was I? Oh, yes. The resolutions.

My biggest resolutions are psychological, and already under way.

In the past I have conceived of myself on a road that God has mapped out for me. Lots of people have a hallmark, sentimental version of this idea, but for good reasons, I was thoroughly convinced that only God could understand and map out my life. this led to bad things like: no goal setting, sense of powerlessness, depression and anxiety, no sense of personal responsibility for my own life and even sometimes, my own decisions. I was, in a sense, a sophisticated puppet.

for 2010, I have decided to give this up. I have been thinking this way for approximately seventeen years. yikes. Now, whenever I think of any possibility, I consciously refrain from thinking about it as possibly in or against God's plan for my life. I do not think that, if it is, then it will magically happen. I do not think there is nothing I can do to influence the outcome.
I have to rethink everything.

Seems like it should be exhilarating. But i suddenly feel really sleepy.=)
love.

Resolutions

2010-01-03T14:24:00.000-08:00

I love the idea of making resolutions. I love the concept of changing for the better. Past New Year's Days have seen the perfect storms of my idealism, my optimism, perfectionism and naivete. I have, like many of you, resolved to lose hundreds of pounds, if you add them all up. I have channeled Oprah to envision my best life. I have tried to nurture my inner Martha, but have born her much false witness: yes, i will be cooking organic homemade meals all year long.

This year is a little different. I am a recovering secret-perfectionist. At thirty, I know too much to be considered naive, and not nearly enough to be considered really knowledgeable or wise. I have a few strengths, but lots of weaknesses, and this certainly puts a damper on my resolution-making zest.

Still, I remain idealistic and optimistic. I still want to be the best version of myself possible, even though I am unsure what constitutes "best." I still think that the world is what we make of it; a rosy-glasses, half-full kind of girl. Kind of woman.

And I am newly appreciating that how I spend my time is really all up to me. So for the next few days, I will be writing out my resolutions and their rationale. I mean to take them as seriously as I take myself. which is to say, somewhat, and to a point. I can laugh at myself, and in the end, i can laugh at these resolutions too, even if they whip me. hey, even that will be kind of funny.

Happy New Year. Happy 2010.

Well, now...

2009-11-29T13:18:00.000-08:00

let's see. it's been forever, has it not?

We're all busy.

to recap the last six weeks:

I am back in my hometown, back at the prior job. heh.
For a little while, I was thinking that I would wait another year to apply for grad schools, but everyone but me seems to hate that idea. So I studied and retook my GREs (as the scores had expired) and I did tolerably well overall.

I did awesome on the verbal part, I did alright on the math, and I am hoping that this is enough, that the composition of my score is good enough for me. We'll see in March and early April.

I have to get applications going-- most are due So So soon. it is so much at once. And i am terribly hopeful. hopeful in the extreme, and this is always bad news for me.

really, my chances would be better next year, but it isn't an either/or situation, it seems. I am applying just in case I can get in somewhere good this year and save myself a year.

I just saw chris over thanksgiving and he is doing well. It was a nice, calm holiday. Chris' mother turned out the meal, all I did was be grateful. That is the easy and rewarding part, anyway.

There is just so much going on right now and I feel unsure as to whether i am coming or going.

I have a plethora of truly interesting, compelling projects to attend to: more than I can do, really.
I have no idea which to say "no" to, because I want to do ALL of them.

I am aware I sound manic, but trust I am not, i am still sleeping normally, etc, and of course am not bi-polar, would have let that cat out by now, for SURE!

i never get to watch any tv or blog or read just for fun and it is certainly taking its toll.

okay, that is enough to tire you and me.

Practicalities

2009-10-13T21:47:00.000-07:00

We did laundry today. I love doing laundry. It is the chore that has the most pay-off for me, though to be fair, I also like cleaning the car and vacuuming.

It started out as a rainy, cold morning and I was sad. I didn't feel exactly sad, but i couldn't get started. I spent the morning looking up perfumes I like, to identify what commonalities they have between them. (for your information, I like chypres.)

Chris came home from work really early, at 10:30. I made him a sandwhich and we got into bed to nap. Two hours later I woke up, happy and hungry for oreos.

i always want sweets after a nap.

When we woke up, it was because the sun was shining through the blinds really brightly. The rain had stopped... it was like starting the day over again.

I do not have a job here in Boston. I am sad because I am going to Texas this week and looking for work there. Interviewing for a job, actually. I had made up my mind to stay here, with Chris, come hell or high water, but we wouldn't have enough money to send him to Berklee in the spring if I don't make real money soon.

this all comes on the heels of my really counting the cost involved with the year we spent apart. I did, in fact, accomplish each of the goals I set out to this past year. It took longer than I wanted it to, but it was in no way a waste of time.

Chris has been wanting to go to Berklee now for a long time. berklee is Chris' wheaton. we only moved to Boston so Chris could come here. Given what we now know-- that his going will probably take my going back to texas for at least three months, we would probably not have opted to move here in the first place. ah, hindsight. and now that we are here, and he is so very close, we must try. I wouldn't let him give up now if he wanted to. (we are coming up with a nice plan b, in case nothing works out.)

I am trying not to be dramatic, but it doesn't feel like it should be coming to this, again. we have just spent a year apart.

and one month together.
six weeks, actually.
and it has been fun. different.

I have things to be done in Texas; important and pressing things. I have a paper to present in March at a conference that needs more thorough research. as in field-research on the border to Mexico. I have a chapter to write for a book. I also have two separate versions of my thesis that need creating, and submitting for publication. (one of which will be based on the one I present, so it needs the same further-research.) I knew all of this when i drove away from Texas, and i didn't care about it. i prioritized my relationship, and the good faith Chris put in me, letting me go to texas with no caveats. i felt it was right to come to boston, ready or not, to show up where i belong. with him. I didn't know how i would get all that other stuff tended to, but i figured I would find a way.

If i want to be positive about my leaving, to be strong about it, then I tell myself it is the best thing-- that my being in Texas will get Chris and I that much closer to our goals. It is a win-win.

But we're apart and I feel self-conscious about it. Nobody does what Chris and I are doing. And I can easily start crying about the whole thing. like this morning, when he came home.

or...I can take a nap and eat four oreos. do laundry and choose to accept this as an opportunity to return a favor to my best friend, my 8-years-now husband. and I can laugh about this. I can thank God that Chris is driven and committed to seeing me make something specific of myself. I can appreciate that our getting married young means a certain amount of space and flexibility is needed as we grow and change.

I can laugh and tell myself not to be weak, or as we are saying lately, weak sauce.

And seriously, that silly phrase, is kinda doing the trick.;)

Mothering--part 1 of 3

2009-10-10T06:18:00.000-07:00

I am reading Ann Patchett's Run right now, and I cannot quite fathom that I am nearly finished with it. It feels like I just started, by I only have approximately 50 pages left.

I recently mentioned how much I love Patchett's work. She is, for me, the quintessential novelist. I love Patchett's gift for creating character-driven drama. My friend, Mary, found it remarkable that Bel Canto is as dramatically moving as it proves to be because it occurs, for the most part, in one house, with the same people trapped in that house. Patchett's characters are superbly, but believably, dynamic.

Patchett's Run is, among other things, a domestic drama. Some of my favorite scenes are those in which Patchett pays homage to the comforts of home. Consider, for instance:

What she would have given to hear her mother's keys right now,
the jingle that preceded the deep click of the lock. Heaven would
be home, to walk into their own apartment together right now.
She would barely get out of her shoes. She would sleep in her
coat and her dress if her mother would let her. She would
collapse into their shared bed, melt into familiar sheets.
Home, bed, sleep, mother-
who knew more beautiful words than these?

I can't remember reading a piece like this before now. Which piece is about a little girl and the intense love she feels for her home and her mother? No fairy tale for sure... as the mother in those tales is usually dead, missing-in-action, ineffectual, or wicked and step-. Which Austen drama? Emma's mother is dead, yes? Sense and sensibility? quite ineffectual. Mrs. Bennet is patently ridiculous. Jane Eyre? orphaned. And my poor, poor favorite, Anne Shirley? It is a home and a mother that she longs for, what she actually achieves in Green Gables and Marilla, though none of that came easily and she was pathetically and thoroughly orphaned before her big break.

Of course, none of this is lost on Patchett, who readily acknowledges her intention for this book in an interview included (in my copy, anyway) at the very end. While commenting on the book's concept of family, she explains:

the wonderful thing about fiction is that you rewrite history.
I kept thinking, What if in fact this family, which seems
completely patriarchal, does in fact run on a matriarchal line,
and that the true power that is handed down from generation
to generation comes not from the father but from the mother?

I am actually forcing myself to digest this book slowly. It is one thing to grow up in a patriarchal society, or maybe subculture, and come to feminism as as a result, which I certainly would own as my own journey. It is quite another to read Patchett extolling the Mother, pronouncing what it is to mother, in a way that can challenge the writings of one's personal history. yes, it is that imaginatively creative and yes, it does the trick. I won't mention the strongest inventions Patchett employs, just so you can feel their full effect should you chose to read her for yourself.

(this post is to be continued, with a connection made to these reprinted pictures from Fall 2007).

Ex-Nihilo

2009-09-22T17:54:00.000-07:00

I never, but never, thought about getting married. I never thought about my future husband, what he would look like, how he would treat me. Somewhere that had stopped.

I only have one memory of my future-thinking in matters of love and it is so shadowy- i could not have been more than ten years old. i think i was younger.

The memory revolves around the idea of my having a boyfriend. Not a husband. The part of my boyfriend was played by my parents' bedpost. I admit: i kissed that bedpost.

Chris entered into the role with nearly no conscious scripting.
And yet, somehow, he still seemed woefully out of place.

He didn't fit and I knew he didn't fit from forever. From the beginning, I knew he wouldn't do. But i couldn't let go. i tried to, but i willed not to. i didn't even understand it myself, then.

last night, we lay in bed and i mourned for the irregularities, the grooves that just don't come together, the time we spent apart and the woman I am not. the woman I have yet to become and cannot become by trying. She appears or she doesn't. We don't make ourselves up. I tell him that I am glad I married him, but that i was not ready to marry him. i cried to think about how much sense we fail to make in the day-in and day-out experiences that everyone else seems so adjusted to.

He holds my hand. He laments, our lives together have been. . .bizarre.

I didn't have to say it.

I thanked him, because what he said was true, only he could know how much and there he was, in our bed, holding on to me, when there has been so little positive reinforcement to do so.

I couldn't, wouldn't have made this up, and maybe that is the best part about it.

She said, He said

2009-09-20T10:25:00.001-07:00

Synchronous, Synchronicity- sometimes my many streams of self-help converge and I notice a theme. Lately, i keep getting a certain message: i need to develop myself, my goals, my talents...

And just writing that down, typing it out to you, is opening a door in my mind.
So in an effort to "develop myself" I will be writing here more intentionally.
But it will not all be real, not autobiographical like everything else has been.
And i thought that I should let you know that, because it could have been confusing, right?

