Thugs Don't Eat Dry Salad.

For a brief little while, I bought into the idea that I was supposed to give a shit about a lot of things.

Most of this bullshit propaganda was forced on me when I worked at Walton for two years, which was a finance company in downtown Scottsdale, teeming with assholes pulling in high six figure incomes, and the girls who wanted to fuck them.

During my time there, I quickly came to the realization that people gave a lot of fucks about a lot of things.

Things I had never, ever even thought to give a fuck about.

Things like the right way to eat a salad.

The idea that there was a right or a wrong way had not even once occurred to me, let alone had I taken enough time to decide if I gave a shit.

And that wasn't all. There were plenty of other things I found out I was supposed to have an opinion on, or interest in.

Things like matching cardigan/blouse sweater sets, whether my purse was a Spring or a Fall style/color/material, the different flavors of forest floor, apricot, some fucking how blue cheese, in a glass of red wine, always described in ways like "subtleties, nuances, hints, whispers, or splashes".

I remember once attending a department dinner at a reasonably upscale restaurant near our office.

My boss was a fucking prick, so he of course kept us there working until 7 pm before taking us to the dinner we'd all been waiting for all day. I'd gotten a sitter for the occasion to pick my kids up from daycare, I had four saltines and half a diet coke for lunch - again because my boss was a fucking prick - and this restaurant was supposed to be AH-MAZE-ING according to all the girls in my office who had opinions on every $50 a plate restaurant in Scottsdale.

Also it was free and my boss was a drunk, so I knew there'd be alcohol.

I was pretty excited, and also hungry as shit.

A little bit about me: I don't handle being hungry very well. There were many times in my life when I was growing up that we were legitimately fucking hungry - like, there hasn't been anything for dinner except rice or microwave popcorn for 3 days now, kind of hungry - and now if my blood sugar gets too low I have flash backs and lose the ability to control the volume of my voice.

When we got to dinner, I realized very quickly my hunger was not going to be sated anytime soon.

See, the hot shit thing to do these days is apparently for 40 fucking people to sit down at a table together, and order a bunch of small plates of shit, and share. 

All around the table people are saying things like "taste" and "nibble" and "experience", and I'm sitting at the end trying not to sweat from panic, because I don't think I have the calories left in my blood to afford it.

I didn't want to taste things.

I didn't want to nibble.

The only fucking thing I wanted to experience was protein and carbs and not passing the fuck out.

But I didn't say anything.

Yes, I had worked nearly 12 goddamn hours and didn't get a lunch.

Yes, I had bent over backwards to arrange a sitter to not only watch my kids, but to pick them up from daycare and put them to bed.

Yes, I had traded the only couple hours I had with my children between work and their bedtime, for a stupid dinner with people I hated.

Still though, I didn't want to be the asshole who was all "Fuck you guys, I want my own food."

I didn't want to be the girl at the table who didn't know you're not supposed to pour your salad dressing on your salad, but instead dip the tines of your fork in the dressing before each bite, and that's all the dressing you get.

I didn't want people to think I was a fraud.

I sat there at that stupid table, with those stupid people, and ate maybe a combined total of 50 calories between my bites of food and two glasses of wine.

By the time I left I had to get a ride home because two glasses of wine held more alcohol than my body held calories at that point, and I was shit faced.

I remember going through the drive thru at Jack in the Box on my way home, and then sitting on my kids beds and watching them sleep while I ate, because I saw them for 40 minutes all day.

If there's one thing I learned from my time working in the corporate world, it's this:

Every single fucking person you meet has an agenda, and shit that they care about.

It doesn't mean you have to give any fucks about those things, just because they're caught up in them.

Don't try to force yourself to give a shit about the color scheme of your cardigans, or whether your shoes match your ear lobes or whatever the fuck else, if that shit don't come naturally for you.

Don't eat a dry as shit salad like your Jackie fucking O, just because the other girls at the table are self obsessed and insecure.

And don't ever, not fucking ever, give up the opportunity for free, expensive food just to please a bunch of assholes who don't notice you anyway, after you've already given up a night with the people you love, and too many hours of your life.

