A friend lent this book to me right after it was released, having read it herself and knowing we both shared an equal love for the author and it’s message. But that wasn’t long after we moved into the first apartment (roughly, I think) and I couldn’t pick up the book. It would stare at me and I’d glare at it and we were like two positives repelling each other at every attempt to fall in love. I gave it back with the explanation that I wasn’t ready to digest the book.

I had entered my own season of Bittersweet and the last thing I wanted was someone’s hope or happy ending. Ok, lets be honest – I had entered the season of Bitter – running from all things that could end in sweet.

A few weeks ago we took the whole family to the book store and I’ve been wanting to read something *else* lately. I love fiction but I needed substance, only I couldn’t figure out how much or what kind when I remembered I hadn’t read this book yet. I found it and started reading the prologue, tears streaming down my face … I knew it was time to read the book. To own it and mark up the pages, make notes in the margins and underline every sentence that sent shivers down my spine.

Shauna writes about the list of things she doesn’t do and I can’t stop thinking about it since reading that chapter a few days ago, so I’ve decided to give myself permission to occupy the same kind of list.

My List of Things I Don’t Do:

I don’t feel guilty about making pancakes at midnight while drinking red wine. There’s a movie with Diane Keaton (Somethings Gotta Give) where one of her scenes is making pancakes at midnight, drinking red wine. Call me crazy, I’m used to it, but there are days where I make pancakes at midnight while drinking red wine and I’m blissfully happy while doing so all because of that movie.

I don’t plan vacations. I love taking vacations and will be the first to jump on the bandwagon when one is mentioned or thrown out as possible. I love getting away, but I don’t love figuring out where we’ll eat every night or what we’ll be able to do. I don’t scour local visitors bureau for information … I just show up and order an umbrella drink or have my camera ready. I say yes on vacation.

I don’t make dinner past 5 o’clock. If it’s 5:03 and I have no plans for dinner, we’ll order out! If I purposefully wait until 5:15 to decide on dinner, we’ll order out! It’s a great plan.

I don’t run a daycare. I love other peoples kids and pets just as much as the next person, but when I’m away from my own kids – I don’t do yours. This has been hard because I want to be the person who always says yes, who volunteers in Sunday School and who can relish in being surrounded by twenty-three 5 year olds, but I am not. I wanted to be the favorite aunt who had sleepovers with my nieces every month. Who played dress up and had a bin of candy for baking cookies. I have an aunt like this, who I love dearly (and Jessica is named after). And bless her heart for being that person for me because I don’t think I’ll ever be that person for my own nieces.

I don’t apologize for my ideas. I laugh loud and often snort while doing so, sometimes I cackle. I make plans and throw parties and want everyone to have an amazing time. I dream really big and I’m almost always in my head. I’m scared of myself, most of the time, afraid to say things out loud because even though they sound good when I’m thinking them, what if someone doesn’t like it? Fuck it.

I’m not the person who sends amazing packages in the mail. But I want to be. I shop for people all the time, I have little piles all over the house and in boxes meant for this person, that baby, just because. I’m really bad at getting and sending the mail. Really bad. Once upon a time I was on top of it. Once upon a time I was on top of many things (scrapbooking, sending correspondence to out of state family, christmas cards, thank you cards etc) and then I gave birth to a second child. Period.

I don’t clip coupons. OHEMGEE. I said it out loud. I don’t clip coupons and I don’t feel bad about it! It’s such a time suck for me, if I can make a list and menu plan for the month – we’re ahead $250 bucks. Times 26 trips to the grocery store (give or take) in a year … that’s $6,500 in savings. BOOYA. Frugal that. I feel so much better getting that off my chest.

What’s on your list?

But I do want to say thanks for all the kind words, emails and comments since then. You guys are pretty awesome.

Probably the best realization that came out of my vulnerability was knowing I wasn’t alone. And it was so very lonely in my head, bouncing around with these questions and ideas and ideals. Which, aside from being able to express myself, is what this is really all about.

