H-A-Double L-O-W-Double E-N

Halloween has always been a pretty big holiday in my family. It is such a big deal to my sister that she gets Halloween presents for Christmas. My mom (who decorates pretty extensively for almost every holiday) goes ALL OUT for Halloween. As for me, while it might not be my favorite holiday, its definitely in my top 5. I was so looking forward to Arthur's first Halloween. We were getting settled into our new house in Wisconsin, getting to know the area and there were kids in our new neighborhood so we might actually get trick or treaters!
Then we got the news that Skyler would be going to Ohio for work. Again. Until November 9th. So once more, our lives were thrown into disarray and chaos and separation. I had to be in Missouri for several events in October anyway, so instead of travelling back and forth from an empty house, I packed up the baby and the dog into the Durango and drove to my parents house outside Kansas City. Thankfully, Skyler was able to fly in for the birth of our nephew, and then most of October turned into a whirlwind of events and planning for me. My Aunt turned 80. My Alma Mater celebrated its 100th Homecoming (MIZ!) and my sorority celebrated it's 10th anniversary of re-colonization on campus. I went to a bridal shower and threw a bachelorette for a wedding I'm in next month. In between all that, I spent time with my parents and provided a cute cuddly baby for my mom to cuddle with when she got home from work. It was busy and exhausting, but it kept my mind off the fact that Skyler was hundreds of miles away. Again.
But there was still Halloween. What to do? Should I stay in Missouri and celebrate it with my parents? Should I drive home to Wisconsin and spend it alone in our house? Should I fly to Ohio?
Once Ohio was brought up as an option, I knew that is where I wanted to be. Even though Skyler would be working long LONG hours while we there, I didn't want Arthur to spend his first Halloween away from his daddy and even a few hours at the end of every day together is better than nothing.
We were in Ohio for over a week and it was a great trip. The night before Halloween we stopped by a dinner that Skyler's co-workers had been having every Sunday night and showed him off in his costume for a little while. On Halloween, Skyler got home from the office around 10pm and we quickly carved a pumpkin and took some pictures. It wasn't an eventful Halloween, but it was so nice to be together.

Daddy carving the pumpkin. We didn't go very elaborate, he'd had a long day. 

He kept sticking his hands inside and gumming the top. 

A great sensory experiment! And he didn't even try to put it in his mouth. 

Best family shot we could manage. 

We were messy afterward and had a hotel-room-sink-bath. He was pretty done with the camera. 

When we got back to Nana and Papa's house we took some pictures to remember the costume. 

The ONLY picture of him smiling with the pumpkins. 

So that was Arthur's first Halloween. 

And Skyler comes home tomorrow :)

Led to those who help us most to grow

I disappeared. Again.
Why, oh why can't I maintain my blog? It's just like all those darn diaries I started as a child and never finished even a little bit.
The truth is, very shortly after my last post, a little over a year ago...I got distracted. I got distracted because I found out I had done #3 on my 30 Before 30 List. Do you remember #3?

30 Before 30

1. Read all 87 Pulitzer Prize winning novels (0/87)
2. Take an overseas trip with the Boy
3. Get Pregnant
4. Finish the X-Files (4/11)

Done and done.

So, forgive me, I was busy. I was making this guy:

In addition, I had an organ removed (gallbladders are stupid anyway), moved across country (again), and said goodbye to my husband for two other work deployments.

I'm tired of the excuses though. I want this blog to be something. I need somewhere to express myself. To be a mama, yes. To show off my baby boy as he grows and share what I'm learning and needing and feeling about parenthood. Also, though, to be a person. To show off the parts of me that haven't changed along with the birth of my son. To share the things I'm interested in and doing and learning and feeling that have nothing to do with being a parent. I think I need this blog. If for nothing else then for a place to vent.

So. I'm back. Let's see how long this lasts.