I will never be the kind of girl who prioritizes perfect hair over a few extra minutes of sleep.

I will never care enough about the calories in my dressing to eat a dry salad. I already ordered a fucking SALAD instead of a burrito, so let's not push this.

I will never be the kind of person who has the trendiest, most expensive or popular clothes, and everything is always matching and put together.

I'm the kind of girl who has been wearing the same The Who t-shirt since her 18th birthday, and doesn't get people who don't wear Chuck Taylors.

I'm the kind of girl you can always kick it with, no matter who you are, or what you suck at, as long as you're fly as hell and aren't too much of an asshole. I'm the one girl in the room that anybody can sit with.

That's important to me.

You be you.

Care about what you care about, and don't let fucking nobody tell you what's important.

The Good Parts

I've never been particularly great at being happy.

I'm the girl with abandonment issues. I'm the girl who is always waiting for it to all fall apart.

One thing I've tried hard to get better at though, is recognizing when something good just happened, and letting myself play it over and over in my head, as many times as I want.

See, when you come from shit, when you experience trauma on a regular basis, you learn to play that shit over and over in your head. 

It's easier to believe than the good things.

It's easier to recognize. 

It's unfortunately, a hell of a lot more reliable in your experience.

So I never knew how to notice a good moment when it was happening, but lately I've been trying to lock that shit down.

When you order soup at Wildflower and they put it in a bread bowl without charging you the extra $1.99, so you don't have to dig a little soup moat into the roll they give you.

When you live in Arizona and it's a perfect 75 and breezy, during a month that's usually 98 and hell.

When your favorite rap song comes on the radio while someone who has yet to experience your dope rap skills is in the car with you, and you nail that shit and obviously impress the shit out of them.

When you ask the person you love what they're thinking, and they pull you in a little closer and say that they love you. That they love you a lot. That they'll love you forever and ever.

And then some.

That's the shit I've been trying to teach myself to savor.

To replay.

To memorize.

And it's so goddamn sweet, I wish I could bottle it.

I wish I could record it and play it in the car.

I wish I could box it up, and live inside it whenever I want to.

It's nice, to know all the words to a good moment, and let yourself rely on there being more of them.

The Little Things

When I was younger my friends and I were always making lists of qualities and attributes that our dream man would possess. 

We included things like "romantic, funny, honest, smart", sometimes even getting as detailed as "brown hair, green eyes, 6'3 - oh and drives a convertible.

Convertibles were the shit in the 90's.

As I've gotten older though, I've learned that those things almost never matter as much as you think they will.

It's the little things that make you fall in love.

By the time you make it to 25 - or more conservatively 30 - there are very few women in the world who can say that they've never met a man who was the perfect guy on paper: loyal, honest, handsome, stable, everything you're supposed to want, that they just never were able to fall in love with.

A man that is perfect in so many ways it's infuriating, but for whatever reason, they never become more than a relationship that almost happened, but didn't.

  Instead we fall in love with people who on paper probably look all wrong for us. People who don't look very much like that ideal man we'd built in our heads with bullet point requirements and the perfect inseam length. All because of a bunch of little, unexpected things.

The way that you haven't had to tell them how you like your coffee since the very first time they ever asked.

The way they reach for your hand when they're driving.

The nickname they gave you on your third date that feels more like your name now than your legal one.

The little things that they do for you that seem to anyone else as completely inconsequential, but ultimately show you how much they truly understand you at your core.

The love of my life was 17 years older than me, and took 3 years to tell me he loved me.
We had an almost insurmountable number of obstacles, but he was the first guy who ever held my hand in the car. He had a dead-pan sense of humor, and even when I was super pissed, he could make me laugh. When we slept he wrapped his entire body around mine like a ladle, and even though he thought he was a terrible dancer, he danced with me. In clubs, in the living room, at concerts.
I loved that.

And that's how love happens.
Unexpectedly, out of nowhere, and with someone you might never have imagined for yourself.

