Crazy Town

Day Two of Crazy commences now.

But first, I'm giving myself FIVE minutes - and I'm spending those five minutes here, with you.

I've been spending some time trying to figure out what I'd love to do - what I want to be working toward - you know, my 'dream career.'  I don't know that it's the same it's always been...  or maybe it is.  I want to write. But I don't want to keep filling the world up with more words.... the internet has crowded us all with words.  (Irony here...now)

I also want to make something - contribute with my hands and body.

I also love relationships - and hosting.

I especially love breakfast.

I love creating beauty.

I've loved a certain house on a hill since I was a little girl.

And had a fascination with old brick mansions too...

Which leads me to my current dream.

I really want to buy a mansion.  And open up a B&B.

I asked John if our next house could be a mansion --- he said, "Everyone needs a stretch goal."


But back to work -- as another project just got set in my lap --- deadline to client 1pm today.

Yesterday was just over 15 hours.... I'm aiming for only 12 today.

Hey there friends!  It's been a couple weeks hasn't it?  I don't have much time to chat today.  I suddenly have two weeks of work to accomplish in the next two days.  Not sure how I'm going to swing that.  But, I'm going to try.  It's 7:45 and I've been here at my desk for nearly an hour.  Already watered the flowers, woke up my girls and changed out their water and food.  First meeting starts in 60 minutes.

Truth be told, I keep pushing an anxious nausea away. What I have to accomplish is maybe not possible.  And certainly will not be healthy if I do pull it off.  

However, as soon as I push that anxious thought away, I find another waiting patiently right behind it.   John.  I came home yesterday to find he was already there.  The front door and back doors open - his shoes on the patio - my man was in the back yard feeding our girls 'a treat.'  My heart melted.  I ran out a few minutes later for a girls night, said goodbye to him as he began the dishes.  And I came home hours later to find him well into moving everything out of our "workshop" and into our office - reorganizing, cleaning, taking care of so many things on our long list of to-do's for the week - creating a guest room. We spent the next several hours of the night cleaning, moving, folding. I'm so glad I get to work beside and with this man for the rest of my life. I'm glad that when I face impossible tasks - successful or not - I get to find him at the end of the day. 

About damn time there's a study that gives some potential perks to those of us holding onto our little baby beans longer than the rest.... can I hear an amen?

Wait.  This might not be saying as happy of things as I first imagined.  [Stupid misleading marketing.]

You waited to have children?  You are hearby awarded no points and you don't get a second car in this game of life.  Return to your desk.

Boo.



But really, I'm at my desk.... obviously, for too long based off of the liberality and candor of this post.

Also, seriously, how unrealistic is that game of life? Can we talk about that? Because really, those of us who stick around at work and have no babies are WAAAY more likely to have a second car and faaaar less likely to have need of it....

The Beautiful Game

Tonight is (my) first blueberries game of the season. I've been thinking a lot about soccer. Me and the world have, you know with that whole "World Cup" thing happening right now.  So I've been thinking on this sport that my dad put me in shortly after I could walk. Thinking of all the years I played and what they were worth.  Thinking of the season I had to pull out early and how I assumed that would have to be the end for me.  You take off 6 months and you come back out of shape, out of practice, out of confidence.  That's not the recipe for moving up in the premier world.  But somehow I came back with something else, I wasn't over-thinking it.  And due to a number of other details out of my control - what should have been my scariest, worst tryout - was my best.  I knew no one.  I hadn't been competing.  I was trying out for the same league that I'd pulled out of early last year. What were the odds? Low. I moved up.  I became a part of what would be my favorite team.

But what is the point of all those years?  What's the point that I didn't quit playing soccer in 10th grade? Well, I'm engaged to a guy I met on a co-rec soccer team.  And who knows, maybe I'd still have joined it if I quit back in 10th grade.  Then again, maybe not.  It's just delightful to me to look back and see that this thing that became a part of my life so early on - introduced me to the guy with whom I'll be spending the rest of my days.

I can't just leave it at that though - because I don't think the guy is the end goal of it all.  I don't believe who you spend your days with is more important than who you become - before them - with them - maybe even after them. This sport also crafted deep parts of who I am, taught discipline to my stubbornness and teamwork to my strength.  Taught me that sometimes it pays to sprint the field and be the only one down there by the goal.... but more often, it pays to wait for a good teammate to join you. Your glory might be less, but your score will most likely be higher.  There's nothing better than a good teammate that you don't have to see to know they're running the opposite sideline and setting up for you - nothing better than creating something beautiful with someone you trust.  That's what soccer taught me.  And perhaps it's fair to say, that's what soccer brought me.

I'm glad I didn't quit the berries that first season. That's another thing soccer taught me, part of that disciple and stubbornness. Don't quit.


I'd never have met that guy making dollar bill rings with Chris.

Quad tall soy latte and two big deadlines for noon tomorrow. Good morning, Thursday.  

Please be kind.  


At least be gentle. 

I feel suuuper sick and reeeaaalllly tired today. But I suddenly realized that today, is a great day!!

USA plays their first 2014 world cup match today.

And it's 111 days until I marry John.

That's fun!

"It all adds up to what can be a remarkable life, if we’ll but learn that it’s less about what we’re doing, and more about the attitude with which we’re doing it. Lives of faith, I’m discovering, can be rich even in poverty. Vibrant even in the midst of health challenges. Lush even in the desert. I know. I watched this kind of normal, in this slightly “out of the way” town, for decades.

I just preached this past Sunday on the importance of making the most of “the time we’ve been given” and I’m sitting here realizing that I lived in a family that, for all flaws, sought precisely that. I’m just now reading Ecclesiastes and am reminded that it’s only in jumping into the deep end of both joy and sorrow, responsibility and goofing off, life and death, that we find the treasure called abundant life. That’s why Rilke said:

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Keep going, no matter what. No sensation is too far out. Let nothing separate you from me….the land which they call ‘life’ is near. You will recognize it by it’s serious demands. Give me your hand!”