PS: Coincidentally, I also did #4  

(30 Before 30)

4. Finish the X-Files (11/11)

It got harder as it went on. I am SO RELIEVED it's done!

I want to believe

Colorado is beautiful.
My husband is beautiful.
Our love is beautiful.
This blog post our wedding photographer wrote is beautiful.

You know what’s NOT beautiful?
The fact that my husband just got sent on a deployment until election day.

So I’m not going to talk about that.
I’m going to talk about something that makes me happy instead.
Hooray happiness!

Television makes me happy. It really does. People rail on and on about how evil television is. They call it “the dumb box”...it sucks out your brain and makes you and your children and the old lady down the street turn into useless zombies. This can be TOTALLY true. “Teen Mom” totally turns me into a zombie. The other day I was making dinner and I ended up sitting on the edge of the coffee table for 20 minutes with a spatula held upright in my hand watching the trials and tribulations of our dear friends Farrah, Macy, Catelynn and Amber. So yeah...TV can definitely be zombie inducing.
On the other hand, I think it is INCREDIBLE that we live in a time where theatre...where ART can meet us in our living rooms. There is a lot of crap out there. But there is also a lot of great, quality, didactic programming as well. And all we have to do to access it is pick up a remote.
FANTASTIC.

The boy and I (as I mentioned before) have been watching our way through X-Files. We felt we really couldn’t qualify ourselves as “nerds” if we had never watched it.
I mean really. Who did we think we were?

Going into it, this is what I knew about the X-Files: Scully and Mulder are some kind of government agents who look for aliens while fighting their growing sexual tensions and massive government conspiracies.
The end.
Now, as we approach the end of the 6th season, this is what I know about the X-Files: Scully and Mulder are FBI agents who look for aliens while fighting their growing sexual tensions and massive government conspiracies.

Really. That’s the X-Files in a nutshell. 

There are things I definitely like about it. There are also things that I really can’t stand. And other things that bugged me at first that I’ve since gotten over.
I feel like I really really really would have enjoyed it had I been old enough to watch it when it first came out. The X-Files is one of the shows credited with inventing the modern “story arc” television series. Before the X-Files, most shows were incredibly episodic with no theme tying everything together. The problem as a modern viewer, however, is that we are really used to story arcs. Really tight story arcs, ones that the producers and writers have had planned out since the beginning. Comparing the X-Files to shows by Joss Whedon and JJ Abrams is like comparing “2001: A Space Odyssey” to “Avatar”. Yeah, they’re the same genre...but there have been so many advances in technology and story telling techniques in between them that the first, to someone who didn’t see it when it came out, is almost laughable. X-Files can be frustratingly repetitive, the characters have a tendency to grow or learn in one episode then revert to old ways by the next episode. I mean really....how much does Scully have to see before she starts believing? Really?
Speaking of Scully, this show screams of early 90s sexism. Maybe because my mother is so strong and independent, maybe because I had other strong females in my life, I never realized I grew up in such a sexist time period. Scully is the only woman in the first several seasons who is not portrayed as a victim or someone’s mother. She is constantly landing herself in the hospital. Mulder is hardly EVER the victim, he’s too busy saving Scully.
It drives me crazy.
There are things I do like. I like how ridiculous it can sometimes be, it reminds me a little of Dr. Who. I like the three nerds that help them out, they call themselves “The Lone Gunmen” and it turns out they had a spin-off series at some point. We are totally going to look for that. I like that it’s all about conspiracies and the possibility that the good guys are sometimes the bad guys...and sometimes people are both.

We’ll see how I like the final three seasons and movie (and then I can check off one of the things on my 30 before 30, woot). Honestly, I just want to get this over with so we can start back up on Star Trek.

And that's my new philosophy

In my high school, everyone wanted to take a class with a man named Ernie Gulner. He taught The Bible as Literature and Philosophy. It was a really important class to a lot of people. I have to admit, it was an important class to me too.