You don't always fall for the cookie cutter definition of perfect.

More often than not, you love the one who drives you fucking crazy, someone a little broken, someone unexpected. Maybe you bicker with them more often than you planned, or you don't love that they're a bartender with a law degree they don't use and no plans to ever change that, but you love how they tickle your back and kiss your neck, and that weird little patch of hair on their lower back, right above their ass.

Bottom line is: they have a way of catching your heart in their hands like a frantic bird, and calming it.

And in a world full of potentially "better" options, you feel like they're the only perfect option for you.

On Sex and Being Naked

When I was growing up, I always seemed to be surrounded by people who assigned this huge, heavy, weight and meaning to sex. 

Whether it was for religious reasons or personal upbringing, there was an idea going around that taking off your clothes, allowing someone to see your physical self completely, and putting your two naked bodies together was the highest form of intimacy two people could share, and it was not to be taken lightly.

For a while, I went along with this in a half assed sort of way. 

While I did go ahead and take the plunge into sexual experience at the tender age of 15, I remained convinced that it was this huge deal. I prided myself on only having slept with one person for the two years that that number remained the same, and I would tell anyone who would listen that sex was not something to be taken lightly.

Cheating, in my opinion at the time, was unforgiveable.

Sex was this big, grand, monumnetous and important thing! It was special! It was a gift you give somebody! It was the highest form of intimacy for fucks sake! For someone to offer that to another person outside of their two person union {in other words cheat}, they must not care for their partner at all! They must be callous and horrible and completely out of love with their person - not to mention now probably in love with this hussy they cheated with! - because I also believed that since cheating didn't happen in the presence of love, sex didn't happen without it.

I had somehow almost entirely forgotten - or chosen to overlook - the indesputable fact that sex happens all the time without love, respect, or even really liking each other. It was something any asshole with working genitalia had the basic ability to do. Something we were all, regardless of nearly anything else that was true about us, able to do.

Something that we all had a natural and instinctive drive and desire to do, since long before we began experiencing any romantic feelings for people.

Still, even though I knew this, I insisted it was the biggest thing two people could share.

To take off their clothes, part their legs {if they're female}, and wrap around each other, moving together usually in the dark, where no one can see them and they don't really even have to see each other.

What I've learned as I've gotten older though, is that that's the easy part.

The stripping and the panting and the blind feeling.

People do it all the time.

But opening up your soul to someone?

Letting them in, past the well lit paths and things that are easy to share, all the way into the darker and more fragile parts of ourselves; sharing our hopes and dreams and fears and secrets....letting them not just inside your body, but into your spirit - into your heart?

That's being naked.

And it's not something that everyone is capable of doing.

It's not even remotely as easy as having sex.

In the name of the father, the son, and the HOLY SHIT WHAT IS HAPPENING.

As some of you may know, I don't typically get a long right away with most breeders {and by this, I do not mean straight people, I mean people who have birthed/adopted/taken in small, adolescent humans, and become their parents. You can be gay or straight, if you got the bebes, you are a breeder}.

Maybe we don't instantly jive most of the time because I'm almost always significantly younger than the other parents of kids Lainie's age and I feel like they're judging me, maybe it's because I refer to them as breeders...the reason isn't important.

The point is, I really have never felt comfortable around most people with kids.

I'm not a PTA mom, I don't run the local girl scout troop, I used to drive a mini-van but I mostly used it to bump rap music and drink in when I was hiding from my kids, and I have not ever in my life successfully baked something from scratch.

I don't live for sales at Michael's, I look ugly in sweater sets, I have tattoos and I went through a legit slutty phase when I was 19.

Most of the time when I'm around other parents with kids my daughter's age, I feel like a hooker in church, sitting in their well decorated dining rooms just sweating cuss words, holding in the F word like a fart on the first date.

I feel them looking at my wrist tattoo, and see them doing the math in their head when they finally do break down and just ask how fucking old I am.

It's not pleasant.

I admit, I probably have a lot of preconceived notions about most parental types.