I decided on writing because writing comes easily and naturally to me, like speaking. I don't know that i love writing as much as i love language and words-- more for the symbols that they are than for the letter following letter-ness of them. I love words. i play with words in my head... like the beginning of this post, i will start with a word and speak its connections...or just turn them over in my mind. synchronous, synchronicity, fate, time, serendipity.

i don't really have any discipline in this or any other matter.
but it seems like i'm being sent the message that now is a good time to start having some, getting some, developing Some discipline.

once when i was in grad school, the professor i went to grad school for gave me an A on a paper I prayed for a C on. i had written the paper overnight, in twelve hours, when it was supposed to reflect two months' worth of work. my classmates talked about their research efforts for a whole month while i did nothing. i got as good a grade as they did on their papers.

It was, actually, a really good paper. And she said so, right before she said, "and your writing is okay, too." Trying to own that it could be better, and also trying to acknowledge the fact that I could be better as a person, i said, "So do you think i need to enroll in a writing class?"
to which she replied,

"No. It is my opinion that you either can or cannot write and there isn't much you can do about it either way. you're writing is fine, passable."

ahem.

There was another professor, a man with a lot of facial hair and an awkward fashion sense, a man who could formally bless us with his hand lifted in the air, right after delivering a three hour long wit-filled diatribe on the History of Christianity, and this man came to mean something to me, too.

And i wrote the hell out of several papers for him; oh! i wrote, friends. And he gave me a B a lot of times, but almost ALL of the time he wrote things like:

your writing sparkles. or your paper haunts me.

and, i am not joking when i say, i would love to write the book that would satisfy them both.

and i am thinking about doing exactly that over the next two years.

Suddenly, it is possible.

2009-09-09T22:09:00.000-07:00

I have been, as you well know, turning over all the rocks, as they say, leaving no stone unturned.

It was the only way.

You'll remember that i was disrupted, that there was a sort of rupture, an earthquake of my being

you know the details

and you have felt my aftershocks, absorbed them, because you are kind.

i started to dig through the fundamental rubble, to search it, to replace it, or find it somehow permanently displaced, these

little and small, sometimes quite large, pieces that comprise me.

and i never stopped. everyday i was an archaeologist, examining my ruins, a cracked foundation from time immemorial to myself. my very little self.

i was so thorough.

allow that: for a long time, i could not rebuild. oh, I could rethink but i could not be constructive about it. And in my frustration there was a time I even threw the pieces in disgust

i did not care if I broke myself, so thoroughly fractured and frustrated

but i did not break at all.
somehow there was a freedom in the wild flinging
a resolution to the carelessness
and the rocks don't beg to be turned over and over

and i can construct

fun!

2009-08-15T21:30:00.000-07:00

Some things that I have been thinking about:

tonal by ericasw featuring Marni

Ladies, above you see Things I would Love to Wear in Boston.

And that is NOT ALL! I have been worrying because I got invited to interview for a job but I haven't heard back from the lady who invited me, though I tried to contact her back. Ladies, my ladies, I need THIS particular job. Can you cross your digits? (#2 fun thing: hope and possibility).

3rdly, back to fun stuff:
I love me some Austen, the books and the movies, and although I also love Gwyneth Paltrow, faults and all, her Emma isn't exactly the reason she has an Oscar, right? So I am excited to know that Romola Garai (RAHM-eh-lah garry, i think) is the BBC's newest Emma, which is set to air this fall. I loved Ms. Garai in "I Capture the Castle." I think she is as underrated as Zooey Deschanel is, well, overhyped, though I admit she is darling. Romola here, she has acting karate chops, she is a blackbelt in acting and she reminds me of Kate Winslet. That says a lot, no?

4thliest:
Feast your eyes, darlings, on my new favorite music: The Bird and the BEE! They have three albums, one self-titled, one that is just a baby collection of five songs called Please Clap Your Hands, and their latest Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future. I am super-picky about music, like your friends' kids who will only eat chicken nuggets and jello, so I cannot be called discriminating. I am just bad-sad-picky. it is so rare that I like any cd all the way through, but I love Ray Guns a lot. So I created a Pandora radio station around The B&B, you know about P-dora, right? My friend Tiffany (hi Tiffany!) introduced me to it. It plays music it thinks you will like based upon another designated like. (I like my Coldplay station even better than I like Coldplay-- it plays tons of Keane.) okay, well I must LOVE b&b all the way through because my b&b station is my new favorite. it plays Jem and Lily Allen and Stars and Kate Nash and Imogen and Regina Spektor. Pandora sang me my new favorite song, by the Bird and The Bee from their little Ep -- it is a cover of the BeeGees "How Deep is Your Love." I already LOVED THAT SONG. the bgvs sounded DIVINE, so i googled to find out who sang them. they are by Sia Furler. I have hearted Sia Furler for a long time. So the song is like musical christmas for my ears. Bird and Bee are on Blue Note. That's some pretty tasty chicken nugget, yes? And doesn't she look amazing?

5thly: We are going to begin a major reading tradition when we get to Bahstun. We're going to go through the Harry Potters and the Narnias and the Lord of the Rings. One of my favorite things about Chris is how he can read anything convincingly and entertainingly. Judah is so, so lucky. Which should we start with first? The best thing will be watching the movie each time we finish. Since there are so many books in these series, Judah will probably graduate from highschool right before we're finished.

Ever been drawn to someone and you don't know why? it is that way with me and Ann Patchett. Sometimes when I was waitressing and it got hard on the psyche, i would comfort myself by saying, " Ann Patchett was a waitress." It worked. I liked ann patchett before I read her, before I read Truth and Beauty, where she broke my heart and made me laugh. I just finished bel Canto this summer. I died of love for it. I am reading the Patron Saint of Liars this fall. I will make the time. It is my number 6 fun-thing.

(hey Becky! when i read Ann, i want to be you-- becoming a writer. Sometimes I am nice to myself and make us both writers in my head. and we're friends in real life there- in my 'magination.)

Six is enough for me!
love~

Religion

2009-07-29T08:32:00.000-07:00

I am in Boston and it has been lovely. Really lovely. It isn't like other places i have lived and i think i will be different here, i tend to adjust to my surroundings. I expect that i might inhabit Boston, not just live here.

We also envision being here for a long time, maybe five years, all of Judah's elementary school education (that would be six years, really) are possibly going to be spent here. It seems like an awfully expensive place to spend five years. But if I get into a great phD program here (in religion), then... well, we will SPEND six years here.

(Chris is getting ready for work and he looks fantastic. All the walking around has done him good.)

Today is my last day here, until September. Judah starts school on the 15th, so I am hoping to be here by the 7th, maybe even the 1st. I am still looking for a job. It is kinda scary.

I have been at points, so many points, like this before. I almost always miss my life's train, it seems. Last night we were waiting for the train and I got all caught up in reverie and I was staring out into the distance while everyone else was getting on. doesn't that seem impossible? to be so entranced at a subway station? Chris turned to me and called me and I snapped out of it, followed him onto the train.

I am a dreamer, but i have been so easily contented with just dreaming. dreaming is what i do, it is what i know, it is safe and familiar and wonderful. and my particular kind of dreaming has no connection to reality. I never expect for my dreams to come true

Chris isn't that way. He isn't about to dream away his life. He is angsty about doing something with it. In this way, i feel he is religious--spiritual-- if you will, about his life. He means to live it.
but it always becomes a crisis for me, that he wants to progress toward his dreams. It requires me to snap out of it.

I wish i could tell you how hard this is, how hard it has been, how being taken from my dream-world feels so threatening, wrong even.

My responding, my snapping out of it, it is my religion at its best. It is my being my most brave, most trusting, most sincere. I always worry about it, for my self, stretching so hard-- but then I reflect that for me, it is a matter of faith. and in my life, I want to be a risk-taker. I want to have meaningful faith.

I mean to move to Boston.

This I Did Not Know:

2009-06-24T09:58:00.001-07:00

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

from Dream Work by Mary Oliver

I lust, I list.

2009-06-14T21:01:00.001-07:00

1. Cakebread Cellars! I love their merlot. yum!
2. Matthew Trent's fleur de Lis ring. Yeah, I know. Maybe never. But. . . maybe Someday?
3. I always loved this dress. Wanted to get married in it. Was out of my price range! Still love it. It's Reem Acra.
4. New favorite blog: This is Glamorous. love it.
5. Bought these earrings for myself on my birthday and I love them and wear them all the time.
6. Have you ever tried Leonidas chocolate? I had it on my honeymoon in Paris and found it in Santa Monica! Yum.

Judah and Chris

2009-04-16T14:27:00.000-07:00

I am always talking about myself, so i thought i would share that:

Judah is five and is really tall and most days he is a little bit chubby. I just got his haircut at a place called Cool Cuts4 Kids and it makes his cheeks even more prominent.
Today we ate lunch at Luby's and he eschewed the dessert-- even the jello that comes with the kids' meal-- because he wants to be faster at soccer and eating healthier helps that.
It made me cringe a little-- i don't want him battling with food issues psychologically; it makes me hopeful because I don't necessarily want to set him up to battle his weight either. I guess it is like this, for everyone, trying to keep balance on this issue is hard.

Chris is doing alright In boston. He works longer hours than he wants to but overall, it is definitely a place he loves. He starts Berklee next month.

I am doing swell. i have some good news, career-wise, nothing huge, just a little conference I get to speak at at the end of the month. I will tell you all about it, after the fact.

love and peace.

Intentionality

2009-03-12T16:08:00.001-07:00

I didn't mean to abandon this space for more than two months. It has been a busy two months, emotionally, I have been all over the map, off the map, really, and none of it belonged on this blog.

It is new for me to restrain myself, to keep secrets or just to consider what is appropriate. I have been a very open person and I am not so much any longer.

Tomorrow I turn thirty years old and I don't feel at all old. I know thirty isn't old, I know that, but I am surprised by how young it feels, how I still feel at the beginning, the very beginning of knowing myself.

I am
coming to the end of my paper. it is due on April 6th.
visiting Kristen this month in Portland. It is my birthday treat to myself to take myself on a trip by myself. self self self.
only five pounds heavier than I really want to be and for me this is in the grace margin, so I feel pretty good!
$800 into therapy and feel that every dollar has been worth it.
watching American Idol and in love with Adam and Matt Giraurd.
going to post again, tomorrow, on my birthday.

not the same girl i used to be. at all.

in the near future

2009-01-01T20:15:00.000-08:00

I will wear something like this.

peacock by ericasw

yay.

2008-12-30T09:09:00.000-08:00

I think the argument, the real shiny argument that i have been waiting for, the one for my thesis, finally but finally materialized in my mind last night. we'll see. but i was up until four a.m. asking the internet if anyone else has ever said what i want to say and so far, it looks like i am singularly genius. at least in this one possible idea.

I had a nightmare last night. judah and his sibling were terminally ill. I also had a brain tumor. nice dream, huh? I woke up to great relief, of course, as we are fine and judah has no sibling. but i did have a little sister who died at age four, when i was nearly twelve, and she was "terminally ill" for two years. That must have been such a f*ing living hell for my parents.