So, words. I have so many of them. And in an effort to change the subject and lighten things up … we’re just a few days away from a birthday in this house. Our daughter is on the brink of turning 7.

When I was 7 my birthday lasted a whole week, seven whole days for turning seven. I got the game SORRY!, a jump rope and a stuffed puppy, among other things.

It just feels like a big year this year.

I’m quickly becoming the person who loves the Winter Season most. Arguably in previous seasons I was Team Autumn nine out of 10 times, Summer taking the close second while tying with Spring. I love all seasons, honestly, but I love the feeling after getting groceries and having a fully stocked kitchen that begs me to stay home tonight.

I can make anything my heart desires, I can feed the bellies of my laughing babes and I can scoot them happily outside to spend hours and hours in the cold blanket of white, fluffy snow.

It really is magic.

I’m a bit of a hermit and a constant worrier about my kids when outside … except in the winter. Their coats and the tracks they leave behind them are insurance to my neurosis that they’re fine. I can easily spot them and if, by chance, I do lose sight of them – I have a way to get to them quickly.

Not to mention all the tea and hot cocoa, the soups and game nights. The endless availability of a reason to finish a project.

I can see how the driving and the temperatures can give Winter a bad rap but I love a good excuse to wear a different scarf every day, drink one more cup of coffee in the morning and make home made bread for dinner.

I always find that the end of the year is a marathon in reorganizing expectations and realigning possibilities for the new year. I’ve found over the years of bloggingonline journaling that I have a pretty cyclical nature when it comes to the big things in life. I cycle through emotions, generally feeling lost while doing so. I write my way out of it, in to it or around it and then I can get on with it.

To be honest, I was going to close up shop this year – I was going to proclaim 2012 the year of actually living, experiencing the things I “pin” or bookmark. I was going to revamp into being the Doer I started out as. Then I wanted to write about it.

I’ve gone away from the ultra vulnerable topics and headed into the “what works” sphere of writing.

It’s time to be vulnerable again. Naked on paper. It might very well be a repeat of what we’ve all read before – only this time? I’m committed to finding the alternative. Finding the way through it.

I need to refocus on my health as I’ve been officially diagnosed as Diabetic. I need to refocus on my faith, on our family, our future and not so much a destination or even the journey there (that was the year of fluid, I’m over it) but more on (in, actually) one thing at a time.

Once you think about it, it seems silly that the concept of one day at a time is something to strive for, but the simplicity in it is just that. I live in a world where now is the new then. Always something better, bigger, different, more, new. What about the laugh lines, wrinkles and worn in boots? Those didn’t happen overnight – it took one smile, one joke, one lovers kiss. It took walking the beaten path and hiking on mountains. It took building and tearing down. Crafting, gluing, sewing and holding. Those moments are the ones to live for.

We’ll just see how this goes.

Sushi at six.one.six and lettuce wraps and a shared plate at Pf Changs. Also? The Wall of Chocolate. Try it. No, really.

I started the day with fluffy hair. Yes, fluffy. I ended the day with some makeup tips – a glass of red and flatter hair.

Concealer? How have I never heard of this before?

We were upgraded to the Concierge level as a hotel guest at the JW which meant we had access to a special lounge with free food and drinks and amazing views.

I get a little anxious about spending time doing … well, nothing. I like to go and then go some more and then keep going. So after falling over in bed at 2:30 am Friday night and waking up a mere 6 1/2 hours later at nine I was ready to shower, apply new make up tips, put on some shoes and head out. To what? No one knows. But I was ready to DO something.

Instead I stayed in my PJ’s, sans bra and makeup and socks and laid in bed with some of my best friends and talked the morning away. We searched online for a few things, giggled. Talked about being hungry but ended up being lazy and finally made our way to the concierge lounge for breakfast.

