Well…hellooooooooo, September!
I know there are those out there that will want to shoot me for this, but I am not sorry to see summer fading in the rearview mirror in the slightest. I’ve been over the heat of summer since sometime in early July, though I do, indeed, know better than to tell people that.
I’m the reason they put the pumpkins out for sale at the grocery store Labor Day weekend…you know I’ve already bought more than one (along with pumpkin spice scented candles and cloves to put in the apple cider I’ll now begin buying by the gallon…stop. judging.me.).
The rainy season has also begun here in Seattle, much to the lament of every person I talk to. But I love it. It just begs for a second pot of coffee and homemade baked goods and a lit candle and a long day of writing…what’s not to love?…
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We arrived back in Seattle late last night.
What a trip.
In case you didn’t know this, driving the 3,000 miles from one corner of the country to the other when you have very little time to dally is…ummmmm…a lot. It’s a whole different ball game than having weeks to linger and explore and take your time.
The last week was a lot of 10-12 hour driving days, getting out of the truck just long enough to stretch for minute, gas up, pee, and get back on the road. Driving past mountains and rivers that called our name, meeting friends along the way for a quick lunch or a cup of coffee, and then moving quickly on…
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I’m writing from the car as we drive from central Pennsylvania towards Chicago, making the rounds of our friends on our way back across the country.
We’ve become masters of the drive-by visit and I have to say, it’s not a particularly satisfying accomplishment.
It took us five long days of driving to get from Seattle to New Hampshire in time to celebrate Justin’s parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. From there, we raced up to Maine where Justin continued on with a friend to run the 100 Mile Wilderness section of the Appalachian Trail (a feat the two of them have been planning for nearly a year…a self-supported 100-mile trail run is no joke, my friends!) and I remained in the greater Portland area to do some photo shoots.
I tried to squeeze in some visit time with friends between shoots. There was a long walk with one friend and a lovely brunch with another, time I cherished even as I longed for far more of it. Justin ended up stealing an hour with an old neighbor, but his run took up the bulk of his time in Maine and the days ran out long before we’d seen everyone we would have liked to…
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Three years ago today we closed on our home in Maine, selling our beloved space and all it contained.
We left the dishes we received as wedding gifts a decade earlier stacked neatly in the cabinets. We left the dining room table we built with our own hands (and those of our sweet friend, Emy, who offered not only her hands to the job but also her laughter) one sunny weekend our first summer there. We left the bookcases from Ikea that took hours to assemble and us to the edge of our wits.
The teapot handpainted in the Polish style that I adored and used nearly every snowy afternoon during our long Maine winters. The chest of drawers that had traveled with my Navy family as part of my parents’ bedroom set when I was growing up and I’d refinished during finals week my second year of law school. The canvas print of one of my very first photographs of Maine, a sunrise at the Portland Head Light where any doubts I’d had about our move were swept away with the crashing waves on that rocky slice of coastline…
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We are on the road as I write, making our way east across the country once again.
This trip is fast-paced. We have a deadline to make.
Justin’s parents are celebrating 50 years of marriage this year and the party’s on Saturday. We can’t wait.
But even though we are racing past mountains and valleys and winding dirt roads we yearn to drive down, there is a sense of peace that settles into my heart when we have a long stretch of highway laid out in front us. The music is on, the land rushes by, and even in these circumstances, it feels as though adventure is just around the bend….
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Remember last week when I said that to live the life that you want for yourself, your mindset has to line up with where you are trying to go and how this week I’d talk a little about what I believe is the number one way to make sure that is the case?
Well, I couldn’t decide on just one, so I’m going with three instead. Here they are…
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When we were in Arizona last year, there was a salty old man who lived in our RV park. His ramshackle 1988 Fleetwood Southwind RV was decorated in the usual way- blue tarp, duct tape trim, and the ever-present pile of cracked cinderblocks and firewood with a few broken lawn ornaments mixed in.
This guy- let’s call him Gus (his name is definitely not Gus, but I like “Gus” so we’re going with it)- is unimpressed. With everything.
He is unimpressed with the famous Tucson sunsets (“I’ve lived here all my life- they’re the same as they’ve always been.”).
He is unimpressed with the way things bloom after a desert rain (“Yup. It’s what happens.”).
And he is super unimpressed with the entire concept of “tiny house living.”
“Tiny house? On wheels? Yeah. Some of us have been doing that for years- it’s called a trailer, dipshit. The same rich kids who look down their noses at a trailer park, build their trailer out of expensive wood and take away the TV, and they think they’ve fucking invented sliced bread. Smug assholes.”
