hello, old friend

More than a year has gone by since I've come here to put down my thoughts on this virtual notebook tucked away in my little corner of the interwebs. I had actually almost forgotten about this blog.

I hate to say it but I've disappeared to another venue where I suppose i tried to do the whole Mommy Blogger (TM) thing that is so popular nowadays. Women are out there getting book deals and winning television shows by talking about their babies and their husbands and satirizing their own lives. More power to them, I think it's great...but somehow (surprisingly considering my affinity for myself), that kinda thing doesn't seem to be turning out to be for me. At least not right now.

I'm still hopelessly contemplative but in this past year I haven't really made the time that I should for my Thinking Blog (as I've affectionately labeled this space) and so I've just sortof left it marinating here and have hoped to find the time to come back to it whenever that might be.

I guess for now, that time is here. At least tonight.

Life has changed for me in a myriad of ways. When I last wrote here, even though I didn't discuss it, I was living with my parents and my husband and I was nearing the end of my pregnancy. I am a mommy now, I live in a new (to us) house with my family and our cat and birds and life is just...well, it's magical and chaotic and fulfilling and exhausting and a big blurry whirlwind all at once. And I think those are the markings of a pretty good life if i do say so myself. Which I do. Obviously.

I realized something about myself since having my son; I am right on track to where I want to be.

in this day and age (i feel like a grandmother saying that), it's not really avant-garde to admit this but here we are: I have always wanted to be a wife and a mother.

shocking i know.

but isn't this what feminism is about? (the answer is yes). Feminism is about allowing me to guiltlessly pursue any path that I desire without feeling as if my gender dictates that I "should" be doing something else.

and the path of my desires was this one: being married, having a baby and a family and THEN moving on to more "professional" endeavors.

I've always wanted to be a writer, i've never kept that a secret. But what i DID keep a secret, locked away in the innermost chambers of my heart was my desire to get married and start my family. No one knew about it because I was ashamed and embarrassed to admit that despite my five star education and my fancy future outlines that all i wanted was to Fall in Love and Get Married and Start a Family. It seemed like I wasn't allowed to want that but really, that was what it was for me.

My boyfriends of the past were privy to this knowledge and as soon as I would realize that they weren't Husband Material, I would cut them loose. And I kept up my wild child image for as long as I could. I think i was even trying to convince myself that I didn't need it - i didn't need this future that I secretly longed for. I think I was so scared I couldn't have my dream that I pretended that I didn't even want it.

But here I am sitting at a computer at 9:37 on a Monday night. My husband is near me, my child is dreaming upstairs and I am so lucky and I am SO grateful because I have indeed fulfilled one of my life's ambitions.

That doesn't mean that there aren't more to come because there are! There are more children in my future I hope and there are also more goals. Like i said, I still want to be a writer and I am still actively working on that (one novel down, more in the works) but in the meantime, I just wanted to throw back the curtain of it all and admit loud and clear: It is the 2000's and I am a highly educated woman who has chosen to be a wife and a mother and i couldn't be happier about that decision.

Because truly, at the end of the day, we all just have to follow our hearts. And my heart led me here and now and it is full and open and full of a mother's love.

and that is a beautiful thing worth blogging about.

life: Aren't I supposed to be.....

I always thought that once I was pregnant that somehow my life would drastically change. That I would have some kind of identity crisis or need to reevaluate who i am as a person or something. So far, none of that has happened to me yet and it makes me wonder, am i doing this right?

I'm sure that the answer to that, like all things, is that there is no "right" or "wrong" with any of these life moments or experiences. I know that that's the truth but whenever i hear that i feel so unfulfilled by it. It's like when I was little and I would ask my mother, "who do i look like the most in our family?" and she would respond with, "you look like yourself and that's perfect." I would always roll my eyes at that, i wanted to know who i resembled and being just myself was never enough, it scared me in fact. I wanted to belong.

I guess it's the same feeling that drives my "am i doing this right?" obsession in my life. I want to have the right check marks at the right places so my list can be diverse and i can cover all the bases.

Whenever I play one of those videogames where you get to roam around a world and do quests on your own time and in your own way this trait of mine shows up almost twice as strong. I'm a compulsive explorer. i talk to EVERYONE, i search for everything, i cover every piece of ground i can. I spend huge quantities of time searching regions for secrets, i perfect my skills in every way possible. I love that there are quests that open up and I can watch one by one as they get checked off and I know that I am definitively making progress. It's somehow so fulfilling to me to see that - to see things get crossed off of the list and to know that at the end i will not only win but I will also know all of the secrets.

I would love so much to have a guide like that to life. I know I approach life in the same way: exploring every part of it i can, getting certified in every imaginable endeavor possible so i know everything there is to know about everything (areas in which i'm certified: interior decorating, wedding planning, personal training, lifeguarding, obviously life coaching but that was a legitimate one, there are more but i'm forgetting them now...). I just want to amass as much information about the things that I think are important as possible. i guess i'm hoping that somewhere there is someone keeping track of all of this stuff and that I am making some kind of progress here, that all of these thoughts and activities and weird jobs and endeavors haven't been for naught (i like getting to use that word) and that it will ultimately just MEAN something. Wouldn't that be great?

So when I reach a Major Life Point like being pregnant/preparing for a family and I'm somehow not having the overhaul experience that I thought i was supposed to have, a distant part of me worries a little bit. "Aren't I supposed to be wondering what it means to be a Mom?", "Aren't I supposed to be obsessing about how this is going to impact my life?", "Aren't I supposed to be frantically trying to join mommy groups or set up activities that help indoctrinate me into parenthood?" and so on and so forth.

