status report, with some run-on sentences thrown in for good measure

I'm here, and I'm alive. We moved in over a week ago, and I'll be thrilled if we get completely settled in by Labor Day. It's just so hard to capitalize on any brand of organizing momentum when you have an adventurous crawler on your hands who doesn't embrace napping. So I've been trying to accept a little here and a little there as okay. And it is.

It's also hard to muster any kind of motivation when your upstairs is 90 degrees, because air conditioning isn't a given thing in Oregon, because really, you wouldn't even need to use it the whole summer. But boy when you need it, you need it. And for all those readers from more scorching climes than Portland, Oregon, remember that you have air conditioning and I do not. So complaining about the 90-degree heat is perfectly acceptable.

I've had several good blogging ideas, but whenever I think of them I'm either in the car or using my best energy to play with the babe, and when the time does come available, my brain feels like it's melting. So, there we are.

I'll wrap up my status report with a few tidbits from the past week or two:

:: Asher loves sparklers so much that he wants to touch the flaming magnesium.

:: The brother leaves on his mission in three weeks.
:: Asher has a Batmobile.

:: I made these last night and died.

 :: I've had my hair up in a bun almost every day for the past two weeks because it's been too hot to use the blow dryer.

34ish weeks--a freak-out

I've been reading everything I can about birth, nursing, and babies, and I think I've reached the point where rather than informing me (which has been great), my reading is now freaking me out. I'm overwhelmed with the uncertainty of all this change in my immediate future, change that I know is coming but change that I don't really know.

Yes, I know that I'll be up in the middle of the night--probably all night sometimes--and I know that lots of days I'll feel like a zombie, but I don't really know how this will affect me emotionally or mentally. I don't know how I'll change.

My mind is flooded with questions: How long will it take me to find a routine? How will I know how to comfort and reach out to my babe? Will Josh and I ever have time for each other? And what about all that laundry? I hate laundry. And underlying everything, Will I be able to find balance, to find a way to be me in the metamorphosis of motherhood?

Babe has roughly six weeks before he debuts, and sometimes six weeks seems so far away and sometimes it feels so close that my heart starts palpitating and my mind blanks in panic. The bottom line is this: I've had months and months to prepare for this, and six weeks out I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing or what I'm going to be doing or how I'm going to do it.

Six weeks. Babe is coming whether or not I'm ready, and something tells me that I'll never be ready, so I might as well accept it now and trust that I'll figure out motherhood and me as I go.

the empty time card

{I realized that for professional reasons, I might be wise to remove the bulk of this post from this public forum. I don't think this blog could be an honest one without occasional references to how I spend my week days, and I do think I should be more careful in how I discuss this particular aspect of quasi-adulthood. If you're wondering about my job or how I'm doing with it, feel free to email/call/visit/apparate me. And who knows, maybe you'll get an email from me because I'll feel bad that Josh has to hear the same things from me all the time. 

Writing my thoughts is therapeutic for me, and so while I may not be expressing certain feelings via blog, I do plan on writing them out, because I've found that I'm much more articulate and purposeful when I write, as opposed to extemporaneous speech. Obviously.}

So for now, I'll leave you with the most important part of the original post:

My life is wonderful.

my latest "craft" project

My sewing has been progressing nicely. I finished up curtains. I've had a few more fabric-buying excursions, and I've even bought fabric for a pattern that's not in my sewing book. I'm that serious now.

Last night I finished my first clothing project since the skort I completed when I was nine. I made a wraparound skirt. When I picked out the fabric, I even had a whole outfit in mind for this skirt. It was a great transition project into apparel sewing because it combined new and old concepts into something that wasn't too hard and still increased the sewist's confidence.

I found a few things I could have done differently, but I thought that, for a first piece of clothing (since I started sewing more seriously) I did pretty well. It's even green for St. Patrick's Day. {Please excuse my lanky post-work hair}

So when I came into work today and one of my co-workers complimented me on my skirt, some pride welled up inside me.

I felt even further validated when he asked me where I got it. "Oh, I made it!" I confidently answered.

"Oh, I was wondering. It has that crafty feel to it."

. . . Thanks? All my confidence, pride, and validation went mostly out the window.

While I do aspire to be a craft master, I want the things I make to have style. Especially the clothes. I don't want my clothes to look like a craft project. Which apparently, right now, they do.

So with a little more trepidation than I had before, I'm headed into my next skirt project. Or, should I say, craft project.

musings

I like to write about things that make me happy, things I look forward to, and things that I love. I like to write about happy minutiae. But I also like honesty on this forum. In short, I've had some hard days lately. I've been uncharacteristically over-emotional and overwhelmed. And really, I'd rather be normal emotional and normal -whelmed. So, I'm on my way to figuring it out.

I'm not expecting a wealth of response here, and I sure didn't write this out of self-pity. I just like to be honest, because it's easy to read blogs and see the ideal, when really it's possible to love your life and simultaneously have some hard days. So, there you have it: some down-to-earth honesty.

word: 2011

For the past several years I've chosen a word on which to focus, and it's been productive. This annual ritual has been therapeutic for me and has helped my resolutions stick more firmly.