Literally minutes too late for the feast – we quickly stole as much leftover bread as we could, managed to find where they kept the jams and special baby jars of exquisite toppings and ate a breakfast of laughter, peanut butter toast and renewal.

I haven’t had so much fun being in the moment in a long time. Fresh coffee was finally put out and my morning was complete. No matter what we did the rest of the day I was content, I finally slowed down. My mind stopped. I opened up to the conversations, my ears popped to the topics and something inside of me decided to wake up.

Maybe the part of me that wants to keep going? Because for a while now I’ve been going, for sure, but wanting to? Not so much. Not a cry for help or a danger zone, just … just … floating.

And it feels good to be here. Finally.

And I never actually sent them out.

I do have my favorites though. I’m just drawn to some of my photos – not because they’re amazing photos to anyone else … but because they mean something to me. Or better yet, make me feel.

Here are just a few (ok a lot) of the photos I think I’ll print some day and hang on my office wall. Big ones.

Eclectic.

Want one? Which one?? I’ll make it available.

What makes you stop, stare and remember something? Some of these photos make me feel like I can put something into action: accomplish! But not hurried, just allowed. They’re whispers for me.

If it’s not a photo for you – what is it? A note that you keep around? I have a hand written note from my {step}dad who passed away. His handwriting alone will bring tears to my eyes – but the words those letters make are etched on my heart. I’ll always feel special when I see his typeface. Or is it a piece of fabric? A pattern? A custom drawing or something your child made for you? What is it that you surround yourself with that when you see it, feel it, touch it – it rises to greet you, too?

He’s kind of fun. I was just talking to a friend about how our dad’s have this passion for aviation and how they had that passion when they were our age now.

As a mom we’re often told that our passion must be our children. Who’s telling us we can still be anything we want to be when we grow up? And should we be telling the same tale to them?

I was missing music.

I remember calling Aaron and just saying – I don’t care any more. I need our crap out of storage and my speakers on the wall. I just need music.

Which felt like I was relieving the pressure for the first time. For a year living upstairs everything we did had an audience.

Exhale.

Privacy is a big deal to me, odd because so much of my life is online and available – which induces hiding and blah blah blah!

I want to be invisible. I want to escape.

Music makes me feel like I am, like I can. And apparently, makes a house a home too.

So, what are you listening to? What does music do for you?

Yet here I am writing an entire article on how out of balance I feel or rather – how gaining balance is quite an upsetting phenomenon. Some times. Like right now.

I’m always so surprised when my chiropractor points out how stressed I am. Always followed with the question: What’s new in your life?

Uh? We moved. Again.

Uh? We didn’t get the house. Again.

Uh? *blink blink*

I am numb. Being overwhelmed and stressed out has completely shut me down. I have memory loss issues and obviously battling the stress-weight issue, my health in general is down because the last few months of crazy are anything but a balanced existence.

Yet I stroke the life-boat of my family in the ocean of assurance hoping I’m heading towards land.

I feel like our emergency flares went bad when we decided to jump ship and swim with everything we thought valuable strapped to our backs.

We won’t drown! Keep swimming!

Do not deploy that life-boat yet, just 100 more yards.

And we hit a sandbar. We’re safe and finally gaining strength but our supplies are limited to the things we saved. The things we thought we needed so badly. We forgot to pack tents, clean water and food to get us through. Now we have a time frame on a sand bar with no sustainability and we’re still waiting for someone (something?) to shout “Now! Go!”.

Turns out my bodies Fight or Flight mentality is well aware of our surroundings and only when I’m asked am I conscious of them as well.

Otherwise happy to pretend this sandbar is exactly what we need. Tricking myself into believing that a healthy root system of a strong oak will settle wonderfully into the soil that can hardly hold us.

And I can see both sides winning – but I’m tired of convincing the loser of the moment mentality to keep your chin up. One of these days I’m going to forget who woke up first inside of me: The we’re going to make it side or The barely getting through it side.

And then what?