head full of doubt, road full of promise

b/c many of you have inquired of late, this blog is for you. the studio. i will be officially moving out of the studio this summer. those of you who wish to help me (and by help, i mean take me drinking that night), i welcome your generosity. this will be the first time i am without a studio in a very long time. it kind of makes me feel a little (more) claustrophobic that i realized i had been feeling...particularly b/c of the weather here. i feel a little shoved into this motherhood thing now...into this season completely...no more entrepreneurial mama. just mama. just wife. a friend emailed me about this next step and offered me the phrase "simmering" as to what i will be doing creatively as i move forward. i like that. i hope i just do not burn in the process. i do hope to return to a place where i can feel creative and feel like i am doing something that involves my brain. i know that stay at home moms do a lot of work, so i'll say this: this season will be the first time i have not actively made money since i was 14 years old and it feels strange and induces a bit of panic in me, i must admit. this little business held strong when Ash was laid off, making more money that ever while he was out of work. what if that happens again? what would we do? alas, i know this is that part of "living in fear" i wanted to depart from this year--it is crouching at my door ready to pounce. i know that the contributions i will make to our family and life together will become even more diversified and will be a struggle for me to not compare who has the "better role."

in general, my thoughts at present are on summer. on warmness. it's easy for every thought to feel bitter in the middle of this 6 month winter. i can close my eyes and imagine the sun on my face, the breeze on my bare arms and it is too much for me. we planned a family beach trip to rosemary in may and it is over 70 days away, also too much for me to think about right now. i feel like winter is my reluctant lent...fasting from the sun, from warmth and opportunities to enjoy being outdoors, and with friends more often. i can appreciate more fully what i've been made to live without. i hope. for instance, this summer i am also hoping that Hols will move up here. i  know it's a little far-fetched for me to hope for this. i've tried almost every summer we've been up here, and this year is no different. not just for reasons i cannot mention, but because i just miss her. i love my sister. i love being with her. and i'm being selfish too. i want her here with me. in the same city. in boston. not bhm. not knoxville. i want to ride bikes with her along the charles and have girls' nights. for ellery to really get to know and love her Auntie Lolly. to have inside jokes and have fun. that's all. is that too much to ask?

even as i write this post, i feel like i can never get what my real thoughts are, OUT. it's so frustrating. i've not posted in way too long until now and then when i have a moment to post, i feel eluded by the day, unable to articulate the things i have REALLY been thinking in full, to even make connections. i get distracted by the need to keep the entries cohesive. but you know me, right? when have i ever really been cohesive in conversation? distracted: yes. focused: no. am i barreling into a season of continued malingering b/c i am only around a toddler all day...? oy VEY.

on an almost completely unrelated note, this video inspired me this week (it took 2600 paintings!):

 have a wonderful weekend, friends.

blah blah blah

today it's 35 degrees. just another january day in boston. it's hard to try to push aside my longing for spring b/c i know we still have at least 3 more FULL months of this. warm weather has a such a lusty appeal for me that it kind of feels dirty at times. in the 29 years of living in warm climate, i am as my brother would say, "ruint" for any other climate. at this moment, there are snow piles on the side of the roads taller than i am...we have had 60" of snow in january and that's only #3 of the list of snowiest months in boston for all time. true story. and this shit isn't melting until may, people. shopping centers are hidden by walls of snow piles so much so that you cannot even see the businesses located behind them. this is the winter of my discontent, quite literally.

one of my remedies for such blah is loooooong hot showers, which i now have to share with a toddler playing beneath me in the tub. you're getting a visual and feeling bad for EV, aren't you? she loves it as much as i do and it gives us something to do inside other than stare at each other, or me having to wrestle more playdoh out of her mouth...or another marker she has just pretended was lipstick, lipstick that should be eaten, mind you. i am continually amazed that she will only put into her mouth that which is NOT food.

i have also started baking more. i kind of started this trend our first winter here when i was sick and pregnant. mmm, bread, pastry, muffins, scones, more bread was the only cure for my addiction to carbs. currently, our gym membership is lending itself to the battle against muffin tops. i'm not sure who's winning that one right now. finding a gym with babysitting was probably one of the most genius things we have ever done as a family. in addition to giving us a much needed time out from each other every afternoon, i have more motivation than i ever have to work out consistently. so anyway, baking: today i made banana nut muffins from scratch, a birthday cake for a friend, and am roasting eggplant to make some babaghanoush. YUM. i will say that most of my baking of late has become increasingly more "how can i fit more fiber into that?" kind of baking. which either makes me a weight watchers star or really old. i'll leave that one out there for discussion.

and i'm blogging! you'd think i'd be spending my weekend time with the hubs, right? well, i would LOVE to, but lost out to the first round of a super-secret-very-cool-i-am-so-proud-of-him-for-trying-something-like-this project. more on that another time. i'm actually content to not complain about this right now, being that i would also stand to benefit hugely from the possible outcome of this project. again with the selfishness...

i hope your weekends are going well. i hope today is restful for you before your week begins. and i hope there is no snow if your forecast.

