Summer has come and gone and in the last few weeks Justin and I have been adjusting to the new drag. Some summer highlights (watch my bump grow as summer passes ;) ) :
The bump in may...haha I thought there was a bump!
We left Casa Grande in late May and made it to Cali in time for Aimee's graduation and my cousins' bridal shower. I was so happy to get to spend summer with my family but it was really sad leaving this garden behind!
June bump pics
We went camping in June with some family friends.
The whole crew (sans Justin who didn't go out with us cuz he was sick)
July bump
In case you are not my fb friend, you should know that Justin made A LOT of furniture this summer. I really proud and will probably dedicate a future post to it.
July 16th ULTRASOUND!
Justin got rejection letters from several PT schools and when June rolled around we kind gave up on the others which hadn't contacted him. So we splurged and bought tickets to Hawaii, figuring we'd both be working this year. No sooner had we bought the tickets then he got the blessed email---He was in!! We've had to do some maneuvering to get everything paid for now, but I am secretly kinda glad his letter came late--because Hawaii was the best baby moon ever!
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Justin got in to PT school!!!!!!! I am so happy for him. It's been two weeks and he has been a little overwhelmed by how demanding the program is, but a little moment the other day reassured me that we are in the right place. Justin was bent over one of his books, head phones securely over his ears when he looked up at me and said, smiling, "Everything I am learning is the stuff I've been wanting to research all these years. I LOVE this!" I am so happy that he likes it, also it's really adorable.
We've moved into our very own apartment ( imagine high pitched squeals of excitement). Justin picked it out while I was coaching, I signed the papers trusting him and I was shocked when we walked in the door--crown molding, a bay dining room...he did good.We love our place and where its located. One drawback is my commute--Justin didn't find out about school until mid-summer, and I didn't feel right about leaving my team with so little notice, so I am braving the 45 miles to Chandler most days. 45 miles isn't that bad, the hour and 20+ minutes it takes in traffic is. But's that's more for another post. I propose a toast to the fun we had this summer, to forgetting the negatives, and to FALL. Only 3 months left of pregnancy!And you know, all that other fall stuff that's fun.
There is
nothing better than anticipation to put you in your place about time. Insist as
you might, every minute is not equal to the next. For me the moments are moving
fast and slow at the same time as that fateful day approaches, the day of our
Ultrasound.
I’ve had
pretty ambivalent feelings about this whole pregnancy. Am I a bad person if I
say that I have yet to feel an overwhelming surge of perfect love towards my
unborn child? Before I got pregnant I wanted to hold every baby , press them to
me and kiss their foreheads. I was rather emotional about the whole thing. Now
that we are having one of our own I am sort of up in the air about babies in
general. That powerful urge, that “Baby!Must-hold!” shout that used to run
through my brain is absent. At first I was surprised by it, but now I have come
to think that maybe this is maturity pushing its way in. I love that I am
pregnant, I am happy about it, but the girly squeals of excitement have been
replaced with a peaceful smile; a more constant kind of love is being allowed
to grow.
I am not
giddy with excitement for our Ultrasound, I am simply anticipating it with this
new kind of joy; and time is behaving differently in reaction to this
previously unmet emotion. Time is freaking out. Like, yesterday would NOT end,
but when it did I looked back at it sadly and thought, “Yet another day has
slipped past me, without my full awareness, because I am waiting for something different.”
I want the days to pass by so I can get to the one that I am anticipating, but
I have grown enough to know that this kind of attitude comes with a cost. I am
also learning that time is a tricky little devil, who likes to pretend you’ve
got the hang of her, just so she can throw you for a loop. This maturing thing
is stupid.
P.S. Having to wear a bra all the time is also stupid.
I am really really bad at keeping secrets. Well, I guess that's not strictly true. I guess I am average at keeping other people's secrets...but I am terrible at keeping my own. When I was in high school and something would happen with regard to a crush I'd decide each and every time that this time was different, that this time I would keep this story to my self for a while, you know be a lady about things , be discreet. Then I'd see a mild acquaintance and blather on and on about how he may or may not have winked at me, how I think that this guy is Prince Charming ,how it wasn't like a full on wink but he definitely had to put conscious effort into it...ah the good old days. I look back and get embarrassed at my big mouth...but what's a girl to do, I've always been a bit of a story teller. Well, now that I am married and settled and whatnot, EPIC stories that just have to be told are getting harder to come by. I've come to find that there are things that are made sweeter when they are shared with your sweetheart and him alone, so I've been learning to bite my ever wagging tongue.