I probably assume that they're all stay at home moms who are completely obsessed with their kids to the point that they talk about their 4 year old's "love languages" as if they really know what it is - like I imagine them sitting at their computer at night taking that fucking love language quiz {which I've totally taken for myself, and that shit is LEGIT. Words of affirmation and quality time, right here y'all}  for their child, like PRETENDING to be their 4 year old when they answer the questions, just to see what it is, as if toddlers have any goddamn idea what words of affirmation or acts of service are. 

I also - based on some straight up shitty experiences with breeders from the 'burbs - assume that they're all judgmental and closed minded, etc.

I know these snap judgments aren't fair, and as I get older and age and loss continues to mellow me, I occasionally think that I should do the adult thing once a decade, and branch out. Give one of these highly stereotypical matriarch figures a chance. Who knows? Maybe I'll make a new friend!

That kind of crack pot thinking is exactly how I ended up in my neighbor's {who I had just met that. fucking. day.} garage the other night being forcefully baptized while drinking a beer.

My advice to you is also to stay away from beer. It makes you seem too laid back about things. Keep it pretentious and stick to expensive Bourbon, and then people remain too afraid to anoint you without permission. 

It all started with us moving into this new neighborhood. See, in our last hood, there were a couple houses across the street just chalk full of kids around my kids' ages, who were always available for playing outside. It was awesome, I hardly ever had to deal with my own children during daylight hours, so long as no one fought with anyone else or god forbid wanted a drink that didn't come from the garden hose. 

But then we moved here, and it's mostly old people. Everyone is very friendly though, and one nice, breezy, Thursday morning, the 18 millionth neighbor came into my driveway uninvited while the kids and I were outside caterpillar hunting, to let me know that we just HAD to go over and meet Aubrey, the only other kid in the entire neighborhood, who lives across the street and two houses down.

I was in the same yoga pants I'd worn all week and a ratty t-shirt that I wear to bed/everywhere that no one is likely to see me, so I waited in the driveway with Tiny the caterpillar while Jack and Lainie went to meet their new friend.

I should have known something was amiss when I heard the little girl's mom screaming from across the street in glee about there FINALLY being kids on the block.

I should have gone inside or pretended not to speak english, when the same mom came tromping across the street roughly at the speed of fucking light, to introduce herself to me.

I should have called the whole goddamn thing off and moved to Texas, when she asked for my phone number withing 2 minutes of meeting, all so our kids could play in my yard together.

And I should have just ended it with a toaster in the bathtub, when she called my cell five minutes after we'd spent 20 minutes talking in my yard, to invite me over right. then. to see the inside of her house and get to know each other, so we could decide if we were comfortable with our kids playing together in each other's houses.

But I didn't.

I love my kids somehow more than I hate most parental figures, and wanted her to have a little friend.

So across the street I went.

I toured her home, heard her life story, got the 411 on her love for Jesus, and then it was apparently time for me to ask her questions.

We stood in her garage/art studio, and I assumed the interview was over. I was mentally already crossing the street and opening a beer in my kitchen to recover from this emotional trauma whilst watching Grey's, when she looked at me with her big excited eyes and said "Don't you want to ask me anything?"

I hesitated.

I hadn't so far got the sense she was a child molester or drug addict. No red flags about her possibly whipping my kids behind my back with metal hangers had so far gone up. Her house was very clean, she never cursed, and they had a turtle.

What was I supposed to ask?

"Do you like wine?"

That was all I could think of, in part because having a fucking drink was at that point all. I could. think of. and partly because I'm probably a shallow person and a person's taste in alcohol tells me a lot about them.

For instance, unless they're a recovering alcoholic, I don't trust people who don't drink at all. But I also don't trust voluntarily bald white men, and people who collect stickers, so maybe that's a story for another day.

I digress.

She in fact did love wine, and upon my mentioning it, decided I just HAD to come back over around 7 that night, and sit out in her front yard with her and her husband to watch the kids play and "crack a bottle" of wine.