One of the books we read in the class was “The Alchemist” by Paulo Cohelo. He has become one of my favorite authors, but that first book I read of his will always have a special place in my heart. Probably one of the more famous lines, and one that I remind myself of on a pretty frequent basis is this:

“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

My momma the minister refers to this phenomenon as a “God thing.”

Whatever you want to call it, it happened to me recently in the most clear and obvious way. I read a blog post from an old childhood friend one day. It hit me hard...really hard. And I decided that’s it. I’m done with this “circumstances are what they are, my husband and I have to live apart right now” thing. I’m just done. I got online that night, applied for seven jobs in Pueblo and drafted a resignation letter. By the time I had a chance to turn in the resignation letter I had had a phone interview. At the end of the phone conversation, they offered me a live interview. They wanted to schedule it for the next weekend. I already had a plane ticket to fly to Colorado for that weekend. About an hour after my live interview, they called and offered me the job. And it’s a good job, in my field, working for people I care about.

I think the universe totally conspired. God did God’s thing.

In this horrible economy, where people go months, even years not finding work, I was able to have probably the easiest job search in the history of mankind. How did this happen? Seriously? How did I get so lucky?

I blame it on letting go. I was fighting to hold onto something...don’t ask me what. Probably control. Once I just let go, things fell into place just the way they were meant to.

And I’m so happy that I get to live with this guy...

In ONE WEEK!!!!

I miss the music, I miss the song

So have I mentioned that I live precisely 785 miles from my husband?
Well...I do. How bizarro is that?
We’ve lived apart since April. This means that it’s been 4 months now. Out of those 4 months, we’ve seen each other 3 times.
One time in May we each drove a really long way and met up in Wichita, Kansas for the weekend. That’s how much I love this guy...I was willing to go to KANSAS. I guess he loves me too, since his opinion of Kansas can pretty much be summed up with this picture.

What can I say? We both went to Mizzou!

The second time we saw each other, we got married. Taken out of context, that sentence could be really funny! Seriously though, he flew in to Kansas City, I drove down from Des Moines and picked him up. Then we drove to Columbia together, had a rehearsal, a rehearsal dinner, a wedding, and a wedding reception. We followed this with a 3 day “mini-moon” in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Then I drove him back to the airport and we said goodbye. It was a huge blur.

Our wedding was pretty fabulous though, I’m not going to lie.

Aren’t the folks at Avia Photography amazing?

The last time we saw each other was over the Fourth of July. We spent the day Saturday exploring Pueblo. On Sunday, we drove up to meet some friends, visit the Rocky Mountain National Park and watch fireworks. Then on Monday we checked out Boulder and Denver and I flew home that evening.

Snowballs! On Independence Day!

If you were keeping count that’s 12 days in 4 months. This is after 4 years together. Seriously 4 years TOGETHER. As in we’ve spent practically every day with each other since we officially became a couple. The longest we’ve ever spent apart before was when he went to Mexico with his family in 2007. That was 6 days and I thought I was going to die.
How do we do it?

Well, we don’t do it all that well. I notice us bickering over the DUMBEST things. I cry all the time. In fact, I spend every Saturday bawling in my car in the parking lot of my church. EVERY SATURDAY. I generally have to sprint out at the end of the service so no one will see me lose it. I’m pretty sure he hasn’t eaten anything other than Spaghetti or Chipotle in about a month. And our dog is going through all the classic signs of traumatized post-divorce children.

But we have the benefit of technology. We have video chat and cell phones and Facebook.
We have both been watching the X-Files on Netflix and it’s almost like watching it together.
And we both have thrown ourselves into our work.

Hopefully, this whole thing is very temporary. We will be together again soon. For the next 60+ years or so.
And my next post will be a little more happy-go-lucky. Maybe I’ll tell you what I think about the darn X-Files.

Signing off...

Good Night and Good Luck....

Have a pleasant tomorrow...


Ok, I’m still working on how to end these things.