that changes everything.

Why I’m happy:
1) Working lunches…ie paid for lunches.
2) Nothing is more energizing than waking up to sun streaming in the windows and cool breezes coming through the screens.
3) Me and Luke.
4) Me and Luke and little bitty baby.
5) My house is great. It just feels great.
6) I got a new camera that should be here by friday. I’m going to document EVERYTHING.
7) About to get the last part of the last duplex rented. Hooray! No more, ever. Or at least until the next good deal.
8) Natty and Emmie. 
9) A new book on parenting I got called “Becoming Attached.” How our first relationshipos determine our capacity to love for the rest of our lives.
10) Pumpkin Spice Lattes
11) My mom who hangs out with me.
12) Afternoons walking in the park with Cooper.

I could go on forever.

I’ve not been feeling like myself. I don’t look like myself, and sometimes that is interesting but sometimes it is weird. I can’t do the things I used to do. Used to I loved working on houses…painting, sanding, cleaning, whatever. Can’t really do that anymore. Used to I loved to go out with friends to the pub, especially late afternoon after work. That’s kind of out. I know these things aren’t a big deal…and the excitement I feel far, far outweighs them….but sometimes still I feel sad. Like I’ve lost another part of myself. I know thats not true, and Mom said that its not like you are losing yourself. Its like you are expanding yourself into new places. First a wife, then a mom. That made me feel better. I’m still the same little person, just bigger.

Natalie actually found this picture and we thought that if we could have our “strategy meetings” and quiet times here then we could probably take over the world.

Space has such a huge effect on me…the way that I feel, how motivated I am, how much I am able to connect with myself. In the house I live in right now I have had a hard time carving out inspirational nooks. I think some of the reasons are poor lighting, small rooms, and messiness. There are others, such as relationship difficulties but that is not what I’m talking about. Anyways we are about to move to the Midlake house, where I really did feel at home when I lived there. In moving back, I really want to make a concentrated effort to make it a sanctuary- peaceful, comfortable, inspirational. Some of it has to do with you as a person, whether you feel at home with yourself. I’m already working on that, so lets talk about ways that allow you to connect with your environment. Without building a glass room on a cliff of the west coast.

One time my nephew Gideon lost his stuffed animal, Hobbs. And he wandered around the house saying “Where is him? Where’s Hobbs? Where is him Momma?” This really has nothing to do with anything but it was so cute. What I really wanted to say is that somewhere in the past year or so I feel like I’ve lost myself. When me and Natalie were little we would climb up into our treehouse and read LM Montgomery books and write in our journals for hours. And if something happened in my little life to throw me, all I had to do was take a some time with myself up in a tree…and everything would come to rights. I’ve always been like this. Just give me my journal, a cup of coffee, and a some aloneness and I can figure out what I’m thinking, feeling- I can find myself. But for some reason this seems to be harder to come by these days. I don’t know if it is because life is more complicated, or there are more things to worry about, or what. But sometimes I get these little glimmers of the person I am on the inside, and I realize that I haven’t seen that person in such a long time. I try to sit and think or write but I just feel empty on the inside, like there is nothing to say. It makes me so sad, because I feel like time is just blowing by me in a rushing wind and I can’t make it stop. Faster and faster than ever before. Without finding myself I have no way to label the experiences, or grab on to the moments. Maybe it has something to do with being married. Maybe it has something to do with being older. But I would give anything to change, before its too late.

I know that everybody is very familiar with this image, but I just needed it to describe today.  Things might not be exactly as I want them to be, but several things are: it is sunny outside, I can see progress on my houses (thanks AL for working today), and the new-to-us boat is almost ready for its lake debut.  The future has this hazy rosy happy hue in my mind…..and it makes me feel calm, and expectant.  Like a warm yellow innocence mission song.

I think this is an appropriate image for my first post.  With all of the things there are to worry about out there- creating a captivating blog ala Marsh or Em or AL should not factor in.  And yet….I had a major crisis just trying to come up with a username.  Alas!  Words do not come easy to me, but I still feel a desire to reflect, connect, just put something out there.  I’m going to try.

Maybe I’ll start with the things I’m worried about.  Topping the list are 5 empty rental houses, 2 of which are for sale and 3 of which are under construction.  Funny how life goes….as I started all of these new projects I was just thrilling with the anticipation of getting to do some real hands on get-it-done kind of work.  Yet now, because of the small person that lives inside of me, I must stay away from paint, chemicals, exhaustion, stress- which kind of leaves me not knowing what to do.  And even more stressed because I can’t do any of the things I need to be doing.  Ah well…this is life.  And its the only one I’ve got.