I'm from the hood, and in the hood you pop a bottle you plan to drink and you crack a bottle you plan to shiv someone with, so admittedly I may have had a misguided idea of what we'd be doing that night when I accepted her invitation.

I also felt intimidated by her and kept side eyeing my daughter playing with her daughter, and felt all of Lainie's hopes and dreams and need for a best friend pull on my painfully sober heart strings.

Fast forward to sometimes around 10:30 pm and a bottle and a half of wine {drank solely by this lady, I had beer} later, and we're dancing her garage to MoTown on Pandora. Well, she's dancing. I'm standing near the door holding my beer and trying to decide if she will buy it if I just leave without saying anything and later blame it on being drunk. I count the empty beer bottles on the porch. Two. That makes three if you count the one in my hand.

I can't even pretend to be that drunk on three beers, because I have a thug ass reputation to uphoald.

I stay.

She, however, is falling into drafting tables and openly weeping while she proclaims her love for Jesus.

This is all OK with me right now because I have a good buzz on and I love watching drunk girls cry, but the next thing I know, the song "Royals" by Lorde comes on, and apparently this shit has some deep spiritual meaning for home girl, because she has me by the elbow like a crabby third grade teacher, and is dragging me into the center of the room before I know what's hit me.

I think at first we're just dancing, so I hold my beer up high to prevent her flailing her own drunk face into the glass bottle, and do my most half hearted dancing ever.

She's now in full on Jesus mode, and is praying out loud - louder and faster, until she is straight up speaking in tongues.

I'm trying not to look too freaked out because I know that one way to escape a serial killer is to not seem shocked by anything that do, so I stay real fucking calm.

But, things continue to escalate, until she dips her thumb into her red wine glass, and I shit you not, draws a cross on my mother fucking forehead with wine.

The wine she's been slurping and crying into all goddamn night, with her dirty ass thumb.

It was worse than an old lady licking a napkin and wiping your damn face.

Frozen in horror, she saw a window and she took it:

Home girl grabs my head - hard and with both fucking hands - and starts rocking back and forth chanting and speaking in tongues like those old, fat, pink skinned TV evangelists, or southern Baptists preachers from the movies. 

I'm more or less trapped BY THE FUCKING HEAD in her death grip bear paws, so I decide to just stay calm, roll with it, and finish my beer.

I assimilate very quickly to straight up ridiculous situations as a way of surviving.

So, there I am standing in a stranger's garage at nearly midnight, being forcefully baptized while I drink a beer and fish around in my bra for my last cigarette.

I'm not 100% on how baptisms are supposed to go, but I'm pretty sure neither the baptizer or the baptizee are supposed to be drunk, smoking, or standing in a garage listening to a TuPac Pandora station. 

After she finally released my head, I was pulled inside so she could joyfully announce to her husband that she had anointed me, and the holy spirit was going to now move through me.

Expecting him to be more rational, in part because he was sober, and in part because I assumed someone in the house had to be fucking sane, given how much of their dishes actually matched, I figured he would roll his eyes, apologize to me under his breath and put Captain Wine Pants to bed.

Nope.

He looked at her with the straightest face I have ever seen and said 

"If you're going to anoint her you should get the real oil"

When I am in a stranger's house and I have already been physically assaulted, the mention of oil of any fucking kind is the fastest way to make me not want to be such a good sport about it all anymore.

I'm ready to leave.

But, of course, since she moves with the speed of the holy spirit, she is back with a bottle of White Angelica essential oil, and blocking the door before I can sin my way through it.

So, now here I am standing in a stranger's kitchen feeling completely convinced that I'm about to made into a skin lamp shade, taking in the all new sensation of someone dumping - I mean literally POURING - the most offensive smelling oil all. over. my. head.

She didn't just make a cross on my forehead, no I'm too full of sin for that to be enough, no she straight up poured it all along my hair line, down the part of my hair, she rubbed in my wrists, on my neck, and BEHIND MY FUCKING EARS so I would never be able to completely wash off what had happened to me.

At midnight I finally left, depressingly sober, out of beer, and stinking like Jesus candles and carnations.

