One of these things first.

Posted On March 15, 2009

What I’ve been up to:

• I got accepted to massage school for the fall. I got my tour and the whole experience was so exciting. It’s different than I thought it would be, in a good way. Smaller class than I expected- only about 60 people split into two groups. The woman told me that I’d likely leave with very close friends. I’m feeling like this is going to be a really good experience and I’ll learn a lot.

• I went to a doula training last weekend. It was invigorating and inspiring, and also humbling. It’s not like I was assuming I’d be an awesome birth support person right off the bat, but through the training I really realized that it’s a precious time for women and their families, and I just think I now am closer to grasping the profundity of it. I really need to respect the role I’ll be playing, be forever open to learning and to being wrong, and to just be of absolute service. In thinking about doula work lately I realized that it’s not like any other vocation. I mean, my mom and her friends coached each other when they were having babies. It was just normal. I’ve read books where women routinely attended each other’s births and it was just what you did. We help each other through it. I think it’s a really important role, but it got me thinking that it’s also just what women in a community (who have the heart for it, of course) are sort of naturally drawn to. It was beautiful to me in that way. It’s life work. I think midwifery is a calling, and I don’t feel particularly drawn to it, but the women I know who are into it are so amazing to me. I love being connected to all this and I feel so blessed to have been able to catch the "bug".
• I’ve been digging Deepak Chopra lately. He’s so inspiring! If you haven’t heard of him, check him out. At first it seems like any other dude spouting inspirational mumbo jumbo, but I really really like him. He speaks lots of truth.
• Jeff and I have been laughing and laughing. I love love love him. We are great friends. Last night we had a date and we snuck Chinese food into the dollar theater and were just giggling and hugging. Ridiculous cheesiness. We talked about our future and our present life. We talked about parenthood and our new house. Jeff kept saying "I had a really good time tonight". I think it’s just been a while since we had an alone date together, it was really good for us.
• The house is coming along. Sometimes it seems like a snail’s pace to me, but inevitably when someone comes over they point out something that we did that they hadn’t seen last time. It’s feeling really like home, and I have no doubt we made the right choice. That alone is a really good feeling. It was such a big decision.

Yesterday we put up these shelves in our dining room. I wanted to put stuff on them before we left for the movie, so Jeff took it upon himself to help me out. So, we’ve got a mini collection of mezcal from Mexico, some tin baking pans, brita filters, coffee maker, snow man shaped cookie box, etc. I swear, in the (going on) 5 years we’ve been together, I continually laugh at dumber and dumber stuff. I used to roll my eyes and tell him to knock it off, and now I roar with laughter and take pictures. What’s that about?

Here it is all "fixed".

Bonus:
I took this picture this morning and then thought "Wait a minute! I’ve seen this before!" and dug through my old pictures. I thought it was cool.

*side note: I haven’t been taking pictures because I’ve been discouraged by my new camera. It was supposed to be way higher quality, and yet the quality sucks so far. I’ve been trying all sorts of things and googling, and it really can’t compare to my old camera. So, I’m gonna switch back. You can even tell between the last two pictures- the pregnant picture being with my old camera. Anyway, I’ve heard there are photographers that can make amazing pictures with whatever camera, but I am not that photographer yet… Hopefully I’ll be back with more pictures now that I’ll be going back to my old one.

Quote of the day:

“The secret of attraction is to love yourself. Attractive people judge neither themselves nor others. They are open to gestures of love. They think about love, and express their love in every action. They know that love is not a mere sentiment, but the ultimate truth at the heart of the universe.” (Deepak Chopra)