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.  

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. 

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.

Coffee and Combines

I've learned from the past year of travel working there are certain normal living in a house and waking up in said house to get ready for work routine items you immensely miss.  One being really great fresh coffee that doesn't end after one cup.  Hotel coffee is for the birds and when you buy one at a shop, it ends at the bottom of the paper cup - leaving you to want more.  Now, the mornings when I get to walk out to the kitchen to pour into a real mug out of a full pot, I almost do a happy dance jig right there.  All the coffee!  Give me all the coffee!  Shimmy.  Shake.  Boom.

Another item missed from the getting ready for work at home routine is changing my mind on what I want to wear.  You know, sometimes you just feel an outfit and sometimes you just don't.  It can't be planned.  When I first started this gig, I would pack a couple of choices because I know this to be true.  But now, that concept is entirely too exhausting after so much packing and unpacking.  I make the decision, go with it, and figure it's a good life lesson to sometimes get what I get and not throw a fit.

There isn't a real clever tie in here to the next train of my thought.  

I heard word from Momma Debi last night they finished the wheat harvesting which means all that remains is flax and soybeans.  There's rain in their forecast so this is good news, real good news!

There's nothing better than a combine selfie from a few weeks ago to celebrate.  Well, I'm sure there's lots of better things - like wine, chocolate, beer, chips, salsa, streamers, glitter, a small flag on a wooden stick to wave, etc... But go with me.

He was helping his friends harvest and I have been in many combines in my life but never have I sat next to someone I also want to make out with so there you have it.  

Also because harvest pictures are some of my very favorite, I tend to get a bit snap happy.  Apparently what was going on here was Kiel saying to my nephew Gus, "Just wave to her.  It'll make her go away."

I found this out later and deep down I'm beyond happy I did not go away.  The rule breaker in me is happy I bucked the mold.

Cheers to the long weekend.  May it be filled with spending time in the slightly chilly air surrounded by the starting to crisp up leaves while wearing a cute sweater to wear when it dips to a tad too chilly.

If you are a man, I hope it still involves a cute sweater.  Never underestimate the happiness a gray or cream cable knit can bring.