The answer is that I don't know if that's what I'm supposed to be doing or not. I'm not doing those things and I don't know if I will be at some point but for now, i'm just kind of going with the flow and waiting with excitement and anticipation for my baby to get here and for our lives to continue forward. I don't know what any of it means but for once, I'm really not trying to figure it all out.

and i think that's a good thing? at least, i hope so...

life: purpose

it's weird how getting older changes you. Or how you change by getting older....i'm not really sure which way it works but I'm pretty convinced that it is relevant to know the difference.

My friend Nadine recently said something about how your 20s are supposedly the most self-absorbed time in your life. I can totally see that in a way. (although in another way I'd like to point out that my mid-to-late teens were also incredibly self-absorbed. I think that really 15 to 25 counts as the absolute most obnoxiously the-world-revolves-around-me era of life...but what do i know, i've only just cleared 25 by a few years).

In another way though my 20s have been about learning how to not be so obsessed with myself; how to get over myself actually. Maybe that's the process known as maturation, I don't know.

I'm not sure how i feel about all this maturity, however (if that's what it is). It's a little disarming if i'm going to be honest. I've gone from someone so enamored with her own thoughts that she had countless journals filled with ~*deep and moving*~ paragraphs to being someone who can barely muster up an opinion on various current events. 

I used to "take a stand" (which probably really only ended up materializing itself as throwing a tantrum or creating a scene or being juvenile) on a regular basis. I would argue at dinner tables, debate on car rides, post pithy quotations and status updates on my various internet portals to the world. Now though? Now I sort-of play it safe, I bite my tongue, I don't formulate ideas or come up with arguments. I don't even really think about things the way I used to. 

I literally used to drive around in my car and contemplate the meaning of my existence. I would analyze how i felt and why, I would constantly try to improve upon myself and I would debate with myself questions of morality and ethics.  Now I listen to NPR and wear my sunglasses and refrain from texting while driving and it's not even that I think about things that are less interesting than i used to...it's more that i don't think about anything at all.

I'm not sure if this means that I have matured, that i've gotten over myself, that i've grown up, that i've become an adult or if in fact it means that I have just finally lost my own personal "it", whatever "it" was (you know, my own personal purpose in life, my personality, that force which makes me a unique and identifiable individual...it's that Thing that all American's are brought up believing they have - their special snowflakeness, their individuality). 

'Cause I used to feel this super driving sense of purpose about life, I had this idealistic "if i could change the world I would be the sunlight in your universe" kinda point of view (that's from a song by Eric Clapton) about things. Now I don't feel much of anything about anything anymore. I don't feel a driving purpose, i don't feel idealism. I see things and I sigh at them. I predict people's actions and am disappointed when I'm right and don't care to analyze it when I'm wrong. 

And i do realize the irony of writing this post about how I'm no longer self-absorbed and the whole thing is focused on me and the way i used to think and act and how that is juxtaposed with the way i currently think and act. I know, i get it. It's amusing in one way but sad in another. 

I guess what I'm saying is that I have realized for a while now that this magical sense of "I can be and do anything in life" and "Every life matters" has just kind of drifted away and I don't know if i should go chasing after it like a lost kite on a summer afternoon or if i should just stand on the ground and watch it float away, the way that we all have to release some childhood beliefs at one time or another. 

But isn't there a sadness to that? Isn't there something awful about resigning to life? Haven't there been great thinkers and do-ers and people who populate our history books and our oral traditions who didn't give up on those childhood beliefs?  What would the world be without the people who still thought that they had the capacity to do or be something in the world? And how did those people exist without having at least some ounce of self-absorption? Don't you have to be somewhat self-obsessed in order to trust yourself enough to go out there in life and CHANGE things for real?

I don't know, I don't even know what the real point is that I'm trying to get at. I guess I just wish I could climb to a mountain top and hear the booming voice of some benevolent creator tell me that I matter and that my life matters and to never give up and to go forward and to make something fabulous happen in my life because in the end it will all be worthwhile afterall. 

I guess on the one hand that's an immature wish to have.  But on the other, part of me thinks that the real thing to do is to learn how to hear those words in my own head and from my own heart. To go forth and believe those words fully, even if I'm the only one saying them. 

Because life just ends up being about what we choose to see and what we choose to do anyway. Sure, we could die and the lights could go out and that could be the end of it all; there could ultimately be no purpose whatsoever to any of this. But is that a reason to sit around and do nothing meaningful with your life? I don't think it is. I think that it's best to live life like there might be something more to it. I think it's better to find some kind of purpose and to go out there and hang onto that purpose with everything you have and to allow it to infuse meaning into everything you do because that's the only way that this whole thing will make any sense whatsoever. That's the only way to feel truly alive and not like you're just going through the motions.

At the end of the day it won't matter if you were right or wrong when your last breath leaves you and you find out the secrets if there are any. What will matter is whether you wasted the time you had here or whether you had the courage to really live. 

And i guess for me part of that courage would require me to stay self-absorbed. To continue to be moved by totally emo song lyrics and to wear clothes that reflect my mood and to start up long conversations with random people about whether they're happy in life or not (I once spent a whole night talking to the coat-check-person about their aspirations to join the FBI). I would like to go back to being that person who i used to be because I've spent the last two and a half years as this other person who has just decided to go with the flow of life and it's been boring and depressing and worst of all, it's been pretty pointless. And I don't wanna feel that way anymore. 

So i guess the hard part now is just figuring out how to get back there again...suggestions are welcomed. I hope it's not too late.

Life: getting TRULY healthy

it's been way too long since i've updated here. 

Why? Because I was holding off until I made my big announcement: I'm pregnant!  

i won't be going too in depth with that right now at the moment, I'll save that for the blog I'm writing about my pregnancy over at: a yellow giraffe but I will say that it was too much of a huge secret for me to keep AND update this blog at once so in a way, that explains my relative silence over here. 

Enough of that, though. 

What I really want to talk about here today is my new obsession: eating healthy.

