a few of my favorite things 2013: a moment

This is my favorite moment from 2013:

It's from my trip back to Virginia for my 20 year high school reunion this past summer.  The day after the reunion, I met up with a couple of my friends at an old park in the neighborhood we had grown up in. Most of the playground equipment that we remembered had long since been taken out and replaced, which was sad. Except for this sweet old metal whale! And you all know how much I love whales anyhow. So I told my friend I wanted a picture of me sitting on the whale.  Well, I sat down on it and the springs on the poor old whale were so old and loose that as I sat on it's tail, I immediately swung so far back that I almost hit the ground, which of course came as a bit of a surprise, so I started laughing uncontrollably as I swung back up and leaned forward to keep myself upright! And this is the shot she got of me on the whale.  People have told me that they like this picture of me, how nice it is to see me genuinely happy and smiling and laughing. And I agree with them. It isn't often that I get pictures of myself laughing. And I don't often like the way I look anymore smiling too hard, honestly. My face gets all scrunched up and I have a double chin and my eyes are squished and it's really not my best look, take my word for it. But this, I like this picture. And I liked remembering happy times of my childhood with good friends. Lots of good times at that playground.  So many memories. So this is a good moment.:)

Honestly, the trip to Virginia was kind of a hard one for me. 

(I'm just going to leave these photos interspersed out of order throughout the post because it's too much of a pain to try to put them in order, so just enjoy them for their randomness. Maybe they'll make some sort of sense to you. I'll put captions at the bottom. There.:))

The whole idea of going to the 20 year reunion was a hard one. Not knowing who would be there. If people would recognize me. Knowing I have changed - a lot. Had 4 babies. Etcetera. But also knowing that I don't care too much. That I don't care enough to keep me away anyway. But also being very nervous. What have I done in the 20 years since High School? I went on a church mission to Germany, I got married, I graduated from college, had a baby the month after and I've been a stay at home mom every since. That has been my choice and I'm happy with it, but it is hard sometimes to tell other people that who may have "expected" that I do other bigger and better things. I was afraid of listening to a night of "oh I always thought you would do ____" whatever that might be....

And then being overcome with memories of high school. It's just the name of the game, right? And oh, my. It's just kind of overwhelming. Sometimes. It can be that way for me.

And I don't go back to Virginia often. I was born there and lived there my entire life until I got after my mission when we moved after I got home. So the place itself is very strong with memories, for me. Especially this time, with the reunion. It just felt saturated. Dripping with memories everywhere I turned. I was kind of a mess. And I was very nervous about traveling with the pain, too. The flight. And I had never ever gone on a trip all alone before. I know that seems silly, being an adult and everything, but my anxiety was just very high and my pain was very high. I had a bad migraine every single day of the trip. That alone makes me a little crazy. I stayed with my sister and her husband, who I appreciated very much. They worked full-time so I was left to do whatever I planned to do, which was perfect. But I didn't have as much of a plan as I had planned to have, which was stressful for me. I would very much like to be a person that can be spontaneous and can go with the flow and just do whatever comes my way and whatever but I learned that what this does is increases my stress a hundred fold and then I become sort of paralyzed with indecision, and then I make bad decisions. Or I drive around aimlessly and get lost, or end up places I don't really intend on ending up. Or going the wrong way down one way streets. Or all of the above. It's not really good for me. I get emotional.

Some things worked out really well. I did see some friends that I hadn't seen in many many years and I loved catching up with them and it was wonderful. Some things didn't work out as well. Some plans fell through. I got lost, a lot. Every day I got lost. My GPS on my phone kept dropping out, leaving me driving along with no more directions and pulling into random parking lots trying to get it to reconnect and turning around multiple, multiple times, every time I tried to go anywhere. Northern Virginia is a zoo with traffic anyway, but everywhere I went had changed unrecognizably. Even places where I knew I should know where I was, I no longer had any clue where I was. I got lost late at night coming back from the reunion in my own neighborhood, the one I lived in for over 20 years. I was turned around, completely disoriented and about in tears (in my defense, there are no streetlights in the neighborhood so it was pitch dark and I just have a terrible sense of direction - plus, all the trees had grown so much taller!). In fact, I think just about every single day I was there I ended up in tears for one reason or another. I couldn't find my best friend's house in Fredericksburg (she no longer lives there). I drove around where I knew it should be, just to look at it, because I had time to kill, and never even came close. No idea where I was.