I'm not sure if these things happen to me because I make snap judgments about people, or because every once in a while I try to give people a chance to prove me wrong, but I do now know one thing for sure:

I've now been baptized four fucking times, and not one of them has stuck.

A brief history of coffee and therapy

I never, ever liked coffee until I had my first Frappuccino from Starbucks.
I got a caramel one, with a shit load of whipped cream on top, extra caramel drizzled all over the fucking place, and it was the bomb. I remember clearly standing in Scottsdale Fashion Square with my sisters, and I was 11, and the caffeine hit and I could taste colors, I swear to God.

My dad was super pissed at first about my new love for coffee - I don't remember why exactly, but probably because I started asking for Starbucks all the time, like luxury had just become my standard - and he was all "We have a Goddamn coffee pot right here on the counter, it will make you a cup of coffee for basically fucking FREE! Drink this!"

But I was changed.

I couldn't just go back to the ghetto of caffeinated beverages after what I'd seen. I'd been to the mother fucking mountain top!

Anyway, finally my dad started taking me to Starbucks twice a week and buying me a sugary, caramel Frappuccino. He wouldn't let me get any lemon pound cake or any bullshit like that for an extra $1.89 because let's not get crazy. But he took me, and didn't complain about what it cost.

I got these little treats on the days that I went to therapy.

I was 11 when my dad made my sisters and I go to therapy, and even then I thought it was a crock of shit.

You sit around and talk about all the fucked up shit that's happened to you, over and over, and in painful detail, as many times as it takes until you can "let it go"?

Fuck that.

Not only does that sound exhausting and painful, but I'm not good at letting shit go.

For a long time I felt like I'd earned the right to be pissed off and depressed, simply for surviving most of the shit I'd survived.

The anger and the sullen resentfulness felt like my trophies - my fucking door prize, my SOUVENIR. And I love souvenirs, I never get rid of those. {Shout out to all my ribbons "Great Job Participating" pins from 4 years of little league baseball. You always make my lanyards look fly as hell.}

There was a Starbucks on the way to the therapists office though, and my dad promised that if I just went and participated for my hour long session, we'd stop there on the way home.

When I started counseling, it was the summer I was going to turn 12. 

I had bad insomnia, and was sleeping maybe 2-4 hours a day total, and none of those were during night time hours. I would stay up at night and watch black and white movies, pull weeds in the backyard, play with the dogs, put on every item of clothing I owned and put a fashion show on for the dolls in my room.

Anything but sleep.

Therapy was hard.

That shit fucking hurt, and I hated a lot of people for a while.

I stopped going, I left. I always eventually went back.

I sat for an hour a day, two days a week in my therapist's office and dug up dead bodies from my past.

It was the most beautiful and morbid thing.

After the sessions, my dad would always ask how it went, and I would always say fine.

We'd walk the rest of the way to Starbucks in silence and I'd get my Frappuccino and try to forget about what had just happened.

For years I never thought I ever made any "breakthroughs" or experienced any major recovery as a result of therapy. I just knew it was something that sometimes helped me feel better when I got so sad that I couldn't make myself feel better.

But lately things have been hard, and I've been recalling all the hours logged on the chairs of different therapists over the last 14 years since my first non-consensual visit. 

I thought for a while that I've been lonely lately.

I kept talking about it, I kept needing people around more and more, I kept feeling desperately sad in the face of all the things that hurt, and all the things I can't do anything about right now.

And then I realized: it's not loneliness, it's grief.

A kind of mourning.

I never really had the words to attach to a feeling so heavy, so I assumed it must be loneliness.

I've never been good at grieving. Usually I allow myself a specific amount of time to cry about it, and then I eat all the bread in the house and act like I'm ok. 

I've also never been good at letting things go.

But I feel like these are both skills I could improve, and eventually bring up to par with some of my other mad skills. Like rapping. My fucking rapping skills are legit.

So, maybe it's time to go back to therapy.

And Starbucks.

On Blogging.

Blogging is weird. 

Most of the time, I don't talk about it.

