Come, Little One
37
Today is my birthday. I’m 37. I’ve never had a hard time with a birthday until this year. I feel like 37 is so close to 40. And 40 is so close to 50 and 50 is so close to 60 and then Joe interrupts me to tell me he’ll just go ahead and call the morgue in the morning.
I haven’t done anything yet. I want to do so much stuff and I feel like I’m running out of time. I need to create stronger bonds with my children. I’m disappointed that I’m still overweight. My hair is too short. I still have acne. I’ve barely scratched the surface of the web social networking that I want to be a part of creating.
My birthday is always so close to New Year’s that I most often than not confuse the two with all the resolutions in my head. My birthday ends up being a day of promises made to myself that hardly ever are kept. But this year….this year it’s worse.
So for the rest of the day I’m going to do my darndest to try and feel positive. Wish me luck.
Photo Contest!
We’re having our first contest over at Flawed but Authentic. Go and enter!
Christmas Baskets 2007
Yes, I KNOW that Christmas is over but I didn’t post about the baskets we made this year so you’ll have to endure and pretend it’s a few weeks ago.
I made some lip balm. For more info I suggest Not Martha and Blue Arts. Both of them have spent time creating recipes and extra info for people like me and you.
I made an army of little mice ornaments out of kisses and felt and yes – googly eyes. It took forever and I will not be repeating that craft anytime soon or ever.
The fudge was probably the easiest thing to make. I use the 5-minute recipe that just uses chocolate chips and sweetened condensed milk and you’re done in a flash. (I can’t find the original recipe but here is a wreath that Rachel Ray makes that is basically the same one if you use only chocolate chips instead.)
The chocolate dipped pretzels were fast, too. I used jimmies, red sugar and chopped pecans to coat the chocolate.
These little paper ornaments were sent out to a few friends. They were easy to make and so pretty on the tree.
I used watercolor and inks to create the trees on the cards. I like how they turned out. It’s watercolor paper that I cut to fit the fronts of pre-made cardstock cards.
Joe made these nice tree magnets using watercolor and business card papers and magnets that are pre-cut for that size.
And last but not least, we included a bookmark that was inspired by Jen Lemen‘s work. I love her downloadable prints. She gave her permission for me to pull together a smaller size for a bookmark to give to family and friends for Christmas.
Not shown for this year was a CD of our favorite Christmas music, some cheese, crackers and salami and Jelly Bellys. Next year, I predict that the lipbalm will be back as will the chocolate things.
Lunch With Diablo Cody
If you’ve seen Juno, you know what a great writer she is. She was also a lovely lunch companion. Our conversation went the gamut and I’m very pleased to have met her. She’s the type of person that is filled with compassion while discussing sensitive subjects and also notices the Hot, Sweet Mustard rich with honey produced by The Beaver Company on the table. It’s a tangy squeeze. I read her book last night. Quite entertaining.
Diablo blogs in a few places. I can’t find her MySpace one, (I found it) but here is the older one at CityPages.
While I Was Out
Christmas came and went as well as New Year’s Day and while they are important days to me, there is one day that came and passed that I didn’t acknowledge that burns in my fingertips to be noticed. That day is my wedding anniversary. Three years ago on the 21st, Joe and I decided to drive to Vegas and ask a midget in a bad wig and too much makeup to integrate our programs together and create a new product – a better product – a life-long product called Marriage.
This past year has been one of the hardest years of my life and subsequently caused quite a bit of strain on our relationship from time to time. Jobs have been hard. The situation with my kids has been hard. Our living quarters have been hard. And when you seriously consider suicide as an option, you know that life in general is hard.
I think it’s safe to say I wouldn’t have made it through this past year without Joe. Even that might be being a bit too generous to my own abilities as I’m leaving out the part that on more than one occasion he’s had to pick me up by my bootstraps and assemble me back together using nothing as a guide except my own distant sighing.
And while I know that I’m more of a partner since the medications have kicked in and I won’t always be having this hard of a time and that there have been times when Joe has needed me in some of the same ways I’ve needed him, I am certainly looking forward to being on equal footing sometime soon.
One night, as we were driving to or fro and discussing one of the many subjects where I feel less than equal and we were getting into that dangerous territory where it’s no longer a discussion and more of a land mine situation where Joe can’t say anything right because my angst is so great, he said, ‘But, Leah, I know all of that – but I love you. I LOVE you. And I don’t think you are hearing me when I say it. I LOVE YOU.’ And something about the way he said it made me stop and pay attention to it. So I thought about it and realized that I wasn’t listening and when I just sat there for a minute and felt his love for me, the rest of everything kind of settled down for a bit and stopped pestering my brain.
Thanks for that, Joe. I feel so incredibly lucky to have you for my partner. Thanks for three years of marriage and five years of being together, that while hard and trying have alternately been wonderful and worth it and mostly have been full of love. Thanks so much for that. I promise to keep trying and keep keeping my body on so I can keep trying. I love you and I’m looking forward to what our 4th year brings to us.