- Pastor Richard Dahlstrom 

I've been writing here for 9 years, recording events and thoughts and memories. Collecting.

This is the only place where I'm the dozen girls all at once - the dozen me's I've been over the past decade, changing and then changing again. Waking up to meet someone new.

I started this blog soon after my first real heart break, a couple years after I got my braces off, during my first year not living at home, the year I graduated high school, months before I started college.  Before marketing at UIE, Starbucks, Linville, Weaver and LMN.  Before any of my classmates and childhood friends married or had kids or had second kids or bought houses.  Before I could buy whiskey. Before I stopped getting french manicures. Before I fell in love with Keats. Before I bought the Toddler. Before I gave Todd a hampster for Christmas because I thought it would be funny. Before I smuggled a book in my dress under my graduation gown. Before I ever went to Vegas.  Before I went to Vegas again. Before I stayed with Kim in Nashville for over a month. Before I applied for the Cambridge Gates Trust.  Before I received the news that I was not awarded the scholarship. Before I was a backup dancer for a tween christian hip hop artist? Before I got a concussion on a sail boat. Before Sparks wrote lame books. Before The Office. Before the Blueberries.  Before Beau. Before moving out on my own. Before I pierced my nose. Before my childhood dog died. Before a dozen other goodbyes.

I think I just knew that paths were parting in my soul and all around me and the only way I'd be able to get back or make sense of it was to start collecting tiny pieces in long run-on sentences. I'd begun to learn the painful lesson that many, many people will be happy to tell you who you are and who you've been - and many of them will not be true - though they don't mean to tell you lies. And more dangerous still, those who knew you may forget you.  And if they can so quickly forget what is true, perhaps a person can as easily forget themself too.






Many things have changed.  And some things have not.

First post in 2005.

A couple hours before getting engaged in 2014

[Thanks for the pin, Jess.] 

Life is Good

Life is good, and I am grateful.

I seem to be hearing the same sentiment all around me lately.  Life is not perfect.  It isn't exactly "comfortable" most of the time.  And it could never get mistaken as "easy" - but, life is good.  And I think if we can learn to feel comfortable in ourselves amidst all of its surprises, irritants and discomforts, we'll be able to see and enjoy all of its pleasures, joys and gifts.

One of our favorite things lately is making our first cup of morning coffee and sitting out on the lawn with our "girls" - letting them wander around exploring and pecking.  I also have this constant hankering to sit on the front porch in the evenings.  We don't really even have a front porch.  We have front steps, and a concrete landing just big enough for us to fit two old ikea dining chairs beside the door. And I love it.  We leave the front door wide open despite the flies and bees it kindly invites into the main house, we crank up my dad's old record player we had repaired and we sip on something strong.

Work is crazy.  My body seems to have some old grudge against me. The house has a few dozen projects that need attention (not to mention flies).  We're planning a wedding on the fast track. And we're working on growing together. It's stressful and demanding. But it's also fun, when I take the time to remember.

Life is good. And inside these moments, I find comfort.

The Renewed Mind is Key - Single Ladies

Thank you, Chris Moody.

For your Friday viewing pleasure, please enjoy this excellent remake of The Renewed Mind is Key. ;)

10 Life Lessons From a Navy Seal - Lesson #9

"The ninth week of training is referred to as “Hell Week.” It is six days of no sleep, constant physical and mental harassment and—one special day at the Mud Flats—the Mud Flats are an area between San Diego and Tijuana where the water runs off and creates the Tijuana slue’s—a swampy patch of terrain where the mud will engulf you.

It is on Wednesday of Hell Week that you paddle down to the mud flats and spend the next 15 hours trying to survive the freezing cold mud, the howling wind and the incessant pressure to quit from the instructors.

As the sun began to set that Wednesday evening, my training class, having committed some “egregious infraction of the rules” was ordered into the mud.

The mud consumed each man till there was nothing visible but our heads. The instructors told us we could leave the mud if only five men would quit—just five men and we could get out of the oppressive cold.

Looking around the mud flat it was apparent that some students were about to give up. It was still over eight hours till the sun came up—eight more hours of bone chilling cold. The chattering teeth and shivering moans of the trainees were so loud it was hard to hear anything and then, one voice began to echo through the night—one voice raised in song.

The song was terribly out of tune, but sung with great enthusiasm.

One voice became two and two became three and before long everyone in the class was singing.

We knew that if one man could rise above the misery then others could as well. The instructors threatened us with more time in the mud if we kept up the singing—but the singing persisted.

And somehow—the mud seemed a little warmer, the wind a little tamer and the dawn not so far away. 

If I have learned anything in my time traveling the world, it is the power of hope. The power of one person—Washington, Lincoln, King, Mandela and even a young girl from Pakistan—Malala—one person can change the world by giving people hope.

 #9. So, if you want to change the world, start singing when you’re up to your neck in mud."  


Source: 10 Life Lessons From a Navy SEAL

The sun is soaking into my skin and I can't help but crave a little country, some cut offs, sweet tea and a long flat drive. I'd thought perhaps I was over country music, maybe it had all gone flat - thought maybe Beau had gotten to my music taste, drugged me with a distaste.

Nope.

That loves still going strong, it was just waiting for a warm ray and a new worthwhile song to make my foot start swinging.

And I'll win Beau over, if it's the last thing I do.  The man's from Boise and loves a cold bud light, mountain biking and girls who bake him homemade pies.  But he hates country and called the first ball cap I saw him wear a "costume."  This guy.  All I can do is continue to spam his Spotify inbox.  :)

I'm itch'n for the 75 degree weekend - 7 hours and counting.

And the theme continues. 

