Dirty Laundry

Yesterday, it happened.  It happens all too often.  I suddenly remember a load of laundry I washed about 18 hours earlier.  In a mad rush to the dryer, I pray that a rewashing isn't in my future.  Flinging open the dryer with hope in my heart, I pick up a damp t-shirt.  Burying my nose in it, I start sniffing.  Hard.

Okay, it smells mostly like laundry detergent with a hint of mildew.  I stand there feeling each breath in my lungs while I make an important decision.  Rewash it or throw it in the dryer?  Dryer.  The dryer wins almost every time.  Shamelessly, the cold clothes are thrown into the dryer with no regrets from this girl.

Honestly, I'm just being resourceful.  I'm saving money AND water because of this decision.  

But this is so much more than just clean (dirty-ish) laundry.  I view my whole world wrapped up in this wet pile of clothes.

Here's one of my daughter's pink onesies that will undoubtedly deliver some dehydrated peas once I open the dryer.  Food loves being stuck to my daughter's clothes. Oh look.  Her cute, little jeggings with ruffles.  Old Navy, you win, again.  Her little bum is just so adorable in those!  The love I have for my baby daughter makes me ache.  Those cheeks will never be kissed enough.

Next, I see an array of superhero socks from my little boy.  Why are his feet still growing?  Shouldn't this process slow down a bit?  Just look at his Mickey Mouse shirt.  I love how he looks in it.  I love hugging him while he wears it, wondering just how I could adore someone so much.  Please, little boy, stop growing so fast!

Most of the wash consists of my husband's clothes, mostly because he's bigger than the rest of us and his clothes take up more room.  Hey, you.  My first love.  Remember when it was just our laundry?  Just ourworkout t-shirts and shorts?  You've always had a most impressive t-shirt collection.  We never separated our colors...and still don't.  We live on the wild side.

Remember how excited we were when I brought home baby clothes from our first shower?  We loved seeing those tiny clothes mixed-up with ours.

I used to wash our work clothes using the gentle cycle and air dried them.  Now, my work clothes are t-shirts and sweats.  Your wardrobe has changed a bit too, just as your job has changed.  You can learn a lot from just looking at someone's laundry.

Like I said, I can see my whole world wrapped up in this laundry.  Sure, there are chunks of food that fall out of the dryer when the door's opened.  Maybe I feel buried in laundry because it's never ending!  That's okay.  Sadly, I know this won't last forever.  My children's clothes will continuously grow, as will they.  My work clothes will someday be dressy again because I won't need to be a stay-at-home mom.  Who would I stay home with?  Eventually, my kids will leave for college and take their laundry with them...hopefully.  The time I'm in the now, it lasts as long as a breath. 

So laundry, here's to you.

Here's to all the pink onesies, ruffled jeggings, Mickey Mouse t-shirts and The Avengers socks.  You won't be in my laundry too much longer and that saddens me. But that's okay.  That's how life goes.  Here's to my husband's weightlifting shirts and my running shorts.  You were together in the beginning and you'll be together in the end.  That brings me joy.

No Fear

I've successfully managed to avoid blogging for over two years.  I'm an overachiever, I know.  Every excuse to not blog popped into my head.  I'm tired, I have to finish the laundry, there's a bird outside, I should really start dinner.

My husband occasionally brought up the subject of blogging.  My excuse, for him, was time.  There's just not enough of it.  Well, he didn't believe me and I knew it sounded lame.  I finally ran out of excuses and asked myself why I truly stopped blogging.  I dug deep, cleared away all the excuses and found the root of the problem.

Fear.

Fear is the reason most of us avoid doing anything.  I'm a private person and am fearful of exposing my emotions and thoughts to others.  How horrific!  I fear people will read my writing and think, Yikes, go back to second grade!

Hi fear.  I'm facing you right now.  Arms wide open and ready to conquer you. 

Fear is a daily occurrence, whether we acknowledge it or not. If my two year old is scared, I tell him it's okay.  It's alright to be afraid as long as you face your fears.  It's completely normal to be afraid. 
It's time I have the same expectations for myself as I do my son.  What kind of example am I showing him by avoiding tasks that I'm afraid of?

So here I am on a rainy Wednesday afternoon.  My two kids are napping and I'm blogging.  Scratch that. One kid is napping and my teething daughter just started screaming.  Either way, I'm blogging!

 While chewing my nails and having butterflies in my stomach, I'll admit,  I've certainly missed this feeling.  It's waiting for the gun to boom before a cross- country race, the silence of a gymnasium before shooting a free throw.  I love the fear.  This is a fun type of fear. 

Remember those No Fear t-shirts?  I bought one for my eighth grade boyfriend that said something like, "Time doesn't stop me.  I stop time. No Fear."  That doesn't make sense but it definitely said something along those lines.  Let's get a whole truck filled with those shirts and roll around in them because I'm facing my fears and blogging and my palms are sweaty, mouth is dry and it feels so right!

