100%

I know I've shared some things before about how AD's profession as a pilot affects our lives (if you want to read about it, click on the "life of a wife of a pilot" label to the right). While I'm not about to do a full out post about the ins and outs of being a pilot's wife, I had a realization today that I want to record.

AD and LG have been visiting AD's family this week, and I have had a bit of free time (which could have been a bit better structured--but hey, I'm pregnant, so what my mind wants to do and what my body will do are two very different things). One of the things I've done with my single girl time is watch a couple of chick flicks. Today I browsed new releases and picked "Friends with Kids," mostly because it had Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig in it, and also because it was a comedy about people in their 30's with kids. The storyline is basically that a gal and guy who are BFs decide to have a baby together because the clock is ticking and neither have found the one. And, you guessed it, they realize they're in love with each other and end up together. But not before one realizes it before the other and they spend some time apart.

At first, the friends-with-a-kid-but-not-romantically-involved thing seems to be working really well for the friends, especially regarding mundane, everyday life. When the female protagonist tells the male protagonist that she wants to be a real family, he's not ready. So they spend their time apart, and in the last scene when he's winning her back, he tells her that they were wrong in thinking that they would raise a kid together [as friends] so they could still have the "romantic part" separately, but that he realized that the raising a kid together was the romantic part.

And in a lot of ways, I agree. Mundane, everyday life, and being a family is romantic to me. So I was thinking about what everyday life is like for AD and I. I work Monday through Friday, and he works Thursday/Friday through Monday/Tuesday, so my weekend is Saturday and Sunday, and his is Tuesday through Thursday(ish). There isn't a regular day (or two) when one of us isn't waking up to an alarm and going to work. We don't get to wake up together and spend the whole day together.

I get him after he's worked four days with very little sleep. He gets me after I've been up and worked eight hours. I've been saying lately (though not to him, at least in a direct manner) that AD is going to run me ragged, because when I get home after work he wants to work together to make some progress on projects--this summer it's been the garden box, compost container, basement shelving, etc. While I'm so thankful to have a husband who wants to spend time with me and has the motivation of the Energizer bunny, all this pregnant lady really wants to do after work is have dinner, have some playtime with the kid before he goes to bed, do a load of wash or something low key, and go to bed.

And while I am happy and our life works--Logan usually only has to go to daycare three days a week and we each get two days off with him, we get three/four days each week when we spend as much after-work time together as we can--I can't help but think that I want to wake up and be with them all day. I want to wake up and give them 100% of myself, not what's left over after eight hours of work, because I love them so much and they deserve it. 

I am not saying that anything needs to change; I'm just sharing this realization, and this longing in my heart.

Happy Father's Day

To my husband:  

 

And to our fathers:

And since we missed Mother's Day (on the blog), a belated Happy Mother's Day to our moms:

Monday, Monday

Today was a lousy day, and I am weary. This is one of the verses that the Lord has really put on my heart this year: 

Source

 

The coast and the city

I can barely believe that it’s the end of May. Not a lot of posting up in here this month, for a few reasons:

1.       The first part of the month I was getting us ready for vacation. Lots of shopping for the perfect pair or sandals for me, 
      boardies for AD, and small items to keep LG busy during his first airplane ride, along with paying bills, washing, packing, etc.

2.      We were on vacation for a week, during which time I unplugged. No email, Facebook, blogs, Internet-anything. It was 
      amazing.

3.      I was pregnant the whole month. How’s that for a super low key life event reveal? I am currently 12 weeks and due 
     December 8^th. I’ve been tired, nauseated, and hungry.

Besides the vacation and pregnancy, I was also a perfectionist throughout the entire month (okay, throughout my entire life). Though I know things don’t need to be perfect and have come a long, long way, perfectionism still trips me up, wedges itself between me and my dreams, and sometimes paralyzes me. If I don’t have the (time, energy, resources) to do this (blog post, DIY project, event, meal) to an acceptable level I’ve created in my head, I just won’t do it at all.

In terms of the blog, I don’t have the time or energy right now to make it read, look, feel the way I want it to, which has been a stumbling block to recording and sharing what’s been going on in our lives, in my head, and in my heart this year.

Though I wanted to do something fun to highlight my first blogiversary (and Mother’s Day, and the new bebe) this month, it didn’t happen. I did go back and read my first blog post, and realized that I need to get back to where I was a year ago: simply writing as a way to share memories, work out some things going on in my head/heart, and hopefully glorifying God. Not posting photojournalistic snapshots with each post, using the perfect graphic and font, getting followers, getting my projects pinned, etc. So I’m going back to basics for a while. If I have time to get my photos uploaded and edited, great, but if not, it’ll just be memories and meaningful content.

Source

So, here’s what I’m noodling on right now:

Part I

My family (AD, LG, and I) and the fam I’m from (mom, dad, brother, brother’s girlfriend) spent last week with my mom’s aunt’s family at a gorgeous beach house on St. Simons Island, Georgia (it’s on the coast between Savannah and Jacksonville). We had a wonderful time—I will definitely be doing a detailed post about our trip with pics at some point—but what’s really struck me since I’ve been home is the simple beauty of that place.