A Theme

Since returning from Omaha, I've been struggling to settle back into life.  I came away from a weekend in which the man I've been building with for the past two years, asked me to continue the journey for however many more we are lucky to be given.  And I wholeheartedly told him I liked that plan. A weekend that included not only the greatest joys, but some of the biggest, realest fear I've encountered in a couple years - being told a tornado is coming our direction.  My hands shaking and John whispering reassurance and confidence into my ear about the future and hope we have, as he holds the shaking hand with his ring. The following morning I made breakfast with and sat at the table just us two, with a woman I could legally call "Grandma" soon, a woman who will be my children's great-grandma.  Her legacy will be part of mine, and mine hers.  That's the first time I've ever had that opportunity - setting a table with Grandma. She bought us matching aprons.

Then, I came home and back to work and the overwhelming majority of people just wanted me to do my job.  They didn't even care there was a new ring on my finger or awakened look on my face.  I've been numb and cold for such a long time, and after one weekend, and a very important and challenging week that lead to it, I had changed.

Within a day or two I felt an extreme sadness weighing heavily on me at work.  I spent much of last week at work fighting it with all the tools I knew how.  I don't want it. I don't want that numb feeling to creep back over me.  I'm recognizing some things.  And as the week rolled to an end, I started stumbling across a number of articles and events with a similar theme.


I don't want success more than life. 
John is my business partner and I couldn't choose a better one. 
I want to live a remarkable life. 
I have to live out a calling or I'm going to go numb. 
I need to work for people I admire, not just a purpose I respect.

I just might have to step out of the game for a while, and it will likely cost me "success".

The Fresh Exchange: 

There is beauty in the process. It’s a beauty that I continually try hard to remind myself to stop to take in. Too often I get caught up in climbing to the next peak or trying to be better than I was last time or constantly needing to perfect the process. There is nothing wrong,however, with being someone who loves to climb higher and expect better from themselves. Recently, I have learned that as great as that feeling of achievement is, there is also an even better feeling with being content within the process of where we are now. If you are like me at all, you constantly feel the weight of that ever looming finish line.  Lately I am realizing how important it is to take in the moment of where we are in work, life, dreams, and the in-between.

My Pastor, Richard Dahlstrom’s Blog:

(this new blog address reflects my profound belief that our lives are journeys of transformation, and that there’s always a step we can take towards wholeness – my upcoming sabbatical was the catalyst for the change, as you see here…)

If success is a mountain, I’m an accidental climber.

Has it ever happened to you?  You’ve been working hard for goals you believe in for a long time.  You’ve sacrificed and said no to trinkets so that you could focus on the gold of your goal.  It didn’t happen overnight, but it happened.  You took initial step into the unknown of a new job, or that visionary idea into a deeper realm of committing to it and the universe rewarded with you success.  The business grew.  You were promoted.  The publisher said yes.

It feels good and so you stay on the path a little longer and you continue to get a few more responsibilities.  All the while, there are other areas of life, and these too are growing.  You’re a spouse now, maybe, or a parent, or you have a loan for a house and are slowly filling it with stuff.  Your hard drive’s filling up with pictures of kids at Christmas, Little League, Prom night.  It’s not perfect.  There are bumps along the way, but you’re still getting more responsibilities.  The business is gaining new market share.  Investments are doing their job.  It’s all paying off.

Days become decades, quickly.  Now there’s money in the bank, and when the car breaks you don’t worry about whether you can afford to get it fixed.  You eat out a bit more, maybe a lot more.  Others, looking in on your life from the outside, are a little envious, or maybe resentful.  That’s because you’ve become what our culture tells us is most important; you’ve become “successful”.   You just kept walking, step by step, and it happened that you eventually found yourself high up on the slope with your own measure of fame, or influence, or upward mobility, looking down on the lights below.  You wonder how you got there, pausing to look around for a moment.

You look around, once you have a little time to catch your breath, but nothing looks familiar.  You’re not sure where you are anymore.  You thought this was the right path because back down there along the way, everyone applauded and affirmed every step you took – college degree, corporate job, promotion, partner, consultant, marriage, kids, cross fit, commute.  The world’s filled with cheerleaders ready to affirm or punish every step of the way so that the well trodden mountain becomes your mountain too.  You went, almost without questioning.   And then comes a moment when you know it’s time to rest and recalibrate.

Just such a moment came my way last summer.   I’d come home from  two packed months of speaking at conferences on both coasts and in Europe, ending this season with a cross country flight on a Friday night.  At eight the next morning I joined with other staff members of the church I lead for a four hour morning of round-robin interviews with several candidates for a single staff position.  These were finished and I was having lunch with one of the candidates when my phone rang.  “Germany?” I said to myself, seeing the +49 country code.  Because I have a daughter there, I picked up.

“Kristi! Good to hear from you…”

Silence.   And then, “Richard it’s Peter.”

“Peter.  I thought you were Kristi.  Listen, I’ll call you back, I’m right in the middle of…”

“Nope.  I need to chat now, for a just a minute or two.”  I walk away from the outdoor table just as the waiter brings my food.  I’m sitting in the glorious Seattle sunshine by the front door of the restaurant when he says, “Hans Peter died today paragliding in the Alps.  They found his body early this evening.  I’ll let you know more when I know the time of the funeral.”  After a silent moment Peter says,  “I know.  Stunning.”  We chat a moment before I hang up the phone and finish the perfunctory interview, wondering why the world hasn’t stopped for everyone else on this outdoor patio, because God knows its collapsed for me.  I can’t eat, can’t throw up, though I want to.    Then I go going home and sit in the sun that set hours ago in Austria, sinking behind the Alps and leaving a family I love reeling in darkness.

One of my best friends is dead.   We’d skied the Alps together, snowshoed the Cascades east of  Seattle, and ridden bikes amongst monuments of Washington DC.  We’d rejoiced and agonized over our kids.  We’d argued theology and commiserated about leadership.   Even though we were separated by 6,000 miles or so, he was one of my best friends.   And now he’s gone.   The next day I broke down while telling my congregation, but on Monday there was an important retreat to lead for my marvelous staff.  It would be filled with laughter and adventures, and  I just kept pushing, because there was always another thing to do just around the corner.  The retreat ended and I sat in a stream and talked at a camera for video that needed making.  Then home, then studying for Sunday, then preaching three times.

