September First

Last night an expected storm rolled across the valley, and since we live high up on the East Bench, we were privy to it's every move. The lightning and thunder started first, all the kids who normally habitate the basement, tore upstairs to inform us of The LIGHTNING! and The THUNDER!!! as if we'd somehow missed it in our bedroom full of echo-ey wood floors and single paned windows.

It rained all night, and it's hailing as I type this. I love this kind of weather. It's so fitting for the mood I've been in lately. Not broody or depressed, but moreso introspective. I've been doing a personal overhaul, one I have kept private except for a couple of squeaks to my sister or cousins, although Mike is fully, and probably painfully, aware. He's sat up nights til 3 am when we both have to be up in the morning by 6, listening to me, laughing when I laugh at myself, crying when I cry at myself. There have been nights that I can't sleep until he will come over to the bed from the computer he's working at and rub my back as he tells me stories about anything. "Just talk..." That's what I say to him. And he does...about anything, everything, nothing. It works, and I can sleep again.

I'm not particularly beautiful, I'm not exceptionally talented on the violin like my sister, I'm no world traveling dancer like my other sister, I'm no lawyer like my brother, I'm not an eternally patient mother like my sister in law, I don't own a beautiful home like my sibs and cousins, I'm not the cleanest person in the world, I'm not a scriptorian like my mother, I don't complete every goal I set like my father, but here are a few things I am:

• I'm a hopeless romantic, often thinking during the day about the second the lights are out and Mike and I can snuggle in our bed watching tv
• I do enjoy a good laugh
• I talk to myself often, sometimes cracking myself up
  
• I invent recipes nearly every night, and then forget to write them down
• I ignore my neighbors at the store, for some strange heartless reason
• I rarely answer the phone during the day
• I drive my kids to school and sports sometimes with no shoes on
• I make my kids go into the store for me for this very reason
• I do breathing excercises, meditate and eat ice instead of taking medication for anxiety and depression
  
• My favorite bedtime treat is a huge cup of ice and my 2 favorite down pillows
• I sometimes panic when I lose a little bit of weight because I don't have the money to buy new "skinny" clothes
• I am so good at putting on a good face/sounding peppy on the phone to others, that it's frustrating quite often because I don't know how to tell people how I really feel
  
• Mike and I talk about moving to another country/to the South/East Coast all the time
• I was always willing to be in front of a crowd/outgoing as a child and a teenager, but now I have to force myself to go to places where there will be lots of people.
  
• I love the smell of coffee
  
• I sometimes love the smell of cigarettes
• I wish I could bottle the smell of Mike's skin
• My bedroom is our "family room". In the last 3 years, our kids have found comfort in being able to always come in our room, and it's stuck. We don't really use our family rooms, we all just gather in our bedroom.
  
• I love that.
• Until it's midnight and they won't leave.
• I have a horrible double chin, no matter how thin I get.
• I prefer cloudy days over sunny ones
• I get chills when I walk into a bookstore or a cool antique shop
• I have a fear of sleeping outside that only has surfaced over the last 3-4 years
• I get anxious if I am awake so late that I see the sun rising
• I adore dew on flowers
• I like white twinkly christmas lights up somewhere in my house, at any time of year, most often in my bedroom (when we moved in here, there were already some here! that were for my Grandmother when she was still living here. She's extraordinarily old, and still very alert, so they put up some lights for her to admire. My cousin Kjersten said to take them down with an "ew!" face...but I love them secretly and would have put some up anyway if they hadn't been here)