So. Much. CRAP.

Ah. HOME. i love being here. it has nothing to do with the place we live, b/c as you know, i kind of hate it. it's dumpy, but settled, and priced fairly for boston, so i'll take it for now. i do love being in MY place, MY bed, with just MY family, on MY schedule (or rather, EV's, as it goes). i'm just going to own how selfish that sounds b/c, after 10 days of it, i am done with traveling for awhile...especially for work. especially solo with a toddler.

ESPECIALLY with a toddler...

As busy as i've been the last couple of weeks with work, it's almost been the last thing on my mind most of the time (plenty of blog entries to come). i'm kind of over what i do. it's just work to me. it's not creative anymore. it's not very profitable anymore. i did FINE at the show itself, but by the third day, i was walking around with my nose in the air, looking down on all the poor little buyers and sellers as if they were stuck in some sort of perpetual sorority rush party, making small talk and using their fake laugh. gag me. there was just SO. MUCH. CRAP at that show, and why do i even want to compete? to be frank, i can't. the "handmade movement" (EYE ROLL) has, in many ways, KILLED handmade. buyers still want it cheap (or they think they can make it), so many handmade artists still design it, but ship it off to be made in china and africa for a fraction of the price, sell themselves as "charitable" and call it a day. no quality, no joy in the process or being able to communicate that to buyers, just production. where is the craftsman instead of the businessman? i've seen it over and over again and forgive me for being judgemental, but there are stark few of us who still care how it's made and are interested in the process. as for the business side of it, i am certain it will lose momentum. i know it gives more room for similar products to surge ahead, but i really don't care. HAVE AT IT. i'm tired of living the carnie life and worrying about stupid little things that go along with wholesale/retail shows. i'm tired of leaving for days on end, toting the child every which way. i'm TIIIIIIRD of the benefits not outweighing the costs for me in this season of life. I have been successful at this and it's time to move on. well, after i fill all the current orders, that is. and taper down the current inventory though the last few retail shows this year.

sincerely though, i don't want the story i live to continue to magnify things that don't really matter to me...to crowd my brain in such a way that the rest of my life seems to be waiting on me to jump in. it's like i'm slowly waking up. something that had once been so life-giving has been strangling me for awhile now and i am seeing an opportunity to let go of it. i'm actually not afraid to let go of it b/c i'm really understanding more now how little my work defines me.

i hope it helps me be a better woman/wife/mama. i know it's been easy for me to view EV as distraction from my work, when often i know, in the deepest part of me, what the distraction has really been. i hope i don't become that SaHM that i have feared becoming (which is controversial to even say anyway). what i mean is that i hope that my capacity for motherhood is expanded in this next season b/c it feels tiny right now.  i have to stop rethinking my status as a mom and accept it with gusto. no one told me these thoughts happen. i really want to enjoy it more than i have. to relish the long days with short naps as best i can. and to love my husband better. and i realize that i kind of have the luxury of being able to choose this next step from a financial standpoint that many people do not have. i know we will be facing a micro-recession up in this house. maybe not. we'll see.

and how long it is until summer? it is an effing 7 degrees today, people. wtf?!

Snow and other infirmities

happy snow day.

being that i have less that 24 hours before i'm supposed to leave Boston for the ATL gift market (with wee mcclure in tow), and i have about 18" of snow outside and i'm done packing (for the most part), i thought i would take the time to update our little, neglected blog. and b/c i'm working on my second pot of coffee today and it's this or more snow shoveling b/c whoa have i got energy. oh, and Ash is working from home, with, i might add, just his long johns on. oww oww!

i've been so busy getting everything ready for this show that i haven't really had the time i want to think thoughts on any particular subject beyond reacting like a caveman-uh huh, ugga, wha...? though i started taking time to "think" over the holidays a little more. i've been reading donald miller's "a million miles in a thousand years" and it's been good for me to reflect on the story i'm currently living. what's more, it's good for me to think bigger than my life for a change. especially around this time of year, when i find myself hating life in new england and all this stupid cold (did i mention we are have snow of epic proportions today?), and needing, no, LONGING for change. where do i want to be at the end of the year, personally...even literally? much more than that, where in the bigger story does my story make sense? i'm just asking right now, hoping to see answers flesh themselves out in the days and weeks to come. there are specifics i hope that will happen...very literal and exacting, but the key on that, i guess, is hope. more on that later.