After that I collapsed.  There was a day or two when the thought of getting out of bed to make a little coffee was overwhelming, let alone actually doing my job.   It was time for a sabbatical, a break from the normal routine in order to restore.  I knew I needed it.

Sabbaticals are for pastors, what fallow land is for a farm.  God invoked farmers to let the land rest every seven years, as a remembrance that God’s the provider, and as a gift of restoration for both the land and the farmer!  It’s important for the health of everyone: the pastor and the church, the farmer and the land.  It was time.

When you’re young, nobody tells you about the dangers of success. It’s like a disco ball, high up there on the ceiling in the center of the room, and all the lights of everyone’s ambitions are shining on it, so that its beauty is magnified as it reflects the collective pursuits of greatness back to everyone in room with sparkle, as if to say, “this is what it’s all about”.  You want it to shine on you too.  We call it lots of things, depending on our profession.  We want to build great teams, provide service second to none, create a product everyone needs, cure cancer, end human trafficking, write the song, get the corner office, get into Sundance, make the NY Times Bestseller List, raise amazing kids, find true love.  Let’s face it, there’s a gold medal in every area of life.  Maybe this isn’t a bad thing.  After all, we all need a reason to get up in the morning.  We want our lights to shine.  We want significance.  I get it.

Conventional Wisdom, or disguises dressed as the same, capitalize on these longings for success.  That’s what seminars are for, and books about losing 100 pounds, or running marathons, or creating a marketing strategy.  There is an entire “pursuit of success” industry precisely because we believing that going after it is the right thing to do, and maybe it is.

I’d always thought I wasn’t in that camp.  In a world of big, I’d made my living running a church in my living room, and teaching at tiny Bible schools around the world several weeks a year.  In a world of urban, I was living with my wife and three children in a place where the phone book was a single sheet of paper.  We were rural, small, subsistence.  There were resource challenges at times, but even though we lived below the poverty line, we slept under the stars on clear nights, camped in old fire lookouts where Jack Keroak  spent his summers, and enjoyed tiny staff meetings around the kitchen table.  It was hard work, and frugal, lacking notoriety, but life giving.

That was nearly twenty years ago.  Between then and now, I’ve been privileged to pastor what I believe to be one of the great churches, in one of the great cities of the world.  Grace infuses our life together as we try to focus more on how Jesus unites us than how lesser issues divide.  There’s joy and laughter, there’s brokenness and healing.  It’s far from perfect.  But I’ve been thrilled and honored to carry the torch for this season.   In order to restore creativity and vision, though, I knew it was time, not for something different, but for a pause.

I asked my board for three months off, so that I could get off the treadmill, get my bearings, and return, with a sense of refreshment, and  a re-calibrated soul, better able to serve, lead, and discern the signs.

I’ve been intrigued with the notion of pilgrimage for my sabbatical time, trying to learn what it means to walk with God by literally walking… for 40-45 days, through the high Alps.  My intent is to move away for three months:  out of speed and into slow, out of complexity and into simplicity, out of comfort and into suffering, out of certainty and into dependency.  The convergence of my weariness born from success, and the death of my friend pointed me towards the path of getting out from behind my books, and desk, and out of my car, putting one foot in front of the other for 400 miles.

Lessons will be learned through preparation and travel about suffering, traveling light, encounter, endurance, beauty, hospitality, and much more.   And while the original thought was to travel the Pacific Crest trail from the Canadian border south into Oregon, or from Mt. Rainier to Mt. Shasta, the death of my Austrian friend left a teaching hole for this summer that I’m qualified to fill, so I’ll teach the last week of their program and then my wife and I will begin in Northern Italy, head up through Austria into Germany, then west before dropping down and finishing our trek in Switzerland with friends.

I’ll post what we’re experiencing and learning here as I’m able, so I hope you’ll join us!

Departure: July 23rd  Return:  October 23rd – Here’s a Sabbatical Video  that will answer more questions.

Oh hey, we were there... the evening apparently 12-15 tornadoes were noted around Nebraska and Iowa.  When the sirens went off, we headed to the basement.  My hands were definitely shaking.  It's been a while since I've been that legitimately afraid.

Getting engaged one night, and two nights later sitting in a basement hoping to be "missed" by a tornado reportedly heading your way - it was a quite the exciting weekend, we had lots of feelings.

This girl be goin places.

Morgs you're rad.  

This weekend in as few words as possible: 


I got a ring and John got a gun and Grandma Jean Marie told us stories about love, marriage and childhood while all under the stairs in the basement. 

But that doesn't really do any of it justice, now does it? 

Having one of those crisis.  I've always considered myself a dreamer, and a doer.  But lately I'm finding I am far more the doer. But then, each day I find... I'm more and more 1-9 but probably not 4. And maybe 10.  I think maybe 11 should be "indecisive". Is that a creative trait? I also find I am more comfortable with parameters and clear goals - just not rules. And most importantly, I find I love making lists, but hate trying to go by other people's lists. 

Let's see - I'm tired.  Now that we've got that out of the way on to more interesting things.  For instance, last weekend.  Beau and I were lucky enough to work an event with MacKenna and the Hallstroms, which culminated in running through the belly of an abandoned old Free Masons building.  The History section of their website described it as being designed as a retirement home, but as we toured the dark halls of the rumored haunted ....mansion(?), our guides told us it had been originally designed to care for orphans and widows within the Freemason community, then became a hospital. Our evening tour was exceptional and even included balconies, basements and entry into a massive walk-in vault, filled with floor plans. Sadly, this massive and beautiful building is slated to be demolished... for condos.  Yay Seattle!

