Little Nest

This nest FULL of tiny baby birds is nestled in a wreath on the front door of my parents' house. I squealed like a little girl when my dad showed them to me and couldn't resist hovering long enough to snap a photo - even though I knew my presence there was preventing the mama bird from tending to them. My dad said that he and my mom try not to use the front door these days because every time they do, mama flies away until the coast is clear. While I understand thats how it works.....I guess I don't really understand. Mama says - "ooops! danger is coming - I'm out, babies! fend for yourselves!"? I guess that you can afford to have that kind of laissez faire attitude toward your offspring when you make 5 or 6 at a time.

Meanwhile, our little nest is still loudly, achingly empty. Its been about a year since our last IVF attempt and pregnancy loss. Its amazing how different things feel now and yet how many things are still the same. I am infinitely glad that I am not reliving the sadness and trauma of last April, yet those events still shape and color my world. I have regained a small portion of the confidence and self esteem that infertility robbed from me, but I am not my old self. I don't have to worry about injections and intrusive hormones and devastating phone calls. But I still have an empty bedroom and a gaping hole in my life which separates me from many of my friends and peers and a parent-focused society. I still sometimes take a step back to look at the big picture and can't for the life of me believe this has all really happened to us - that this is real life - that we have to live this reality.

We decided at the close of last year's events to let ourselves heal for a while with no pressure, no expectations, and no foreseeable next steps in our quest for parenthood. We needed to get a few steps outside of the fire before we could think about rebuilding. And now, already, an entire year has passed. Do we feel healed? Ready to move on? I honestly don't know. I expected to feel ready...or not ready...or excited....or just....something. But I still don't feel much of anything besides lost. I desperately want to be a parent but with each day that goes by, the prospect seems more and more far-fetched and fantastic. I often feel old and like I've missed my chance - though logically I understand that this is untrue. But with the artificial milestone of one year passing since the end of our treatments, I feel like its time to pick ourselves up, look to the future, and start living the lives we want to live.

Change

This is a 5 Year Journal post. The goal is to answer a simple journal prompt each day of the year as a real record of daily life in this moment. 

January 6 - Can people change?

Graveyard, Cades Cove, Tennessee

Of course people can change. But I think its really difficult. And I think most people don't change much unless they are forced to by life circumstances. I certainly feel like a different person than the me from 10 years ago.

New Year, New Blog Project

Photo taken by me, Chelsea Market, Manhattan

Confession time: I really haven't been in the mood to write recently. I like the idea of writing every day but when it comes down to it lately, I just keep getting sidetracked by far more important things to do. Things such as: avoiding writing. Basically I'm swamped. But here's the thing - one of my New Years goals is to write at least one meaningful blog post per week. But here's the other thing - another of my New Years goals is to live more simply. What to do?

I hava you answer! (That will look ridiculous unless you're familiar with My Big Fat Greek Wedding. If you're not, you should be.)

The answer is a project I found on Pinterest (which is a black hole of an activity that falls under the category of avoiding writing and that I'd highly recommend!) called 5 Year Journal. It was created by Tami Taylor and featured on the scrap-booking website Get It Scrapped. While I have NO patience for traditional scrap-booking (who knows why my brain says knitting tiny hats with delicate yarn is no problem and cutting out paper and photos is too much work?), I do love the idea of keeping a record of real daily life - for myself and for future generations. I actually think of this blog as a sort of scrapbook - just without the scissors and glue and tape and glitter and whatnot. And really, if you look at this project, it doesn't have to be about scrap-booking at all.

The 5 Year Journal is, essentially, a list of 365 prompts to follow - one question per day. You can write a word, a sentence, a paragraph, or an essay - the idea is to have some record of your day, every day for a year and then start over next year with the same questions. After five years you'll be able to not only look back at the goings-on of years past, you can compare and contrast the entries for the same day year to year and see how time changes your answers to the same questions.

I don't know if I'll do this for five years, but I am intrigued by the idea of having a ready-made prompt every single day to get me started. Knowing that some days, when I'm up for it, I'll write a lot. But other days, when I don't feel like even looking at my Mac (Her name is Mrs. Mackey, by the way - and she is married to Mr. Mackey - Randy's Mac. I know - we rocked it coming up with creative names.) I can answer a question in as little as a word or sentence and instantly have a record for the day.

My plan is to try and do the 5 Year Journal every day. Some days the simple prompt answer will be all I blog. Some days I'll use the prompt as a jumping off point for a more in-depth blog entry that highlights something I would have written about anyway. Sometimes I may tweak a prompt if I feel that it would be more suited to my needs.  Also - I'll be perfectly honest right from the get-go: I will most likely not physically post every day. I may miss a few days or a week and write all those posts at once, back-dating them to the appropriate day. Also, there probably won't be photos for every entry. Its not ideal, but life is busy, and also its my blog and I can do what I want. :)

With no further ado......Let the 5 Year Journal begin!

January 1: What is your number one goal?
See yesterday's post. I think that will suffice as my answer for this prompt!

I will do today's prompt in a separate post. Two posts in one day! Might be a record for me. :)

Encampment

I know I haven't been around much lately, but most of June was a blur for me because of this place. Please enjoy a brief photographic essay on Girl Scout Outreach Day Camp. (Special shout out goes to Miss Sara Marksberry - my trusty side-kick through the somewhat rocky but always entertaining 2nd week!)