I am trying to lose eight pounds by my birthday.

I am hungry!

I am taking Judah to Fiesta Texas today. He is So excited.

the 27th of December

2008-12-27T10:00:00.000-08:00

It is Saturday but it feels like Monday. I will see my mother's side of the family today, and my father's side tonight. lots of cousins i never see. and then four hours together. awkward.

not that i hate them.

i also have to work a shift somewhere in between and hope to get out early enough to make the wedding.

i got a new camera for Christmas, one i have wanted for a long time and i am jazzed about it.

i sneezed so very hard today, my lower back now feels a pulled muscle.

2009 is shaping up to be such a challenge.

game face.

boston pics

2008-12-14T15:33:00.000-08:00

Judah and i are in Boston visiting Chris.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-26T21:14:00.000-08:00

a few holiday season pics...with new highlights and a tiny (8yr old) dog named toby. Toby and Judah have been friends since Jujie was three months old and they love each other dearly. I love this last picture of Judah. I hate how big he's getting.

Monday Morning

2008-11-24T07:38:00.000-08:00

It's Monday and i think that i am half-way through my time in San Antonio. I got here on the 13th of September, which means I have been here approximately nine weeks. I aim to be back in Boston by the beginning of February and no later, sooner would be lovely.

I am looking forward to the Holiday Season. Last year Judah watched Paula Dean and the Barefoot Contessa make their versions of Thanksgiving dinner. This year I want to include him in the fun, so sometime today, we will be shopping for our ingredients. I think we may make the potatoes and the sweet potato casserole.

We won't be seeing Chris until December 8th. We're spending the 8th through the 16th in Boston. We're all looking forward to it, as this will be the first time Judah sees our place. the 8th is also our seventh wedding anniversary-- it'll be fun to be together for that.

Judah's last soccer game was Saturday afternoon and it was too cute. really, the little Tiger team has come SUCH a long way. To commemorate the end of the season, their coach presented each player with a trophy. Judah LOVES his trophy, carries it around, sometimes even kisses it!

Probably one of the biggest struggles i have is paying attention to the concrete, Real World details of my life. I am almost always distracted by existential questions and/or personal psycho-analysis. Because i am so distracted the following is true: I drive bad, i cook worse, i forget to take vitamins and sometimes even forget to give Judah his morning allergy meds. these are just examples. I am getting better, but it is Such a Struggle. it is hard for me to even be motivated for it, except to think that if I don't pay attention to these details, i will suffer consequences. I don't want to be neglectful.

and, i don't want to be obsessive, either. lately, i notice recurring motifs/thoughts, and the net result is that i have become somewhat bored with my thinking process-- it tends to be angsty, somewhat neurotic/obsessive, unproductive and, now, predictable.

I need to shake that up!

So this blog is an attempt to pay attention to the externalities I usually fail to engage. it reads a little like those posts about what one is having for breakfast, but for me it represents real growth. boring though it may be.=)

Have a good monday!

more polyvore!

2008-11-12T23:51:00.001-08:00

wardrobe by ericasw

Bandwagon

2008-11-10T17:44:00.001-08:00

boots, plaid! by ericasw

in San Antonio or, "and never the Twain shall meet"

2008-11-07T08:30:00.000-08:00

I am in San Antonio, right now, sort of bunkering down in my life. I am pretty sure i passed my comps, now i am to write the Dreaded Thesis.

I get a lot of Starbucks these days, out of necessity. I have been tired more days than not and the caffeine makes all the difference. I have started associating the lattes with "treating" myself, which i find humorous. I guess in the way of vices and splurges, a latte is a relatively tame choice.

have you had their new hazelnut hot chocolate? it's a revelation and i never call things "revelations."

my life has been profoundly interesting these days, to me anyway. I have become totally free, through some rather complicated experiences, from my father-figure issues. Some of those experiences, you have read about right here and others I am not sure what to do with. My relationships with God, Chris, my dad, and literally every important male friend has changed, in what feels like a short amount of time. but the truth is that is has been long time coming, no?

A former self, a sweet girl, rather dependent, is giving way to some strange current incarnation I hardly know at all. The best thing about this metamorphosis is that i deeply trust myself now.

(i am aware that you are not excited about Obama, but i am. i am not even sure why I am. i think it has more to do with Potential and less to do with my personal investment in Obama. I think he could do great things, and that feeling, that hope, i love it.

Although, i am far from being sure that he will do great things.)

Being away from Chris has been a gift, one that i think he has given me. As a recovering co-dependent (*wink,wink*) I had often envisioned my spending time away from my husband. This time has been one in which i face myself, a rather dark side, and asked myself whether my life was one i truly identified with: not one i believed in, but one i lived in, one which represents the Truth as i am it.

It turns out, mercifully, that it is-- my life is the one I belong in.
And i am so grateful to Chris for his patience and faith in me, which isn't dependent on the answer to those questions being what it SHOULD be. I could be any incarnation of myself and Chris would respect it.

my respect and appreciation for him have grown huge.
it is far from any definition of perfect, but
i love my life.

in Chicago

2008-10-28T17:22:00.000-07:00

and i forgot how big this town is. really, when i stepped on to the train, which i took into the city, i felt provincial and broken down. one thing i noticed was how daunting i found the foreign advertisements. Somehow, the diversity and the ads for companies we don't have in Texas made me feel small.

But now i am in a friend's basement apartment, getting colder by the minute, visiting all my familiar sites on the web, and i feel secure again.

I am here to take my comprehensive examination for the Religion in American Life program. My test is at 9:00 a.m. in the Buswell. I suppose the rattling off of the details, to you, my friends, is my way of dealing with the test anxiety. i hope i pass, but i wouldn't be surprised if i did not. We'll focus on the hope, k?

i have been busy busy and tired. I worked a bit to come up with my per diem for this trip. When i get home i will have to work a good bit to make up for this week. hopefully, it comes together, the financial details. hopefully, i come together.

I have come up with a mission statement for myself, which i have been saying to myself almost everyday, sometimes more than once. the difference it has made! the saying of words i choose to describe the life I am working toward--they have been a talisman and an antiseptic, almost magical in their power to shape me anew, words i wrote and said and memorized are healing to myself.

i will have to tell you sometime what they are... do you have a life statement? a mantra? can i know it?

On track

2008-10-14T12:04:00.000-07:00

I have been so busy doing the things i meant to do while i was here.

i have been studying, I have been working, I have been mothering.

and i have been doing little else. I watch precious little TV. I am missing Dexter and I will have to try to catch the finale of Project Runway at another time. Please, let it not be Kenley and please can it please be Leanne.

I have been about my own agenda and it feels really good.

As now Judah is home and i am starving, I'll have to write more later. possibly.

hope all is well. . .

Sundries

2008-09-24T13:38:00.000-07:00

I am in Texas, as you know, and I am doing well and poorly at the same time. It doesn't even out to okay.

Maybe because this blog has been read by people I don't want reading it before, I am hesitant to explain too much of that sentence. We need a secret blog, where we can share secrets.

I am making efforts. I go to church here, twice a week- Tuesday morning ladies bible studies and Sundays to Christ Episcopal. I don't feel at home in either place but i get something, usually, from each place each time i go.

I try to take care of myself. I am not sure I ever mentioned before that I am particularly bad at this, by nature. I get too locked in my head to think about taking vitamins and exercising. I bite all my fingernails off in deep thought.

I am trying to be mindful of my physical needs. I just made myself lunch, real lunch, though i didn't really want anything at all.

I am headed to work tonight at a restaurant that is just fabulous. It serves chic American Latin Cuisine in an avant-garde atmosphere and tonight is my first full-fledged night on the floor. I am a pretty good waitress. I like to chat people up. I can forget practical items sometimes, not usually, and i think of the whole thing as an opportunity to pay attention to detail (see above) while actually getting paid.

Have you heard of OPI nail polish color "I am not really a waitress."

i feel that! but i don't hate waitressing, I don't. $2o-$30/hour. and little stress.

Jujie has been sick since i got here. he had spasmodic croup and not he has an ear infection.
on the upside, he is loving his swimming lessons.

more later, loves.

new digs

2008-09-11T07:03:00.000-07:00

I can't tell you how much I am going to miss this person.

this is where i live now, when i am not on assignment in texas, as a special student
visitor.

these are some of the houses in our neighborhood. the picture at the top left is my favorite entryway so far. i love how colorful the houses are, the palette they produce together is just fun to look at.

and lots of people cultivate a shabby-chic looking garden, which i love as well.

The last one, with three houses, is my street.

For Sandra and Hayden

2008-09-09T06:03:00.001-07:00

Dear little Hayden,

You are wanted and loved and blessed already: You have sandra for a mother.
And in life, Hayden, few things matter as much as the disposition of our mothers.
I know your mother to be a courageous and thoughtful woman, full of encouragement and warm in her soul. It may not seem like much right now, when all you want is the warmth of her belly, but it will be everything to you later: that she can nurture a soul is her power for you and your blessing.

Sandra, everytime I picture you, I picture you with light all around you. You shine. You will shine in your role in Hayden's life.

Blessings to you both!

Erica

Unfinished Business

2008-09-07T11:05:00.000-07:00

I am going to spend the next three months- think in terms of a semester- studying in Texas, away from Chris.
I know, right? What am I thinking?

Well--
I am thinking that in Texas I have a job that will replace my IL salary and Judah is back at his old school. He will be in school Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, all day--which in San Antonio only costs $325 for the month. fyi: In Illinois, we paid $500 a month for two days a week & $720/mo for three days a week-- more than twice as much. But the real plus is that Judah's grandparent's are springing for it so that i can just focus on my tasks at hand.

My adviser is afraid, his exact phrasing was "afraid," that i won't finish my thesis and has asked me to take my comprehensive exams in October so that he can sleep knowing that if I do not actually finish my thesis, I will still get my degree. The comprehensive exams are on October 31st which means that I will need to study for approximately five to six hours a day, every day, to be ready for them.

I would be very proud of myself if i did well on them and, in some ways, it would take some pressure off.

on the other hand, my thesis is what i intend to use to recommend me for PhD programs in the strongest possible way in reputable schools. I want to write a fabulous thesis.

I have bad history in San Antonio and I have bad history with this thesis. This weighs heavily on my mind.

But i don't think it is realistic for me to live here in Boston, looking for a good-paying job while sending judah out into a new school which, to be honest, we could not at this point afford. Studying and research seem impossible in that equation.

If i want to do my studying and my thesis, my best chances seem to be in San Antonio.

Why will i succeed now when I have failed so thoroughly before?

There are lots of things that are different now than the first time i went to San Antonio to work on my thesis. The first is that Judah is not now an infant. He is quite big actually. He is in school and soccer and swimming lessons.
I am no longer depressed. I was terribly depressed after Judah was born for many reasons. I was directionless. Now i know I am working on the end of my degree program to apply to PhD programs in the early spring. And i have a real home, in Boston, with Chris. San Antonio is not a end i can not see past. I will be visiting.
I have a fabulous therapist and a best friend who both know my history in San Antonio and who will both be on deck to make sure history does not repeat itself.
I have made peace with my parents-- they have made peace with us. It happened in late spring i guess. apologies were made and accepted. They have been really supportive of our move to Boston-- they helped us pack up our other place and helped us get this nicer place (money).