We also spent a good chunk of our weekend working on getting the permanent location for the coop ready.  And Coops be cray - don't let anybody tell you otherwise. Chickens are not easy pets.  Chickens are not cheap pets.  Chickens are cool, but coops, be cray. We picked up 20 feet of the recommended 1/4" hardware cloth that will be dug 12" down to predator proof the "chick shack" - and a number of bags of sand and dirt to level the side yard where it will be going.  John's been kindly digging the trench and laying out the wire -  mostly in the rain - and yesterday after a long day of work.

I have a massive deadline Wednesday and have been working like mad the past few days.  And we have dinner guests 2 hours after said deadline... so we spent a few hours last night (and will be again tonight) cleaning, shopping and prepping.  We've learned that setting the table the night before helps relieve that much more stress day of, and at least gives our guests the impression that we are ready for them when they arrive - even if dinner is over an hour out and we ran in the door 15 minutes before they arrived.  In general, when we have weekday guests, we're learning we really need to leave the two nights before open.

We're also learning we need a sabbath.  We haven't really been keeping one.  With a new house - weekends become never-ending work parties.  Heck, so do weekdays.  And we're trying to keep up with family and friends and coworkers and second jobs (why do we do that again?!) and lately seeking out volunteer work and we bought chickens!? (cray)

We are getting burnt out.  It's more obvious in me - I am irrational, cry when talking about unrelated things like wanting a dinner guest to feel welcome (no lie, this was two nights ago), and fall asleep on the spot at any given moment.  But, I'm finally connecting the dots and John's definitely getting burnt out too - there's just not as many tears involved.

So, we're hoping to instate a Sabbath night each week, where we have to rest, however we choose. This week would be week one. John's going to a bible study guys night and I managed to sign myself up for not one, but two volunteer design/marketing projects for that night. We haven't quite gotten the swing of it, but we will.  Maybe next week. ;)  After Omaha.

Which leads me to my final thought, and the reason I opened this post to write:  What book should I bring for my flights?  I would prefer something sweet, relaxing, and well-written.  I don't want cheese, and I'd prefer to really be drawn in to a good story.  Suggestions please? :)

Oh yes, this will be arriving at our door tomorrow.  Happy, happy heart. Seriously, what more do we need?

2 half gallons of 2% Smith Brothers milk

1 lb of Stumptown - Hollar Mountain

Flagship Cheese 6-8 oz block

Bread Garden Whole Grains with Honey - 28oz  

New Terrain

As I sat alone in a coffee shop in San Fran, penning down my goals for my upcoming 25th birthday, I realized I travel moderately enough.  Yeah, I have yet to have that grand European adventure I've been dreaming of, but I do find myself on a plane a few times each year.  Only thing is, I find myself on a plane to the same couple places each year - San Fran and Nashville. And while I love both dearly, I decided I need some new territory.  Not just that, I realized I want to always be discovering new terrain all my lifetime.  I deemed it a life goal right then in San Fran.  Every year, one new city. It doesn't have to be on a different continent - maybe it won't always even be in a new state - but it will be an intentional, obvious, new city.

2012 (Twenty-five):  Boise, Idaho
2013 (Twenty-six):  Bella Vista, Arkansas
2014 (Twenty-seven):  Omaha, Nebraska

Omaha, next weekend people.
Unsurprisingly, each of these trips have also meant meeting a new part of Beau's family.  I am looking forward to meeting Grandma Turner next Saturday and hopefully understanding this crazy man of mine a bit better. ;)

2015 (Twenty-eight):  Dublin? Crete?

8/25

Just signed up for Bike to Work Month with my firm.

Now, to buy a bike.

"Weeping is good.  It means I recognize that things are not as they should be... 

Until I own my pain, I will never turn to Christ."

This, is where I am. 

"In the end, peace is not found with solutions or next steps or making and reaching goals or consuming pleasure, peace is found in one place, Christ, and being in Christ's story."



[Follow the link above to listen to Richard's Easter sermon.]

Coffee shops in Seattle?  Look here. 

I am currently scheming as how to never have to grocery shop.  Once a quarter at best.

If all goes well, we'll have fresh produce and dairy delivered to the front door.  We'll have fresh eggs in a few months just outside the kitchen door, thanks to Moe, Maxene, Munk and Mabel. And I'm hoping we'll buy half a cow and freeze it.  With that, all we need to buy is dried goods and we could stock up on those quarterly at Costco.  Oh yeah, we have a Costco card.  Our "other, married half" put us on their membership.  We're basically adults.

Goodbye 5am and 9pm shopping trips. Hello fresh, local food and laziness.

I imagine in this wonderful dream world, I sometimes get up on a Saturday and stroll through the local farmers market for some delicious vegetables, raised with love by the community garden down the street.  But no more lines, no more florescent lights and 90's hit music at ungodly hours.

So far... my plan is not going as well as I intended.  Smith Brothers delivers to "almost all of the Western Washington" - almost, means not Ballard, Fremont, Wallingford, Laurel Heights, Northgate, or Maple Leaf.  And "Blake the Milkman" who is their independent supplier to these snuffed neighborhoods, only delivers to orphanages and families that apparently consume copious amounts of milk each week.  :/

I will not be defeated. Commence emailing request for "special exceptions" to Milkman Blake. Follow with second personalized phone call.  If needed, make additional promises. I will have my milk delivery.

I grew up with a "teacher" mother as evidenced by the snake skin in a jar kept around the house for years.  A little something along with many other little somethings that I willingly forgot over the past two decades.  Until this morning.  Leaving jobs in our 20's can feel like shedding that layer of skin.  They say snakes shed to allow room for more growth, and to remove parasites.  Both seem oddly consistent with my past experience. (Yes, I guess I just called myself a snake.)

My mom would refer to the snake by name.  In fact, she would refer to his skin in the jar by name. He had shed many memories in our garden over the years. At least, this is how I remember it.  You have to keep in mind I was five when we moved away and left that good friend behind.  I didn't see the jar again either. So perhaps I remember it all wrong.

