My Optimist Suit

I know that this is the time of year when most people have their cleanest, freshest, least wrinkly, best smelling, Optimist suits on...and you probably know that I have not yet been so fortunate as to find such a suit in all my 2nd-handling (I don't know if that term works...so perhaps we should stick to thrifting)...but here is what helps me tolerate...maybe even feel excited about...the thought of the new year to come.  I can't predict it.

Seriously, this gives me great hope.

Before the new year even thought about starting, I had let myself start to dread it.  I thought I had it all figured out.  Work.  A good job, but one I don't feel made for.  When yesterday-Monday woke up, I laid in bed thinking about how much I was not going to enjoy myself.  Anymore.  This year.  Maybe next.  A thought bubble appeared above my head (not my own, I'm convinced):  "Erin, you think too much".  And it slowly began to hit me (as slow as hits can ever be, anyway).  I DO think too much.  I think so much I practically look for things to dread and fear and every possible reason why I should.  (Somewhere in the world, a Hallelujah chorus bubble is hovering above Mac's head).

Anyway, I'm rambling, but I guess what I'm trying to say is...I thought I could predict so much about my life, and I sort of dismissed a large portion of it before it even had a chance to happen.  But looking back, I see that the most wonderful things in my life were things I could never have predicted.  The husband I met in 4th grade.  The dog whose freckly mugshot we couldn't resist on a shelter website.  The friends who showed up on Montana's doorstep and the friends whose doorsteps I showed up on in Texas.  Sudden back to back sister/mom visits in December when I couldn't have needed it more.  All of it, too much for my fairly imaginative brain to invent sometimes, much less predict.

I'm not blind to the fact that some of the very worst things in life are also the things we couldn't predict.  The tragedies that blindside us.  An avalanche, a diagnosis, a disappearance, a breakdown...a loss.  For a long time I felt like I worked in the vortex of blindsiding tragedies.  My job was opening the door to the shelter in everyone else's storms, and you would think it would be depressing, but I've never been in a more hopeful place.  I watched friendships sprout like rogue wild berries growing in thickets of knapweed (or whatever other plant villain you can think of).  I would never go so far as to say the tragedies were beautiful, because they weren't.  They were ugly would-be thieves.  I would say that almost always something unexpectedly lovely came out of them, though.  Mostly the loveliness was just...love.

Anyway, I remind myself that I need to rest and rejoice in the fact that I cannot see the days of my life unfolding before they do...and that I have no right to dread them.  If I can just scratch the surface of the expected and let what's barely hidden beneath surprise me somehow each day, I think this might just be a year to look forward to.

A Reason for My Silence

Do you ever just come to the realization that the life you're living is not the life you want to live?  Does it force you to stop and make changes?  If so, will you impart your wisdom to me?  Because often I tend to despair.

To be clear, it is work that has me feeling so down.  I mean...how do you live a life you want to live when the money must keep coming in?  How do you make a change when jobs are so hard to find and this is so not the time to be jumping ship?

I have a feeling that possibly the answer might lie in a change of heart...a change of attitude.  I also have a feeling that those things are deeply connected to (1) being thankful for what you have and (2) giving of whatever you have to someone who doesn't...whether it's time, energy, money, encouragement, knowledge, laughter, service, whatever.  Each of us has something that someone else does not.

This seems as good as any a place and time (and month!) to insert a (sure-to-be-ever-expanding) list of things I'm grateful for.  My dad used to always say to a chorus of eye-rolls (we were teens, what can I say?)..."You've got to get an ATTITUDE of GRATITUDE"  (So here's to you, Dad.)

• I am thankful for my family--for the parents who raised me and the sisters I have always looked up to (and not just because they have at all times been 1/3 - 4 feet taller than me).  I am thankful that the family I grew up with--sisters, cousins, etc. are so darn silly, brilliant and creative.
• I am thankful for my husband who has always seen something in me that I can't, and who believes that whatever that is (me, I guess!) is worth fighting for. 
• I am thankful--so thankful--that God is bigger than me...and yet even though my problems are minuscule in comparison, they are somehow strangely still important to Him.  (This must be love.) 
• I am thankful for Miss Maya Joon who makes us laugh hard, play outside, and make new friends every day...and who always welcomes us home with hugs and kisses no matter what kind of mood she's in. 
• I am thankful that cooler weather comes, even to Texas...and along with it come fat twists of wooly yarn, chai tea, toasty boots and scarves, Crock Pot dinners (with any luck), holiday traditions, Christmas lights, Jesus' birthday and a chance to start it all again. 
• I am thankful for the journey and all the people God's given me to share it with.  Honestly, I need to think of it more because when I do...it takes my breath away.  I am also thankful simply because it is a journey and at any given moment, I don't have to have 'arrived'.  Eternity has already begun as God loves me in this crazy process.

More to come.  Thanks to you who indulge me and my thoughts!

Hello, 2011

I read this Audrey Hepburn quote the other day while browsing the bargain books at B&N (because you know I can't resist picking up an Audrey book):  "Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you're exactly the same."

I guess that's kind of how I feel about New Year's Eve/Day.  Every year I think it will be different, and every year I'm disappointed because really...I'm not that different.  Oh sure, things change...I change...but in the end, I'm only getting closer to who I was in the beginning anyway.  Isn't that kind of what growing older is?  In your teens and twenties, you try so hard to outrun yourself...your childhood, your growing up, your big lump of a past...and then in your thirties you start trying to get back.  Or maybe it's just me.

