Hi, You.

Just short of two years have passed since the last time I was here.

A lot has changed, a lot has happened.

Do you ever sometimes envy people can have entire years where nothing huge happens? Nothing major changes? You can see them two or three years later and they genuinely have no big news. 

I mean sure, that seems so boring I'd probably want to die, but there are days when it seems easier, doesn't it?

I stopped writing here because it got too crowded. Too noisy with the opinions and comments of others. Too full of prying eyes who were only here to satisfy their voyeuristic curiosity, and then pretend they knew me. And it became somewhat hurtful and intrusive for the people in my life who didn't necessarily enjoy being written about. I got tired of hearing about it so I just stopped.

And then I missed it.

Writing here is different than writing in a journal or a notebook and tucking it into your nightstand drawer.

This feels closer to screaming on the edge of a canyon, or confessing to a priest.

It's like you're talking to someone, only without consequence.

Giving up all your words to the Universe and when the last period hits the page and you click "post" it's out there, out of your body and off of your chest and maybe useful to some stranger, some random reader who stumbles across it and sees themselves in your words. It's not in your nightstand drawer, haunting you. It's not rolling around in your chest, weighing on you. 

It's been given away, but it hasn't been wasted.

I don't know how often I'll write or what will become of this space. But I know I missed writing and I know I missed talking to the ambiguous "you" that blog audiences are.

So at least for now, here I am. Still just dancing in the dark.

New Years

Every year I promise I won't make any resolutions, but every year I do anyway. A hopeless romantic for new beginnings, fresh starts, doorways to freedom from the past. The idea of being able to walk swiftly away from the mistakes and pain and ugliness of the passing year, simply with the hand-tick on a clock that will soon say midnight is too rich and intoxicating to avoid. 

I'm no stranger to mistakes. To lessons learned the hard way and things lost from my grasp as quickly as water, sand, someone else's finished grasp. As unrealistic as it may be I cling to the hope of more tomorrow's. More chances to try harder, and even if I continue to fail, to hopefully fail better. 

I'd like to laugh more. 

I'd like to let things go more easily without losing the part of myself that loves even (especially) small things so deeply. 

I'd like to need less and be content more. 

I'd like to feel less like a giant pile of feelings and emotions, without losing the part of myself that is passionate and enthusiastic and perceptive. 

I'd like to eat better....but this one is more of a "nice to have" because cheeseburgers. 

I'd like to be more present and engaged and less worried and distracted. 

To love more and kiss more and hold my babies more. 

I'd like another year to continue striving toward a rich and full and content life. Something all at once simple and adventurous, peaceful and magnificent, complete and curious. 

I'd like another year to continue working on all the tangled knots and sticky webs that tie me to my past. Another year to try not to be a broken victim of my shitty circumstances, but a survivor who feels no need to relive those dark moments. Who remembers what they came from but cares more about where they're going. 

I'd like another year for more. And even if I fail, I'll fail better than I did before. 

Happy new year. 

If you go to San Diego

Stay at the Horton in the gas lamp district. Walk down 5th avenue to find dinner and look at all the cool buildings. Relish the cool air and the smell of the ocean that seems to follow you everywhere. After dinner head to the Tipsy Crow and go down to the basement. That's where the best dancing is. It's dark and loud and the music is good and the drinks are strong. Dance like nobodies watching because they probably aren't. Dance until you're sweaty and happy and drunk and out of breath. Hold onto the person you came with. Make fools of yourselves and don't care because you'll never see these people again. You're young and alive and in love and nothing else matters. 

When it gets suddenly gets crowded, stumble out and find your way home. Weave through the crowded streets, arm in arm, laughing about the people you saw and the way you danced and kiss and giggle and shout because you're happy. Because this is everything and you'll remember it forever. When you finally find your hotel again fall into bed and let the music still ringing in your ears to lull you to sleep. 

In the morning head down Island avenue for breakfast. Go to Richard Walkers Pancake House but if the line is too long, do Cafe 22 instead. Get the Croaker and the Apple juice because it's the best apple juice ever. Sit in the little table at the top of the patio that feels like it was made for cuddles and kisses and plans for the future over brunch and strong coffee. Take selfies with your girl, people watch, kiss openly. San Diego belongs to you and soon you'll be back home in the thick of work and kids and bills and chores and never enough time for brunches and kisses and great Apple juice. 

After breakfast go to Seaport Village and do some Christmas shopping. Walk along the marina and pick out your dream boats. Make plans. Make wild and improbable plans. Hold hands. See everything. 