My relationship with eating healthy has been an up-and-down journey over the years.  Back in the day, when I was young and in my early 20's i never thought about what I was eating.  I was raised in a very lenient household, my mother (who is a wonderful woman) was the kind of mom who would never force us to eat things we didn't like and who more often than not would end up making three or four dinners a night. Consequentially I never really learned to eat outside of my own box, I never even really thought about eating. Food wasn't something that was there for nourishment, it was based on taste and preference and that was it to me.  

Then when I was about 22 years old I decided that I wasn't at a weight that I liked. I made the decision that I wanted to make a change and that I wanted to "get healthy". This was in 2004. I did some research, talked with some friends and settled upon a solution: I joined Weight Watchers. I was determined to this the "healthy" way. 

I say healthy in quotation marks up there because as anyone who has done Weight Watchers knows, "health" isn't really the biggest priority (nor should it be, that's not what they advertise and it's often not what their participants are looking for).  Their priority is weight loss and that is the first and foremost matter of importance with them, and why shouldn't it be? That is what they're selling.  Of course, I didn't realize this at the time, I assumed that learning to eat "better" or to pay attention to my calories meant that I was being healthy.  But unfortunately, there are lots of ways to lose weight without being healthy about it at all. 

Weight Watchers isn't all bad, though I will say that. They do offer food guides, they give you lists of "filling foods" and two plans to choose from: one that is made up of healthy foods that you can eat as much as you want of (but you do have to greatly limit your intake of processed foods if you choose that plan) and another that is made up of "anything you want" but you modify food, eat less of it and count all of the food you eat. 

I am overly-simplifying all of this and it honestly doesn't even matter because 1. Weight Watchers might be different by now and 2. this isn't a post about WW at all.  This is a post about being healthy. 

So on my journey to "getting healthy" I joined Weight Watchers. I opted, of course, for the "Eat what you want" plan and that's how I learned about substitution and low fat and low calorie and artificial sweeteners and all of the things that a seasoned WW veteran is knowledgeable about.  

See, instead of learning about what foods are GOOD for your body, the foods that you need to function, thrive on and to fuel yourself with, I learned how to beat the system.  I basically learned how to keep up all of my unhealthy habits but to just modify them so that they were "okay".  I learned to drink diet soda instead of regular. I learned to eat light bread instead of regular bread. I learned about spray butter, spray salad dressings, fat free cool whip, diet-soda-cake (where you take a box of cake mix, mix it with one can of diet soda and bake - rendering you a cake with significantly less calories than if you add the eggs and oil....). I learned a whole variety of things and know what? It worked.  I dropped almost 15 pounds in two months.  I looked fantastic and I thought wow being healthy isn't really all that hard after all! (and i guess some of it was healthier: I had switched to egg whites and was eating salads instead of fries when I went out to dinner). 

Again, I'm not bashing Weight Watchers here, they're a good company and if LOSING WEIGHT is your only goal, they are the place to go because their plan really works. 

Unfortunately, that's not my only goal anymore.  (well, right now it seems that gaining weight is my goal....even though that's been a tough pill to swallow lol).  

After Weight Watchers I began to question some of my activities...was pouring splenda into my coffee really a good idea? What's IN that stuff anyway?  And what about the fact that the no fat yogurt was FULL of high fructose corn syrup? Does that matter?  I started to think about these things more and more and slowly I became preoccupied with them. And then I became fixated on something else: meat. 

I've never really been too into meat. I haven't had pork ever (i don't think) and the last time i had beef was when i was 10 years old on New Years Eve (don't know why I remember that but i do).  In fact, the only meat i ate with consistency was chicken but there was something nagging me about that too.   Weren't most of the truly healthy people vegetarians?  Wasn't there a lot of information out there about how bad meat is for you? Aren't they injecting the meat with hormones and antibiotics and keeping the animals in horrible living conditions? I did some research and was very affected by the things i learned.

So in 2007 I became a vegetarian.  I started focusing a lot more on the REAL definition of healthy: organic foods, eating lots of vegetables, only eating whole grains, things of that nature. 

Unfortunately for me, I was also broke. I lived with my fiance (who is now my husband) and while giving up meat was easier for both of us than I expected it to be (he went veggie with me), the cost of making better eating decisions was a little more than we were used to spending.  Not only that but switching over all of our diet completely wasn't something that I think either of us were prepared for on either an educational level or an emotional one. 

There's an interesting correlation in our culture which I suppose is a luxury afforded to us by living in such an affluent society; that correlation is between emotions and food.  We all seem to have these attachments between what we eat and how we feel. Eating brings about feelings and in many cases, feelings bring about eating as well. And that's where the problems begin I believe. I found that it was HARD for me to give up Pizza Friday or to get up early and go for a road trip and NOT stop at McDonalds for breakfast like we used to do when I was little.  It was strange to me to substitute a salad for the creamy, saucy side of rice that I was accustomed to.  And so while I remained a vegetarian, I slowly began slipping back into unhealthy habits and soon I was a pretty unhealthy vegetarian. I didn't eat meat but i did eat pizza.  I skipped fish but i partook in frozen tv dinners (and those are AWFUL for you).  I had french fries and doritos and desserts because I was "allowed" to.  It was almost as if I used my CHOICE not to eat meat as a way to justify eating whatever else I wanted to. 

And so after more than two years as a vegetarian I became accountable to myself and realized that I wasn't doing it for the right reasons anymore and that worst of all, I wasn't being healthy about it either.  I stopped being a vegetarian and started integrating (free-range, organic) chicken and fish back into my diet (I hadn't been getting anywhere near enough protein as a vegetarian - something that was my own fault - there are absolutely vegetarians out there who do it the healthy way and they are an inspiration to me). 