It was a pretty hilarious conversation.
Also, he kinda has a point.
The thing is, so do those “rich kids” who build those tiny homes, who spend time and effort to craft something sustainable and special, with intention and purpose (and who, just because it really does bear repeating yet again, are definitely NOT all “rich”).
They are simply looking at the same concept from two very different perspectives….
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The summer between fifth and sixth grade, the public library where we lived in Virginia had a summer reading program for kids.
It included lists of books for various age groups and prizes for reaching certain benchmarks that were determined by meeting with the children’s librarian and telling her a bit about the book you’d read.
I was thrilled. Wait, thrilled doesn’t really cover it.
I was obsessed….
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Mr. Hussman was my 11th grade history teacher.
His first name was Benedict.
He had very dark hair and very pale skin and glasses that made his eyes look a little buggy.
He'd once been well on his way to becoming a priest when he mysteriously left seminary to teach high school history in the suburb of Chicago I’d recently moved to. I’ll bet there’s a helluva story there, but alas, I was entirely too preoccupied with my 17-year-old melodramas to dig for it. And ol’ Ben was good with boundaries, so I likely wouldn’t have been able to pry it out of him anyway (I was definitely not allowed to call him Ben…as a matter of fact, it still feels super weird even to write it, so "Mr. Hussman" he stays)…
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GUESSSSSS WHAAAAAATTTTT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
WE GOT A NEW DOOOOOOOOOG!!!!!!
Meet Chili Pepper.
Also known as Chili Dog, Chili Boy, Chill Pill (Justin keeps pushing for Chili Bob, but…ummm…no.).
He’s a red heeler rescue from Texas and he just arrived on Friday.
We are in love.
We are all still in the midst of getting to know one another and my full-time job at the moment is holding back the urge to snuggle my face into his neck and squeeze him until the big empty space in my chest that Tessie’s absence left starts to feel full again.
It’s a funny thing, isn’t it, the way we can feel so many things at once? In the midst of my over-the-moon excitement for Chili to be here, there are infinite tiny stabs of grief that Tess isn’t. His arrival is full of so much joy and welcome and love, and it also sort of feels like losing her all over again.
Change is like that, isn’t it?
It shines this big spotlight on all the ways things are different. We stand on this threshold, reluctant to let go of the way things were even while we are eager and excited (if also a little unsure and maybe even a bit nervous) for what’s next…
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I realized the other day that I haven’t posted to any social media platforms in almost 2 months.
This isn’t really a big deal, but it made me pause because I never made a conscious decision to go on any kind of hiatus. I didn’t go on any kind of intentional “digital fast” or suddenly boycott technology.
I just didn’t feel like posting. So I didn’t.
And then I sort of forgot about it.
We went to Vancouver for a long weekend so Justin could run a 50K trail race. I took some fun videos and photos with my phone intending to post them later, but ended up getting caught up reading a good book instead. Then I forgot about posting them.
We sat on the tailgate alongside the Skagit River in North Cascades National Park and ate lunch and made plans. But I was busy dreaming about our future and holding Justin’s hand, so I forgot to take photos and posting about it slipped my mind….
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A gorgeous spring day is coming to a close as I sit down to write this, and I’m trying to leave the window open as long as I can even though the temperature is dropping as quickly as the sun.
We’ve spent the day replacing the flooring in the new laundry room/ kitchenette in my Dad’s house and it’s nice to see a room actually coming together after a few months of doing the kind of renovation work that’s super important but not very visible (did I tell you that Justin and I replaced all the hot water galvanized plumbing in the entire house? Not glamorous at all, but I’m seriously proud of us for figuring it all out without flooding the house!).
The renovations overall are moving slowly but sometimes that’s the way of true progress: steady incremental improvement toward goals at a rate that is actually sustainable.
We head out tomorrow for a quick trip to see family in New Hampshire and then I have some photography work lined up in New Jersey that will keep me there for a couple of weeks. It’s been more than a year since we were last in New England and it will be really nice to have this time with friends and family. We have a more extended trip there planned for the summer, but this short one is what we can manage this time around and that’s okay too.
So much seems to be in process for us at the moment. Working on my Dad’s home one room at time. Slowly transitioning my business into two distinct(ish) entities. Making decisions about where our next move will be and when and whether that will be a more permanent move or whether we want to resume traveling in Kippee for a little while longer. We’ve adopted a new pup who will arrive here from a rescue in Texas at the end of May, so we’re excitedly preparing to welcome our newest family member while still being struck sideways sometimes by how much we miss Tessie…
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