Hello
No, no, I’m not sick anymore. I left that up there for far too long. It was a nice Christmas and a good New Years and I barely had to blow my nose.
Yes, I realize the new header is not up for January yet. Look! A new header!
And how are you?
Sick As A Dog
That would be me – sick as a dog. I thought I’d been clever enough to get by this season without getting sick by drinking tons of those EmergenC drink packets. The kids had it over Thanksgiving and then Joe had it a few weeks ago and Ha! I had nothing! I was well, well, well! And then sometime around 2pm on Friday I felt the cold, hard fingers of a fierce cold in the works. Today I’d just like to chop my nose and ears off.
Because I want to go back to bed and moan with intermittent sneezing, I’m keeping this short. 1) there are two rings for sale in the store. They are all that is left of this batch. 2) all the tshirts have been mailed. If you don’t get yours this week, then use the tracking number I sent you or let me know. I love mine. I hope you love yours, too.
Adios, Amigos!
Snow and Trip Recap
Here is what it looked like when we went to go get Joe from the airport on Friday night.
Here is what it looked like the next morning.
We drove home all day Sunday. I was a little worried about the weather but as we approached Southern Utah, I relaxed and the snow disappeared. I don’t like driving in the snow. I don’t like anyone else driving me in the snow. I tend to get white-knuckled and spend a lot of time perched on the edge of the seat, eyes opened slightly too wide and asking inane questions like, ‘You doing alright? Are we almost there? Was that a skid? Are those people going to hit us? Are you doing alright?’ I’m surprised Heather didn’t slap me a little or send me to the back seat to sit with Chuck the night she drove me to go pick up Joe from the airport. Instead she just kept smiling, patting my arm and telling me that everything was going to be fine.
One of the highlights of the trip was getting to play with Leta. It’s not often I get invited into the world of a 3.5 year old and I soaked it up. Too bad I was so easily replaced. Right after Joe got there, he was invited to play circus and be the official Ariel DVD watcher with her. Oh, the fickle heart. I was crushed for a minute but watching Joe play with Leta was almost as fun as playing with her myself.
At one point, Leta grabbed her tape recorder and a tape to show off her dancing. Imagine my surprise when the tape turned out to be ‘Show A Little Love‘ by Janene Brady, featuring songs like Maybe You Laughed and The Words You Speak. I don’t know how to adequately describe these songs but, imagine if you will, the 9 year old version of myself wearing white roller skates with green wheels skating to this tape in the boom box as loud as it would go in the front yard with ALL MY HEART and feeling deep down in my toes how important it was to never tell a lie because you DON’T KNOW WHERE YOU WILL END UP except it will BE IN H E DOUBLE TOOTHPICKS. Some of these songs inspired crying spells where I was filled with so much emotion I couldn’t speak. Because some kids laughed at some other kids. WAAAAAAAAAAAH.
Anyway, I watched Leta do some excellent dancing and I sang along to all the songs which I discovered I still know by heart. Maybe next time she’ll let me dance with her.
Another trip highlight was the coffee. Jon and Heather have the best coffee machine in the whole world. It comes with its own attachments that foam the milk, shovel the drive and create world peace. I can tell you what’s high on my Christmas list.
But the best parts of the entire trip were the conversations. They were many and varied and long and sometimes deep and it was very satisfying to get to talk and talk and talk and listen and listen and listen. I miss that. We need some friends that live closer than Northern Utah.
Rings Part 2
Here are the finished rings. The large one is my favorite and I’m going to keep it. That stone was particularly difficult and Robin had to help me (mostly do the whole thing) finish it. So instead of feeling bad that I couldn’t hack it on that one, I’m going to look at it like a gift from her and just appreciate it.
Now that I’ve done this, I have a whole new appreciation for the craftsmanship that it takes and I’ll never balk at spending 80$ for a nicely crafted ring again.
Rings Part 1
Today my friend taught me how to pick out a stone, create the bezel to fit the stone and solder the bezel to the base. Tomorrow I learn how to finish the rest like trimming and soldering on the finger band. Man, this is much harder than I realized and all my rings are going to sell for a kazillion dollars. Just kidding.
The Drive
I drove to Salt Lake City, Utah today. It took about 12 hours. There wasn’t much snow and what there was of it was next to the road or up on the mountains and not where I was driving so we got along just fine.
As we left Vegas and the smog lifted, I remembered why I like Utah sometimes even though we weren’t there yet. The drive is beautiful starting somewhere around the Virgin River in Nevada and then up through Snow Canyon and farther north into the Utah Valley. Drop dead gorgeous.
I don’t have any photos of the fields of dry, yellow grass along the side of the road mixed with the white snow next to the green dotted hills leading up to the bracing blue sky sporting all shapes and sizes of pink-tinted clouds. And I don’t have a photo of the sky as it turned to dusk that looked like it was on fire for miles and miles, all fierce reds and oranges. You’ll just have to take my word for it – it was beautious.
Tonight I’m so tired that I can barely keep my eyes open and my muscles ache. But it’s all good, baby. It’s all good.