12 Weeks ago though, Justin and I began a particularly adventurous chapter in our lives and that is the explanation behind my blogging silence. This adventure was one of those things that prudence requires a curbed tongue for , and after blurting the news out to one or two-- ok maybe a dozen or so people--I knew that I had to keep my fingers away from this keyboard! It was all so exciting and when I tried to think of something interesting to post about I could only think of my big news. It wasn't time to tell the world yet so I hid my laptop away until the glorious day when the most dangerous part of the adventure had passed.
We've heard that at 12 weeks your chances of miscarriage significantly decrease. So I guess it's ok to let the world know. We are 3 months pregnant! So far everything's been good, the only real day-to-day evidence of it all is my growing belly...speaking of which I have a feeling I am not going to be a magical pregnancy unicorn... but I will be posting photos anyway. I do plan on writing about other stuff though, so if you aren't into mommy blogs keep coming back!
Yesterday marked an insignificant and yet monumental victory for myself. But first some back story.
This weekend my mom came up and she smiled with nostalgia as she talked about me when I was a little girl.She said that I didn’t really ever play with dolls or even toys. “You played outside” she said, her voice rising as though she thought we didn’t believe her. “You played with rocks and sticks—you didn’t need toys because you had such a wild imagination.”
I have always been a dreamer. I started reading before most kids and my dreams reflected the books I read. I was a hopeless romantic. I wanted to grow up and fall in love. Wear beautiful dresses. Live in a castle somewhere. I wanted to be an elf ( learned elvish). I wanted to live in the woods and go on important quests, maybe marry the King of Men. Always, I wanted to live in a little house on the prairie with a quiet but knowing husband who would conquer the plains with me. Our world would be small but it would be ours.
Throughout Jr. High and high school I fell in love with dark haired boys. I was enchanted by brown eyes looking up through thick lashes. But my princes never looked back. I was young, too young to be worried about it but being the worrier that I am I became convinced that I would never get married, never find love. I did find love. Sweet, innocent high school love. I knew it wasn’t going to be forever though, and I still fretted about finding my prince/Ranger/farmer.
I found him. Now I have bound myself to him in every way. He is mine. We are one. Except that now I tend to cling onto him tightly. Sometimes I even forget to keep dreaming.
Yesterday I won a small battle though. See yesterday, Justin and I both had the day off. Usually when these days come along we spend every minute together. Justin comes up with a plan for an adventure and I follow him—lovingly, happily, yeah it can get pretty sappy. In any case , yesterday was different because yesterday Justin had to fix a pipe in the side yard. This was an adventure I just couldn’t follow him on. I tried. I went with him to Lowe’s and tried to help find the part, tried to listen to what the guy said as he explained how to fix what was broken, but my dreams were calling me and I decided to listen.
So I spent the day in the dirt. I hefted a bag of soil on my shoulder and hoed and raked away at the raised bed Justin made for me. I added potting soil and did it again. I even went out to the desert and dug up some clay-like stuff and added that. It was hard work and time flew. Soon I had a bed that was ready for planting. So I asked Alonzo…hemhem Justin to help me place the seeds in the ground. It was really special. Sure it was just one teeny tiny garden and sure I am totally over exaggerating the epic-ness. But the point is that I got out there and did something I wanted to do. Learned something and applied it and I am proud. I have the sweetest husband in all the world but I don’t need him to plant a garden for me. That I did for myself. And he loves me all the more for it.
P.S. Justin has the most beautiful brown eyes and the thickest lashes in all the land.
I know that everyone has their own opinions about Les Mis but I loved this version. I was particularly touched by this song, and have had the tendency to sing it the shower lately.
I’ve been thinking alot about identity. Justin and I are in a bit of a transition period of late, and it is wearing on me. It often feels like the majority of my life is being shelved away for the future, like a box of summer clothes left in a closet somewhere, put off until an undetermined date. We are waiting to hear back from the schools Justin applied to, and it feels like somehow I have been left behind somewhere.
It’s partly my own fault, for deciding not to pursue journalism right away. I think I was sort of depending on that , like I saw myself as a news writer...as though somehow writing news would anchor me firmly in place. Keep me the same. Make me who I am. I thought that’s what I wanted; saw myself reporting , wearing pencil skirts and nerdy-cool glasses…I don’t even wear glasses. It was a dream brought about by chick flicks and a decision made by a 15 year old me. I loved working at the school newspaper, but somehow I just can’t make that jump…don’t want to.