But this morning, he came to mind. We grow like mad in our 20s, leaving skins in offices, apartments and sometimes relationships. The air around us getting too tight, squeezing us until the time we can crawl out of it.  And it's bitter sweet, leaving a shell of ourselves in each place.  Saying goodbye to a part of who we are, who we've been and accepting the cold air on our new unknown skin.  It is vulnerable just as it is exciting.

I'm feeling squeezed and there will definitely be some fresh skin soon, but right now I'm trying to figure out what to shed.  And how to shed it.  Leaving an environment, closing a door becomes the obvious and easy solution for change and growth for our generation.  We don't like it? We leave it.  But what about when we could change it?  And is everything worth changing? Or are we wasting our youth and energy?

Someone taught me back in college about the truth of trajectory.  It's not about where you are, it's about where you're headed.  Once you grasp that, you realize that every small decision you make in your youth can drastically change where you wake up in your 40s.  Little decisions can be big.  And big decisions can determine a lot more than your salary.

But the whole trajectory truth would be a lot easier if you knew exactly where you wanted to wake up at the end.  You could just work backwards from there.  Some do.  I don't.

Thank God for counsel and wisdom but now, I need increased vision. And vision has to be your own, no one can give you your vision. I have to decide to step one way or the other. And while Mr. Frost would have you believe it's the one path least traveled that bears the reward, he missed the fact that no one else has the two unique paths to choose from that you do. They are both untraveled as of yet.  You choose. It's not least or most, it's left or right.

This has been, without a doubt a strange, strange week.

Endless Years - United Pursuit Band

I will hold you tight
When all is done;
When the world is gone, 
And its songs have been sung. 

You will be with me, 
Through endless years;
We will dance and sing, 
When your heart is fulfilled.

So, don't you close your eyes, 
Don't you lose your way,
Don't you miss all the gifts 
That are unfolding. 

I'm your anchor and shield.  
I'm the wind in your sails.  
I'm the song in your heart
That calms the seas.





Songs don't speak to me as often any more.  Instruments sometimes do.

This one finds just enough words and all enough melody and only enough rhythm to communicate with the locked parts.

[Source: Rose & Fitzgerald]

On a Lighter Note

Inclusive: Hard Working Women

Warning: This is a bit of a rant.  But it's sincere, thought out, and not actually intended to hurt or cause more division. It's aim is to draw attention to perhaps an unrealized harm. Also, it's on my own private blog. (That's kind of the point of the whole post.)



I have a habit of scrolling through Facebook and Instagram as I fall asleep at night.  After an almost 9 hour work day, I went home and cleaned and folded laundry for about 5 hours. It was a long day.  Past midnight and the last Facebook post I looked at as I tried to quiet my thoughts said something like "Hey Mommy Friends, when do we get to stop? It's 8 and now that the kids are in bed, the dishes and laundry still need to be done."  I get it.  I do. Or I don't.  (I probably really don't.)  But I considered deleting my Facebook account last night. When did it become a mom's chat room?  Here me.

I want ya'all to talk, but that's what moms groups, private messages, gmail, gchat, iPhones or anything else is for.  Women who aren't mom's - also work crazy long days, to come home and start cleaning at ridiculous hours of night, and grocery shop through empty aisles because most of the world is at home asleep, or worse, grocery shop during "rush hour". So maybe start the general Facebook posts with a few less exclusives, maybe write "Hey lady friends" or maybe just "Friends"?  Because life gets busier and busier... even for those of us who aren't moms.  And dear God, when I think of all the women who are these people's friends... who maybe can't have kids, who unknowingly stumble into an internet mommy group every time they open their Facebook, just trying to glimpse through that small window to say hello to all the people dear to them and instead get ambushed with posts beginning "Hey there all you mom's, what do you do when...."  Google it.  That's what the rest of the modern world does with their problems! Then, ask your mom.  Or call your friend.  Or send out a group email.  Don't all you mom's have each other's emails?  Or create a Facebook mommy group!  Please, for the sanity of the rest of us - create a Facebook mommy group.  So that when I fall asleep at midnight, with a 6am alarm to get to work early so I can make that deadline and get home in time to grocery shop and get dinner ready before the out of town guests get here..... I don't feel excluded from the 'real hard working class of women' who just so happen to have the daily privilege of raising tiny humans.

Many of us would love to be doing that - and we get that it's hard work - but we're working hard too.  And we don't get the reward of a child.  Sometimes, I even like the mommy posts and mommy talk coming up in my feed.  These are my friends - and it's their life.  And I want to be a part of it!! But it's getting excessive and borderline inconsiderate.   Just think about it.  Try to find ways to be inclusive.  I feel like that's a good lesson to teach kids - and maybe moms.

The rest of us don't want to feel like outsiders every time we open our Facebook, or sit in a room where there's a majority mommyhood.  Keep posting, keep sharing, but maybe ask yourself a few questions first.  Who all is going to see my post versus who is my post addressed to? Is this the best way to communicate to my specific audience?  Is it going to hurt someone, and if so, is there a way I could do this without hurting those people?  (eg, a different media or different language?) I know you're all moms and you 'have a heart for other moms' and want to support and encourage one another.  But maybe expand your vision.  Because there's a lot of women who aren't moms, who don't have support groups, who still need you.  Women who would love to see an encouraging note of camaraderie on Facebook, that included them.