I would be lying if i said I wasn't crazy- conflicted about all of this.
But i also know that success in this situation, me and them and chris and judah, for me is about interdependence and relationship. I could cut them out of my life and avoid a lot of angst and anxiety but i would be sad about it long-term.

If you are worried about me after reading this, I understand.

But i want to be clear that Chris and I are not secretly separating-- people seem to wonder if we are when they hear this plan. Chris is vehemently for my finishing as strongly as possible. He has high hopes for my PhD goals and more faith in me than I have in myself. He will miss me as I will miss him, but he feels certain that this is the thing for me to do. He has forgiven the past and feels my father has changed. I love that about him. he has faith in people.

And if it doesn't go well, for whatever reason or reasons, then i will come home to Boston after my comp exam.

cross your fingers for me.

Not Kansas.

2008-09-05T08:43:00.000-07:00

I have to admit that at several points, and on one day in particular, i would have paid top dollar for ruby slippers that could have transported me home. Any home i have previously known would have been fine by me. The move was really stressful, to say it "plain," and on the day we moved in my nerves were shot. That night i shivered when it wasn't cold and paid to stay in a hotel instead of my new place without sheets. it was too much.

But...
our new place is perfect perfect perfect. it has huge windows, three of which i am looking through as i type this sentence. We get good light, which is a priority of mine. The kitchen is huge and beautiful, with tons of cabinet space and fancy appliances. We have two bathrooms, which was exceptional in this little corner of Boston where lots of apartments are in Victorian homes- three floors with each getting only one restroom. I have walk-in closet space. I have a very civilized entryway and a fireplace. I hit the jackpot.

I also have a new roommate. Matt is our friend from Illinois and was living in Philadelphia when we asked him (three weeks ago) if he would like to move to Boston with us and now he is here. We are both INFPs on the Myers-Briggs, so he and i get along really well. Like brother and sister- soulwise. He also happens to get along swimmingly with Chris. Chris and I only considered the option for two minutes before we talked to Matt about it. so far it has been so very good to have company on this venture.

We walk around our neighborhood together, the three of us, and we take in our new spots. I have a charming bakery, one block from my place, where i have had a fabulous gruyere croissant and bought ciabatta bread for dinner tonight. The guys have found many, shall I say, watering holes and i have found the closest Target. So far, all good.

It is louder here i than i am used to and louder than i like. I am getting earplugs and a loud fan.

I have more to write, but it is so much more that i will write this update in installments... so

TO BE CONTINUED

the moon

2008-08-20T22:08:00.000-07:00

I am a mess this week in a really quiet and productive way. We are packing. I am running errands. I have done things the last few days that make me deeply proud of myself: things like getting the recalled part on my car door replaced. getting copies of judah's birth certificate. getting mail forwarded.

i have not gotten a job or a place to live and I have a week before i will be leaving the shelter of my townhome-- in which i am quite comfortable.

I am not too worried, but i think i should be. it is a lot for me to deal with. I think of Sandra in her home, i think of Becky in her home and I think that they have made it safely and that so will I.

Judah is with my parents and i miss him. I am, however, grateful for the space to process this move. it deserves processing. It is the continuation of a conversation I am having with God. I want to say my words, I want God to respond and i want to hear it. I do. Whatever is said, I want to hear.

I am not sure i would recommend the path I am on.

Goodies.

2008-08-13T20:35:00.000-07:00

i bought two pairs of shoes while i was in texas. they look really good on my feet. better, maybe, than in the pictures. I got them for a song. i wish i meant that literally--because I LOVE to sing. did you know that? once kristen and I led worship together. she played the guitar and i sang. really!

Return of the Native

2008-08-12T21:26:00.000-07:00

I've been in Texas.

Interesting things happen in Texas for me, to me--by me. Texas is like that place they sing about in Total Eclipse of the Heart-- we're living in a ... is it pollygag? polliwog? ... I give off SPARKS in Texas.

I always breathe a sigh of relief when i get into Oklahoma or Texas, though I probably should not.

My sister refused to walk the stage at her graduation. I had to convince her to come to her own graduation party scheduled for the next day. I mediated, made peace for them. that is no big surprise, but this time people, like my parents, said thank you to me. that is a positive step forward.

I also made it very clear that I would not ever intervene the way that i did again. I had to kiss my own incredibly spoiled little sister's emotional butt, if you will, to get her to come to the party. It made me angry and I let my parents know it. They said they wouldn't ever ask me again.

at least not for a long time, i am sure.

I also asked them to help me with my move to Boston. My dad is trying to see if he can help us drive from Chicago to Boston.

that is a bunch of steps forward.

He and Chris got along fine.

olympian strides taken there.

I still need a job in Boston.
I am not scared. yet.

Forthcoming.

2008-07-24T22:06:00.000-07:00

I bet you want to know, maybe you do?, how i am feeling about Boston.

(thanks to those of you who asked.)

I feel the anxiety of the butterfly who really wants out of the cocoon but isn't sure she can fly.

I feel relief that I am going to try to do it anyway.

This is where i feel it, the rush, the firing of the synapses, the confidence of a person growing into herself, I feel all of that in the risk-taking. Not fool-hardy risk-taking for the sake of risk... but, like I have tracked down Life, stared it in the face and said, ok, give it to me. I can take it.

If i compare it to the move i made 13 or so months ago, i think this one is less a running away and more of a running toward.

It is true that I just caught my breath. but it is caught. and i wasted quite a bit of time just sitting on the sidelines of my life... i need to keep moving. I tend to fall asleep if i am not moving forward in my life.

feeling good about it.

secrets

2008-07-17T05:27:00.000-07:00

word on the street is that we are moving again, for the last time ever. boston will be the place i grow old in. just kidding. but i will turn thirty there.

chris got the job he wanted there. that was the news he waited for, what he really needed to hear. it was slow in finalizing, but it is now final.

which means that he will be going to berklee school of music. his dreams are coming true. that is a great place to be, but also strangely like being in the center of a tornado. I feel calm, I feel sure, I feel right but the getting there, it will be a whirlwind and the implications, emotionally, will rearrange my soul.

All Shall Be Well; and All Shall Be Well; and All Manner of Things Shall Be Well.
(Julian of Norwich)

part-time for real

2008-06-23T13:19:00.000-07:00

i work part-time and I have been out of school for the last 7 weeks. I love it.
I get to take much better care of my two people, we eat in more often and get buried in laundry less often.

This week i will work a little more but only because last week I worked a little less, twenty three hours to be exact.

I have lost six pounds since school ended. I walk almost every night now, two or three miles, and i count calories. When i started I wanted to lose fourteen pounds. I have eight pounds to go on that, as you can figure out i am sure, and i feel better already. My walks are really challenging and even these six pounds are making all my clothes sit better. I aim for 17oo calories a day, and i aim to burn 300 of them on my walks, give or take a bit everyday.

After all this time, i now feel pretty full after a 500 calorie meal. Today I had something new that was so yum. Do you have Trader Joe's by you? well, if you do, you should definitely try the Roasted Red Pepper soup (sold in a carton). I mixed a dollop of Fage (greek style Yogurt) in and some chives and it was really creamy tasting-- for about 120 calories a cup.

What are your favorite low-fat or low-calorie go-to foods? I really want to know!
I am trying to get used to the idea that i will have to be eating this way for the rest of my life.

Judah has been so much fun lately. I think this will probably be my favoritest year in his life. and it is already half-over. boo!

Chris continues to wait for news that suggests his whole life is meaningful and destined and on-track. That news is hard to wait for and hard to watch him wait for.

I wish i could be friends with you people in the Real World.

love.

Romper Room

2008-06-20T21:02:00.000-07:00

if you're reading this, i want you to know

I spent the last thirty minutes reading through old posts and the comments under them and I am feeling so grateful to you all. To all of you
Kristen (yay Alyssa!) and Aola and Cara and Sandra and Becky and Melissa and Liz and Katt and ...well you get it right? YOU.

oh, and you lurkers... you lurking friends: come out, come out wherever you are!

make it beautiful, make it true.

2008-06-18T21:25:00.000-07:00

I decided, sometime now long past, that i would be honest. at least with myself.

My undergrad is in Psych and, as you know, I have had a breakdown experience, and along the way I converted to honesty and away from repression. I would think a thought, I committed, I would acknowledge it, no matter what.

even when my chest tightens, and my mind goes vertiginous at the possible implications of some one of my thoughts
i think it through anyway.
I choose to be brave as i walk through my mind.
i choose to look into corners with shadows and cobwebs, and invite the spider to tell me what it knows. secrets.
this is my path, it is singular at all times because only I can really walk it
everyone else is just hearing about it, second-hand.

after years on this road, i have come to a maze, I have come to Wonderland, I have come to ruin, I have come to despair
but
I have not often come to Beauty or Rest
I have not ever come to peace.
This is a deprivation.
every moment's repose has been an effort
so large are the questions
so few, and sometimes frightening, are the answers
I seldom think the thoughts I want to think
i rarely feel the way i always think I should
should...
should:
I would if i could.
My mind, it is a landscape unforgiving and too often bare.
And i know
i know that i am meant to paint it, to paint and to
make it,
beautiful
and true.
I have not yet found my tools.
I am hoping i am on my way.

Lars and the Real Girl was good.

2008-06-05T22:16:00.000-07:00

There may be something new on Chris' horizon and he is all aglow in the hope of it. It is hard for me to watch. I don't want him to be disappointed.

Judah and I are going to Texas this weekend. My youngest cousin is graduating from highschool and these kinds of celebrations are better attended than traditional holidays. My ninety-ish year old great aunts will probably be there and i want them to see Judah before, well, you know.

I will be buying a flip video camera to take it in.

Do you believe in Luck?

I don't. I always think good things happen because God loves me, though, strangely enough, I also tend to catastrophize the future. I visualize falling on my face in one way or another constantly. I expect to be found out for the fool I am everytime i make a decision which banks on God, banks on good things happening.

Today Chris tells me he thinks I get preferential treatment. He doesn't say by whom exactly but after ten years, it is well enough understood. Chris thinks God favors me, though he won't make any comment, right now, about Who God is or has been or will be, he won't--- he feels vague about all of that.

Most days, i admit, I do feel like God is interested in me, listening to me, helping me, observing. But i don't feel special, per se, like i have been singled out. more like i singled God out, constantly seeking an audience with God when i was younger, now has grow into a sort of continuous investment in the world as I experience it. So, where I used to closet myself in darkness to seek out God's voice, now i venture into the streets to figure out what Life is revealing to me, speaking to me, wanting for or from me. I've matured, but i am still the same girl.

and while i do feel like God pays attention, the special thing about me is only that I realize it.

