On fire from within

I am: beautiful, sassy, creative, smart, funny, sexy, talented and strong.



We still have to add some highlights and texture to the bangs, but what do y'all think?

The beginning of the beginning

To say it's been a rough few months would be an understatement. Put aside the divorce and all the drama associated with that (hah!) and it's still been a rough month. Our house is being foreclosed on, which is actually good news because, you see, the house was trying to kill us. Between the lead-based paint and the black mold, it's a miracle any of us got out alive. In the last month alone, while trying to get into a new place that doesn't want me dead, I've had pneumonia, bronchitis and strep throat. The baby has had strep and bronchitis twice as well.

But, we're out. We found us a just-right-for-us apartment close to the school. Much to everyone's fear because I'm so clumsy it's on the 3rd floor. But it's perfection. The boys are sharing a nice-sized room. The kitchen and the living room are one big open floor plan which delights Joshua as he can now destroy everything in sight run very free and play. I have a great big bedroom with a walkin closet and a half bathroom (what?! TWO bathrooms!) and a laundry room for my beloved washer and dryer. There's ample storage space and a great big patio. It's nice and clean and quiet and they put new carpet, linoleum and paint in.

Far more important than the new paint and the new flooring and all the storage is the new life that comes with it. It's me and my boys and my Shelby dog in this little house. For the first time in my life I am living on my own. I moved out of my parent's house and in with Mike 2 weeks after I graduated high school. I have never lived on my own. And yeah, it's been tough already. There were some days I wasn't sure I was going to get the stuff in the house, even the most basic of steps, and I still haven't figured out how to install child-proofing hardware and I realized with a start that I am now the person who has to hang eleventy hundred all those pictures. But I know, without a doubt, that I have totally freakin' got this. There is no pain here. No holes in the wall. No "this is where x y z happened". There is hope. There is the start of my new book, my schooling, my career. There are happy memories to be made and a new love to cherish. There is life to be lived.

And I can't wait

P.S. I have not forgotten about the rest of my pictures and my new hair but we haven't quite had time to get it finished with the moving and all. Soon, I promise :)

Undoing

I am both reading and writing tonight, enjoying the escape. Here's a snippet of what I'm working on, hope you enjoy.

‎"I feel sad", she said, "to have ruined a life other than mine."

He said simply, "Nothing you have done was un-fixable. The things that were done that could not be undone were all his. If there is sorrow to be had, it is his. If there is regret to be had, it is his. There is blame enough to go around but misery enough for only one."

"Redheaded women buck like goats.”

Okay so here's the thing with funky, awesome, quirky hair. It takes many stages. Maybe it wouldn't take many stages if it wasn't almost waist-length. But, mine is. So here's how this works. Last weekend we bleached all the box color out. Then we did an all over purpley-pinky-fire-engine-red-y color. And we let it rest and breathe and recover. Then this weekend we'll do one more round of an all over purpley-pinky-fire-engine-red-y color and add in some high and low lights. Finally we'll cut. But, I didn't want y'all to have to wait that long to see how mother-flippin' adorable I am. So here I am, writing, thinking, pensively being pensive**. Enjoy!



**I'm fully aware that "pensively being pensive" is funny to no one but me, but I'm totally keeping it in there anyway.

Adorkablility

I'm getting a makeover. I mean, obviously, my whole life is basically one big makeover at this point, what with the divorce and going back to school and the new love and all.

But, I'm also getting a physical makeover. A brief history of my hair, body, etc. I've always been chunky but in the course of divorce, stress and anxiety I've lost 70lbs. As a baby, I had strawberry blonde hair and giant dark blue eyes. As a young tomboy-ish girl, I had long dark brown hair with giant dark blue eyes. As a tween, I had very long blonde hair with giant dark blue eyes. All of these color changes were natural. Then, I hit my teenage years and my quirky personality started to make itself painfully, crankily known. Ohhhh I went the gamut of colors, cuts, etc as a teenager. I had long hair and short hair and long hair that was shaved underneath. I had green hair and blonde hair with blue streaks and every color of red you can imagine. Red stuck with me and I continued to color it that all through my twenties and thus far into my thirties. In my 20's, I again had a few different cuts but most were variations on a wispy bang with at least shoulder length hair. A couple of times I flirted with layers and shorter hair but generally the same hair. The ex had some definite opinions on cuts and colors and I don't think I got to properly explore my quirk-itude (it's a word, I made it up, you can use it). In my 30's, well I've always been some variation of auburn (light or dark) and until I got pregnant with Joshua I've grown my hair very long. When I got pregnant with Joshua I had been told the year before I couldn't have more kids. I simply thought I had a month-long case of the flu and suddenly my long, gorgeous, gets-tangled-in-my-belt-hair was too much to care for. I had it cut off, sent roughly 18" to locks of love and then would cry every time I walked by the mirror because I was hormonal, pregnant and generally batcrap crazy because I missed my long hair. I started growing it back out after the temporary insanity of cutting it was over, and aside from venturing into Zooey Deschanel bangs, I've kept basically the same hair since.