for now, here is a paraphrased selection from a chapter in the aforementioned book: "We get robbed of the glory of life b/c we aren't capable of remembering how we got here....we wake slowly to the world around us...we could easily believe life isn't staggering....at that moment, I felt the way I hope God feels when he writes the world, sitting over planets and placing tiny people in tiny wombs. If I have a hope, it's that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story, and put us in it with the sunset and snowrainstorm as though to say, Enjoy your place in my story. The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as i have created you..."

for now, i'm excited at the prospect of leaving my teething child with her grandmother for a few days, selling some goods, and having an adventure with the amazing Steph (and hopefully forcing helping her deal with some of her learned food aversions - fourth paragraph down).

i thought you might enjoy a few pictures from our snowy morning. these pics are deceivingly "fun" and "beautiful" if you really know what the 6+ month winter is like in Boston, but alas, we have no actual pictures of hell, now do we...?

and as EV would say: "Haddle do!"

new year.

So I have been mustering up a post in my head the last few weeks/days and while I work it out, I thought I would post a link to my bestie's blog b/c she has a way with words...particularly since this post hit pretty close to home for me today. I hope you enjoy.

Happy New Year, friends.

Advent blogging

so...our church has had an advent blog going over the course of the last few weeks. it's been written by members of the parish. despite my silence on our little blog, i did get to post one for the church's blog. i mean, what did you expect, me to blog on both? do you know me? 

here is my entry. But I also particularly liked the one by Courtney on day 14.

I hope you are all doing well and enjoying this advent/Christmas season. I hope to post more in the coming days.

Oh, and here's our Christmas card this year...

dirty thirty

So Ash turned the big three-OOOOH this week. We had the most fun ever at the Sufjan Stevens show at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown Boston. Amazingness of the best kind and I hope to post a video or two later. I pretty much had the flip on the entire time. It felt a little lot like he threw a birthday party for Ash b/c there was ginormous balloon drop and a confetti canon alongside some pretty sweet dance moves. SO. GOOD.  Okay, I'll stop gushing. After the show, we, along with quite a slew of people we know, went over to Stoddard's for some cake + beers + heckling Ash for his age.

I thought I would use the rest of this post to gush about my dear hubs. Thirty reasons I love you, Ash...And/OR random things people don't know about you (in no particular order):

1.) you talk in your sleep...mostly giggle/chuckle. And your limbs ALWAYS jerk sharply as you fall asleep, waking me up.
2.) you make me love Jesus more by how you love me.
3.) your favorite way to start a sentence is, "Well...apparently..." even if what is coming next is more obvious than it is apparent...
4.) you are way more patient with people than I can ever imagine being...including with myself.
5.) you always give people the benefit of the doubt.
6.) you are an amazing piano player...and I'm sitting here listing to it right now. you also play the trumpet, organ and the banjo, kind of.
7.) you are considering a tattoo. raaarrrr. an inked man. holla!
8.) you are more like your mom in the tiniest of ways than you will ever admit.
9.) my "thinking out loud" still makes you SO anxious. And gives me every reason to continue doing it.
10.) you have way more character, integrity and fortitude than anyone I have ever met.
11.) the worst thing I have ever heard anyone say about you is that you need to be more assertive.
12.) you are way sillier than I ever thought you could be before I married you. WAY.
13.) you let me entertain stupid ideas about just about anything...but always jump in with truth just when you see me starting to believe the lies in my head.
14.) you would have a much harder time writing all this about yourself than I'm having right now.
15.) you show your love to people with sarcasm, wit and awkward hugs.
16.) you used to want to be an underwear model an ambulance driver when you were younger.
17.) when you get excited about a particular dish I make (or anything, really), you bounce. literally. without realizing it. up. down. up. down.
18.) you still think I like surprise parties...and try SO hard to make them happen.
19.) you are the "clean" one in this relationship (not that that really surprises anyone).
20.) you couldn't quote a movie if you tried.
21.) that you and I can go 20 consecutive rounds of paper-rock-scissors TYING every time.
22.) you leave room for each of us to change who we are in this progression of life.
23.) I didn't know men like you existed before I met you and you totally swept me off my feet. And still do.
24.) your biggest strength is your quiet kindness and those who don't know you well wrongly mistake that as a weakness.
25.) somehow we can be SO different on the outside and at the same time, we think SO the same.
26.) you hate board games/group games as much as I do.
27.) you are slow to speak, even when it kills you or causes you to be misunderstood.
28.) you are the most amazing husband. I am so lucky.
29.) you are the most amazing father to EV. She is so lucky.
30.) you will immediately want me to take this list down once I hit "publish."

I love you, birthday boy man!