It's a Beautiful Life

Every eight years or so, my husband and I put massive amounts of pressure on ourselves.  I don't think we mean to, it just happens.
For example, let's flashback to August 2005.  We were as happy as humming birds dancing around a warm flower.  On July 30th, we said our wedding vows at a small chapel in the mountains of Gatlinburg, Tennessee and then spent our honeymoon in a log cabin.  While driving back to Indiana, we realized we had nowhere to live and I had no job.
That's okay, why sweat the small stuff, right?
During that eight hour drive, we sang a ridiculous amount of Third Eye Blind, ate too much fudge and found out that someone accepted our offer on a house and I received a teaching job at a middle school.
There was still some bad news.  We couldn't close on the house for a month which meant we had no home for a month. No offense to our parents, but we didn't want to shack up with them for our first month of marriage.
No problem.
We had connections to someone that rented us an apartment for a month.  Not a luxurious apartment by any means, but nonetheless, an apartment.
Phew.
Now, let's fast forward a bit.
August 2013.
Here we go again.
Right around the middle of August, we sold our house.  We'd had it on the market on and off for five years and finally, we sold it.  So exciting!
Well, except for the fact that I was nine months pregnant, just finished a beautiful nursery for our baby, and my husband and I decided we would definitely stay put in this house for a year.  You see, it took us removing our house from the market for someone to show interest in it.  Go figure.
We decided to accept their offer and look for somewhere to live.  I mean, it took us five years to sell it.
Why would we pass up the chance?
Not a solid plan.
An adventurous one.
Two weeks later, I gave birth to our beautiful son.  We were too distracted to think about packing and finding another house.  Luckily, the buyers couldn't close for a while so we stayed in our house for another six weeks.
But those six weeks went fast.  Way too fast.
At the end of the six weeks, we took about two days to pack up our belongings, mostly into trash bags, and moved in with my parents.
That's right.  I'd love to tell my 23 year old self, "Oh, by the way, in a little over eight years, you're going to move back in with your parents.  Also you have a baby."  Ha!
Our plan was to live with my parents until we found a house.  But we weren't finding any houses we liked so let's throw another wrench into our plans!
My husband interviewed for a job in Chicago and was a final candidate for it!
So then, our new plan was to wait until he heard about the job.
Funny, the business world seems to move quickly until they make a decision that hugely affects your life.
They took their sweet time deciding.
We were going on two months of living with my parents before they offered him the job.
Okay, now we had direction.  Problem solved!
We found an apartment in Chicago and moved our furniture in two weeks later.  I thoroughly hope our furniture and other belongings enjoyed their stay, because they were only there a week.
Something funny happened to us when we had a child.  We stopped thinking about ourselves all the time. Our strong desire to leave the place we were raised started to fade away.  We had to think about a little drooling, pooping, smiling, bouncing baby boy instead of ourselves.
And we couldn't leave our friends and families.
Our friends are having babies, our families adore our little one, and believe it or not 23 year old self, I really like living in South Bend, Indiana.
On a brisk December night, my husband and I decided Chicago was not for us.  And we love Chicago.  We wanted nothing more than to live there.  But when we actually were about to leave, we realized what we'd be leaving behind.  The past eight years, we planted roots in our community and we never even realized it.  We wanted our little guy to be a part of that.
As stated before, I hope our furniture enjoyed its stay.
We moved everything out of our Chicago apartment a week later and realized we were back at square one.
So here we are, about three and a half months of living with my parents.
That's okay.  This whole crazy mess was meant to be.
Why?
We found a house that we both felt was ours' as soon as we walked in.  And it's in the neighborhood we've always wanted to live in. We close in three weeks.
I'm sure eight years from now, my 40 year old self would love to tell my 32 year old self a few things.
I'm sure my 95 year old self will too.
Now I realize something.  I wish I could go back and tell my 13 year old self that Ace of Base was right.
It really is a beautiful life.

The Lonely Island (Please don't sue me for using your group name Andy, Akiva, and Jorma.)

Oh childbirth.  It comes along with a wave of emotions, thanks to a tsunami of ever changing hormones, a soft drink and a side of fries. One would think that with all these emotions, loneliness should be the last thing a mother feels.  But it's not.  In fact, after the first couple weeks of getting used to having a new baby, loneliness seemed to be my only companion.
This is a tough thing to understand and explain unless you've experienced it for yourself.  Perhaps it's part of the postpartum blues but loneliness certainly came knocking at my door.
My husband was still there, we had a number of well wishers and a new baby.  So why did I feel like an island?
I know there's probably scientific reasoning for this but I never researched it.  I didn't really have time.  I just kept telling myself, "It's the hormones.  They're messing with you.  This will pass."
And eventually it did pass.  Still, there are times when loneliness rears its ugly head.
Which makes me wonder if all new mothers feel this way.