Anywho, I realized that I haven't been blogging because I wanted to be this forever-ly over the moon, adventurous newlywed with wit, stories, or at the very least nice pictures to share.  I haven't been able to admit to myself, much less to other people, how much it all aches sometimes (and by "all", I pretty much mean life). 

I feel so stupid saying this because I know very well how fortunate and blessed I am, but you see...my form of outrunning myself all my life has been holding things in, maintaining an illusion, shutting out life/people/emotions and building up walls.  So when I put it that way...maybe it's better just to say what feels stupid.  Besides that, I find I am always touched--even encouraged--when people admit that they struggle too.  Even (and perhaps especially) when everything looks so rosy from the outside (good job, brand new baby/marriage/adventure...)  I guess it's a sigh of relief to know it's not just me.

Happy 2011, everyone.  Here's to shedding a few more layers and loving each other in all our different phases.

5 Minute Outfit

So, maybe you know this about me and maybe you don't...but basically I'm a pretty big dork.  When I was "little" (circa age 5 to 17ish), I used to have these imaginary contests with myself (did I mention I was also a bit shy?).  When I was really small, I would be putting together a jigsaw puzzle and I'd imagine I was in a competitive match with a roomful of people.  When I was a little older, I would do crossword puzzles and imagine the same thing.  Both with an imaginary audience, of course.

Anyway, all this is relevant because tonight I gave myself license to click on one of those shopping announcements I'm always getting in my e-mail.  However, not wanting to let the clicking swallow up an entire evening...I decided to invent an imaginary contest for myself:  The 5 minute outfit.  The rules?  Pretty much exactly as it sounds.  All items from one website--must include everything you'd need to walk out the door and not cause a scandal (well, perhaps that's a matter of opinion).  Voila.

All items from http://www.modcloth.com/

It's a little harder than it looks--especially with my little laptop being on it's last pitiful leg.  I'm not going to lie, I removed one item as I was assembling the collage.  But hey, isn't that what Coco said to do before you left the house anyway?

Speaking of Coco...I really wanted to dress up as her for Halloween, but having to answer, "Who are you supposed to be?"...and perhaps, "Who's that?" is enough to make me dig out my trusty old horse costume.  Oh well.  It's still fun in my head.


P.S. Kids, 2 months from today is Christmas--woohoo!

Meet Miss Maya Joon

This is the face of happiness.  The new love in our lives.  Our little four-legged daughter, Maya Joon.

Daddy's girl

Loves her cousins

(How could she not?)

I know, I know.  Pathetic.

: ]

Dog Days/Dog's Life

Ladies and gentlemen, this is what happens when you go doggie shopping after 40 some hours of rain!

Despite getting filthy and soaked...despite getting lost after the GPS led us to a dead end...despite the fact that we hung out with sweet doggies all day and didn't get to bring one home (we wanted to take them all home!)...it was a pretty great day. 

I know you'll think I'm kidding, but I'm really having to work hard at not letting the fact that I have to work in the morning ruin a perfectly good day.  Here's the thing.  Sometimes, especially lately, I just get tired of being a big girl.  I get tired of getting up at a big girl hour, driving a big girl car in big girl traffic to get to a big girl job where I read about grown ups in big trouble.  I get tired of being brave and tired of making decisions and honestly, sometimes I just don't want to do it all anymore.  I want to spend my days making cool things and hanging out with the people I love.  Why do we have to grow up anyway?  Am I alone in this? 

Thanks for the kind words on the last post.  With everything I've described above, I've kind of been feeling like the life's been sucked out of me and it's a large reason why I haven't written for a while.  I'm sure I'll work it out, but it sure helps to have some encouragement. 

Please Excuse My Absence (and More Importantly, My Big Head)

It's been a long time since I've blogged.  Up to this point, I had a good lecture waiting for myself on the back burner of my mind.  I should write.  I should have a more interesting life to write about.  When did I become so boring and empty of things to say?  And la la la.  But you know?  I'm glad I took a break.

I started this blog because I thought there needed to be more good news in print.  Because I knew there was much to be thankful for that seldom gets written about and sometimes, for negative-thinking little ones like me, seldom even talked about. 

But...somewhere along the line I started thinking more about making myself sound interesting and living a life worthy of a good post.  Discontentment is a hungry beast to whom gratitude is like candy.  No wonder I ran out of things to say.

Today I stopped thinking about how I really should write something, and took time to read what everyone else has been writing (I had been avoiding this out of some weird sort of amateur writer's/crafter's guilt).  I was shocked to see what my oldest friend has produced since the last time I checked her blog, and more shocked still to find that a friend halfway around the world whom she has never met found her blog through mine and made it a favorite...how a dear friend in Austin asked me the other day about a dear friend in Montana (and now that I remember, vice versa!) and how we are all so profoundly connected...(Using the word 'profound' always makes things seem less profound to me...like when you tell someone you love them and you know it only scratches the surface of what you really want to convey). 

Anyway, I guess the only way I can say it is to say that taking it all in today made me feel so lucky.  Here I have been spending so much time thinking about myself and what I am becoming that I have neglected to simply marvel at what a glorious cast of characters I have been plopped down into.  I am lucky to know you.  (And there I go scratching the surface again).