Labor-less Day Weekend

Over Labor Day weekend, Brett and I did a lot of nothing. We watched a lot of Netflix, and that's about it. It was wonderful. On Sunday night, though, we went out for an adventure I've been dreaming about all summer. I suppose it was fitting that we enjoyed it on the last official day before summer ends.

We piled the back of Brett's truck with an old comforter, several miscellaneous blankets, and the pillows from the guest bedroom. Then we drove out to the boat loading dock at Lake Kohlmier. We lay in the back of the truck and watched the sun dip behind the trees across the lake. In that very still place, we decided to sit quietly and just be.

Writing Makes Me Want to Be An English Teacher

I'm frantically digging through the mass of stacked papers on my desk at work, and my fingers catch on a metal spoon stuck to a post-it note message: DON’T FORGET TO SEND FRIDAY. I take a moment to clean my desk.

I think I used that spoon last Wednesday, and the only thing the post-it note is stuck to is my calculator. I throw stacks of papers into the recycling bin, stack others in a “neat” to-do pile for this week, store others in wire “to-do later” shelf, and take my spoon to the kitchen.

I usually do this on Friday afternoons. That way, come Monday morning, my desk is “neat,” and I’m ready to answer my 43 emails received over the weekend. I’m not a very organized person. I usually say I am in job interviews and strength-listing social situations, but I’m really not. I always meet deadlines and I will never lose your work request. There is a running priorities list on a yellow legal pad next to my computer (there’s probably two or three additional, similar lists in various small legal pads and on the back of the Annual Luncheon PowerPoint draft, but the one next to my monitor is the most up-to-date). 

I’m messy. It’s a fact. My car serves as my second home, my laundry hamper, a garbage can, and a storage unit. My house looks similar to Jon and Kate’s before the money (and nanny and maid). And the divorce.

I’ve been living out of a laundry basket of clean clothes for a week and half. Brett finally washed last Thursday’s dishes on Saturday. I’m over-committed and constantly in a hurry. I’m trying to figure out how to both coach a volleyball tournament in St. Francis and attend my cousin’s bachelorette party in Edina on Friday night. I finally put gas in my car on Friday when I coasted into the Casey’s across from work—I wasn’t even planning on stopping until I realized I was literally running on fumes. I haven’t been able to find my black flats in three weeks.

Part of me wants to get back into tutoring or teaching English. Most of me knows I don’t have time for that right now. There are recipes I need to try out, Christmas plans to decide, plays I want to try out for, plays I want to direct, friends I want to visit, and books I want to read.

Eventually, I will catch my fingers on some metaphorical spoon in my life and be forced to slow down and organize.

Changes

Things look a little different now. When I started this blog, I was recently married and very unemployed. It was designed to house all of my fabulous creative writing I drafted during that unemployment and new adventure into being a 22-year-old housewife. Only I didn't do very much writing and eventually landed a job.

So this blog has become less themed, more of a small space for me to document things I might want to remember later. It's also a journal for me to sort out thoughts I haven't been able to communicate with anyone else. Who knows what (or when) I'll post now. But really, the overall goal has always been the same--I need a place to write, to think, to process, and to journal. And this is that little place. 

The new title--"Little Moments and Fun Adventures"--is pretty meaningless to anyone other than Brett and me. But to us, it's everything. It sums up who we are and what we do. "Little Moments" is our reminder to each other to celebrate and cherish the little moments every day, even if it's hard to recognize that a little moment is happening. And "Fun Adventures" is basically everything we do. If we drive somewhere and might get lost, or do something we've never done before, or do anything spontaneous, we go into it saying, "oh well, it'll be a fun adventure." (It's also what I call anything I want Brett to do with me that he doesn't want to--like, "please come to WalMart with me to buy toothpaste...it'll be a fun adventure!").

I do appreciate all my readers, so please stay. Offer advice. Comment. Mock. Just have some conversation with me. I'm a writer, so a world without communication is a lonely place. In fact, it's solitary confinement.

Today I let myself miss you

Some words that are amazingly meaningful to me today. Despite their strange origin:

I guess there's a part of me that's still holding on. That little girl inside is just waiting for her return. You know, that her death was just some cosmic error, and eventually, God will realize he made a terrible mistake and he'll send her back to me. And I'll have my grandma again. I know it sounds ridiculous.

But...I look at you, and I know she's still here.

You are so like your grandmother. She was tough...and independent...and funny. In the same way you're funny. She was stubborn. Oh, she was stubborn. If you would tell her the sky is blue, she would say it was green.

She's not gone. She lives on in you. And that comforts me to no end.

A Conversation

Brett and I had this conversation in the car a few days ago:

Me: I think we should get a pool. Instead of having kids.

Brett: What?

Me: We could use the money we've been saving up to buy a pool. And just not have kids.

Brett: Why would we want a pool if we don't have any kids?

Me: Adults can't like pools?

Brett: I want kids.

Me: We could lure the neighbor kids with our pool. Then it would be like having kids, only we wouldn't really. And we would have a pool. Win-win.

Brett: WE ARE NOT GETTING A POOL!

As of right now, we don't have a pool. But I'm working on it.

Texas Forever

I have been pondering deeply lately. Maybe not about the important things—the meaning of life, my career, the future of our family. But pondering about good friends, happy times and how the two blend to create real-life Texas Forever* moments.

The problem is it’s so hard to realize you’re having one of those “this is real life” moments while it’s happening. Like the moments where Brett and I wander around our neighborhood in the dark, looking at stars and pretending we know what and where the constellations are (okay, I’m pretending—he might actually know. He’s always like, “there’s Ursa Major” and I’m like, “totally, and there’s Dracula’s nephew!”) 

Part of my pondering has been about moments. I’m not a photographer or artist, or even a very consistent writer or blogger so I have a hard time capturing moments. Sometimes to capture the moment in my mind, I say to Brett: “Isn’t it weird? This is real life.” 

It’s my way of making myself focus on the truth that this is my life. It’s not where I thought I’d be at 24. It’s not glamorous or lucrative. But it is rich and it is real. I don’t have life-changing montages set to indie music, but Texas Forever moments happen standing in a friends’ garage while it down pours on our fire pit; Mike standing in the rain roasting marshmallows for the rest of us, while Brett holds a kiddie pool above them for protection. Or they happen at the softball diamonds between stuffing mouths with sunflower seeds and watching kids with dirty feet. 

Each moment, both beautiful and fleeting, has the makings to be worth raising a glass, toasting Texas Forever.

What are your Texas Forever moments?

*Texas Forever comes from the NBC show Friday Night Lights. It's the moment where you toast to life, love, and living large. 

‘In the wave-strike over unquiet stones’

Sometimes, when I’m processing emotions, life events, deep thoughts I write all the time. It helps me see the words in black and white and categorize my feelings into files, organized into neat little boxes with labels. And stacked and arranged alphabetically into filing cabinets in a storage unit. Writing often makes me feel like an organized type-A crazy person (there is one of those living in my house. And it’s probably not me). 

But other times when my life feels messy and out of control, I avoid writing. Seeing real words detailing emotions to life’s events that I haven’t quite processed in my mind only makes it worse.

A few people told me they were waiting for a blog post about my grandmother who recently passed away. I still haven’t written anything, and being totally truthful, I probably never will. I haven’t dealt with her death yet in a way that would allow me to write about it. In many ways, I’m avoiding dealing with it. I haven’t talked about it thoroughly with anyone. I kept telling myself I had to process it, and then write about it—before I could talk through it with anyone. But I don’t know how to process it. Nor do I really want to. And so it sits.