I’ll tell you what I really want to be. I really want to be a mom, a well educated Mom who raises her children up between the grass and the stars. A mom who teaches her kids how to get what they need without depending on anyone but their family and their Father in Heaven. I want to be a poet. The kind who lives out in the middle of nowhere and is inspired by the things around her. I want to be a painter. I want to go walking and discover the world as it was made for us. Not as we made it. I want to be a life-long runner. I want to be a coach. I want to be a good friend. I want to work for the city like I do now. I want to be a leader in my Church and in my community. I want too much. I don’t want enough.
Can one person really want all those things, be all those things? I think we all know the answer is yes. People are multi-faceted, complicated beings after all. I’ve learned that as I’ve listened to grandparents and great grandparents ( my own and others ) tell their stories. When it’s all said and done none of us will just have been an accountant or an artist or a Grandma. We are all those things.
Despite my meandering thoughts on the subject, I still feel like I am losing myself. My life is hinged upon Justin’s application status. I don’t know where I’ll be working, or in what field. I don’t know if my baby will have to wait another year to come into this world. I’m waiting, nervously, to see where life will take me.
That is as it should be, I guess. Life rarely lets us take the wheel. However much control you think you have will have changed by tomorrow. You’ll panic, you’ll stress out, and then you will add another title to the ever increasing list that makes up who you are.
I am a writer. A runner. A Mormon.A video editor. A wife. A friend. A blogger. A daughter. An animal lover. Everything I was, everything I am , and everything I will be makes up a seemingly arbitrary scribble. Trace the pathway of my life and you will find only one common denominator. Me.
Embrace who you were. Love who you are. Strive everyday to be better.
Watch Les Miserable. Write blog posts about it.
And then smile, and know that you’ve found yourself again.
In ancients days, in the far corners of the world today, and in the horoscopes section of 17 magazine, the planets were and are thought to impact one’s fate. In our case, we started of 2013 under the influence of Saturn’s rings.
More absorbing to us than the planet Saturn though , was our car, the 2002 Saturn L200. It broke down as we were pulling out of Justin’s driveway on our way to California. Anxious to get to California for Christmas, we left it in Mesa, borrowed Justin’s Dads’ car and went on our way. When we got back, our lives were consumed with getting the car in working order. Last week, Justin spent several days in Mesa trying to nurse the car back to health but it was all for naught. One of the rings inside one of the pistons is broken( or something like that ), a job which would cost much more than the car is worth to repair. Alas, the Saturn rings have left it on its last leg and we are in the market for a cheap used car that will get us where were going.
As this little family crisis consumed us, I can’t help but think about how lucky Justin and I are to have what we have. But for the whim of fate, the car breaking down would have meant some very bad things for Justin and I. At the very least, we would have had to take out some kind of loan andand dug even deeper the neat little hole of debt we are currently standing in. Mind you, our debt is minimal considering that so far we’ve got a degree each, and that situation too is largely the product of luck or fate. You see, Justin and I both were born into pretty cush situations. We’re white*, American citizens with married, hard working parents. We are living with Justin’s grandma without a chunk of money going to rent each month. We had the chance to go to a BYU school and pay low tuition fees. Even if we fail, we’ve got a huge safety net to bounce us once and lower us harmlessly back onto solid ground. In the very worst of situations we would simply have to move in with my parents and start from scratch . Still a warm bed, food , and fun no matter how you slice it.
How many people in the world have that luxury? Not many . Bordieu* makes some interesting suggestions about the nature of success based on what fate you're born with. His term "symbolic violence" refers to his observation that kids with culturally astute parents and money backing them tend to succeed, while success is much farther out of reach for those without such advantages. He further discusses how despite these obvious advantages we tell the little man that if he would just try or work harder that he could be where we are.
I think it’s really important to be realistic about our circumstances, and acknowledge the advantages that we do have. With that in mind I am committing myself to the following :
Be thankful for what you’re blessed with. Then, realize that the people around you might not have those advantages, and might not have as much say in their success as you think. Once you’ve come to terms with that, it’s time to do something about it. First and foremost do this; Consider a person or a people’s advantages and disadvantages before you make a judgement about their work ethic. Secondly, be grateful for the fate you were born with. Third, seek to help those who are less advantaged in a personal, and day-to-day kind of way.
* I point out that we are white because I wish to acknowledge the fact that there is a cultural advantage for us there, in the United States. I am in no way stating that my skin color should merit advantages, but simply observing that it does. * To read about Language and Symbolic power according to Pierre Bordieu click here, then click download if you dare.