In the dining hall - one of the things I love about the camp is the advanced age of many of the structures. Makes me feel like I'm in The Parent Trap. (You know, the real one with Hayley Mills.)











One day for lunch we were served hot dogs. On hamburger buns. I understand that they are the same as a hot dog buns only in a different shape (like spaghetti and penne). But try explaining that with any success to a picky 6 year old who is already leery of the "burn marks" on the nicely grilled dog.





During our second week the camp ranger was setting this up for a group coming in the week after us. We had no idea that we owned such a thing. Now that the cat's out of the bag, I think we might be requesting this next year. I think it would make an excellent home base for the directors :).





One thing at lunch that nearly everyone ate happily. I say nearly everyone because I don't particularly like watermelon. (Please send your hate mail to KimKnowsSheIsUnamericanForDislikingWatermelonAndChocolate@yourmom.com)





Ahh- tie dye. The craft I have a love-hate relationship with. I run the tie dye station every year. And every year I HATE tie dye while I'm setting up the gallons of water that must be carried from the dining hall out to the picnic tables and mixing the endless bottles of dye which gets EVERYWHERE and soaking and wringing out hundreds of t-shirts in the soda ash solution that dries out my hands and comforting a panicked child who just got dye on her pants after she was REPEATEDLY warned not to walk around the table with the dye bottle in hand and finally convincing skeptical girls to WEAR GLOVES only to watch them take the gloves off when finished with their shirt and then dip their hands into the puddles of dye leftover on the tables because it "looked fun". And then the next day I start to forget all of that and begin daydreaming about what dye designs I'll use next year. And when next year rolls around I'll sign up for the fun all over again.







This long and painstaking process which results in to weeks during which we bus girls out to the wilds of camp from their city neighborhoods is so involved and full of stories that I can't even begin to chronicle it all here. But I will leave you with my most potent memory of camp this year - what will affect ME (not just the Work Me). This year we had a very high number of girls who came to camp without something important that they needed. Particularly bathing suits and/or shorts. A tiny little fire cracker of a girl named London told me she forgot her suit the first day so I gave her some shorts and a shirt we had in our "extras" stash to swim in that first day. The next day she told me she forgot her suit AND the clothes I had given her and could she please have some more clothes to swim in. After some digging we learned that she didn't just forget her suit - she doesn't own one. We were able to get her a suit on the third day and when I called her over to give it to her she took one look at it and screamed. "Its PINK! And I can keep it?!?" I nodded yes and the smile she flashed actually gave me goosebumps. She attacked me with a bear hug adding, "my momma's gonna be SO happy!"

While London's reaction was by far the most dynamic, her situation was not particularly unique. We'd notice a girl wearing heavy, too-big jeans (the same pair each day) in 90 degree heat and find out from her leader that she also didn't bring a bathing suit. We'd investigate and learn that she doesn't own a suit OR shorts. In every case we were able to provide the missing clothing article and allow the girls to feel normal - one of the group. Perhaps the most striking situation we had like this was that of Maria. She was about 6 years old, face-meltingly adorable, enthusiastic, teensy-tiny, and spoke very broken English. She came to camp the first day (90 degree high) wearing a a school uniform shirt, school uniform pants, and heavy sneakers that were at least twice as big as her actual feet. We asked her if she had shorts or a t-shirt she could wear the next day but we weren't sure how much she was comprehending. The next day she arrived wearing the same shoes and pants and, instead of a short sleeved uniform shirt she wore a long sleeved turtle neck. We found shorts and a t-shirt for her. And this sort of thing just kept happening - at a rate about 9 times higher than in previous years.

Randy and I were discussing this trend, these girls, and I told him about one of our volunteers who helped us get many of the bathing suits we handed out. She is involved in her city community center and with various social programs where she routinely encounters kids who don't have basic stuff they need (proper shoes, bathing suit, shorts etc.). So she makes it a point in her everyday life to look for kids and teen bathing suits (among other items) at yard sales and thrift stores and whenever she finds them she buys them all up, takes them home and washes them, and maintains a stash to pull from whenever she finds a kid who needs something. We were bowled over by how amazingly simple but potentially life changing this one little act could be. Sure, a bathing suit doesn't sound life changing at first gander. But think about it. Think about being a kid. At a community center with a pool. And you have no bathing suit. Many pools have rules against wearing street clothes in the water. So you're out. Ineligible. You will miss out on all of those experiences so fundamental to childhood in the summer. You will feel alienated and deprived. You will feel different. When you think about it like that, a bathing suit can be life changing. And it just takes someone like me, who makes enough money to buy a bathing suit AND a pool membership AND a trip to Florida to spend pocket change and spare time to make it happen. My question to myself is: Why would I NOT do something like this?!?

I'd Blog.....

I'd blog and tell you about the eventful week we've had, but the estrogen is making me feel like a shell of a person who doesn't care about blogging. I have zero motivation for just about anything, including writing. So instead I think I'll just sit here and stare at the lovely lanterns Randy's parents (and brother and sister) brought over to help bring a bit of brightness to our lives during this dim period. They are helping. :)