It was so overwhelming and disorienting to be "home" but to feel so lost.  I just felt lost. Virginia will always always be home for me. But I felt like in some ways, I was saying goodbye on this trip. There won't be another high school reunion for however many years. I tried to soak in as much as I could, though I know it will never be enough.   I didn't belong anymore. I don't belong anywhere. I've become homeless.

The reunion itself was good, I was so glad that I had gone, although for some reason I managed not to eat a single bite the entire night. So many of the people there were people I had known since kindergarten. They weren't really my "crowd" during high school. But they felt almost like family to me, I have just known them for so long. I don't know if they feel the same way about me. They probably don't. But oh well. I was happy to see them, at any rate. I was the one who became the "alternative girl" into middle school and high school and stopped hanging out with the cool kids. They just thought I was weird. So the reunion was mostly the more popular kids.  I was ok with that. I don't really care. Most of them didn't remember me unless I had already been friends with them before High School. Hahahaha.;) Oh and if I'm going to classify cliques, some of the really smart kids were there too . I knew them too, happily. So I had some people to talk to. But I stood the whole time not really knowing who to stand next to, becoming increasingly uncomfortable in the heels I wore that I hardly ever wear. Ha. The music was loud, people danced, I laughed and talked to people and caught up and tried not to cry and tried to decide how honest to be about my life and pain issues. But it was good.

There were sooooooo many people that I wish had been there that weren't though. Many many many. It made me miss them.

(I did also get to be there for my sister's baby shower for her first baby which was just so much fun!! I do hope to be able to get out to visit her and her new little family more often. I wish, I wish....)

Oh. And I just discovered that I have lost my photos from this trip. All of them except for what I posted in the reunion group on FB and what I posted personally on FB and on Instagram. I'm a little heartbroken about it - there were a lot of just little things, places and buildings (like the house I grew up in and the church I attended) that I took pictures of that are lost and that I don't know when I will get back to go see again. They may not even be there when I get back there again.  I get attached to places. I seem to hang little pieces of myself in the places I've been and when I go back, I see myself there and say hello again. It's important to me, part of who I am.

Anyway, so I guess I ache for what I've lost, as we all sometimes do.
Childhood, places as I knew them, memories, friendships and relationships as they once were, photos, home...
It was an interesting and sort of hard trip to take. But I'm still really glad I did. We can never really go back to anything. We know this. Some people have no desire to go back and see the places where they used to be. They don't want to be reminded of painful pasts, or memories they've put behind them, and high school is just so done, right?
But I guess I'm never one to shy away from nostalgia even though sometimes it hurts. I need to be reminded that the good parts of who I was are still part of who I am. I'm still that girl too. And I still have a home in Virginia, even when I feel lost and homeless.

(photos:
-  me on the whale
-  me and Megan who I've known since kindergarten under our Class of 93 sign
 - my Senior class photo
- beautiful green VA trees
 - old map of Northern VA in the Fairfax County museum I ended up in one day
 - me looking through old nostalgic photos before my trip
- my high school memorabilia
- flying out of Reagan National Airport over DC - saying goodbye
- Virginia postcard
- Megan, Anne and Me ( I met Anne in middle school but she lived in our neighborhood & knew Megan in neighborhood preschool)
- me in front of our High School, the night of our reunion before going over 
- Scott, Ben and Erik that I've known since kindergarten or at least 1st grade
- view from airplane
- me and Shelly who was my best friend in 6th and 7th grade, then she moved away but we stayed in touch
- Amy, Megan and me (we've known each other since kindergarten)
- view of Rappahanock River, Fredericksburg, VA - one of my favorite places
- Kindergarten class picture (pictured, me, Megan, Amy & Scott - from above pictures - can you find us? Erik and Ben were in the other kindergarten class)
- Senior Class memorabilia table - including the literary magazines that I was a huge part of
- Anne, Carolyn and me (Carolyn lives near me! but this was the first time we'd seen each other - across the country - haha)
- My very pregnant little sister Melissa at her baby shower
- Erin, Christina, Amy and me - we had a separate little reunion get together