This year, though, I think I need a break—not from goals or self-improvement efforts, just from new ones. I'm still working on the old ones. A lot. 2010 brought so many changes for me, and almost all of them were good ones. But change, good or bad, still requires adjustment. And I guess I'm still adjusting. My words of 2008 and 2010 (become and make my own happiness) are keeping me busy enough and invoking enough self-change and introspection for now.

I have bright hopes for 2011, my first full year in this new phase of my life. And I think that my former areas of focus deserve a revisit.

I hope your resolutions have a successful start!

on the record

Off the record, part of me was legitimately surprised that Church magazines offered me the New Era internship--the internship (apart from the news position) that involves the most writing. Before now my writing experience was thorough in ten-page research papers, one-page response papers, and quippy blog posts, but my magazine writing portfolio was lacking. I also don't have any professional interviewing experience. Or photography experience. My actual editing portfolio bursts at the seams, but when it comes to professional feature writing (and all skills accompanying professional writing), I don't have much.

On the record, I had my second in-person interview this evening. I met a group of Young Women down in West Jordan and talked to them for about an hour. I drafted up a list of possible questions earlier and referred to it when needed, but most of the time I could just ask questions with the flow of the conversation. When I meet new people, I'm usually more on the reserved side of things, and so having to be friendly and open with strangers while directing a productive and purposed conversation is new to me. I'm having to seriously step out of my comfort zone--which is good for me.

I have an in-person interview (this one by myself) tomorrow afternoon and another group interview next week. Off the record, I'm still a little intimidated by interviews. On the record, I'm a real writer here.

my real life take 2

Once again I fell into self-doubt and second-guessing my life and decisions. I try to trust myself but often find I can't. I've never felt this way before and this mentality has never been a serious problem for me, but lately I haven't been feeling good enough. Isn't that awful? Isn't that just how Satan wants me to feel?

So I read President Uchtdorf's talk to the Relief Society about how happiness is our heritage, and I made some goals. I talked to my sister, who empathized and understood. I read a devotional given by Elder Holland two years ago about "remembering Lot's wife." Sister Holland, back when the she and her husband were just about my age, said, "The future holds everything hopeful for us." I need to remember that the future holds everything hopeful for me.

Yes, I'm scared about my post-graduation life, because I don't see the plan, and the plan I have for myself is short-reaching because that's all I can see. Yes, I sometimes feel like I'm stepping into the dark. Yes, it's hard sometimes to make my own happiness, but it is possible. I can't be like Lot's wife and yearn for the past when retrospectively things seemed easier, because like Elder Holland said, "Faith is of the future. Faith builds on the past but never longs to stay there."

In these moments, brief or prolonged, when I feel scared and little and just not good enough, I'll remember that the future holds everything for me. Everything.

Take that, Satan.

my real life

My life—the big-picture stuff—has all been planned up until this point, the point of my collegiate exit. I have only a couple of more months before I live out the rest of that life plan, and after that, everything seems uncertain. I've been able to postpone quasi-adulthood with my summer New Era internship, but after that, I don't know how I can avoid "real life." But really, isn't "real life" such a flawed term, anyway? Because the life I lead right here and right now is my real life, regardless of how "adult" or otherwise it is at any given moment.

So in living my real life, I'm facing an aspect of living I've never had to encounter before. I've always been able to steer clear of a long-term 9-to-5 job, car insurance, and a mortgage. Even the rent I've paid for my college apartments has been subsidized by living with three other girls. The real life I'm living is facing impending and unfamiliar change; I don't think I've ever experienced a change as significant as the one I'll experience in my transition from college student to quasi-adult. I feel like every decision I'm making right now has life-altering ramifications.

Sometimes when the world seems so overwhelmingly vast and I seem so unbelievingly small, I want to rail to the universe and cry, "Just give me a plan!!" That's all I need. Except that I'm wrong. I rarely know what I really need; because when I think I know what I need I get something else that makes sense only later.

In those moments when I doubt and question myself and my place and role in the world, at least I can fall back on the knowledge that I'm a daughter of God, who is a divine and exalted being, and it's my destiny to become like Him. In those moments when I second-guess my potential and underestimate my abilities and worth, at least I can know that I have a Heavenly Father who knows my true potential and worth better than I do, a Father who will never lose faith or hope or confidence in me because I'm His child. He believes in me because that's who He is.

And in those inevitable moments of blank uncertainty, once I feel the comfort of a loving Heavenly Father, then I can take a step back and go on listening to HP on my iPod.

details at my discretion

I don't often explicitly talk about my dating life on my blog, and I don't feel like I need to. (Yes, you can read between the lines and learn a few things, but I'm rarely frank about it.) With that said, I'm going to be a little more direct here.

I brought a boy home over break.

We watched Star Trek.

We went to scary Colorado souvenir shops.

We Tim-Tam-Slammed.

We made silly faces.

 

We ice skated on Evergreen Lake.

That's all I'm going to say right now.

mac 'n' cheese

Step one to feeling awesome again?

Let your sister paint your nails Mac 'n' Cheese Orange while you both watch MK&A. :)