And so here we are today.  I haven't been a vegetarian for almost a year now and while I don't regret that decision, I do wonder what exactly I am doing.  My husband and I discuss food quite often and analyze the influence it has on our lives.  We have mutually come to the conclusion (and actually, my husband got there first and has really been the catalyst for this process for me this time around) that we are really just interested in having a truly HEALTHY life, whatever that may mean. 

Somehow something has clicked within us recently that has just changed the way we're looking at what we're eating.  

Because the truth is that the food out there is full of chemicals and toxins!  There are preservatives and literal poisons in the food that we buy on the shelves of the stores.  The thought of these truths is just mind-boggling and terrifying to both my husband and myself and we honestly don't want any part of it any more.  

I don't want to feed my unborn baby some chemical derivative whose only purpose is to turn the fake berries in my pop tart blue.  I don't want to eat things loaded with fake sweeteners and fake fats and polluted with dyes and chemicals and colorings and poisons. 

I'm not trying to get too extreme here but this is a real issue. There are things that are simply unsafe in the food that's available today. How is it possible that they make bread that doesn't go bad for weeks? Doesn't that tell you something? Doesn't that just seem wrong? Do you want those preservatives in your body?  What do you think they are doing to your organs in there?

I think it's no wonder that cancer is such an epidemic. It's no wonder that children are being born with autism at astonishing rates.  It's no wonder that this country is now facing a new generation of children who are predicted to have a SHORTER LIFE SPAN than their parents' generation for the first time in recorded history. 

Don't these things speak to you? Don't they say "oh my god, this is an epidemic, this is a serious problem, something has to stop!!"  They do to me.

We are allowing corporations to put toxic foods on our shelves and we are buying those foods and we are eating them and we don't understand why we wake up absolutely exhausted, why we have chronic aches, pains and depression and why we are all basically just waiting for the time in our lives WHEN (not if) we get our cancer diagnosis. 

This is a travesty and the worst part is that it is totally avoidable. 

So I'm on a new mission here, a mission to discover what Healthy Eating really and truly means and to start to implement that healthy eating into my life, whatever it takes.  I think that having a healthy lifestyle is one of the utmost priorities in life - it is the thing that we should be focusing on the most. What else is there that matters more? If you aren't healthy, you cannot live and you cannot achieve the things that you want to so there is no point. 

And so I have made it my goal this year to become as healthy as possible and to learn as much as I can as about what that means.  That's the funny thing, I don't even really know what it MEANS to be healthy! I know to eat whole grains, I know to eat vegetables with my meals, I know to buy organic but I don't know what choices to make in the store.  What kind of dairy products are safe? How should I prepare my foods? What kinds of breakfast foods are okay and what aren't? What is an actually Healthy lunch? I'm going to question and reevaluate all of my choices and preconceived notions, I'm going to throw out everything I thought I knew and go forward and learn new things because I believe in the importance of this issue so much that I am willing to fully reeducate myself on this topic. 

And YES that will require much more effort on my part but I am up for the challenge and I embrace the opportunity with open arms because these are the things that are important, these are the things that matter. If I can bring better health and a higher quality of life to my child, my husband and myself than I have made a huge difference and that is all that matters. 

And I encourage you to do the same. 

And if you need more encouragement, watch this video, it will absolutely change your world:

http://fora.tv/2010/01/23/Michael_Pollan_on_Food_Rules_An_Eaters_Manual#fullprogram

thank you for reading if you have and please feel free to join me as I make these changes and continue forward with this movement.  Comments are always appreciated <3

Life: There's something amiss here.

i've been thinking recently and i've come to the conclusion that our culture is focused on the wrong things. 

Try not to say "duh" and roll your eyes at me for just a second. I'm aware that this is a fairly obvious observation.  But please, allow me to explain what specifically I mean...

See, I'm the kind of person who is very obsessed with the "Meaning Of Life" (all in capital glowing letters with an orchestra playing triumphant music in the background). I like to sit around and ponder, I like to fill my time with things that I feel are enhancing to me on either a mental, spiritual, physical or emotional level. I pretty much don't do things if they don't fit one or another of those criteria. 

As you can expect, this has made for a fairly nontraditional lifestyle for me. 

My weird life aside (we'll save the details for another day), I kind of want to talk about the principals that drive these decisions and I'd like to wonder why more people, or really, society on the whole isn't governed in more of this direction. 

Look at how most people spend their time (and this is NOT a criticism, just an observation): Get up, go to work, come home, watch TV, eat, go to sleep. Weekends are for errands and home maintenance and, more often than not, some heavy or at least moderate drinking.  Lather, rinse, repeat. If you have children, work them in around the seams - either drop them off at school/daycare, pick them up and include some baths and maybe some children's movies or hopefully some playtime and that's about it.

But what i want to know is where is the time for the REAL priorities? And why has our culture evolved to the state of existence where this is an absurd question?

Sure, it's one thing if you're the kind of person who LOVES their job and lives for it and who feels fundamentally fulfilled as a person by the work you're doing. Than I definitely think that spending 10 hours a day in commute/at work is not only a valid way to spend your time but a GREAT way to spend it. Unfortunately, of the probaly 1,000 people i know, there is literally only ONE person in my life who fits that criteria.  Most of the other people I know are working/living life like this because they have to, because there is not another option.  Isn't that unfortunate? 

Why do we live in a society where there is really no other choice?  Why is the best option to pick the job that appeals to us the most out of all the other options?  Why are we settling for the least crappy choice? 

I mean honestly, wouldn't it be nice if our culture was more focused on family and enriching activities?  What if it was more like it used to be in the middle ages, where a family ran the household together, where they were all responsible for their livelihood and they made what was needed for themselves and their neighbors and that was enough.  Why is it that suddenly life is focused on being outside of the home, away from the family, becoming a robot in a cubicle and spending all the best years of your life (and hours of your day) by imputing information into the great machine of the Corporation? 

