Adulthood or Something Like It

When do you know how to really be an adult?

I remember lying in my bed as a teenager with thoughts rolling through my head like...

How do taxes work?  Will I ever have a clue how to do them?  What if I don't do my taxes right, then what happens?

Who decides things about insurance?  Do you always just have an insurance man come to your dining room table and hammer it out for the year or is that more of a Dad thing?  What do you do if you aren't Dad?   

What will I ever do if the furnace breaks, freeze?  

Please tell me I wasn't a completely neurotic teenager and you all had these types of items running through your mind as well.  Or at the very least, it happened to you once college hit.  No?  Twenty-five then!  It had to start happening at twenty-five! 

The good news is - I now take care of my taxes, insurance, and have successfully handled a new hot water heater, which I feel is close to the heater of my previous thoughts.  

Does this mean I'm an actual adult?  Probably.  I mean, I am thirty-two.  

BUT.  

Every once in awhile something comes out of right field where I think, "Alright.  Who takes care of this for me?  Oh.  I do?  Shoot."  

Or every once in awhile my mom stands in my kitchen as we are packing it up for the big move and says something absolutely genius to my little sister, "Emily, we are going to put each piece of china in a Ziploc bag.  That way, it won't break on the trip and we aren't wasting a bunch of paper.  She can still use the bags once the china is unpacked."  

That's an entirely different level of adulthood right there.  That is most likely described best as momma-hood - specifically, MommaDebi-hood.  

Someday.  Someday I'll be as cool.  

Do you get that smart when you have kids?  I'm betting that's the ticket.  I don't even have a dog; I just claim the neighbors as my own because he loves me.  Lefty, not my neighbor - let's not start any rumors.  

One on a Sticky Note

I clicked apply, saw the ridiculous spinning wheel, and proclaimed with a quick wave of my hand, "And folks, this is where I simply walk away for a few moments and practice my patience."  I did just that too - walked between two of the tables as we all shared a laugh.  When I turned around to make my way back to the front, the wheel was gone and the report was loaded.   

A few minutes later when everyone was back to working through the work on their own, a lovely first grade teacher handed me a sticky note which read, "Patience is the ability to idle your engine when you feel like stripping your gears."  It was written in perfect first grade teacher handwriting and I thought to myself, okay I get it - here is yet another reminder.  I smiled at her and we nodded in our heads in a mutual understanding.    

 

Patience.  It isn't easy and it's especially not easy for this girl.  

It's like Momma Debi has said to me time and time again.  

"We can all have patience.  But real patience is not just waiting, but waiting graciously."  

The universe gave me a sign today - quite literally one on a sticky note.  

I'll take my hint.  

Closed for the Season

The Beartooth Pass is officially closed.  Not forever, but until next spring when the snow starts its thaw and the green finds its way back.  It's hunkering down for the winter, but it will be there for us again. 

Glacier Lake - the very first hike Kiel and I went on together was to that patch of blue nestled between those peaks.  It was magical; I swear it's where unicorns live.  It's also where knew I was with who I was meant to be with then and now and forever too.  

Dear Beartooth Pass,

We will see you when we are ready to have the sun warm our bones again, when the skis have been put away for another year, when the memories and adventures of the winter are tucked in our back pockets, and when we want to be reminded what the world looks like from up high.

Sincerely,
Us

String of Family

We recently watched Woman in Gold and if you haven't seen it yet, do yourself a favor and carve out a couple of hours as it is beautiful with a capital "B."  

Tears ran down my face several times from being reminded of the hard, hard moments people have gone through in history.  The kind of hard like saying goodbye to your parents knowing you will never see them again.  The kind of hard like running for your life through the streets trying desperately to escape the people you know want nothing more than to see you suffer until you finally die because they believe you are worth less than nothing.  The kind of hard like starting your life completely over in a brand new country knowing you don't have your family lineage in its entirety and never will again. 

The kind of hard which quickly puts what I think of as hard into a perspective of well, let's just move right along because love a duck, this life is easy.

After the movie, we came upstairs and vacuum-packed the herbs picked from the porch earlier in the evening in anticipation of the first chilly frost.  As I was writing basil, spicy basil, and thyme on the little pouches I turned to Kiel and said, "My parents would be proud of us right now.  I can't tell you how many nights I went to sleep with the sound of the vacuum-packer sealing up whatever it was they wanted to preserve." 

I come from a long string line of canning, freezing, doing whatever it takes to save food grown in the summer for the long North Dakota winter.  It is deeply rooted in my dad's family and in my mom's too.  Great-Grandma Alice didn't waste one bit of a butchered pig right down to the head and Grandma Gladys wouldn't have dreamed of letting even one carrot not be pulled from her massive gardens. 

I often think about the folks that came before me and pushed through enormous hardship.  My great grandparents coming over from Norway and Germany, my grandparents surviving the Great Depression, my parents getting through the droughts of the 80s...

It's a long history of grinning and bearing. 

A string of events that leads to me standing in the kitchen vacuum-packing herbs from the pots on the porch and my almost four year old niece Hazel learning how to get the kernels out of a durum head from her Auntie Em.

Family history makes us. 

It makes us have a reserve tank to pull from when needed.  