So, with my new-found-freedom, I've decided to do some exploring. I'm going to keep the long hair because, frankly, I love it more than is probably healthy. I tried some darker, more purpley colors. I let the Zooey bangs grow out. And now, well now, I'm taking quite a leap. I've got a dear friend who's a cosmetology student and she's been dying to get her hands on my hair, beyond the trim I let her do. So we're going to keep the length (despite my years of "box-coloring" my hair and all the stress, my hair is remarkably healthy so I'll only need to lose maybe an inch of split ends) and introduce some long layers. We may go back to the wispy bang or the Zooey bang or we may just let them grow. But the big change is the color. THIS is the look we're going for. It won't come out exactly like that of course, as everyone's head of hair is different. I love it, dearly. It's so funky, so quirky. Just right for the girl who rocks pink funky glasses, jeans and pink chucks with a t-shirt that says "I put the cute in execute" and a pair of diamond earrings. Just right for a girl finding her way in a new life. Just right for a girl who says things like "what's shakin' bacon?" and "okey dokey artichokey". Just right for me.

Counting the ways to where you are

Today's Friday Five is going to be five things to summarize where life's at right now for us.

1. I'm going back to school. I completed my FAFSA and am going to get my LPN from the community college. This is what I was studying in Albuquerque before I decided to become a wife/mother and I actually am most of the way done with the requirements. I'm nervous and excited. Someone special has convinced me to pursue things I love.

2. Joshua has an intense and abiding love for Five for Fighting. He especially loves "The Riddle" and "100 years". I think someday when he marries a nice conservative girl if he knows what's good for him that may be the song we dance to at his wedding. He's talking up a storm and loves to yell at the dogs ("girls!" he calls them) and has recently started saying, in the tried and true fashion of a country boy "hi darlin". He smiles and laughs and is, in general, the happiest kid I've ever seen. He did give us quite a scare with a bout of tonsilitis where his tonsils got so swollen they obstructed his airway and he quit breathing for a while. He's also had several bouts with strep throat so I think we're going to wind up with a tonsilectomy in a few years.

3. Nathan's doing extremely well in school. He excels at math and science and social studies and reading, you know basically all the subjects. His behavior grades were all +'s and all in all, he's just really handling and rolling with all the changes. He's such a great kid and I'm so thankful that I'm his mama.

4. We're fixing to move across town into an apartment. It's lovely and we get to bring our Shelby girl with us. It's very close to the schools and has a huge play area. It's the newest apartment complex in town so I shouldn't have the heating/cooling/no insulation/falling apart worries that I have in the 110 year old house. We may actually get to be warm this winter since I won't have to be quite as stingy with the heat to avoid a $400 gas bill!

5. My 32nd birthday has come and gone. It was a great day. My mom and I share a birthday and she has always made that day special for me and made me feel like I'm the best present she has ever received. I am blessed that my Jersey Mama protects, loves, honors, respects and treasures me. Someone Special (S.S.) sent me a kindle for my birthday. I wasn't sure how I'd like it being old and crotchety a little old-fashioned when it comes to reading. But I love it. For one, a lot of books are free for it through both my library and Amazon (they have a top 100 free books in different genres). So, for instance, I was able to get complete collections of Poe, Whitman, Millay and Lord Byron. Since I read those writers as inspiration when I'm doing my own writing, having them available at my fingertips in such a compact format is incredibly helpful. Plus, you can adjust the font size (if you have old lady eyes like me) and highlight different passages and it will keep a separate file of passages you've highlighted. It's really amazing. I do even more reading now and I just love that, it fuels my creativity so much.

Love is like friendship caught on fire

It's an interesting sensation to be building a new love, while still sifting through the ashes of old love and doing it all while enjoying the unconditional love a Mama has for her sons.

All at once you're experiencing the emotions of falling madly, passionately, truly, deeply in love. You've got the dizziness and the rapid heart rate, the giddy anticipation of a phone call or an email or a kiss. But before you can settle in and enjoy it too much, you have to pause for a moment to catch your breath because the grief can sneak up on you, too. It's always there, you know. It lurks around a corner, behind a benign comment from a friend or a ridiculous detail you never thought you'd have to worry about.

And in the middle of all that, of all the chaos, both good and bad, there's your boys. There's bedtime and snuggles and reading The Hobbit and meals and bathtime and help with homework and Mama can we just snuggle a while?

And it's all love. Everything from the grief to the soft nuzzle of a baby's cheek, from the electric kiss of your lover to the sweet hug of your 8 year old. And I suppose it's the only thing that makes life worthwhile, even when it's hard to see through the pain.