I know.
This blog isn't that funny.
But that's okay.  This isn't really a funny topic.
It's also a short blog.
That's because I've had way too much caffeine this morning and I can focus on things for ten seconds at a time before I have to get up and focus on something else!
With that being said, let's end this blog on a high note before I vacuum, do the dishes and complete 100 burpees all in a five minute span!
Go!
Sure I may have felt loneliness and you may have too, or maybe you do now!  Life is full of different seasons and we should be grateful for each one, even if we'd like to forget about them and leave them in the dust.  If you are in a tough spot, it will pass.  It always does.
And soon enough, you'll feel like sprinting up a hill, probably after having too much caffeine, and shouting, "It's over and I'm ready to move on!  Let the games begin!"  And by games I mean the Olympics.  They're getting ready to start and they're always encouraging so you could watch those if you're feeling down.
Again, the caffeine is taking over as I am going way off topic.
This blog must end NOW before I take you on a journey through 20 other topics!
Thanks for reading!

A Hairy Situation

My hair...is a problem.  My cousin and I always complain about our hair we inherited from our grandmother.  It's thin, fine, and has absolutely no body.
About a year and a half ago, I decided enough was enough. I chopped it off!  Well, I didn't.  A professional did.  It looked great!  The picture you see along with my blog was taken while I had this hairstyle.  I loved it and received tons of compliments.
Then on December 28th, 2012, my husband and I learned we were pregnant!  One of the many joys I felt was the thought of my hair!  So many women said, "Just wait until you're pregnant!  Your hair will grow so fast and be so thick and wavy!"
Oh boy!
I couldn't wait!
 I pictured myself all plump in the summer with beautiful locks of golden hair kissing my shoulders while it danced in the breeze.
One problem.
My hair was short!  Solution?  I started to grow it out.  If it's in fact true that hair grows faster when you're pregnant, then mine should grow back in no time!  No problem at all!
Let me take you through my realistic experience.
My hair did not grow fast.  It did not become wavy or curly or have any sort of body.  In fact, I think it became more lifeless than before.  I waited until my second trimester to get highlights thinking this would help the problem.
Nope!
The color of my hair didn't even look good.
I know, I know.  Hormones do crazy things when you're pregnant.  In reality, my hair probably didn't look that bad to other people.  Just me.
Well, guess what?  Things didn't get better.
When I gave birth, it started to fall out.
Woohoo!
In the past, I've lost hair because of stress.  It's happened twice.  However, the hair always came back.
So here we are and it's been about five months since I've given birth and my hair still has not grown back.  I definitely look like I have a receding hairline...which I do.  My forehead could have its own zip code right now.
And no regrowth in sight.
There's really no theme or encouraging tone to this blog.  It's just a story.
A story of a girl and her hair.

Challenges

After having a baby, getting back in shape sounds about as appealing as eating eyeballs.  I'm one of those people that enjoy physical activities, so imagine my surprise when I had no motivation to move my rump post baby!  

I've always been a dedicated runner.  Ever since eighth grade track, I've been running.  Maybe it was cross country season, road races, track, whatever.  I was running!

Finding the gumption to kick it in gear after my baby was challenging.  Please don't be mad when I say this...

I had never been out of shape.  Never, ever in my entire life.  That is, of course, until I spent nine months growing a human, eating whatever was in sight, and gaining plenty of "water" weight.  

And no, I was not one of those talented women that ran a marathon the week before I was due.  No sir!  I stopped running around the three month mark.  Then, add an extra month or two for recovery time after giving birth and well, running didn't sound fun.

But I knew I had to do it.

I needed it.

Not because I wanted to lose weight. Nope, it's a part of who I am.

So, on a warm October day, I did it.  

It was slow.

Painful.

Horrifying.

My lungs burned like fire.

I think I did a mile.  A slow mile.  

But I did it.

My body definitely didn't feel the same as it had before a baby.  There was some extra jiggle in my butt and stomach area.  My chest weighed about a ton from producing all that milk.  My stride was short and my feet barely left the pavement.

But I did it.

During my first week of running, I saw a fellow runner I had coached in the past.  Bless his heart, he encouraged me and was impressed that I was running after having a baby.

Meanwhile, I was trying to muffle the sound of my heavy breathing and disguise the painful look on my face.  Perhaps he thought the sun was in my eyes.

 Still, I'm glad I saw him.  Sometimes you need encouragement from a fellow runner, especially if you don't believe in yourself.

What's the status now?  I still run.  It's nothing impressive.  I go for about a half hour.  

Soon, though, my favorite running partner and I are taking my son in the jogging stroller and doing miles upon miles.  I'll be slow compared to her at first, but I know I can do it.

Whatever your passion is, if you've lost it or had to put it on the shelf for whatever reason, go find it.

You won't be sorry.

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