If I ever am faced with actual hard things, I like to think Grandma Gladys would come through in me with her quiet strong will and Great-Grandma Alice too, with her fearless attitude. 

I like to think I'd pull from the string which has connected us all.  

And so, I say a simple thank you.  Thank you to my great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents.  For having grit.  For getting through.  So that I can flutter around and take pictures of pretty things, travel all around, and live this life. 

Fall to the Next

I think fall as a season is meant to be a reminder to enjoy the current and the now before worrying about the next.  After fall comes winter and we know it happens the same every year and yet, there's something about fall that brings out the happy in us.  Seeing the colorful leaves, wrapping a sweater around your shoulders for the first time, hugging a cup of coffee with steam rising from the cool air meeting the hot liquid, hearing the crispness of the grass as you walk through - it all makes us take pause.  

Yesterday, I had a mild breakdown of sorts.  An anxiety fueled session of worrying about moving.  Where will the stuff fit?  How will we coordinate the coming together of two complete houses into one?  It probably started as a legitimate concern but ended as a tailspin of going nowhere fast.  Self admittedly, I let it get the best of me when I deep down know it will all settle in and figure itself out as things like this tend to do when they are done for all the right reasons.  All of my worries were about the tiny stuff, the material things.  The big stuff, the who we are as people being together causes me absolutely no concern.    

This morning, I awoke feeling like I once again hold the capacity to enjoy the current season before worrying about the next.  Figuratively and literally.  I slid my arms into my favorite long sweater, walked to the kitchen to start the coffee, and looked outside at the mountains with the yellow trees in front of them.  

Fall.  

Plural Pineapple

A few weeks ago in Fargo, I wrote this. 

I wore high heels for the first time today in 5.5 months, three cheers for being normal.   

The internet didn't work this morning in my training.  The system I train for is only on the internet.  So in other words, it was awesome.  Insert extreme sarcasm here.  I sent folks on a seven minute break and came up with Plan B because the show must go on.  

Today, my outfit was a purple dress with a gold scarf.  I enjoyed it much and then I thought to myself, "Self, these are your high school colors.  If you were still sixteen and high school, you would laugh at this as a mom outfit trying to be school spirit-ish."  Then I moved on.  

My coworker invited me over for lunch today because I was in her town and fed me lettuce, spinach, carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, pineapple, and grapes.  In other words, heaven.  I find it funny that the plural of pineapple is pineapple.  I would like to say pineapples but it just isn't correct, so I don't.

I love the days and nights I work in the same town that my little sister lives.  I think I will bribe Em to always live there so I have someone to have patio rooftop pizza with and someone to braid my hair and teach me how to put on blush in the evenings after the work day is done.  It's so much better than sitting in a hotel room by yourself.  So much better.  Love that little nugget this much, arms open wide. 

The above picture is the evidence that yes, we went to Rhombus Guys twice in one week.  Once to sit on the patio and once to sit in a booth and color - both to eat their delicious Cuban pizza.

Portland Now, But Yellowstone Then

When I wished and wanted for a life of non-routine, I didn't realize quite all what that would include.  I just remember feeling trapped, driving to the same building every single day on the same road after doing the same exact thing the day before.  I remember thinking there had to be something different for me.   

Friday night, I sat on an airplane and wanted to be at home instead.  I had already been staying in hotels all week for meetings, two presentations, and one conference.  Kiel had joined me and we were set to take off for Portland because it had been planned as a "vacation" weekend to start our work trips that collided in Oregon this week.  However, I wasn't feeling vacation Friday night.  I wanted anything but an airplane.  And my attitude showcased those sentiments.  

If someone would have offered me the choice of drive to same building every single day on the same road, I would have jumped.  

Because let me tell you this - it isn't all fun, this travel working.  With its long days which often extend into night, it isn't all fun at all.  Nothing is.  That's the beauty of life, the ups and downs.  And normal sane Amy who has gotten enough sleep and who doesn't have to pack three different suitcases to coordinate two entire weeks of travel knows that and keeps good perspective on that.  But extremely tired Amy wants home with clothes out of a drawer and food out of a fridge.

Saturday morning, we woke up in Portland after finally arriving at 2:00 am.  I drank coffee out of a real mug, had the right amount of sleep in my bones, and felt human again.  I felt like I was getting a relaxing Saturday morning, even if it was in yet another hotel breakfast area.  

My attitude was on point, I apologized for my night before antics, and I was ready for a "vacation" weekend.  

I'm not really sure what the point of all this is.  Maybe it's to say that nothing is ever perfect and everything has its ups and downs.  Routine work life or nontraditional travel work life, it all just depends on what is right for life at the time.  It all just depends on what we are willing to give and take on and for.      

I just did laundry at a hotel in Portland and that was a down, but tonight we are driving to the coast to grab dinner and that is an up.   

Also, in case you are wondering...hotel laundry is precisely like college laundry.  The dryer doesn't dry completely with one cycle even though it blows so hot the clothes come out a size smaller.

On a Sunday in mid-September, we day tripped to Yellowstone to hike by the waterfall.  I don't think I'll ever tire of this kind of beauty.  I better not, because that would mean I am not taking the time to soak it up.  It also would mean Kiel has stopped schlepping the big camera on trails; I should note the selfies are not from the big camera, although I'm sure you can tell.