------

As a side note, just to overturn a few things I've heard women say about the difference between being a stay at home mom or a career woman: There are bosses who are as needy and demanding as children (not mine currently), and while the thought commonly exists that you can just quit.  That's not exactly true.  And most jobs aren't just hanging out at work and chatting with friends.  They aren't 'chasing dreams'.  It can be a real test to find purpose in it. And to find friends in it. Women aren't good at compartmentalizing - you know this - so don't expect working women to have this thing that they just go do for a minimum of 40 hours a week and then have all this awesome fun freedom the rest of the hours.  Most careers aren't that way.  We're still always tied to it - thinking about it - being measured by it - and most likely, being emailed about it.  At times, we get talked down to, we have unrealistic expectations set on us, personal boundaries tested and a whole hell of a lot demanded from us nonstop.... at work, and then at home.  Because no one at home knows the big thing you pulled off at work.  You get to prove yourself from scratch, twice a day. You get to learn to be you, while living a very divided life, split between two separate worlds that really don't want you to talk too much about the other.  So, in closing, support and encourage one another, mommys or not.  Please. We already feel like we miss out on enough.

I felt a bit like a single mom this morning. To four baby chicks. Change their clothes (water), pack their lunch (pick the poop out of their food dish and replenish for the day), make sure the temperature in their coop is right. Bring the trash bins all up to the front of the drive (all four of them, Good Lord!). Water the plants sitting on my front porch (okay, I didn't because I ran out of time, but I should have and meant to). Get myself dressed and make myself a cup of coffee to go. Catch the bus. Catch up on email on my commute. Start work day.

Meanwhile, think of the laundry I need to finish when I get home, dishwasher I need to run, and other various errands to be accomplished before sleep. Including changing said water, food, and coop wood chips multiple times before sleep. And maybe cuddling my fluffy little babies and posting numerous photos of them to Instagram for Morgan. ;)

Did I mention I looked at puppies on Craigslist yesterday?

The Great Abyss from The Music Bed on Vimeo.

Oh hey, that's my sister.  


Also, this is the first time I've ever included the tag "ACLU" on anything.  It's for you.  Kristin, I love you and love what you're doing!

7/25

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.  Inspired and Sad.  Not sure if there is much more for me to say about this book.  It didn't light me up like Fahrenheit 451 did a few years back,  but it definitely made me uncomfortable.  Primarily, it has me evaluating the role of beauty and truth - which I have always put at the top of every priority.  And Science - which Beau places very high if not at the top, which I've thereby begun to value more and more as well through our conversations and debates. Here, in this futuristic world, they find that beauty and truth are enemies of happiness and comfort.  I can't help but think of Byron and Keats - would they perhaps agree and choose the pursuit all the more for the danger and pain that is implicit and required?  I think perhaps so.

If you have not yet read it, you like classics and books that discuss topics such as above - then yes, read it.  After all, it is a short book. 

I helped put out three proposals last week.  On top of other things - if you only knew. By Friday, my body (I believe) began to kick into stress mode.  You see, I handle stress really well.  Until I don't.  Then I black out.  Thankfully, I've learned the warning signs - like shaking, sweating, the room beginning to move when I'm sitting still. I apparently also get migraines from stress now.  Or it's something else, because John and I have both been sick on and off (and mostly on) for a few months now.

Suffice to say, I'm seeing a doctor today.

But I think it's just stress.  And maybe allergies.

Seriously folks, I put out three proposals last week.  And worked a 12 hour day on Monday, on less than 4 hours of sleep.  Please, hold the applause. ;)

I feel an incredible pressure to be something, somewhere by 30.  To have arrived.  To be impressive. As if after 30, I have failed or can no longer be remarkable.  I'm curious if this is because I am a youngest child and for so long have identified my success alongside the scale of my age.  Or if it is because of our culture - the 30 Under 30 list and 40 Under 40.  I've known people on those lists. And my name is nowhere near making a list.  Of any kind.

I think at this time - I'd settle for just knowing clearly what my big goals are by the time I turn 30. What my dream job even is - that one thing that will make me come alive in the workplace.  

I asked my coworker today "What is your dream job?"  She said she didn't know.  I told her I don't either and that it's making me bloody depressed.  She leaned her head back on her chair and said, "Me too."  I'm beginning to think it's a disease English Lit majors are especially prone to - and it's making us all sick in the soul.  We pursue a degree we love - and it can apply to almost anything - but finding that one thing becomes increasingly difficult as our dual technical-artistic selves get pulled deeper and deeper into the business world. And here we are nearly 30, still thinking we are moving toward something, some thing we cannot name. 

For some reason, all of this makes me dreadfully sad to not have a grandparent.  I feel like if I had one, they'd tell me - you're 27 years old, dammit. You've barely begun to live. But I don't have a grandparent.  I hardly ever did. And that silence just seems to drive the end ever closer to me - this pressure to do something, be somewhere, be someone, quickly.  Because life seems to end too soon.  And I've barely begun. 

And now that I have depressed you all - go read this article.  It may be the best thing I've read in a while... and I'm only two-thirds through it. 

Twin Talk

I have often talked about this and watched as people stared at me like I was crazy. This doesn't always happen, but often a set of twins will develop their own language, such as my cousins Kate and Kolleen did.  It resulted in the more dominant twin becoming the translator for the other, making it less necessary for her to learn to communicate to others in English.  You would literally watch one tell the other and the dominant one communicate their needs.  Of course, they were toddlers and none of it was exactly clear.  But it was crazy to see, and a bit remarkable.





"Forty Percent of Twins Invent Their Own Languages.

These languages are called autonomous languages. Researchers suspect that twin babies use each other as models in developing language when an adult model language is frequently absent. The "language" consists of inverted words and onomatopoeic expressions. These autonomous languages are formed when two very close babies are learning how to speak a real language alongside one another and naturally often play and communicate with each other. While this is more common among twins, since they are more likely to be around each other and developing at the same rate, this phenomenon can also sporadically occur between two babies who are not twins. The made up "languages" often disappear soon after childhood, once the children have learned a real language."     

-The Huffington Post

Happy Anniversary Mumsy & Dad!

Happy Anniversary to my mom and dad, who've taught us what it means to love one another for better or worse, through thick and thin. You've shown us a real (stubborn) love.  And, you're a whole lot of fun!