There is no focus on community anymore, instead it's the Global Community.  There is no Neighborhood Unity, no Family Focus.  Time with your children (from BOTH parents) is a luxury.  It's all about these meaningless things - arbitrary steps in a system that is fabricated to give us false senses of meaning: promotions, bonuses, projects, deadlines. Outside of the building that you work in these things don't even exist, they have no universal currency, they mean nothing to anyone else but the people on your Team or in your office complex.  Time spent with family however, THAT is a universal concept that has meaning. Enriching your spirit, that holds real value. Doing something that stirs you on an absolutely fundamental level - that's the stuff that lives have revolved around since the beginning of time...or at least they used to.

What has happened to out culture?  Why do all of these pursuits get shuffled to the back of the line? Why is family time often the last thing on our list yet getting to some gray building on time in the morning is first?  Why does it matter what reports get filed when? How will that ever ultimately stir something within you on any level that's real?  How will that ever be the thing that really truly makes your life not just a series of passed hours but instead a series of Events that have something to do with You. 

Sure, you can inject yourself into your work, you definitely can make a difference in these corporations. I don't want to suggest that you can't or that they don't give you a chance to do that...but I do ask why it's so hard for the people who just don't want that life.  Why does this culture shun the idea of being LESS work-focused and more family/life focused. Why is it taboo to want to LIVE more and work less?

The culture has even tried to take mothering away from us. How many women now choose a career over their family?  And why? Because somehow it is socially unacceptable not to be a career woman.  Somehow it is no longer okay to stay home and raise your children and NOT worry about what your career title it is.  

And even worse, it's now officially way harder financially to be a one-income home. That's the other thing the culture has done to us - made it Necessary for us to work because we cannot be educated members of society if we are unable to repay those debts. 

It just seems unfair to me.  Unfair and skewed.  I have a husband who would love nothing more than to immerse himself in studying history and learning as much as he can about it and i KNOW that if he had the chance to do that he would be enriched and fulfilled beyond all words. He would eventually contribute back to society in great ways through writing or lecturing or other things that would come to him by getting to live this dream.  But is he ever going to be able to do that?  I doubt it.  And why? Because our culture doesn't really make it possible. 

He cannot throw himself into learning and have a family, nor can he do it and go to school.  He can't abandon the workforce at this stage of his life because then he will have to explain himself to potential future employers and the odds are that they wouldn't respect his lapse from the workforce. 

The point is, he cannot live his dream and so he tries to tell himself that he just simply doesn't want to do it. 

But i know that's a lie.  and that breaks my heart. 

I don't understand a society that is designed to put all of it's citizens into little slots where they have to do repetitive tasks over and over again in order to pay their dues and pay back the schooling that they HAD to do to get them there in the first place.  It seems unfair and it seems to me like the priorities are seriously screwed up. 

If I could restructure things, I would. I would have a much more community-oriented culture with the priority on family, on using and taking and creating only what you need and on giving back.  People would work of course but they would do things they liked, they would support one another and they would not need to work forever.  The culture would be focused on finding what is inside people's hearts and souls and helping them achieve those goals. My husband would study and I would write and we would still be able to exist somehow.  Others would get to have their antique shops, their horse farms, their artist studios and everyone would be home in the early afternoon to see their children and their spouses and families would get together on the weekends and just enjoy one another. 

I don't know why that world is so far-fetched. Why is that kind of life so impossible to have?  What has happened to us that imagining all of that is just farcical at this point?  Why do i seem like a naive child when i write this instead of someone who has an innovative perspective?  Because something is wrong here in this culture, that's why. 

And i honestly have no idea how to fix it. 

Life: Cupcakes make the world a better place

Sometimes when it's winter and it's cold and it's raining and miserable you just need a little bit of joy in your life to get through it.

On days like that I sit around and plan my eventual move to warm and sunny climates. I literally look up real estate in places like Florida, California and the Caribbean.

I am a big believer in making our own happiness though, and so today I figured that I should take that quite literally:

through baking, of course.

I think that when we make things, no matter what it is that we make we are doing something that is essential in the Universe. The act of creation is a part of us, it is the driving force behind all living things. And on a simplistic level, it makes us feel better to know that we are capable of creating something from a pile of separate components.

today I created cupcakes.

Well, cupcakes and some other things but none of the other things are tangible (they're all words strung into sentences that are living inside my computer...hopefully one day they'll become something tangible though! that's the goal after all)

Cupcakes. Happy little pieces of perfection. They are the best thing to make on a cold, rainy February day when you find yourself wondering if you do in fact have Seasonal Affective Disorder.

and there is something so great about putting the sparkling little sprinkles on top.

So get out there and make something today. Even if it's something totally indulgent like cupcakes. It still counts!

Life: One Year Later

Today marks one year since The Fire that came and burned down the home where I grew up and tried to take my parents and their dogs along with it.

This has been a hard year for me, it's been full of ups and downs. I will never forget that night...when I went to bed and the world was normal and I woke up and an entirely new era had begun.

I don't mean to dramatize things and I know that there is a seductive allure in telling our own stories so much that they become Epic Tales but this really was a big deal in my life. It's everyone's worst nightmare: to hear the phone ring in the middle of the night when no one is pregnant so it can't be good news.

That's what happened to me a year ago. Only my phone didn't ring, Ryan's did. Why? Because I had absentmindedly left mine on silent, something I never do anymore. Leaving your phone on silent all night is a luxury afforded to those who have never gotten calls like this in the middle of sleeping. It's a luxury I miss but I am glad to avoid now.

When Ryan's phone rang at 2:30 in the morning and he saw who was calling he handed it to me to answer. It was my mom and when I said, "Is everything okay" she said "No." and sobbed.