Last week it was the ocean, beach, and marshes, lush foliage and hanging moss, colorful homes of all types of architecture, vintage-style bikes, the sunshine, the breeze. And this week, driving to the grocery store and looking around, I’m seeing concrete, powerlines, restaurants and strip malls, and house after house after house in one of four styles with grass and one or two trees (in one of five species) in the yard. This culture shock of sorts made me realize what an effect being surrounded by a beautiful environment can have on your spirit. Now, I know comparing an upscale vacation destination and working-class metropolitan area isn’t quite fair. And I’m not saying that I don’t see some beauty in some parts of the suburbs or city, but as indicated in my use of the word “some” in the first part of this sentence, it is often an exception, not the norm; something that must be sought out or looked for, not simply taken in. There are a lot of people who would tell me that I need to  choose to find the beauty in the everyday, blah blah blah.

All that said, I know there are a lot of beautiful places--city and country, in all directions, near and far--that working people can live. While it has been in our family plan to eventually move out to a big piece of land with hills and trees and water and be as self-sufficient as possible, traveling to this beautiful place confirmed it that much more, and brought the goal into finer focus.

Part II
On Tuesday, AD, LG, and I hopped in the car as soon as I got home from work, headed to a nursery down by the airport that has quality plants for cheap. When we got there, we were greeted by a sign telling us that they were sold out and closed until they'd have farm produce in late July. So we took a different way home, one in which we'd pass a few more nurseries. A little way down the road, in a city we only ever pass through, I made AD pull over because my stomach was getting empty and making me feel like I was going to puke. 

The next place to pull over was a gas station with a McDonald's. So we got out of our decade-old car, all of us in t-shirts, jeans, and flip flops, and ordered dinner. And the overwhelming feeling while we were there was that we were not welcome there, mostly because we were not black.

And I just thought, this is BS. I live in this county, my taxes help out here, and I can't get some chicken McNuggets without dealing with crap? And then all of the ranting I hear from my father, who grew up in Detroit but now calls it a dump (among other things), and the comments from my aunt and uncle when they get back from visiting my cousin's family in Charlotte, all started to make sense. I was asking myself, why should I deal with a corrupted city that can't help itself (can we say Kwame?), horrible roads, high gas prices, when I don't have to?

And these musings bring me to an ongoing internal struggle between optimism and pessimism, and a question I ask myself all the time about a lot of things: When do you keep trying, and when do you give up on (your city, job, family, friends, religion, sports team, ____)?

This city has me feeling this way this week, but even more so over the past year, I've felt this way towards the behavior of some people in my life that I care about. As I've grown older, I've become more complacent; less likely to speak my mind if I feel that something or someone has done wrong. I've been wondering whether it's that I'm afraid of the lasting consequences of being really straight up/standing up to someone, whether I'm being complacent because these people are not a part of my everyday life and dealings, or whether an appropriate opportunity just hasn't come along yet. The one thing that resonates with me, though, is that doing and saying nothing just perpetuates a bad cycle that could at least change, and maybe one day end.

Well, this post was...
...all over the place?
...moving in the right direction
...cathartic

 

Dress code

Today I took a huge load of clothes to the consignment shop. The majority of it still fit, but don't quite fit with my lifestyle anymore--I don't have to dress up for work, I like my tops longer since having a baby, etc. 

But the dresses. Oh, the dresses. You see, I don't really buy or wear dresses except for special occasions, and so the dresses hold some sentimental value. Included in the load were:

- The dress I wore at my high school graduation party

- The dress I wore to AD's friend's wedding during my first trip home with him

- The dress I wore to AD's best friend's wedding and caught the bouquet:

circa 2006

 
- The dress I wore to my tea party bridal shower:
 

Aunts

 - The dress I wore to my official bridal shower:

BFF

 - A dress I wore on our honeymoon.

All were five years or older. Sad to see them go. I wonder what I'll have to part with five years from now...

LG the bookworm

If you've ever spent time with a toddler, you have likely experienced the moment when you realize that it's been a while since you been pulled away from the task at hand, and your child is very quiet. Luckily for me, lately when these moments strike while LG and I are upstairs, I can usually find him in his room like this: 

And then one night after LG had gone to his room while I was rinsing out the bathtub, I found him like this:

I had even told AD that LG's reading habit afforded me an extra 20 minutes of dozing one Saturday morning. 

And then this past Thursday AD and I were both up and getting ready for work. I came upstairs from the shower, and no sooner had I sat down to dry my hair did LG start screaming in his room. So I got up and went to open his bedroom door, but was met with some resistance--it was LG! 

I started freaking out, thinking my glorious days of toddler-containment were over because he had finally climbed out of his crib. Thank God AD told me a few minutes later that he had put LG in his reading chair to see if he could get a few more zzzz's (but failed to turn on the lamp for him--Dads!). 

 

A good date

Thirty years ago today, I was baptized.

Two years ago today, AD and LG were baptized. 

We did not plan this purposefully; it was entirely coincidental,

and I didn't realize the significance until after the date was set. 

We chose the date because AD's sister and her family would be visiting that weekend;

that Sunday was actually Palm Sunday, and since our congregation does a passion drama on Palm Sunday

(you can watch this year's here--it was amazing), we had our ceremony at home.

 

LG actually wore the same suspendered knickers and cap his father wore for his dedication some thirty years earlier.

 I may be partial, but wasn't he the cutest little baby ever?