By the Bay

Over the weekend we took a nice little two day trip to the Texas coast with Matt's parents... it was a perfect little getaway, and of course I snapped a few photos while we were there.  

I am busy getting work done before an out of town friend arrives this week, so I'll keep this short and sweet today. I have missed blogging lately. Oftentimes while driving in the car or soaking in the bath or working on other things, the urge to write and be creative will hit me, but what's lacking now is the time or perhaps just the desire to make the time. I'm happy to have this space still here for me, though, like an old friend available for a chat over coffee whenever life permits.

Hope you're all having an excellent week...

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Back at the Ranch (+A Wildflower Study)

This past weekend was my first time back at the ranch in over a year... I missed the place, I really did.  Spring is my favorite time there, and I really enjoyed scavenging for wildflowers and documenting each kind I found. Things were a little sparse due to lack of rain in the area lately, but in another couple weeks I bet the place will be overrun with life.

I've learned to put my camera down lately and just enjoy moments for the most part (or, rather, I've had to adopt this practice lately to save myself even more editing than what's on my plate regularly for my business!), but here's just a few more shots from our weekend...

^ sifting dirt for arrowheads (we didn't find any... bummer) ^

^ do you spy anything slithery in this picture...? ^

^ these antlers are exactly where the buck that shed them left 'em! ^

"Blackie" the friendly piggie and her babies

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Thoughts on parenting

Last week I had the opportunity to photograph a birth, and it was the most beautiful thing and has absolutely left me changed - to have witnessed such a monumental thing and also such a basic thing of life. Wow. I can now say I have seen someone be born and I have also seen someone die. Someone entering this world and someone leaving it. Weird and amazing and full circle and certainly makes you think about mortality. Anyway.

Back in December I reached the ripe old age of 27, and as of last month, Matthew is 34. And we are childless. Not due to infertility, though I know that could potentially be an issue down the road, especially since my eggs aren’t getting any younger and all that. Nay, we are childless because, up until now, we have not been ready for a child, for various reasons that I will not delve into here today.

Family members have been reasonably patient and non-pressuring in regards to our child-free-status, until recently when Matthew’s grandmother expressed what has likely been on everyone else’s mind. We were at Christmas, and I was holding a cousin’s baby while Matthew sat beside me watching it cautiously. His grandma walked by, stopped short, raised her eyebrows, and said, “Do you need instructions on how to make one of those?” Our anniversary card from her this year also contained similar sentiments. A spitfire, that woman, gotta love her.

The truth of the matter, though, is that we are both so torn about children and parenthood and all that it entails. Having a child involves a certain amount of dying to self, which means that at some point in the process I, for one, would likely have to relinquish my status as the most selfish person I know.

Also, I already have trouble completing all my tasks for the day, between running my business and running a home and running a meager  social life, and if we were to add a child into that mix, I know something would have to give. It would most likely be my business, which makes me really, really sad. Because it fulfills me and gives me so much joy and confidence as a human being.  Everything I read about motherhood seems to say that your children become your everything. You live them and breath them from dawn to dusk and then all throughout dusk, too, until it’s dawn again. There seems to be such little time for anything else outside of parenting, and that prospect has just not been attractive to us so far.

I guess I just want to be comfortable and at peace with how my role will change when we become parents. There is nothing wrong with being a mom without much time for anything else. It’s natural and normal and good. But is it good for me? That’s what I’m trying to figure out.

Truth is, I have baby fever something fierce, and if I got pregnant tomorrow, I’d be beyond excited. But that dying to self part? Not too excited about it. And I wonder… can you be a mom, and a good one, and still have time for your own interests? And still maintain a strong identity outside of your children? And still run a successful business? Or is it one of those things where there’s like three categories but you can only pick two?  You can’t have all three without making major sacrifices in each department?

All I know is that I’m happier now than I have ever been. More sure of my direction and, well, myself. My relationship with my husband has finally come to a place of peace and evening out, and we kind of just want to enjoy that for a while. So for now, we remain childless. And a bit terrified of being parents. But I think we both know that our family is missing someone, or multiple someones. We know we’re on the edge of some vast precipice, but just haven’t quite gotten to the part where you take the leap.

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8 PM on Thursdays

Oh man, you guys... I am writing this on Thursday evening, just after a phone call with my sweet Grandpa. Over the holidays he was in town with us from his home in Oregon, and I had the opportunity to listen and write down his answers to about the first half of the questions in this book. I had given the books to him and my Grandma each for Christmas last year, only she passed away suddenly in March, as many of you know, and I will never get to hear or read those priceless answers. But on Christmas Eve this year we took out his Grandpa book, and I started to ask and listen and write, and where before he had been incredibly, tangibly "low" as he faced his first Christmas in sixty-some years without the love of his life, we watched and noticed as his spirits were visibly lifted during and after answering the questions. He was telling his story. He was revisiting memories he'd had no cause to revisit in maybe years or decades. He was being listened to, and cared about.

During the time my Grandpa was there staying at my mom's, Matthew and I moved out and into our new home, and a few days later we had them over for dinner at the new place.

"Are you going to interrogate me again tonight?" My Grandpa asked hopefully, and I laughed. "Absolutely!" Again, it was so sweet to see how much he seemed to be enjoying this.

But we didn't get to finish the book, so I offered to call him every Thursday evening at 8 PM my time and 6 PM his, and we'd go over a few of the questions each chat. His home phone in Oregon must have rang at about 5:59, and he picked up after barely two rings... most likely waiting by the phone.