I remember snippets of the call, mostly her saying the words "the house is gone" over and over again and telling me that Heather (my sister) was on her way to pick her up and she would be at Heather's house (which was then across the street from my own house) soon. I remember collapsing to the floor and then, like a frantic bolt of lightening I darted out of our room, out my front door and across the street where I collapsed onto Heather's front steps sobbing in my nightgown in the middle of the freezing February night. All I knew was that my parents were on their way and that our house was gone.

Ryan came out to try and bring me back inside but I couldn't move from there, I had to wait, my mother said she was on her way and I had to see her, to touch her, to know she was truly okay. He  brought clothes out to me and I dressed on the porch and shivered.

When my mother, father and their two little dogs arrived I burst into tears. My mother looked stunned, my father kept shaking his head.  I wrapped my arms around my mom and buried my face in her hair. It smelled like a campfire, a scent that would linger around all of us for weeks to come.

A few hours later, my siblings and I congregated at Heather's house with the exception of my other sister. My brother, Heather, my mother, Ryan and myself set off to make the trek down to our family home to see what was left. I know I went mostly to find out if this was all Really Real or not. I had to see it, I just had to know.

When we turned onto our street I thought that it had begun to snow. I was wrong. Ash fell from the sky like tragic little snowflakes. Ash. Remnants of our old lives falling all around the car, coating the street. I put my hand to the window and stared.

The house was still standing, but it was still completely gone. Charred and collapsed inside, there really was nothing left.

I remember saying "No, no, no, no, no" and falling to my knees in a pile of rubble that was once my mother's desk and bookshelves and a chest I had made that housed all of our family photos. I dug and dug and dug through broken glass and wet pieces of wall just to try and find anything that I could in that pile. There was nothing there.

Smoke still hung in the walls like the ghosts of our memories.



and as we all looked around at the place where we each used to lived, it dawned upon me: this is Really Real.





For weeks afterward, everywhere I went I had the morbid ability to imagine whatever room I was in transformed to it's post-fire skeletal form. I knew what lived underneath of plaster and drywall and I could picture anywhere in ruins. It was terrifying. I felt like the little boy in the Sixth Sense: haunted, stalked by the dead but in my case it was dead rooms and not dead people.

We would make return visits to our house, some things in the attic had survived, some things from the dining room and an old guest bedroom were in tact still. Every time we entered the house, we had to wear masks and don our 'Fire Clothes' - articles of clothing my father kept in the trunk of his car. These were items that we would only wear into the house because that smell never comes off.

It was post-apocalyptic the way we looked. And in many ways, for us, that felt appropriate.

But this isn't all bad news, I promise, it's not.

Over the time that has passed between now and that morning I spent digging on my knees through the ash of my old memories, there has been a lot of growth.

For one thing, we have all learned to cherish every day and one another very much. I never take any moments with my loved ones for granted anymore. Not even a little bit (like a woman at my book club joked the other day, "you never screen mom's calls again!" how true that is). 

For another, we've had the chance to really define for ourselves just what it means to have a Home.

A house is one thing. It's a building where people live.

A Home however...well, a Home is something else entirely. A Home is a magical sort of thing, alive in the same way that memories are. A Home is a place that holds you, it keeps you, it's where you belong, it's where part of you always is, even if the rest of you has moved on.

And over this year I've had to really come to terms with myself about what A Home really means to me and what it means to lose a Home. I've had to learn that I can lose my Home and not lose the parts of myself that used to live there as well.

Sure, some of it is gone. There was a death in our lives after-all, the death of what used to be, of where we used to live. I had to mourn that death, I had to grieve for it and let it take over me and let myself go through all of the pain of having to figure out just what it all meant. I had to write a letter saying Goodbye to my Home and to those photos and moments that are forever lost.

But in doing that I was able to really clarify for myself just exactly how valuable a Home really is, how much meaning and power it has. A Home: the family member i didn't even realize I had until it was gone.

And now I am aware of what a gift it is to even HAVE a Home, to have a family, to have people in my life that make me feel like there is somewhere I belong. I only felt so empty because I once had felt so full. That is a blessing, truly. A gift like that is one that nothing can ever destroy, not even a hungry fire in the middle of a February night.

So I am grateful. I can truly say that now. I am grateful and I am at peace. I understand that what has been has been and that it is important to honor your past, to respect it and to move on when it is gone. I also have learned that it is equally as important to cherish the present, to absolutely revel in it, to roll around in it and wrap it around you like a warm blanket because that is when all of life is happening: right now at this very moment. And not to be all doom-and-gloom but it is very true when they say that no one ever knows what tomorrow may bring. So live and love today for today. Plain and simple.

As for my parents, they are doing well and are so grateful for the outpouring of love and care they have received over this year. Their house has been rebuilt and while it is very different from the old place that used to live within those walls, it is still theirs nonetheless. And every day it moves farther and farther away from being a House and gets closer and closer to becoming a Home again.

Thank you to everyone who has been there for me and for us this year. I am eternally grateful to you. <3

Love,
Rhian

Life: wouldn't it suck if....

Wouldn't it suck if the guy standing at the Gates of Heaven was like Simon Cowell?

What if he was all like, "Absolutely not, you were the worst person i've ever seen. You have no business being here whatsoever. I'm just being honest."

and then I'd have to be all like, "Oh but please, please! Give me one more chance! Can I try something else? Wait, quick, I see a building on fire down there and I know that puppies live in it, let me go save some!"

But you know he would roll his eyes and shake his head and say, "No, those puppies would be better off if you don't touch them so they don't have to deal with YOU coming into contact with them. Trust me. They'd rather perish in that fire than have your hands on them."

So then I would wail and makeup would streak down my face and my false eyelashes would begin to come undone. I would fall to my knees and start shouting things like, "But I used organic toilet paper! They promised to save one tree for every roll I bought!" and, "Please, PLEASE! I didn't cheat on my math exam and I EASILY COULD HAVE!" and the security guys would have to start dragging me out while I kick and scream and say, "Just one more chance! I'll be better! I was just nervous!!!"