how does your garden grow

The other night I was kneeling in the dirt of our little garden looking at what has come of the seeds we have planted, what has grown and done well, and what has not, pulling out all kinds of very prickly noxious weeds, and weeds that had worked their twisty ways around the stems of my dear little plants. I knelt there weeding and weeding and weeding and and I got to thinking, as I am wont to do. Oh, thinking. My brain. It's a doozy. And I thought about life and summer and the trip I just went on and my kids and the things we've been doing and all of what we've been up to.  (I know it's hopeless to even tell you about the posts I still have in my drafts that I really am still going to finish and post. I really am.) But anyway.  Gardening. Weeding.  Thinking.  And I thought I'd check in here and give you a little update and let you know how things are going, or growing, as the case may be, beginning with our experimental garden plot, and maybe expand on this as little metaphor because metaphors are always fun.  And here I am.

1. So we've lived in our house 11 years and through these years we have had a little plot in which we have sometimes  on and off experimentally gardened.  Nothing has been very successful and it has mostly been discouraging and has mostly grown an amazing amount of weeds.  This year we are trying again. We bought some manure and peat moss and turned the soil and even designed and installed a watering system (which we determined to be our main failure in the past. Turns out things don't grow so well without water. Hm.)  We bought seeds.  We started some seeds from little seed starter peat pots indoors.  And eventually (later in the year) we bought a few tomato plants and a red pepper plant. The younger kids also brought home some carrot seedlings they had started in yogurt cups at school.  So, at this point, our watering system has failed - our sprinkler system turned out to have main water valve leaks that Zac has tried to fix at least 3 times and it is still leaking and so the branch leading the garden and back yard are still not functioning.  And yeah, it's over 100 degrees and our backyard is not being watered.  If you're not from Utah or the West you may not understand the significance of this. Oh well. We are watering the garden from the hose but we are more committed to keeping things alive and I think it is working.  We have some tomatoes starting to grow. Some lettuce. Some peas look good. One carrot from the kids school seeds. Of my little herb garden that I started from seeds, only basil looks like it will grow into something that can be harvested.  I am disappointed not to have any dill or chives but not much can be done. Of the seedlings we started indoors, marigolds were the only ones to make it after we transplanted outdoors.  We have some green bean plants growing (haven't seen any fruit yet) and some zucchini or yellow squash (not sure which).  The pepper plant died and we don't know why.  We are learning through trial and error.  Probably mostly though error. We don't really know what we're doing. Just hoping to enjoy some of our harvest.

(all below photos taken in Humboldt, CA)

2. My trip: I went to CA for my oldest sister's wedding.  I drove 2 days there with my mom and her new husband and my niece/sister and her husband and we stayed there 3 days in a rental house with the 5 of us plus my brother, his wife and their 2 yr old and my youngest sister, then drove 2 days home again.  We spent time with my sister, her son, her fiance, and his 2 daughters, plus the best man, another friend, my sister's fiance's parents. Did I forget anyone?  There were a lot of people, which meant they were surrounded by a lot of love and support which is wonderful, but for an introvert like me who needs a little time alone to recharge, and a person like me with chronic pain who needs daily naps to kind of function in a normal fashion, all the busy running around kind of drained me in a significant way.  I mention this to try to explain to myself why this trip felt so difficult to me in some ways.  Family.  We grow up together.  Are we like a garden? We are seeds somehow sown together, we think we are getting the same experience of sun and water and soil and yet each of experiences it all so differently.  This is something that always seems to come up when I am together with my siblings.  We experienced our childhoods so differently.  We remember even the exact same things so differently.  We experienced our parents differently.  It is hard sometimes to come to terms with the differences of our experiences.  Our memories.  Our childhoods.  And even now. We continue to experience things so differently.  It is hard sometimes to respect and come to terms with the differences of our experiences.  We are in the same garden but experiencing differing shade and sun and water. Sometimes we forget that it's not the same. And not all of us are flourishing in the same way.  Anyway.  I'll just quickly also bring up the issue of being an adult when your parents divorce and remarry. I must have been naive or maybe I just didn't want to think about it - but I didn't think this would affect me as much being older.  I was 21 when my parents got divorced.  And I will just tell you that I was wrong. And if you are one of the people who somehow think or thought the same, I just want to disprove that myth for you once and for all.  And I just have to say that having your parents remarry at any age is still hard.  There just is no way around it.  There were weeds I found on this trip cropping up in my mind that I didn't even know existed.  Not the "bad thought" weeds that we're typically taught to weed out of our minds in that sense, but just things growing in the back of my mind, thorny prickly uncomfortable feelings that needed to be dealt with. Painful thoughts that had to be grabbed with both hands and yanked on and brought to the surface and untangled, even though they dug into my palms and left me scraped and bloody.  I came home from the trip having accidentally unearthed some prickly thorny weeds and it wasn't necessarily any one's fault or any particular incidences or anything. It was just the circumstance of what is and that I need to deal with my weeds. It was a wonderful trip, all things considered. It is so beautiful there and I love it.  The wedding day was beautiful and I loved it. I love my family and I loved spending time with them.  Gardening is just such hard work.  We work at it the best we can and sometimes we aren't so good at it.