Head to Coronado over the tall sweeping bridge and feel very wild and free and romantic. Go to the Hotel del Coronado and think about all the history. Make a note to watch Some Like It Hot when you get home. Sit on the beach wall and watch the water Crashing over the rocks and the kids looking for sea shells and the birds looking for lunch and the ocean returning over and over to kiss the shore, no matter how many times its sent away again. Think about love and the ocean and the future and the past and each other. Leave when the tide starts coming in and threatening your dry feet. 

Wander around until you find the tiny gelato shop you went to two years ago, on that little hidden side street by El Cordova auto shop. Get the chocolate hazelnut or the salted caramel, and when you leave make a right. Follow the residential street down to the marina and pick out your favorite houses. Think about what home is and how it changes and how undefinable family is. Wonder if the two of you will ever share an address and a blanket and keep both your things on the same windowsill. 

And then go back to the airport and come home. 

If you go to Winslow

If you go to Winslow, stay at the La Posada. Think about the subjectivity of "art" and wonder if you're just not cultured enough. Listen to the lonesome sound of the train the tracks and the wind in the courtyard and think about how it all feels sort of romantic in an unrequited way. Once this might have been a place to have a love affair, torrid and brief and wholly unforgettable. Think about love. Think about us. 

Head over to PT's bar and have a drink. Take in all the locals and think about what their lives must be like here, in a town so small. Were they born here? Have they ever left? Do they want to leave? Are they running from something or hiding from someone and is everything that seems true about small towns really true? Think about where you come from, and how houses are just buildings but homes shape you. Wonder what the difference is while you wait for another drink and make fun of the DJ in your head. 

Go back to the hotel. Take a shot of tequila and a long shower. Fall into the biggest bed you've ever seen and close your eyes. Drift off. Think about me. 

In the morning have breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Get the breakfast nachos, and some toffee nut syrup in your very strong coffee. Watch the train come in through the fog, it's guiding light preceding it's eery rumble like a midnight premonition. Think about far away places, mysterious adventures, places you might go someday. Think about whether or not you'll take me with you. 

Pack up and check out. 

Head to Two Guns and wander through the ruins. The crumbling animal cages of the old zoo, the half walls and old stone. Think about our history, your history, the way things were and the way things are and wonder what all the rooms were used for. 

Skip the petrified forest. 

On the way home stop for a cheeseburger and a coke and listen to The Eagles. Think about me. Then come home. 

Christmas time and seizing the day

It's Christmas time again, and I'm trying really hard not to talk about how fast this year went by, mainly because I get bored with myself when I say things everyone already knows. I love Christmas though. I love the way the house feels with a brightly lit tree stuffed into it. I love wrapping paper and Christmas movies and twinkle lights and cold air and the way everything feels very possible. Christmas is a time for magic and for miracles and for holding hands and saying I love you. It's for fuzzy socks and shared blankets and wood fires and small gestures. 

It's also a time for stuffing and ham and wearing big hoodies over your weight gain. 

Still, the way time passes now at light speed does make me sad and scared. There are too many articles and blog posts and "inspirational quotes" floating around everywhere you look right now about seizing the day! Choosing joy! Putting down your phone and enjoying your kids who are almost grown up and therefor won't love you anymore! And it makes my heart worried and tired and heavy. Am I seizing the day? Am I spending enough time with the kids? Do I hug them enough? Do I look at my phone too much? Is it already too late, are they ALREADY GROWN AND EMOTIONALLY DOSTANT FROM ME OMG. Yesterday I made a very rare trip to Walmart with my dad so he could buy something, and while I was there I found almost matching, little red flannel pajamas for the kids, and they just looked so innocent and sweet and filled with Hallmark-movie Christmas spirit, so I bought them and put them on the kids as soon as I got home - at 3 pm. And the kids looked like little dressed up teddy bears. We wrapped garland in twinkle lights and finished decorating, and then they watched a football game with my dad. It might not have been seizing the day or making the very most out of every moment, but it was warm and it was sweet, and that was good enough. 

Did you miss me?

This blog post goes out to everyone who was like "omg it's been soooooo long since you blogged" (which wasn't actually anyone, because I don't associate with people who talk like that, so really it goes out to the people who asked if I was "done" being a writer). Nothing motivates me like knowing I am not the only one who reads what I write. 

Coincidentally nothing makes me afraid to write honestly like knowing that people i know in real life actually read what I write. 