And for a moment after I was gone Simon would stand there in stunned silence before muttering to himself, "God I hate this job."

And then God will reply, "Well that's what you get for being such a prick your whole damn life."

And I would still be gone. No Golden Ticket for me.

Yup. That would suck if that happened.

Life: a letter to the internet

Dear Internet,

Today i worked out again. I've been doing that a lot lately and it makes me feel more powerful and self confident (even though I'm doing the 30 Day Shred and every time Jillian tells me to get into plank pose I want to scream, "NOOOOO! NOT AGAIN!!!" but I do it anyway and then much later (after I've showered and caught my breath) i feel freaking amazing because I could do it. I can do real pushups now. I never could before. I like that).

Right now my husband is walking around the house in boxer-briefs and a sweartshirt hoodie. This is one of the things they don't tell you will happen when you get married. Your spouse will do the most RANDOM things ever and it will be the most fun to find out how weird they can be. Like, really? A sweatshirt and boxer-briefs!? How is that not the greatest thing ever? It definitely is.

I got to have a late lunch with my best friend today at Our Place. We always go to the same place to get Soup For Lunch. Though recently it's been Soup then an Entree and then we split Dessert. Fine by me, I'm working out now so it's okay, right? lol (i'm pretty sure that's the kind of thinking that got me into the situation of needing to work out in the first place).

Anyway, today she's sad because she entered a contest to win a free $90,000 wedding but she didn't win. Some other couple won and we decided that we hate them because they look like they're trashy and they met at a dive bar. They also have four kids and are in their mid-thirties. We don't think they deserved to win as much as she and her fiance did. They were accused of cheating anyway. Really we hate them because they won and she didn't and we're jealous of them. Okay and all that other stuff I said too about them not deserving to win.

Who knows though really WHO deserves or doesn't deserve to win things? The word "deserve" is completely meaningless anyway. Deserve is in the eye of the beholder if you think about it. There will always be someone who thinks they deserve something and someone else who thinks they don't. There's really no such thing. We've all had hardships and we've all had successes.

I went to dinner later with my in-laws and it was nice. I had a salad because I want to continue to lose weight since i've been doing so well on my work-out/fitness thing. I don't even like salad to be honest. I know that's like some "Gasp!" non-girl-thing or something. I'm supposed to like go to lunch in the cities with my friends and eat salads and wear high heels and be obsessed with my phone the whole time but really i don't do any of that (okay fine except for the phone part). I only liked this salad tonight because there was fruit in it.

I took some pictures today too. The light was beautiful in my room when the sun was setting. I tried to get some silhouettes but they didn't come out as well as I had hoped. That was sad. My husband really liked them though. He really likes me. I'm lucky because he's pretty great.

Tomorrow the Snow Days are officially over and he'll be going back to work which makes me sad. I'll miss him because I have off.

Sometimes I get depressed when I'm home alone on a day off. I guess it's because I sit and think and compare my life to where my fake life in my head says i SHOULD be by now. Should is a very stupid and dangerous word. There is only what IS. And nothing is wrong with that.

Maybe tomorrow i'll work on some of the writing ideas i have. That'd be awesome.

this morning i had oatmeal with berries. It's the little things that make me the happiest. How bout you?




Love,

Rhian

Life: Happy Valentine's Week

I am getting ready for Valentine's Day here on the snowy Mid-Atlantic coast. And by Getting Ready I mostly just mean that I am finding ways to justify baking cupcakes and cutting hearts out of paper in the livingroom today while I'm on a snow day.

My husband is working from home and we are breaking apart the day by watching Youtube Videos and laughing until tears roll down our cheeks while he is on bathroom breaks and eating his lunch. It's fun to have him around even if he IS busy most of the time. I just like that he's here in the room with me.

I am wondering something: how do other married couples celebrate Valentine's Day? This is our second Valentine's Day being married but apparently last year's celebration was so anti-climatic that I can't recall it now.

I think that V-Day is more a holiday for the unmarried/people not in super serious relationships. It gives them a chance to see where their relationship is, it's like a litmus test for "seriousness".

For me I'll just be excited to go out for dinner and maybe see a chick flick. I am really looking forward to eating chocolate without guilt and I will definitely be having cupcakes because they're my favorite. And then I'll probably make up for it all by working out three times in one weekend.

So if anyone is out there reading this, tell me how you plan to celebrate Valentine's Day? I know it's Internet Trendy to shun this holiday as being "stupid" and "pointless" and an unnecessary way to express love but I feel the opposite. I think that it's great to have any excuse to tell those we love that we love them. Appreciation is something that is in short order in this culture and it really does mean a lot to take time out of our days/lives and tell those that we love exactly that.

So get out there and tell someone that you love them. They don't have to be your valentine, just show some extra affection because it's a nice thing to do.

And just for the fun of it, here's Zoey looking out at all the snowfall.

oh sNOw!

So it's apparently supposed to start snowing soon. As in, within the next few hours.

Some people talk about being born in the wrong era. Maybe describing how they would've liked to be born in the 50's when women wore poodle skirts and men slicked their hair and took them on official dates. Others maybe wish they lived in the renaissance, big gowns, knights in shining armor, the whole thing (although, really, just thinking about the bugs and the impurities in the water back then makes me itch and choke a little bit to be honest).

I wasn't born in the wrong era.

I was born in the wrong geography.

Honestly, it is way too cold here.

For those who don't know, I live in Eastern Pennsylvania. Hardly the arctic. Pennsylvania doesn't even come up in the minds of most people when they are listing "cold places". It doesn't matter though because i know the truth: I know that Pennsylvania is a frigid wasteland of cold. I know that sometimes when i come home at night i can't stop shivering until i put myself in a hot tub or take a steamy shower.