I don't tell people in conversations that I have a blog, because...honestly, it sounds pretentious.

"I have a blog" feels like something that people who also talk about the flavors of forest floor and meadow mist in red wines say.

It feels like something that people with an overblown sense of self importance say.

Maybe I over think it.

Maybe I'm shy.

I don't know.

Still though, blogging is weird.

On the one hand, it's a lovely little journal in which I have cataloged hundreds of posts about my family, my kids, myself. The journeys that we've taken, the challenges we've faced, the big and small moments that have made up our lives for the last three years that I've been writing here.

It's the place where I told true stories of love, loss, heartache, death, anger, and received dozens of emails from people all over the world who said "Thank you", people who said "You helped me", or people who felt a kinship to me because I had the words to say things they didn't.

On the other hand, it's a vast and public arena and you ultimately have no idea how many people are reading about your life.

I have 17 "official" followers, according to Blogger. 

Yet, I have upwards of 3,000 views and visits to my blog every. single. month.

Are the same 17 people coming back 176 times each per month? I doubt it. That means there is a huge number of quiet little lurkers out there that know more about me than I will ever know about them.

When I meet people who read my blog, and they mention it, I feel shy.

I feel like they have the advantage.

They know so. much. about me. and I know almost nothing about them.

Still, most of the time, it feels good to come here and talk.

To tell you about the inconsequential things that made up our week, or the things that are weighing on me, or the little victories I've achieved. 

Even if I don't know you, even if you're one of the people who read consistently but don't officially "follow", even if you've read for years and never left a comment or sent an email, or said hello, I'm glad you're here, whoever you are.

I'm happy to share myself and my family with you and I hope it makes you feel something.

After three years of endless rambling, I'm glad you're still reading.

Life.

So here we are, all moved into our new house, and it looks like we all {somehow} survived.
My new couch came, and I'm pretty sure it's made of angel wishes and clouds, and is the best thing ever.

Now that I'm not moving though, I guess I have to stop using that as an excuse and get back to work like everyone else.

My new associate photographer has her very first wedding coming up day after tomorrow, and I'm not sure who is more nervous, her or me. Bringing someone else into my business is fun and exciting but also really hard for me. On the one hand I don't trust anyone, and I like to be in control. On the other I'm glad to be able to pass on clients that can't afford to me someone less expensive, but still get to handle the business side of things which I really enjoy, and make a little money off it. And on another hand {maybe foot because I think now I'm out of hands} I am an adult child of an alcoholic which means I have boundary issues and don't want to hurt anyone's feelings or make anyone mad so I feel awkward and uncomfortable saying things like "hand out my business cards at the wedding, not yours" or "if any of these images go on your facebook page, they need to include my logo, or at least say on behalf of sarah horne photography"

I don't know if I make a good boss.

I try.

We'll see how it all goes.

I'm still excited to watch Kourtney thrive and grow and come into her own.

She has a natural talent and I think she'll make a great photographer.

I'm choosing to be positive.

In other news, my first wedding of the year is on Friday, after a nice long two month break.

I like weddings, but that doesn't take away from how physically demanding they are, and how much time goes into them, from the first client consultation to their engagements to the wedding itself.

And the editing.

Shoot me now.

I sometimes walk out of a wedding with 2,000 pictures on my memory card.

Culling through all those and editing the keepers?

I will need all the coffee. 

And wine.

All of it.

But I'm excited still. Weddings are a photographer's wet dream. They're like styled editorial shoots, but with real people instead of just models. So many pretty, well planned details to photograph, so much emotion, so many great moments.

It will be exhausting, but it will be fun, and I'm ready to come out of my wedding hibernation.

Not much else is new right now, really.

The kids get bigger, I get busier, life goes on.

There are small victories, like a kitchen that's stayed clean for a solid week and a wedding booked in Louisiana. Jackson sleeping in his own room now, and not stress eating all the Girl Scout cookies at once.

Nothing huge, nothing life changing.

Just the steady accumulation of small moments that when added altogether equal a life.