Disconnect

2008-05-30T22:55:00.000-07:00

I hope that one day you read this, and i hope that you know that i love you, no matter how we've passed the last twenty years, no matter what highs or lows govern the landscape between us.

I see you already doing the things i might do myself if I were you and
there are things i want you to know about what you are predisposed to do.

I think you gravitate toward inaccessible people, people whom, for whatever reason, do not actively seek you out. You energetically try to engage people who, for their own reasons, tend to be slower or harder to engage and who, if engaged, tend to disengage faster than others, faster than you would like...
you are so vulnerable and sweet, Judah.

you work hard to connect to me, but i am not the only one. i wouldn't make a generalisation about this if it were only me.

i have never known myself to be so thoroughly limited as when i am with you. you always want me: you want to snuggle, you want to play, you want to sleep in our bed, you want to stay up as late as we do, you want to go to work with me. You can totally overwhelm me.

i feel an enormous need to be alone. I stay up really late to be alone. I can't make a judgment on it right now.

Don't always be trying to connect , Judah. Don't always be trying. You are worth seeking out. You are worth finding.

Though, right now, i don't know how to be as emotionally present to you as i want to be.

I am not a bad mother, not a terrible mother. you are brilliant and chubby, generally smell good, and you show the beginnings of a sturdy self-esteem. recently someone told you that you are handsome. you sighed, looking a bit annoyed, and said " I know."

Hopefully, you will read this and be shocked. you will say--- you, mom? you felt like you weren't "there" enough for me?

But if you aren't, and you feel some sort of emptiness between us. . .please know i have never wanted to be More for anyone more than i have for you.

I never got into Sex and the City, FYI.

2008-05-12T19:19:00.000-07:00

This morning i put Judah on a plane with my mother. It wasn't that difficult for me, though I have been walking around in a melancholy state for the whole day and night. IT is quiet here and although I seriously dig that this is a BREAK! it really just feels like the party is someplace else. I miss my little Party.

Ofcourse I shopped all day and went to a movie with Chris tonight. Like I am a single girl with a boyfriend.

Now that the semester is over I feel incredulous. I feel doubtful that i will be able to make much of anything out of myself. I feel deluded, maybe delusional.. I also feel certain something good will come of my efforts, though they may not seem like so very much to anyone else. They have felt monumental to me.

In other more cheerful news: we get to go on a mini-vacation. We'll essentially be going to pick up Judah, but we'll get to spend a night in Dallas. I have lots of fond memories of Dallas, places i still think about haunting, and I am readier than ready to go to La Madeleine.

It'll be the first time Chris and I vacation without Judah.

Chris and i dated in Dallas. we had our first date at La Mad, ate BBQ at Pappas Brothers, shopped for too expensive groceries at EatZis. We strolled Highland Park Mall, I lost my purse in its little movie theater. I fell in love with Maggiano's and PF Chang's and my boyfriend in Dallas.

I'll try to post some pics.

turn turn turn

2008-04-23T06:23:00.000-07:00

new things happen in soil of my soul. Things sprout up that i hoped for, but i don't remember planting.
Last night in our townehome was the night i always hope for but can never generate...

I had the time, energy and mental wherewithall to play outside with Jujie. To throw and catch the yackleball, to chase and play Scooby Doo. He was velma and i was shaggy. When we made it back to our house after having outrun the monster, i told him that he was such a brave and cool girl.

He said, yeah, I am .

Chris made dinner, I vacuumed the living room, I bathed Judah. We went to bed on time.
Like Becky said: satisfying.

Women is Survivor. As a student: Thriver?

2008-04-20T16:51:00.001-07:00

i am adopting a hard-hitting journalistic attitude in my blog title. enjoy!
This is how i feel about my paper that i really care about: it had a good concept driving it but...i just didn't have the time dedicated to it to do my concept justice. overall, it was fair. i expect a low B.
sad.

i am actually thinking about re-doing it and re-submitting it just for kicks and for some real feedback about the ways i am processing and developing concepts. we'll see.

I felt really good about the Unitarian Universalism paper, but i didn't care quite as much about it. it was shorter and easier.

more later. it'll be busy week.

To answer CV's question

2008-04-14T08:35:00.000-07:00

I do think that there are fervent UUers. I am still working this out, on paper, but i suspect that, much like Judaism, UU is a "religion"primarily of practice, or praxis- if you want to get academic about it.

So in both, and there is scholarly research to support this grouping of the two together, the emphasis is on doing Right (v. believing the right thing: doctrine).

of course, Judaism is monotheistic and dogmatic in ways that would make UUers sick.

Still, UUers live by 7 principles and the first is that all beings have worth and should be respected. I feel sure that no UUer worth any salt would convert to a hateful regime.

IN the research i did after i posted, I read that UUers are practicers of a Different Religiosity. They are quite different from traditional religions. For example, UUers as a set value spiritual growth highly, but value "Salvation" so lowly that it almost qualifies as a disvalue.

not your mama's Faithful, now, huh?!

Did i mention i love this stuff?

and the winner is

2008-04-13T19:56:00.000-07:00

i attended the 9 am service of Naperville's fine Universalist Unitarians.

I am about to hammer out the first draft of my paper, which is for psychology of religion. My prof, who happens to be my age, wants to us to evaluate the religion in terms of what it has to offer, psychological appeal.

It is fairly obvious to me that Universalism is appealing in that it allows one to maintain an openness to others and their ideas. Universalists are committed to religious pluralism- and doesn't that sound awesome right now?

Really, wouldn't it be amazing to be able to give everyone and everything the Benefit of your religious and existential doubt? how peaceable, at least in my mind! Without dogmatic commitments, one is free to "learn". the only responsibilities that UUism places on its followers are ones that any mature adult would gladly take on: to care for the earth and for others, to pursue knowledge and spiritual growth. For real, if that is all there is to it, i am practically UU.

Except.

there is an exception. I happen to think that choice and commitment mean saying no to somethings while also saying yes to Something Else.

UUism never had this choice! It can be anything to anyone, it can synthesize any religious belief. And i have to say that this strikes me as such:

to be everything and anything to anyone and everyone is to be no thing at all.

but that is just my initial thought....

9:48.

2008-04-08T19:36:00.000-07:00

today i signed myself up for a long overdue root canal. that i have known that i have needed one for more than three years is balanced out by the fact that i am not in pain yet, so my upcoming surgery is, for all measures and purposes, preemptive and therefore a sign of my developing practicality and good sense.

straws are grasped.

I have a major paper due, two really, but one is so much more major that it eclipses the other, both are due April 16th. Today being the eighth means that i should already be panicked but i can't muster it and panic rarely helps.

future crisis foreseen.

Judah is coming down the stairs to remind me that he has no intention of letting me be on my own for fifteen minutes together.

Blog is abandoned.

sneaking it in

2008-04-06T07:20:00.000-07:00

I have to be at work in tweny-five minutes and my hair is crazy, cray-zay. I am still in my pjs. I am listening to Andrew Bird's Plasticities catching up on bloggies.

I want to send Becks a shout out: I didn't completely understand, maybe even misconstrued, your last post. I didn't mean to, but i know one of the best things about this blog thing is being comprehended. I usually feel i do comprehend you. so, i re-read it all, i think i get it now.

for me, the worst thing about being Pulled, is that in the struggle, in the ways it works out in my head and in my home, i often forget that i am being pulled by things i love and want and need. I need Judah and Chris and i need school, i need to work, for the challenge and i need these moments, in front of the computer, listening to Sarah McLachlan's Blackbird, and generally feeling like myself, in my life. feeling present and feeling forceful for the day ahead. I want to be be myself, a wife, a mother and a student. all of it, but the challenges sometimes get so gnarly they only feel like struggles.

still, still, what else is worth spending all my energy on?

how does your garden grow?

2008-03-31T15:39:00.000-07:00

I've been different lately, disconnected and quiet and wistful. i've been restless and bored.

I can't seem to get away from all my roles and my people, I can't seem to be by myself and i think it is what i need, though by this point, it would kind of be unpleasant, i think. it is like a hunger gone too long unfed that you are nauseous. you don't necessarily want food.

i don't feel like doing any one thing. i don't feel like myself and yet there is something pretty familiar about this feeling. i feel fussy and this room is a mess.

But, maybe,

there is more than the blahs to this blah. I have been wondering at myself the past week, wondering where i think this is leading and seeing myself at not too special, not that gifted, not that smart. why do i think i will get into a good Ph.D program? why?

And at the same time, i know i have talent, it is just that i can see that so do many other people. many others, just in my classes, and there must be so many others with better qualifications that i have not ever met.
i have remembered a life before i was trying to make something of myself, a life in which something was made of me, and i have been wistful for the ease and entertainment of it.
i am wanting to hide from my life right now.
but instead, i am going to read two chapters from Invitation to the Psychology of Religion.
Try not to be jealous.

Oh Sweet LORD!

2008-03-18T18:34:00.000-07:00

Thank God I didn't miss it!

Okay, Kristen, you are becoming a mother everyday! I bet you look so cute.

For your mind, a metaphor. You are visibly pregnant and it becomes more and more defining. You were teensy pregnant, then visibly pregnant, now definingly pregnant. It is probably the first thing that people notice about you now. But what is happening inside you is so much more profound than what can be seen with an eye.

So is motherhood itself. It will change everything about your day and all your decisions. But the change in your heart and soul will be so much more. you will be changed in your fundamentals.
Your very fiber is different, you're blessed. Welcome to it, i am always here if you need...

Kristen, you will be a great mother to Alyssa. On this point, there is no doubt. you will bring your thoughtfulness and consideration to the role to be sure and your practicality. your good sense, not so very common, will be to Alyssa's great benefit.

For your darling girl, a blessing: That her heart would beat strong in her ears, that she would truly know herself, live thoroughly and well, succeed in making wise and good plans which then materialize into a wise and good life. That she would comprehend her blessings, that her struggles would strengthen her, that she would have laughter.

Alyssa: Welcome to the world, our world, your world.

love to you on this becoming...
Erica

I got you a couple petit bateau onesies. so yummy.

Maybe it is like this right before something cool happens

2008-03-10T21:21:00.000-07:00

We spent most of our day, me and Judah, in the city. God, a city has energy to it, for sure, and Chicago's energy is energetic. Yep, i meant that. There is a steady, strong pulse to Chicago. The wind from the lake is its breath, cold and strong. Chicago is alive.

We ventured up to the skydeck of the Sears Tower which is an expensive thing to do, when one considers $21 parking for 65 minutes. I usually cringe about things like that, but i am learning to let go and enjoy the more expensive moments. You don't get anything for them if you fail to enjoy them.

I really enjoyed being with Judah in the city, being with him on the streets. We ran and whooped and hollered about being in Chicago, about being among its people and its crazy tall buildings. It was so nice to do it- to be with Judah and thrill him. To thrill him is pretty thrilling.

We watched the History Channel short on the construction of the Sears Tower and Judah enjoyed it. He also thoroughly appreciated our friend's classical guitar concert last month. Yeah, i am trying to say that he, my offspring, is smart.