"Hello?" He said.

"Hi Grandpa!"

"Jen?"

"Yep, it's me! Ready for your interrogation?"

And you guys, I cannot even tell you how much it touched me tonight, to chat for 22 minutes with a man who should have died in the Korean War, but didn't... a man without whom I wouldn't exist. I can't tell you how much it touched me to hear him re-tell the story of how he met my Grandma. How he first laid eyes on her in the hallway of their Passaic Valley, New Jersey high school, after he got back from the war. She was with at least three other girls, he said, but he locked eyes on her. "If it's possible to fall in love at first sight," he told me, his voice breaking as it often does, "I fell in love. She was it, my whole life."

There's probably about a month's worth of Thursday phone calls left, but I don't know, I might just make up my own questions so it lasts longer. It is such an honor and a privilege to take that time. I know it's helping him through an incredibly difficult time, and somehow, it's helping me too. We so often live in such a world of ME ME ME, so focused on our own issues and endeavors and hurts and pains and joys, that we forget to reach out and be there for the people who were put in our lives to be there for. Don't ignore your grandparents - make time for them, get to know them, love on them. I wish I had done that more for my Grandma, but I'm content to know she knew that I adored her, and it really feels like the right thing to do, to help care for my Grandpa's heart in her absence.

Happy Friday, my friends, and thank you as always for listening to my thoughts... :)

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Christmas 2013

Hey hey, how was your Christmas this year? The past week has been a complete whirlwind. I started my meager Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve (about a day after getting all caught up on photography work), then of course celebrated with family on Christmas day, and the day after Christmas we finally, FINALLY closed on our house, and have been moving in ever since! (follow along on Instagram for updates in real time!) More on that later, because right now I just want to take a time out to look back on Christmas this year. 

To be honest, I almost feel like we skipped the whole Christmas season because I didn't have much time to enjoy it and because so much of what makes me feel in the spirit of things centers around my own home... which, obviously, we weren't in yet during the entire season. However, it was certainly an unforgettable holiday spend with people we love, and that's something to be grateful for.

Some in my family were hurting this year - it was my mom's first Christmas without her mom, my sweet Grandma, and my Grandpa's first Christmas without his sweetheart in over 60 years. The holidays have a way of bringing out the most blissful happiness but also the deepest despair at times, don't they? They tend to remind you both of what you have and what you miss. A strange jumble of emotions.

I can't tell you how excited I am, though, about the coming year ahead. I cannot wait to have my home and office all set up and ready to show you, and I can't wait for the work that will be done there, both professionally and personally.

Enjoy your day and week ahead, my friends!

morning at my mom's...

and evening at Matt's parents'....

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From my family to yours...

Wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas from me and mine... 

May your holiday be beautiful, peaceful, and bright. See you again after Christmas!

(these photos were taken just this morning... apparently fall doesn't arrive fully in Texas until Christmas! :)

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The most pictures of Matthew smiling you'll ever see, AKA law school graduation

Folks, it was a happy, happy day on Saturday... a milestone, really. Matthew graduated law school, half a year early, and with honors... and we couldn't be more proud. Law school is one of those things you apparently don't appreciate the magnitude and the difficulty of unless you've experienced it yourself. I, obviously, have NOT experienced it myself, but I had a very tiny taste of what my husband went through when I would read his papers, during which time I'd have actual flashes of jumping off a very tall building just to make it stop.

I remember sitting down at the kitchen table of our old home, over three years ago, having the law school discussion for the first time. I was taken aback because I didn't know it was Matthew's ambition to go to law school and because he had a great career going already, but education is always a good thing, and I DID know I had married a man with big ambition. So he began to study for the LSAT, applied to numerous law schools, and at that time our future was very much up in the air... as, in reality, it's been ever since and continues to be. We lived apart for two years since he studied in a different city and came home only on weekends, if at all, and Matthew himself has lived in five different places - at our old home, at an apartment for a year, with a friend, with his parents, and now with my mom. He's really the one who's done most of the sacrificing. And all this we did because we know the power of further education and it's ability to transform who you are as a person and how your life plays out, and because a few years is only the blink of an eye in the grand scheme.

During the time Matthew was hard at study and mostly away, I had to occupy myself somehow and also help pay our bills, so a little business was born that has now absolutely saved us financially and given me so much happiness and purpose. So all in all, law school has been a great thing and the beginning of many other great things, I'm sure of it.

Thank you for all your hard work, husband of mine... cannot wait to see what the future holds for us.

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Something Old

The last day of the Blogtember Challenge! We're about to be back to our regularly scheduled programming around here, and I'm OK with that. As per usual, I struggled with committing to a whole month-long deal, but it was good for me, and obviously I HAD to see it through, since I hosted! I had so much fun working through the prompts with many of you this month, and I hope you did too. :) And now, for the last day. Share a photo of something old. Maybe something that has personal history for you, that was passed down to you, and that has special meaning to you. Tell us about it and why it's special.

This was my sweet late grandma's HIGH SCHOOL ring. My mom brought it back after the funeral along with some other keepsakes of my Grandma's, and I claimed this one. I wear it almost every single day, and think of her whenever I put it on. "Peg" is engraved on the inside, which makes it even more special and personal... I feel a little closer to her when I wear it. It gives me courage and peace when I'm feeling anxious about something, and I love to imagine her going about her day some 60 years ago, wearing this ring that I now wear, never imagining how much it would mean to her granddaughter when she was gone. Love you and miss you so much, Grandma. Always.