Torin

I welcomed my beautiful nephew into the world on Friday.Be still my heart!

work and dreams

Last night, Matt and I pulled up our prolific cucumber plants, harvested our one butternut squash and the rest of our chives. Then we added some minerals, tilled, and planted a cover crop of barley in one of our gardens. Barley should add nitrogen to the soil over the winter and make it ripe (is that a pun? :) for the spring garden next year. Then, we did a second round of planting in our newest garden, so we can stagger the harvest times. In went cauliflower, carrots, kale, more leeks, and some brocoli. We plan to add garlic on Wednesday.

Matt and I get along best when we’re working together toward a mutual goal. I have a sneaking suspicion that if we manage to have a farm one day it will be really good for our marriage. Finding pictures like these on pinterest, just fuels the perseverance we must have now with our time, finances, and decisions. I almost crave my own land, but there’s a lot of steps to take first. I get tired of the baby steps. I have to be reminded what is at the end of the long winding road. I have to keep hope. I have to allow dreams to resurrect: dreams of secret garden doors, meals eaten outside, scents of dirt and sun, aching muscles, and long days of labor next to my husband. Somedays I feel like it will only ever be a dream. But even then, oh! what a wonderful dream.

Backpacking in Yosemite

I haven’t cropped and fixed the pictures yet, but here are my two favorites for some instant gratification. This is my friend Lori representing us, with heavy packs, traveling from that valley floor to the top nether regions of the mountains. It was a brutal climb but my new backpack held up great. At the top, another little valley nestled in between two walls of granite, and me stooped early morning next to a stream to filter water. I won’t insult it with cliche superlatives, it was simply: beautiful.

I know...

Most of you have probably stopped reading. Why? Because there was nothing to read. (I know, so logical).

And now you wonder if I’m tempting you with a cruel morsel or an appetizer with promises of a coming meal. I can’t really tell you. I don’t know…that.

I can tell you I bought a dress, a really cool dress. One that is a size too small. It has been sitting on my dresser, with the receipt, awaiting replacement. I left it there when I hoisted on a pack of survival gear and marched proudly into Yosemite with two friends. I stressed over weather, bears, elevation, pain in my calves, rations of food, and water supply. My body smelled, my hair was gnarly, and the people I passed (mostly guys) gave me major props.

I’ll admit, the props were nice, seriously nice, as the pain grew worse, the vista’s more beautiful and the mind more doubtful (was I crazy?!). Yet, at the end of it all, I didn’t want the props or the pictures. I wanted my husband.

With facebook and blogs and pinterest, it’s more possible than ever to compare myself to others and seek validation in a tangible way (‘likes’, ‘comments’, ‘pings’). It’s easier than ever to find and press the “cool button”. My dress is just another password in a long line I’ve collected to get “in” the world around me.

But as vestiges of my college days filter through my memory, I wonder if, like the backpacking trip, I’m caught up in the props while missing something very different. In the crash-course of wilderness survival, life lessons often crystallize very nicely. But not here in the real world.

I suspect that easy access to the coolness of others has slowly distracted me. I pour energy into comparison and acquisition and reconstruction of my life according to others. I used to pour energy into being a good friend, into the act of relating. Have I subtlety become obsessed with my own image at the expense of others?

It’s more complicated, of course, than just a switch of focus. Relating to others has become more difficult as the adult world with it’s distance, schedules, and commitments, tear us from the easy proximity of college dormitories and shared walks to the cafeteria or roommates across the apartment hallway. Relating now is popcorn style, once a week here or there. Everyone seems fine with it. My own husband doesn’t seem to require much relating to be content. So why not fill up all the holes with things that look sharp or function well or garner me props/likes/comments/pins, a way to make everything feel valuable?

Well, because I KNOW the better way. I’ve been there before. I just don’t know quite how to make it work in this new post-college/married/electronic world in which I find myself. Perhaps the best way to start is to return the dress and to continue to search for the right ‘yes’ and the right ‘no’. Even if those ways are small, I think together they’ll begin to make a difference.