Really, it doesn't strike me as smart when i see him do these things-- he strikes me as really old for four years, one month. At 48 lbs and 44 inches i believe that is above 95% -- out of 100 kids his age he is bigger than at least 95 of them. He is big and memorizes lots of things and tells me off sometimes.
A tiny teenager in lots of ways.

Judah, if you ever read this one day, I want you to know that i miss you as a baby. I miss your babyhood. seems a tragedy that it had to end. you are always so beautiful to me though, even now, i am always thinking what a gorgeous little jerk you are. That these days with you are the ones i would buy back at any price, though they are tedious and stressful in many, many ways and i know that it is best for all of us to keep evolving, still you tempt me to stay right where we are. It is a good thing i have no say in the matter...because you might be four forever.

So now that i got that out...

i'm off to bed.

picture perfect: this is how my mind works

2008-03-01T21:48:00.000-08:00

I've just spent more than an hour looking at design sites, featuring homes that are flooded with light and good taste, and i am sitting in my very cold, unstylish, basement.

We've been rolling right along here:working, watching tv, going to classes, judah-- so much demands lots of my attention. especially project runway!

i sometimes think i need to write a letter to my dad, that i need to get my thoughts out on paper. But seriously, would i ever finish that letter? it would be so long!
I have even tried just putting a few thoughts down, but one thought just leads to another and i can't seem to organize my thoughts. i am not satisfied with them when i re-read them.

I know he must be so sad and angry at me. I feel bad about that.

i'm sad we're broken up. i am sad in a way that... if i really think about it. . .i can start to cry and stop breathing and hear my heart beating in my ears.
my life is so f*ing messy- it is. and most of the time i am so frustrated that it is. i haven't come to terms with my life being what it is. I haven't come to terms with myself because, you and i both know, i am the reason that my life is the way that it is. I am profoundly messy- loosest of ends and feeling so threadbare-- i will not be able to cover my wreckage with my best efforts.
and i don't feel that my path is heading anywhere anymore. or, maybe, i feel i have been on this special and trying path to get somewhere but that when i get there, wherever There is, i will not have what i need to make it my There. I do not have the goods. I don't.

i guess i am rethinking the rethinking. What was the question? What i am doing with Chris?!
Chris is the first time i ever knew something didn't add up about me. Before him, everything made enough sense. But my falling for Chris was just weird, from the leftest of fields, he is just Other than anyone would have had for me and even i sometimes still wonder at what he means. Anti-thesis of all my former ideas. Opposite soul-fabric. Suddenly i have married a Dreamer.

Everything happened at night.
I can recall the privacy of my room, i can recall not wanting to be interrupted there. I can remember the retreat into my own world: mirrors and windows. shade and trees. i can remember nights on the picnic bench in front of my house and stars shining through the branches. My night and private self chose her husband. This is not a fictionalization, an enhancement through hyperbolic imagery. This is the closest thing to Truth i can tell about it.
That very private self i barely saw because She was not as yet connected to anyone or anything. Only in my room. only on my own. An un-self-concsious self .But now...
The choice to marry Chris was the first move toward being let out of that tower of privacy.
And sometimes, i just want to go back.

The person i was before Chris had no real hopes or dreams but I didn't have to worry about anything. Now i worry about everything.

i try not to.

And you'd given me up for dead!

2008-02-26T05:24:00.000-08:00

okay, so i am back from a visit to Chris's parents. The low light was something i think it wouldn't be fair to print and the highlight was going to have steak where i used to waitress. My word: that is the best steak i've ever had.

The trip afforded me a golden opportunity to be by myself, when the house was sleeping and still. I journaled eight pages, lists and drawings. I made plans, resolutions, maps and schedules. i felt whole for the first time in a long time. I felt unto myself, present and it was so needed. It almost felt like a spell and the saddest part about it is that it will almost certainly be broken.

I know that i do the breaking myself. I "check-out" all the time. I detach, as some sort of defense, but i do it so often i can't begin to guess why. The idea is that if you go back to when you checked out, right before it, then you can identify what triggers the defense mechanism.

My first guess is that my messy townhouse is making me check out. I hate it cluttery and messy. Maybe that is why cleaning it always feels so enlightenting.

Speaking of, i have lots of cleaning to do.

Did you know that i kind of like Mary J Blige?

2008-02-13T11:19:00.000-08:00

okay, fyi
1. today judah is sick and home from "school." He is most in touch with the fact that his health is ailing when i ask him to do things like kiss me or take his cup back to the kitchen.
2. Chris is off the next two days. YIP-ee. We're on a good stretch these days.
3. Obama, he is a Barack-ing my world.
4. Tote bags are my new thing. I just bought... three recently and i lurve 'em.
5. Organisation is also my new thing. king of.
6. British spellings come naturally to me and they always have.
7. weird, eh?
8. i just had my six month review and it went well. i am happy about it.
9. i love my classes at Wheaton and got an extension on my thesis.
10. If i could just straighten myself out enough, i could write two books.

Sick is not how i pictured it! or I like to think i would be Lucy Liu.

2008-01-16T21:07:00.000-08:00

maybe it was the shots. I am sick! i don't get sick, really. I am the last to get sick My sister or roomate can get sick and i won't. Judah and Chris will be laid up with Ebola and i can go for a walk, come make them soup, snuggle them, and i am fine the whole time. I am the last to get sick.

usually.

I had another class today and it became apparent to me that i am much much older than lots of college kids. More than age, really, i am older in the sense that i have been around. I have been places. I have had judah and been with Chris for eight years. I have had the struggle of my life, it seems.

They are twenty-ish and look like the places they have been include and are limited to Wet Seal and Forever 21.
I am trying to remember not to be condescending but i am not sure it isn't natural...
in other news, my mom sent me earrings for no reason.
which created a minute but detectable shift of the earth on its axis. Polar bears can tell because they got a little more time to chase those seals we shouldn't be clubbing.
Really, who exactly clubs a baby seal? Why a club?
I digress, i know. The people in latin america noticed because their siestas inexplicably lasted one minute longer, with no effort on anyone's part.

The earrings are pretty and gold and came accompanied by a matching ring that i would like enough if it fit my proper finger.

pretty. i just don't know what it means.

___
and finally, Kristen, KRISTEN ARE YOU THERE? i am now watching Project Runway which is bound to make us grow oh so close. I like Sweet P.

I also watch a little bit of Cashmere Mafia.

Who is the fallen mighty now? I never get hooked on that stuff: sex and the c. or desperate housesluts. I never get pulled into this stuff. And i never get sick.

well, hardly.

the way up

2008-01-15T21:54:00.000-08:00

i generally regard 2008 to be my year of The Climb... I sense i am at the foot of a mountain, the top will be my Actualized Life. I know, God help all his children who took too many psych classes!

I am so glad to be here. I feel like everything i am doing, and i am doing a LOT, is getting me closer to who i want to be. I know it. It is a conviction, my dears. So the work thing, it doesn't bother me. I can deal with my work.

Because it means I can go to my school. I am very very verrrry (roll the R) happy to be back at Wheaton, i love it! i had my first class today and i wanted to cry i felt so happy. But i didn't, i just smiled a lot.

I also got three shots today. I narrowly avoided a pap smear (rescheduled). the school keeps tabs on its students! the shots were mandatory. the physical is too. the pap is cause i am a big girl and know it is best for me... otherwise i would say no thanks.

Judah and i both go to school and he finds this really interesting. he likes to ask me if i get a play time or a nap time and i had to tell him that his school is way better than mine. no naps are scheduled, anyway.

i got an ipod for christmas.
good night.

2008-01-15T21:53:00.001-08:00

2008

2008-01-02T20:58:00.000-08:00

i have been a person who loves to make New Year's Resolutions. I love it.

Even when i am making simple changes, i'll wait for a sunday so that the change has a proper commencement.

But the turn of this year is different. I am a little spent on all the changes i have recently made to think that i can make some more changes.

though i would like to think so, but i can't even muster up the energy for a list.

and you know that all real sustaninable change begins with a list- nice penmanship increases the likelihood that it will come to pass, too.

No, I am not feeling change-y. i am not feeling like i can. or will.

i will probably just continue gaining weight.
and not finish my degree.
i will probably still be surrounded by my clutter twelve months from now
i will not have visited the chiropractor
nor the dentist
Judah will probably stay up past ten every night and
we'll eat from the frozen section
when we don't eat out
i won't exercise and then i will drop the ball on going to the Dells this summer because i refuse to get in a bathing suit
i won't save a dime or pay my bills on time.
i'll snack too much and blog too little.
i won't buy the Differin that my poor stressed out skin needs.

eeek! i have so much to do!

That said: some plans!

I will lose ten pounds by Febuary 14th. I will then lose another five by my birthday, March 13th. After i lose fifteen pounds, on my birthday, i will spend money on something nice for myself as a reward and a congratulations!
I will go out on a real date for Valentine's Day.

Judah will start going to bed on time again. On time is nine. NINE!!!
i will learn ten new recipes in five months.

I will visit the chiro and the dentist and, though i could definitely think of much more better ways to spend my time, i need to visit the gyno too. it is time.

i will love myself, trust myself, listen and learn myself.

change can happen even when I don't have the energy of a false sense of invincibility,

No, not forever

2007-11-29T14:40:00.000-08:00

My version of the story is the one i am sticking with. i think my father is having a mid-life crisis. although he cannot see that. for him, mid-life crisis-ing is for weaker minded, less original people. No, he simply has come to the rational and not crisis-induced conclusion that he wants nothing to do with me, nothing to do with my mother and nothing to do with my sister. Should he have a major heart-attack and barely survive it, I am not to come to his side- I am not to even call. If my mother dies tomorrow, i am told, I will not be welcome at the funeral.

Oh, how the mighty fall.

I spent six hours on the phone with this bruised Ego, this disillusioned man-child. I was bewildered and perplexed by the time i got off- still in my pajamas. I was abused, and he abused my care for him, my concern for my own place in the family. He wanted to hurt me. He made me literally sick.

The next day i couldn't focus at work. I could not. I felt sick in my stomach, light-headed, fuzzy. i felt bruised up inside.

i felt out of control and i was... i was at the mercy of his tantrum.

my dad has earned his crisis: he has been the chief contributor to it. My dad deserves to rage: lots that is presently making him crazy is not entirely his fault.

But not a bit of it is mine either, so i am not paying the tab.

I am going on with my life, the only one i have. I will not invest in his breakdown, though i honestly hope he regains his footing.

Once my aged and wise therapist held my hand and told me that i could not be the stabilizing force in my family. He told me he understood why i had tried, that he believed me when i said that i played the part i did because i feared the chaos that would ensue if i did not.

He told me I had to let happen in them what would happen-

and now I am doing that. I let them destabilize in my absence because i cannot struggle with them forever.
my son is growing up too quickly for that.

Rolling with it.

2007-11-07T19:26:00.000-08:00

I am the type pf person who really gets into the movie or tv show she is watching.
I really need to identify with the characters or there is no point in my watching... i don't inherently value stories about people i do not relate to.