3. Summertime and my kids: we started a new chore system and it seems to be going well. The kids are actually doing chores!!  Hooray! This is going well for the most part because I am doing well enough to enforce it - ta da! Magic! ;)  And Zac and I are both actually amazed at how well it is going.  It took a couple weeks to get some of the complaining to stop and to not have to drag certain children from step to step but after 4 weeks, it seems to be going somewhat smoothly. They have a room for the week to clean and maintain everyday and then "deep clean" once a week and we have incorporated doing the laundry and some extra things into the basic rooms. They have a printed list of what they are expected to do every day.  I help Samuel and Elisabeth as needed.  That's basically it.  They seem to be proud of their work, happier throughout the day, they keep things cleaner because they take some ownership in it. Ahh finally seeing some growth in this little garden!!  We are also taking steps to limit screen time and that seems to be helping the overall tone in our home.  Other than that, we've made our list of "fun things to do" and we're trying to do them.  Except Elisabeth wants to do things like "make hats" and I'm really like, really? do we have to make hats?! I'm not crafty and I don't really want to sit and make hats but there it is, sitting, staring at me on the fun list, wanting to be done. Crap.  So yeah.  There's things like that.  I'm more into the "make homemade ice cream" - lots of it.  Let's make lots of homemade ice cream, and popsicles, and smoothies, and cookies .... and forget all about counting calories .... ever . . . again.  Ugh.  It's too hot here.
We are also doing lots of pooltime and hopefully growing lots of great family memories. Summertime...

4. Finally, because I haven't updated in a long time, I'll just give a quick pain update.  It's still there. The beastly trigeminal neuralgia and chronic migraine. I added another medication that is supposed to be helping the migraines and could also combine to work with my other med to help my TN. I started in April and have been increasing the dose. April I had 17 migraine days.  May I had 14. June I had 10.  So you could say perhaps it's working. It could be coincidence. It could be any number of factors.  You could say any way you look at it, 10 migraine days in a month is still an awful dang lot of migraines!!!  I was disappointed when I counted it up because it felt like it had been such a better month for me.  hahaha.  That's still an awful lot of days.  And then I still have the daily TN pain.  But I'd have to say that pain is mostly down a notch.  So instead of generally being at a 6-7 on a 1-10 scale, it is mostly at around a 5-ish most of the time.  And I have some small hours at a time when I am almost without pain, which is glorious.  I have been able to exercise, or I am able to force myself to exercise most of the time, which I am grateful for - and I have been counting calories, which is miserable.  But it is a necessary evil, because I hate the weight I gained on the meds and being bedridden that first year and a half with the severe pain. It is/was a definite contributor to my depression.  I never know if or when I may be at that point again so I need to do all I can to become more physically healthy while I can or whenever I can.  It's been hard but worth it to see even small results.  So my pain is a little bit better.  Mostly now I get the ache  and stinging pain across my cheekbone, occasionally aching in my upper jaw, occasional aching and shooting pain in ear, pain around eye and in eye, tingling along tip of tongue, feeling like someone is pinching my ear - then the migraine either in my left eye and left side of forehead and head, or on my right side of head (I know that's
weird).  So that's the strange garden of my brain (these messed up neurons).  Just leave it alone - only the professionals can tell what's growing in there (metaphorically).



And there you have it.  Lots of growth and weeding and watering and fertilizing and nourishing and waiting and watching and hopefully harvesting.  All of it.  That's what life is, right?  Gardening. :)

well . . .