The longer I went without blogging the harder it got to blog again, because there seemed to be too many things to catch everyone up on, and I was for real just lazy and uninspired and all of that self-important stuff that we millennials have been raised to think matters about us. 

So anyway, here's all the things I should've blogged about lately but didn't. Enjoy. 

1. My facebook news feed is ALL BABIES ALL THE TIME. 

When I started having babies, I knew like two other girls my age that had kids, until my sister finally got on top of things (get it?) and got pregnant with my nephew Ryder, so I there wasn't 18,0000 babies in al my newsfeeds until recently when I finally reached the age where my peers start aggressively procreating. Now I can't escape the babies. Babies in Halloween costumes, babies inside pumpkins, babies sleeping, babies inside uteeruses, babies holding other smaller babies, ornkickingbitbwith their little baby homies. My kids are not babies anymore, so I feel half sentimental about all the babies, and half like "man sleeping all night long without ever having to wipe someone's butt is something I've really been taking for granted" 

2. I still hate working out 

Sometimes I'm tempted to write about this, but it feels so unoriginal and obvious. One of my top 5 favorite foods is cheeseburgers, so, duh, of course I hate working out. 

But really, just know this won't ever change. 

3. I hate every "inspiring" quote about being in your 20's. 

Inspiring quotes and memes on Pinterest make me worried and tired, but none quite as much as the Taylor Swift-y bullshit about how in your 20's you're supposed to be all independent and free and all focused on yourself. Judging by all the babies in my newsfeed like we talked about earlier, this is clearly not the decade of selfish free wheeling independence. It's not glamorous to only care about yourself, there's nothing to be proud of about having no obligations, and I'm all for building a career, but this is no time to get in the habit of not caring about anything else. This brings me to my next point....

4. I still hate Taylor Swift. 

I know I'm mostly alone in this, but I think she's a mean girl, and a snob, and all her music is vapid and sounds the same. She came out with new music recently, and I just wanted to make sure everyone knew: I still hate her. 

5. Having a fireplace is everything. 

For the first time since I was 19 I live in a place with a real working fire place, and it is the best. It's turning me into such an old lady, but I can't even begin to care. I light a fire, I find a movie for me and the kids, and we sit by the fire in our Jammie's like a Norman Rockwell illustration, and I love it. The smell of firewood and peppermint and hot chocolate is one of my strongest love languages by far. 

6. It's Christmas time and that is also everything. 

Over the years the kids and I have fallen into several Christmas time traditions, and as they get older I've noticed they cling to them more and more, which makes my little heart so full. We decorate, we watch every Christmas movie ever made, we keep the hot chocolate and candy cane companies in business, we drive to the best Christmas light neighborhoods and walk around picking out our favorite houses....I could go on for days. 

This time of year is my jam. 

7. Chat books are my new favorite thing. 

Have you heard of these? Their softcover books of your instagram photos, that come automatically in the mail every time you post 60 photos. (You can choose which ones to leave out before it ships though) they're $6 a book with free shipping, so it's like happy mail full of sentimental cuteness, that comes out of nowhere like a giant rainbow colored unicorn. 

Simple pleasures, you know? 

Random Thoughts While Running for the First Time Since I was 14

I can do this. Yeah. Not so hard. Kind of fun actually!

{three seconds later}

Fuck this. This hurts. My lungs hurt. Why do people do this?

No, keep going. This is good for you, you're burning so many calories.

{two seconds later}

You know what? I like my body the way it is. I'm not fat, I'm curvy. Guys like curves, right? Like, Marilyn Monroe or something, right? Yeah, Fuck it. I can just be fat forever.

I think my left lung just exploded.

Is that my own ass slapping against my thigh or have my shorts come down?

Nope. It's my ass.

How did I do this in high school?!

Oh, right. I didn't. And I was 50 pounds lighter.

How did I get so fat? 

Oh, right. Cheeseburgers.

Am I peeing?

No, just sweat. I think.

God this hurts.

Little further.

How much further?

Like, that lightpole down there. Yeah, stop there and walk a while.

Or....maybe just stop here. Yeah, here's good. Slow down and walk a while. Or lay down. How uncomfortable could gravel be? Might be nice.....I miss cheeseburgers.

Now I'm almost positive I'm peeing. 

Don't you wet yourself when you die? 

I think I just died. I'm probably already dead.

Ok, I've run a while now and I was going really fast. Time to stop and check my running app:

Annnnnd I ran two miles even slower than I walked two miles last week.

Awesome.