That said, i am in the fifth and final season of Six Feet Under and

Hot F-in Damn.

that is what i have to say. I have to give props to my girl, Nancy Oliver, for her mad screenwriting skills...
okay, ditching the vernacular i want to talk about a special crazy phenomenon that i just experienced.

In this season, without giving too much away about a show that aired its final season about three years ago (a shout-out, too, to the netflix people who keep old shows fresh for years) ,
Nate breaks up with Brenda because they fight too much; he's tired of it and they don't seem to "fit."

And i got totally sucked into that world and remembered that not that long ago Chris and I were seemingly ill-fit, and though we weren't really fighting with each other, it felt as if we had been fighting for our life-together for as long as either of us could remember and we were tired.
sick-tired, nauseous-tired, dreadfully-tired, bone-tired. marrow- tired. and we felt like the brave thing to do, i definitely thought that the brave thing to do, would be to break-up: to walk away and cut our losses and face the world as individuals. individuals, the parts that cannot be divided being the ones we keep. let go of each other and stop fighting the very matter of reality and give in.

We didn't belong together it seemed. fate was apparently against us and we were

fatalities.

i have struggled with a dreadful sense of fatalism probably since my youngest sister died. it makes sense, you know? And this was that all over again- the need to let someone go even though everything inside of you is begging and pleading for that someone to stay, to live with you, to be with you. So i mustered up the idea and then the will to face that maybe, just maybe,
we were doomed. star-crossed.
for real.

It was at first a terrifying thought and since it was i knew i had to face it, i knew i did. so i held the thought in my mind and tried to embrace it with my heart and sat with the notion for about a month. yes, a month. for a month i did not look away from the tired sad thing we had become together, from the misery and the despair, from the existential questions that seemed legion.
I did not say to myself that God was with Us or that we would See with our Eyes some Good from this Pain. I did not make excuses for the rot and decay of the years set into our blood and bones; a sepsis and cancer. I did not look away to some better future.

as an exercise of the moment. to be present and to be brave.

tonight, watching nate and brenda collapse reminded me of that haunted time. the echoes of disappointments and disapprovals, of unfinished business and buried hopes filled my ears. i heard and i remembered the hollowness and illness.

and no one around me could answer for it, because it isn't the question of the mind hearing or realizing that the night has passed.
but of the ear listening past the echoes for what is now being whispered.
i heard something better tonight after the echoes.
something solid and something hale.
something set aright,
Illinois.

Falloween PictureGanza

2007-11-06T18:16:00.002-08:00

Our House, The Bag of Autumn, & My Favorite Tree

Fall in Illinois is a beautiful thing and my little one and I took it upon ourselves to relish it by collecting leaves and examining ladybugs in the tree by our house. It's brisk here mostly, sometimes cold but every now and then it is warm again. In other words, it is annoyingly inconsistent.

Halloween was short-lived but really fun while it lasted. Judah is an A-list trick-or-treater. He scurried up to the houses and managed to get out

Trick or Treat, Trick or Treat, RRRRRRAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWRRRRRRRR!

Some pics of my little dragon:

This is a very scary dragon, as you can probably tell by his very scary stance. I believe Judah stated his goal was to "thcare them thso bad they run away crying and thcreaming!"
People dutifully pretended they were scared by a three-and-a-half foot tall adorable green thing.

Connected

2007-10-30T19:55:00.000-07:00

I feel most here, in Illinois, when i am at home, cleaning. I feel more connected with my space when i am cleaning it. Probably because I have to notice it, bit by bit. I can be so wrapped up in the atmosphere of my mind that i miss the material details.

I keep thinking i would do better here if i worked four days instead of five... but i don't think it's financially realistic-- at this point anyway- we aren't even sure what IS realistic as we are just getting a solid idea of what our every month responsibilities will be.

WE have been eating at home more than I ever have before and- wow!- it is so much cheaper to eat at home. No wonder i ran out of money before the end of the month- seriously, I have eaten out enough times to last me a life time. no, really, THAT MANY TIMES.

----------------&&&&&&&&*********$$$$$$$$$$%%%%%%%%%%%%%%******

Judah and i spent the whole day at the mall--
we went for a costume. I know, it is last-minute, but i have issues with money. I can't spend it until... damn, it is the last latest minute and I MUST purchase-- a case of need, or it is under fifteen dollars. The best situation is a combination of the two. I know, i am weird.

So i went to a couple of stores with no real luck- then i went to the Children's Place and (more proof that the Universe is on my side) I found the Cutest little Dragon Costume EVER! for $4.99!
I don't even need to tell you how cute Judah looks in it...he fills it out great. I'll post pictures, k?
I am not sure if it's good or bad but even Judah listed the getting of the costume for "five bucks" as a highlight of our day. Is that too soon to teach bargain-hunting? what about plain ol' cheapness?

Did i tell you that Chris is working overnight and that i admire him for it? That he does an Incredible job about not pitying his lot too much?

Did i tell you that I am not cut out for the job i have? That i am not naturally detail-oriented and that i am in fact quite flighty about such things?
I knew that going into this position and i feel pangs of insecurity whenever i make dumb mistakes ( about three times a week!)

i was hoping to develop these skills...

today i watched a lot of TV.
Some Gilmore Girls...Rory Gilmore is my fashion muse, by the way.
Some Six Feet Under Season Five...damn great writing.
Some Five Days...damn you HBO with your premium prime time line-up.

Some resolutions:
tell my dad what he can do to make it up to me and Chris.
Develop Real Live Budget-- we've been rounding and guesstimating thus far.
Hold proper staff meeting.
Invest in ways to get music flowing throughout the house...I need music.
Take Chris out to show him how much i appreciate him.

Forgetting

2007-10-26T15:13:00.000-07:00

if you want a fresh start, if you need one, i think you have to prepared to forget the past for a little while.

I feel so different from how i felt in San Antonio. I have been pondering the themes of proactivity vs. passivity. It sometimes becomes a mantra of Becoming Creative, Living Creatively.

I am enthused about this new chapter and its themes.
There is great continuity for me between what I have been before and what i am now becoming-- if i think about deconstruction as a precursor to construction-- winter becoming spring, the flow of life and ofcourse, death.

True that the dead of winter can sometimes feel final, can threaten forever with its chill.
But i am sowing now, is spring when you sow seed?
I am creating my own life! How fun! What a gift to find myself with the resources to define the moment, and God help me to seize it.

In the past week, i sense i have forgotten. There are steps i am taking, and in the taking i know that I could not have done the things i am now doing before. I remember that i could not, but i don't remember, really, the feeling of not being able to. And how invigorating to know feel myself able to. . .

To have the ear and Have the stomach

2007-10-14T19:59:00.001-07:00

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.
Zora Neale Hurston

As you all know by now, i have returned to Illinois. I have returned, as if in a dream.
The incredible force it took to get here, that is all foreign to me, so i feel transported here, though indeed I brought myself here in a rented car.

And i bet you thought i would be happy. I bet you expect posts with picutres of my new life with a matching smile, and I may do that with our Halloween photos.

But right now what i know for sure is why i left Illinois in the First Place my dearests!
It was asking the most ridiculous questions. The most scary questions, questions ranging from the practical... how to pay for a baby while in school?. . .to the existential: what in the world am i going to do with my degree?

I opted out of that quiz. I strongly suspected that i was headed nowhere and courting poverty.
Moving back means i suspect otherwise now.

Oh to refuse to ask the questions, to live in San Antonio and play at a life with the most convenient answers, was absolute torture, the most exquisite pain at times.
Oh to move back, to listen to the questions, to ask them, to open myself to some other answer not yet written for me to read, not yet written by my own hand. . .
is not cake in the afternoon, darlings.

I am trying to create a life for myself and i am not creative in that sense... so accustomed to being a passenger, so pleased to let myself be overpowered have i always been that now, now the task of creaing my own way seems severe... severe!
i am now so easily frustrated.

Precious

2007-10-04T22:04:00.000-07:00

A moment fully realized is the rare commodity. Am I the only one who wants to know? To peer into the fabric of the second that the words are uttered, the ones you hold to your heart like a talisman against the little deaths that bite at everything precious in a day. What is this symbiosis? Blood and breath fight meaningless and monotony. These are our struggles- to strengthen our pulses, to enlarge our lungs.

His eyes have a ring of mossy green inside a caramel tinged brown and they are more to me than anything has ever been. He sleeps upstairs and my world is balanced in that bed, so fragile am I now: I am no stronger than a three year old’s frame.

How could I not be religious? Be spiritual? When I know that the best parts of myself are walking around outside of me now and are designed to be my remains when I am gone from this earth. when I am in the earth still I’ll walk the earth.

The feet I wash with chocolate shampoo sometimes will carry my heart into the future.

So I pray.

We make tacos together the three of us, then we watch Scrubs.

Sponsibilities

2007-09-19T17:06:00.000-07:00

i am in suddenly so responsible. no, scratch that. I am suddenly exceedingly aware of all my responsibilities and...
not that good at meeting them, though i am trying.
i Am Trying.
And still this job is kicking my butt. so much stuff to do and all of it multi-tasking and detail-oriented. MURDER!
it is killing me.

In other news, we have moved into a townhome. Really nice. it has a really nice layout! I have three levels. the first is a two-car garage and a room for Chris to play music in, the second and main floor is wooden througout- the kitchen, breakfast nook, dining room and living room. The upstairs is nicely carpeted, has a HUGE master bedroom and two other smaller rooms... one for Judah and one for my office.
fun.
and the boxes Are Everywhere.

the stress has been sky-high lately.

Moving Again

2007-09-03T20:22:00.000-07:00

not away from Chicago! but we are hoping to secure a new little nest in the next week or so.

We met a realtor at a townhome this morning and it was a really good layout for us, near to an excellent elementary school, near to our friends.

There were, as to be expected, some minor details about the home that were less desirable to me. I am hoping that we could, should we get the place, change out the lighting.

Toward that end, we spent some two hours getting dazed and, yes, confused! at Ikea. I actually felt dizzed by the frenzy.

I have been hemmed in by traditionalist taste all my life and i have no idea how to be creative with fashion or home decor with any degree of self- confidence. Still, i think this part should be fun, so i am trying to get over my need for "correctness" in decorating myself or my place.

I've spent some time looking at funky wallpaper and cushions and i am thinking i will start there.
oh, and I think we are getting an ORANGE! couch.

if anyone out there has any good reasons why i should not be joined to an orange couch, please speak up.

Triumphalism

2007-09-02T09:50:00.000-07:00

i haven't been blogging much lately-
part of it is that i have been busier than ever before
part of it is that i have been happier lately and i don't blog happiness as easily as melancholy and
part of it is, was. . .

embarrassment and fear.

We took a leap of faith in moving here, with no cars and only one job. on the outside, and even sometimes from the inside, that made me look/feel crazy at times. Who does that? Who moves with three year old without a place to live or transportation?

A desperate person can sometimes seem crazy- or be crazy.

