Tangled Grrl

 Y'all I am NOT in the Christmas spirit. I am cranky. Yesterday was a gloriously beautiful day. My perfect kind of day. Sunny but not eye searing sunny. Breezy and chilly. The kind of day that lets you mix sneakers and wool accessories and be comfortable. But I was at work so I worked. Then came home and did what felt like a zillion household chores. I had made a to do list on my lunch break. And it made me more than a little cranky. I've been asked what I want for Christmas. What do I want for Christmas? I want a maid. I want to come home and my dishes to magically already be clean. I want laundry to not be sitting in the dryer or in baskets in the laundry room. I want the clutter to already be organized and put away. I want space for bookshelves. I want to not have decision fatigue and it rear its ugly head when I'm asked yet again what the plan is for dinners this week.  Adulting is hard. And yet I'm beyond lucky to have a roof over my head and a job to go to every d...

I have been lost in a world of fantasy lately. In between work, household chores, sleeping and basic living I've been listening to a series of fantasy. And it has been glorious. I get lost in books. Lost in the characters, the worlds. Entranced by the stories and even after they are over, they linger with me for quite some time. My husband has been on second shift for months, so most evenings it is just me, home alone. Home alone with the words of other realms shifting around me as I cook or clean or eat or knit. Adventures, loss, heartache, love and magic as the telling of the tales are played. I'm on book five of my current series. Hours and hours of being captivated. And maybe that's why I dreamed of my mom last night. My mind has been open to the possibilities that only fiction ever leaves you open to. I don't remember how it began or how it ended exactly. But she spoke to me. I have no conscious memory of her words or her voice. But her very presence was so str...

I have never been so grateful to see a year end in my entire life. Yesterday I celebrated my third wedding anniversary. Today we celebrate the end of a year and the beginning of a new year. For our young family we traditionally spend these three days celebrating another year of marriage and ending and beginning the year. We spend time together. We don't do big anniversary gifts and we don't attend fancy parties. We have the kids, and sometimes friends, over and we eat junk food and play board games. We play card games and video games and we just celebrate having each other around. I love that we are doing the same again this year. This, like everything else this year, is bittersweet. But I can't wait to say goodbye to 2019 and all that we have gone through this year. I can honestly say that this has been the worst and best year of my life. The worst by far, because I have never suffered so much emotionally, mentally and physically in such a short amount of time. But in ma...

I was thinking while in the shower this morning. I don't know about you, but most of my best, and craziest ideas, come to me while I'm in the shower. Maybe because it's such a routine and mundane task. Or because it's near impossible to multi-task while doing it. Or there's something spiritual about the water or something. But I was thinking about marriage. And my marriage specifically. I woke up this morning after being exhausted yesterday and then not being able to fall asleep. I went to bed and was stuck in that weird state where you're too tired to get up and do anything but you're too awake to actually sleep. My fellow insomniacs can relate. So when I woke up, my husband mentioned he heard me listening to videos on my iPad while trying to get sleepy enough to fall asleep. And then asked if I was going to try to craft myself into exhaustion again today. And I suggested an adventure instead. For those of you who don't know, I'm a bit of a home...

It's been a little while since I've posted any kind of update. I've been in a bit of a blah place lately. We've had some changes on the home front and I've been trying to keep my mind in a decent place. I managed to stay employed, which I think I shared. And I am working on getting adjusted to the new role. The husband has had some changes in his job, and that has caused some financial changes for us, which is just adding insult to injury after everything else this year. But like everything else I face, I'm doing my best to face this too head on. I've learned over the years that I have a tendency to cope with hardship in different ways, some of them healthier than others. Right now I'm struggling a little because I'd like to indulge in retail therapy, but that is absolutely a no go. So I'm digging through my older wardrobe (handy since the weather is changing rapidly and I have an excuse to dig out fall apparel) instead of going out to buy new ...

Saturdays are sometimes my hardest days. Those are the days that I used to call Mom for absolutely no reason other than to ask her what she was doing, or ask her how she was feeling. Mostly it was just a good day to reach out and catch up with her. It wasn't unusual for her and Dad to be off doing something with the Club or off to the casino, but she would typically still be around at some point to shoot me a text or to call me back at some point. Right now Saturdays are really hard. Because I have my big MRI coming up and I'm in the middle of another flare up and I really want to talk to my mom. In the middle of the day yesterday, after I finished up some household chores I felt capable of doing, I sat down to rest and I looked over and saw the bag of crochet work I had taken from Mom and Dad's house. It was a project my mom had swiped from my aunt to finish for her. And I took to finish when my mom no longer could. And the tears started. Because this was the kind of day...

I've been trying to think of how to do this for days, weeks maybe. How to express thanks. I've been touched by so many people over the last few months in so many different ways. Who ever thought that you could be so thoroughly heartbroken and yet so thoroughly soaked in a feeling of love that you feel as though your heart was overflowing with it all at the same time? It's possible and it's confusing. I would love to thank you all individually. Hug each of you and let you know in just the right way how much you've touched me. How much you've helped, how your acts of generosity, kindness, time, words, gifts, patience, phone calls, text messages, flowers, presence, hugs, food, conversation, shelter, rides, organization, ideas, etc have somehow impacted my family or I in a big way. But I don't even know who all contributed. And I don't know how to say it in the exact right way. But I sure as hell am going to try. The last three months are a bit of a haze...