Other people are fine here, i don't get it. My husband will wear just a shirt out and he'll be fine. On the same day I will literally layer myself in a tank top, a long sleeved shirt, a sweatshirt and a wool coat and will still feel the sharp bite of the wind cut right straight through me.

I don't get it. And I don't like it.

I dream of warm climates. Winter with highs of 75 degrees and lows of 60. I dream of palm-trees decorated with twinkling lights at Christmas time, swimming in my back yard pool while my friends update about rock salt and shovels. I dream of heat.

But alas, i know that my dream is just that - a DREAM. I know that the odds of it ever coming through to fruition are slim to none. I know this because there is something i love even more than the warmth: my family.

Yup. my family. I'm a family kind of girl at heart and unfortunately (or fortunately i guess) for me my whole entire family (complete with my husband's whole entire family) lives in Eastern Pennsylvania.

I don't give up though. I am an eternal optimist, someone who took it seriously when they told me as a child that i could do anything i set my mind to and I've set my mind to convincing my family to move somewhere warm.

I've begun to make suggestions, i've described beaches, blue skies and sunshine on the bleakest, grayest, snowiest days here. I've imagined us all living near one another somewhere lovely and warm, the walks we would go on, the photos we could take, i've even appealed to my dad's love of fishing.

I can't say that it's time yet to pull out the Real Estate section and start making phone calls but I have seen my mom's eyes drift off and stare into the distance while she perhaps thinks of sand between her toes and lifting conch shells to her ears. I can only hope that if it does snow today, that it snows enough to make that dream of mine inch a little bit closer to becoming a reality.

the way i would change things up (just in case anyone is wondering)

it's weird, for me. Being back at school again as a 27 year old woman. Being back at school again as a 27 year old married woman who daydreams about pushing a baby in a stroller. coming home at night to my husband, making a healthy dinner, working out and soaking in a relaxing bath before falling asleep peacefully.

I wonder sometimes what school would be like if it were populated with more people "like me" and less people who are "supposed" to be here. Today I imagined a world in which all of the 18 - 22 year olds were sent to some kind of "camp" where they lived for four years instead of going to college. At this camp they would hold down jobs: retail, bartending, professional surfing, waitressing and then the rest of the time they would be free to "get it out of their system."

I kind of imagine the whole thing to be like one long Spring Break. Partying, going out of control, binge drinking, the whole deal. Girls and Guys for that matter gone wild. I mean, isn't that what college really is anyway? And sure, I'm generalizing here but that's what a generalization is, right? A phrase that sums up a large group of people. Clearly this isn't true of ALL 18 - 22 year olds in college but from my experience, it is true of most of them.

If this camp did exist, the only difference in this four year experience for these kids would be that they wouldn't be doing all of those things AND going to school. The benefit here is obvious: education and the value of the education wouldn't, therefore, be lost on them.

See, i did half of my schooling as one of Those Kids. I was an 18-19 year old maniac. I was up all night and sleeping all day. I was counting down to Thursday nights when I could put on a mini-skirt and boots and dash off to the closest party. I wasn't sitting in class taking diligent notes and asking the professor what his interpretation of a particularly vague Emily Dickinson poem was. But that's me now. Those are the things that I do now that i am back to school as a 27 year old.

And i think it's a shame that college gets wasted on the younger members of our culture (myself would've been included in that) who don't appreciate it because there are so many people who I know now, who are in my age category (mid to late twenties) and who have already completed their schooling but have no idea what they are doing and where they are going in life. I think that it would benefit those people greatly to be able to pull a massive re-do and to attend school now. What would it mean to them to get to show up with their books and their pens and to actually listen to the conversations in class, and to approach the topics from a more mature and developed mentality instead of from the taking-it-all-for-granted mentality of the 18 - 22 year olds.

It's not the fault of the 18 - 22 year old that they take it for granted. Why wouldn't they? They don't know what the Real World is like, do they? (though of course they would protest this statement greatly - i would have, too!). They haven't had to go out there and learn it. Again, this is a generalization but for the most part these middle and upper class students haven't paid rent and a car payment and their bills, they don't know what it's like to be stuck in life wishing that you could do something meaningful that fits your personality. They are going from the pampered hallways of their youth directly into the safety of their college education and they don't know the value they can find in those hallowed hallways.

It's a shame, it is. School is so expensive and since this camp that i describe doesn't exist, most people wake up on the other side of 22 stunned and confused with the daunting task of joining the working world. They may look down at the diploma in their hands and wonder just what it is they've done, what it is they supposedly are knowledgeable of and what happens next. I've seen many a friend turn and run screaming back into the doors of a university just to get a post-graduate degree because the task of stepping into "Reality" is too confusing, too scary for them at this point. I know other friends who lament their time wasted, who wish they would have studied something different, who wish they had the money to go back again now.

Wouldn't it be great if these sorrows weren't thrust upon us at the beginning of our lives? Wouldn't it be great if we could emerge at 26 ready to take on the world because we partied through the immaturity, we focused hard during the learning and we could take on school with a better, more well-rounded grasp of who we are and what we want from life?

I know that the likelihood of this happening is .00000000000009% but i feel compelled to describe it anyway.

As for me, I'm glad that I waited this long to finish up the second half of my education. Sure, sometimes i feel behind when i compare myself to others. Yes, occasionally i look at girls walking around campus in stiletto heels and poofy skirts and wonder if they're filming a new episode of SATC but for the most part I am comfortable here and am secure in my decision. I know that I waited until it was right for me, until I had gotten it all out of my system. And I can move forward with the knowledge that those 5 or 6 years i took off weren't wasted at all because I know what I want and who I am. And i have at leas 70 more years ahead of me.

that should be enough time to fit everything in...