I seem to be struggling with some writer's/blogger's block with these trip posts. Everytime I think about doing it, I just feel . . . stuck. Lots of pictures, from multiple devices, and I can't seem to think of how to organize them all to present in blog posts. I don't know what my deal is. I think I will tackle it eventually. Just please be patient. :)

One thing I can answer is how my pain was during the trip. Hm. Zac drove the entire way, thankfully. So I could sleep and take my drugs as needed. The ends of the day were the hardest for me. Pain levels the highest, kids getting cranky, Zac getting drowsy. Good times all around I guess. We drove about 12 hrs each day (3 days there, 3 days back) so it was just long. At the beach, as expected, the sun and heat exacerbated my pain. I had to lay down each afternoon to nap, which put a damper on how much we could do (Zac couldn't manage the kids by himself with too many crazy things. Neither could I, for that matter.) So, sometimes I felt bad about that (putting a damper on things). I think the kids were content to sit around the condo and watch the Disney channel (something we don't have at home), but of course I felt guilty because we did not drive all the way across the country to sit and watch more TV. Ugh. Oh well. We did the best we could. And we had a lot of fun, all things considered, I think.

I am grateful that my medication was helping somewhat, and reducing my pain to manageable levels for a lot of the time. Without that, I don't know how I would have survived.

And it was so great to be with all Zac's siblings and parents and nieces and nephews (excluding his brother in Alaska and his family, unfortunately). I think everyone was remarkably patient and considerate of each other and it made everything wonderful to be there as a group.:)

So! If anyone has anything to help motivate me to blog more about the trip, send it my way!! I want to do it.
I do.

let's start at the very beginning

This recent trip reminded me of my first visit to Ocean City, NJ in May 1994 with Zac. Ohh, this guy. What would I do without him.
Here he is this time:

And here we were then:I visited him there, his hometown where he lived from the time he was 11, before he left for his 2 yr missionary service. So this visit I felt a lot of nostalgia, mixed in with remembering having to say goodbye to him. Boy oh boy! Emotions!

And then in 1997, after I had returned from my mission, we again went to the boardwalk when I came up to see him. The very first night I saw him again (after 3 yrs of only writing letters), we rode on the big ferris wheel. I think he held my hand.

So Ocean City holds a lot of significance for me. It was his hometown. But it was the place I said goodbye to him, not knowing what the future held for us. And then hello again, and figuring out what our future was going to be. Crazy stuff!!

We hadn't been back there since his parents moved to Indiana in 2001 (?) and we moved back to Utah. It's been a long time! And we hadn't seen his sister and her family either who still live in NJ, so it was a trip long overdue.

His family had decided to arrange a sort of family reunion there with his parents and all his siblings gathering there. It took over a year in planning, reserving the condos, making the required payments in advance etc, so it was kind of a big deal. One brother and his family moved to Alaska mid-planning and decided they couldn't make it. But his other 2 brothers, their families, us, his parents and his sister and family ended up sharing the 2 condos. It was quite the adventure!

Beginning, of course, with our road trip. Are you ready for this?!? haha . . . here it comes! :)

oh hello again

This is where we've been. :) We went on what the kids referred to as "the vacation of our lives." Meeting up with most of Zac's family in his hometown of Ocean City, NJ. We shared 2 next-door neighbor beach condos. I have a lot of posts to come! Oh boy.

Zac didn't want me to post anything about us leaving (either here or Fb, etc) so that I wouldn't "announce to the whole world" that our house would be vacant and available to rob or plunder. I'm not sure that we really have anything of interest to any potential thieves, but I guess I see his point so I tried really hard to comply (it was so hard!!!). But anyway - we are home now after 2 crazy weeks (3 days driving there, a week there, and 3 days driving home). The good thing about driving is that there isn't much vacation blues afterward - after 3 days in the car, you are just so glad to be home again!! Our own beds! Our own toilets! No more crying and whining and fighting from the backseats. Ahhh it's good to be home! :)

I've done 7 loads of laundry so far. I stepped on the scale this morning and my jaw literally dropped. But I exercised yesterday and today and didn't have *severe* pain, just moderate (haha), so that's good I suppose. And I just wanted to check in and say hello.

By the way, if you aren't already you should follow me on Twitter and Instagram!! That's where al the good stuff is (most of it copied over to FB to my personal friends and family, of course). But on Twitter and Instagram, I am Kristenj_C and I would love more followers. Come find me! :)