I think i was a little crazy!

But i don't think the craziness was in the moving, but in the staying so damn long against myself, my own needs and wants.

Our lives were out of control, because we had given up control to someone not at all fit to make any decisions for us! That is what we did, in essence, by allowing ourselves- myself- to be manipulated so extensively.

Mayhem ensued.

Emotionally, psychologically, maritally...financially. All out of control.
I was bereft of any power over my own life because i had given it to someone else a long time ago and i didn't know how to get it back, how to appropriate it for myself.

So i did all i could, i moved. With no job or car, with nothing except enough money to last a little while.
Crazy move, but the only one i could live with.

So i haven't blogged about the transition because i wasn't sure what would become of us and i was embarrassed by it all, the irresponsibility!

At the same time i was praying for the opportunity to take responsibility and authority over my own life, i was feeling my most irresponsible and resource-less.

But i thought you should know,
now that I know, now that i know how the Universe has answered that
Crazy Leap of Faith:

We both got cars, great cars from carmax!

My job is what i asked for and expected and i am grateful for it!

Chris got the job we needed to make it here, in Chicago- a major promotion-- doubled his salary!

We feel great about our crazy decision. Sometimes a person has to get a little desperate to make a necessary chage- rock bottom or what you will.

Thank you for your patience and for the hand-holding.

more to come.

Change

2007-08-29T19:45:00.000-07:00

They say it is inevitable and that it is "good", they do. I have been Change's protege and her help-maiden, her slave and her beneficiary, it seems.

I have been dropping dead, passing out at around ten nearly every night. I multi-task all day long and by ten o'clock i am done-in. I am completely off the mark with my weight too, and have been irregular in ways i never am... pleasant! and if that doesn't convince you i am in over my head, then consider the fact that i had my first ever case of ... was it vertigo? i just felt, for the better part of more than three hours, that i had been on some crazy carnival ride.

It is kind of getting to me.

Still, there is good in Chicago for me. I earn more, which is nice right now and we are looking at property and getting used to ourselves in a different zip code. Judah seems to be doing really well, seems to like his pre-school, seems to laugh harder and more often now. Either that or i notice it more fully now and either way, or both- i feel sturdier because of it. I take heart in Judah's belly laughter.

We are with friends (different ones than intially) who are taking such an amazing attitude about our presence and really welcoming Judah into their fold. (Liz's link is Online Therapy-she has some too cute posts about our too cute kids being too cute together). Their open door has been the difference-making factor in our being able to take root here at all. We're going to try to stay by them wherever we move.

Chris has an important meeting tomorrow at two so if you pray, please do so for him.

I am gearing up for fall in terms of FASHION!! i am really looking forward to shopping Simply Vera at Kohl's this fall. In other news, i've got an awkwardish haircut and ten extra pounds dampening my excitement. ah, ambivalence.

Mavis Beacon

2007-08-05T21:52:00.000-07:00

it is late and i am tired and i cannot see the keys on the board and i am a horrible typist. It seems to be one of those things that everyone else gets and i do not, like i was absent that day and i missed the crucial typing lesson. I am finding out, at this moment, that i am better than i thought and still very bad indeed.

We are staying with friends in a very small space in a suburb of Chicago. I feel i am a burden, a leech and that is a horrid unpleasant feeling.

The further i get into my life here, the more unfamiliar the territory of emotions gets for me. I am sometimes happy, sometimes unreasonably tired, sometimes energetic and other times i get caught in a off-color mood. Change is hard i think, and we have had nothing of stability for what feels like forever now. I try not to expect my feelings to be all sameness and reliability, but that would be so nice right now.

i am behind on everybody else's life, i miss you girls.

Today is gonna be the day. . .

2007-07-14T07:02:00.000-07:00

today i board a plane for Illinois so that on Monday i can begin my training.
When i net on the Universe being kind to me at this juncture, this is Exactly, Exactly, Exactly
what i was betting on.

I call this chapter: Satisfaction.

Dominoes

2007-07-09T21:36:00.000-07:00

Lately, i have been letting the dominoes fall. I pushed them initially, but i knew that once I did, it would be too late to stop the reactions.

Leaving San Antonio this time was just that, the push of a domino that i knew would cause a hundred more to fall.

They are falling, the details are coming together, in just exactly the ways that Chris and I thought they would. He saw some things happening more clearly than i did- he said he suspected for more than a year that my dad would hit him. He gets that stuff, the stuff that has to do with seeing through people and into what they really mean and what they might do.
I am good at looking upward and inward. I look at God and i look into myself these days and i try to bring what is inside into harmony with the melody i hear God humming...such a different tune than i thought i would hear.

Chris and i are really different people at this juncture, but we are miraculously in sync- we're coming to the same conclusions in completely different ways.
i am so grateful for this, and in gratitude, i look upward.
____________________________________________________________________

I leave this Saturday for a week of training and i will be staying with a very dear friend and her family. I am looking forward to having the time to myself, without Chris and Judah, to establish familiarity at work--without distraction. But i haven't been away from either one of them for so long since before Chris and I were engaged.
It won't be easy and it feels kind of like a big deal.
_____________________________________________________________________

i Like who i am becoming, as a result of that push of the domino- as they fall around me, they force me into a very narrow space where i can't be anybody but myself. It is stressful, but it's the right kind of stress.

Lists

2007-06-21T23:42:00.000-07:00

We are fresher than we have been in recent memory: me, Chris and Judah.
Judah is admittedly pretty fresh, being only three years into this world and still having so much living to do he can't begin to channel the stale, beaten-down energy that Chris and I can on the Wrong Day in the Wrong Year (est. 2004-2007). Truly we can, Chris and I, double over onto ourselves, contortionists of listlessness on top of depression! we can overwhelm whole cities with our emotional grey.
We can be pained and painful to be around.

and i admit that with a funny pride that knows that even in all that we have stayed together, grown closer and made our way to this half-way house, Chris' childhood home.

Here, no blue-skies for sure, but here, we are better. we are some newer versions of ourselves: appreciative for the new chapter that might not have been started, fierce about the border to our home, the one built in our hearts. Don't knock on the door unless you have kindness and grace with you, because we aren't interested in peddlars of despair, doubt, insecurities and the like. We know better than to let you in, we'll be mad at you if you knock.

Us against the world? not close. In fact, us and the world: what we have always wanted.
I sometimes write down a list of my girlfriends, names from undergrad and grad school, names of people reading this very blog and i write the middle names (if i know them)of my dears in pretty cursive. I look at the list: it is long and satisfying. It is the list that tucks me in at night, the blanket of stars i sleep under, each name gives me hope for hope- all my real friends are wild about hope.

I am beginning to reimagine Chicago with that list in my heart. Chicago was the literal mainfestation of my fears: i have felt the world too much for me, cold and ruthless, as if i could die in the snow on Chicago's front porch and she might just step over me on her way to work. I fled that city with my newborn, a refugee to the Sun.

This time it is different: i challenge my youthful perceptions. Chicago was also kind to me, glittery but also welcoming, if grey, i always had invitations to a campfire or dinnertable. I was never without friends, i was never jobless, heck i don't think i ever ran out of money there...

So i am getting back together with Chicago-- i know about the wind and cold. The good outweighs the bad. I think i am going to find the City as I expect to: i no longer expect to be abused or neglected. I am trusting that we can make it, the three of us, fresh as we are again, with hope and good intentions, our intentions.

1. Judah intends to ride every elevator in that city, starting with the Sears' Tower.
2. I intend to buy everyone flannel pjs and get that illusive master's degree from my dream college.
3. Chris intends to-- well that is all for him to write out i think.
4. we all intend to thrive.

2 weeks.

Day's end

2007-06-19T21:46:00.000-07:00

It's nearly midnight and i sit in this strangely hot room and wonder where the day has gone.
Judah went to pre-school today and the hours always seem to fly by.
I had a lot of me time today- seems to be the reason I reflect on the day with a decent amount of satisfaction- though there is so much in the air.

I seem a weirdly unmotivated person lately. I have had strange thoughts that all seem to suggest that actually i do not want to do anything with my life.
i want to be cloistered!

but when i survey my life's course as of late, it seems to be calling me out, to be making me suddenly accountable. I have always detested the parable of the talents. I see that as my conflict this last week. I have no desire to be accountable for my "talents." I don't want to make any decisions that require that i use them, which i have already done! maybe i doubt them that much?

I recently read Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own and she exorts women to live by [our] wits. Blasted Woolf! how much easier to hide in a job that requires virtually no thinking!

So I sign up to perform for Life. Yeah, i did that. I said, Look , I am going out on my own. Give me opportunities and I will use them. Enable me, i will perform.

I didn't say that with conviction! I mean i said it because i was convinced of things that led me to deduce that that was the right thing to say.
is tres diferent!

Now i am feeling all the weight of making the "right" decision because it was right!

Last night i had a dream i was accepted to a very good PhD program. I was happy.
maybe my sleeping self is trying to motivate me.

Chicago-bound

2007-06-08T09:24:00.000-07:00

I anticipate a few more posts like this one, each one a little more declarative, less tentative.

When we moved to Tulsa, I felt like i was turning in my real thesis, the one i have been working on without knowing, the one about My Life.
It seemed to me that i had acquired lots and lots of information and had plenty of evidence to support my thesis:
I know what is best for me, i know i want to move, i know the world, though not perfect is not so harsh that i cannot take this risk.

I also know that my life is My Homework, My Assignment. I know that i am meant to live it governed by my faculties, making my own mistakes so that i can also fully own all my triumphs.

In the end analysis, this road isn't about my dad and how bad he is. It is about how i see things, how i see the world. I don't see it as rigged, in totality, against me. I don't see rootedness as my immediate goal, though one day i hope to God to get there. I see different commodities as more immediate necessities. I think that is okay, valid, even if my dad's way really works for him. I conjecture that my way is what will work for me. More than one right answer, a thesis is about supporting your views.
the past three years have been about acquiring the perspective and experience to support my own views. they are different, slightly bohemian and sometimes a little bit radical. they will change over time. But i will not sell-out, whole-sale style, to someone else's views ever again.
I am committed to myself. I am committed to myself.

So when i set out for Tulsa, it was turning in my Life's thesis: I was ready to be graded on my own work. I literally said to the Universe, Here i am: Support Me in This Trajectory or Slit my Throat. Like that was the subtitle.

Two weeks ago I got a call from the company i want to work for.
I got the job.
They want me there in a month.
aye yai yai.

C. as in Can Write

2007-06-01T21:25:00.000-07:00

so the husband has restarted blogging and he's got a lot to say. please go visit him at Exodus, linked to the right.
love.

I am being watched

2007-05-27T15:19:00.001-07:00

and not flatteringly.
Turns out that my parents are most definitely reading my old blog. They are reading it and getting offended, this i know from the letter we received yesterday. So out with the old one.

i wanted a fancier blog. like sandra's. or maybe michelle's at La Vie.
but i needed one at this moment, and this'll do.
welcome, hope you enjoy the new pics.