Thank you. xoxo.

I was asked the other day what my friends would say was the one thing they most appreciate about me.  I replied, "that I am consistent."  Well my interrogator disagreed, and it has me thinking why I gave that answer.  "Are you sure you're not being humble?  They wouldn't say fun? I think they'd say fun." He's right, my friends probably wouldn't actually give, "consistent." After all, who does? I told him I might be being overly-confident, that they might not say consistent.  But I didn't want them to say "fun" - everyone in their twenties is fun - but few are consistent.

Somewhere along my journey, or perhaps all along, being consistent became one of my biggest measures.

Consistent = Trustworthy.

You can fake anything for a day, you can sell yourself as anything to a new group. So when people seem to become a color wheel of characters and styles, I give a wide berth to their spin.

I'm really not the most fun person in the room.  Nor the funniest.  I'm not the smartest.  I'm not the prettiest.  Lord knows I'm not the tallest. But whatever I am, regardless of how I may be feeling, I try to be the same person every day in every room.

I've been writing on this same blog at the same url for nearly nine years. I've published 3, 116 posts here. This blog is not the prettiest or wittiest in the room either.  But, it is consistent and honest.  And to me, that counts.

"We must take care that everything doesn't get so dreadfully serious.  We must play -- but we must play seriously." 

 - Hans Wegner

[source and full article: fastcodedesign.com]

Oatmeal is a power food.  It is to everyone. But to me, oatmeal is also my 'game day food.'  It is steal cut comfort and confidence.  It reminds me that I win sometimes, and I work hard all the time.  It reminds me that I'm strong.  It reminds me that I'm a morning person.  That I'm a team player.  That I'm a striker.  That size matters less than strength and speed. That I have good coaches in my life - and that I'm good at listening to them.  And above all, it reminds me that I have a few very loving and strong people behind me - like my dad, who I'd hear out in the kitchen banging pots, closing cabinets, running the tap, cooking me oatmeal on game days.  And now my Beau, who set his alarm early to make sure I had a cup of coffee waiting for me in his kitchen when I came in at 6:30am.

That's why this morning, I had oatmeal.

This is going to be quite the week.  I'm fairly certain I had the flu this past weekend.  Lots of sleep, a few cancelled plans, 4 baby chicks and a 5k later.... I'm back at work and going to attempt to pump out 3 proposals in the next 3 days.  On top of that, some other side-exploratory-projects.  Aaaaaaaand Morgan, John and I are flying out to San Fran 6am on Thursday!!

"Not Cool Robert Frost!"

A Pep Talk from Kid President to You

We've got work to do and we can cry about it or we can dance about it.

I feel my humanity ignored. When I'm walking down the street I don't feel recognized by strangers as another, like them.  I feel unattractive. Unnoticed. Un-human. At work, I feel more and more like a piece of a machine, a tiny mechanism to be tinkered and fixed.  At best left alone to operate efficiently and clean, leaving as little loss as possible along the way. Replaceable. One in a line that can be switched, changed, unnoticed and unnamed.

It could have something to do with Brave New World.  Each day I've spent my commute lost in the laboratories and Fetus assembly lines, carried along in their pre-conditioned lives.

It could be my work.  Could be our consumer-loving new world, driven by the twin demons of large corporations and personal autonomy obsessions. Could be my perspective and lack of attention to my own humanity.

Go watch this Ted Talk Playlist:  Work Smarter.  Especially, watch the second one in the playlist, "The Happy Secret to Better Work."

I'll be honest, I'm avoiding writing the next part of "our story".  I like it and I'd love to share it.  But I've been thinking so much on conversation lately and working intentionally to improve mine and what I post here is an extension of that - this is part of my contribution to the written conversations happening between us all. And I'm tired of the conversation  - so tired, that I'm willing to bite my tongue about John and I's story for a bit longer.

Instead, I'll tell you this.  There's seasons of life where you feel under water.  Not like you're drowning, just like all your movements are fluid and slow, not quiet obstructed but resisted.  You see the other end of the pool and you'd like to get there, but walking feels ridiculous, nearly humorous.  And so you dive under water to swim, but then you can't see where you're going, it's either pitch black or blurry shapes at best - you have to just point yourself in the right direction and hope to get there - bumping into all sorts of people and weird objects that have sunk along your way.  And if you're lucky, you'll get there.  And your shorts will still be on.

I'm in the pool. And swimming itself seems a bit silly right now, because I don't think getting out of the pool is the point.  And I don't know what "end" of the pool is really the best anyways.  But all my movements are so damn slow. I kind of just want to thrash around like a child, cut my arms along the surface and splash.  See if John will let me climb up on his shoulders and jump off.

It's hard to write when you're in a pool.  

Nebula

She is the center of her own world.  Ruling those around her with quick words, frenzied comments and an unbeatable drive to be first.  To conquer others through the sheer rush of finishing first. She imagines others spinning round her, colliding into the literature she consumes at the core and tosses out into her system as if she were their sun, leaving bright zodiacal light all around to be called dust.  But that dust was once stars.  And those stars are held together only by their own gravity.  They don’t need her to feed them light. In truth, it is her pull that would try to consume them.  Devour them.  Her fire burns the brightest on the surface as her core has already begun to shrink, so soon she’ll collapse and leave nothing more than a black hole. 

You Can't Eat Beauty

Oscar Winner Lupita Nyong'o Speech

6/25

Insurgent by Veronica Roth.  It was okay.  I'm angry about the end.  Maybe talk to me about it again in a few weeks.  I liked Divergent a great deal, Insurgent a little less, and Allegiant the least of them all.  At moments, I found myself annoyed with the characters decisions and inability to learn through THREE books. I didn't gain the same incredible attachment to them as one does in the Hunger Games.  I did tear through each of them fairly quickly, and that says something perhaps.  But again, now that I have finished the series, I would rate them only "okay."