Category Archives: Good for Me

making room

There are a lot of terrible things about getting divorced. Although I am very lucky to be part of a positive, consciously uncoupled, respectful and friendly co-parenting situation that we have both worked hard to develop and maintain, there are still a lot of things to get used to. From the word go, the thought of not having Miss L for days in a row was absolutely devastating. I dreaded that separation and imagined long, lonely days in an empty house, so I stockpiled lots of projects to keep me busy.

This now seems a little funny. Nothing is as traumatic as it seemed like it would be. Miss L is an example and an inspiration – she is happy and excited to go to her dad’s house and seeing her so positive and well-adjusted, and knowing that she just loves spending time with both of us in different ways, has been the biggest relief. I barely have time to do the housework and laundry, the yard work, grocery shopping and meal prep, much less complex knitting projects, half marathon training, furniture restoration, learning to swim or writing that novel. I try to do a lot of chores on the days that Miss L is with her daddy so that when she’s with me, I have everything organized and more time to relax and have fun. But I usually end up working longer hours to make up for the days when I dash out early to beat commuter traffic to pick her up; I come home feeling drained. I do more sleeping and staying in pajamas and crash out for naps at the drop of a hat. I’m not sure if this is psychological or physical or if I just need to kick my own butt. I’m hoping this is a passing phase that will correct itself as I get used to the schedule, but right now I’m just rolling with it.

I have a four-bedroom house and for the last couple of years the two back bedrooms have been a staging area for GB’s things and other stuff that we just don’t know what to do with or haven’t gotten around to recycling or tossing. This weekend, when Miss L was with GB, I finally roused myself sufficiently to start cleaning out one of the rooms. I’m relieved to have a workable spare bedroom again. The room itself is in terrible shape and needs a complete makeover – wallpaper stripped, repainting, floors refinished, baseboards and toe boards redone, new closet doors, window treatments – but I start getting tired whenever I think about that. Having it clean and organized with a comfy made-up bed feels like a major accomplishment, even though my upstairs hall is now filled with trash bags and piles of boxes. It feels like I am moving into a new place, as though I never fully occupied this space before now, even though my name has been on the mortgage for almost eight years.

As I combed through the bookshelf and the closet, it felt like going through a museum of my life. I went through my knitting stash, photographs and scrapbooks. I took books down from the shelves and made piles for Goodwill and it was funny to set things aside. The books about law school prep, Australia travel and restaurant guides, pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum depression – those were all huge phases of my life and those books are well-thumbed and now I don’t need them any more and never will again. Now replaced with books about surviving divorce, finances for the single woman, creating happy homes at mom’s house and dad’s house. The knitting books and running books went to higher shelves, still to be used, but not as often as they once were. There is room on the shelves for new books now, and I am excited to see what they will be. Raising a teenager, dating as a single mom, maybe biking or mountain climbing, who knows. Right now all I have the energy for is a hot bath and a nap!

lowlights

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House of Cards – I’m not a huge fan of political dramas but this one is gooooooooooooood.
Listening to Jon Krakauer’s ‘Into Thin Air’ during my commutes. The version I have is narrated by the author and I am basically finding myself driving aimlessly so I can keep listening to it. Is it weird that I want to start climbing now?? I have become so obsessed with the whole controversy that I think I have to read ‘The Climb’ now as well, and I’m going to check Netflix for that Everest doc.
This week, I’ve been the only person in my department and I’m doing constant triage. People come to find lawyers, they find a row of closed doors, and me. I never imagined that being in a corporate legal department would result in such a wide array of problems to solve. I’ll never get any benefit out of it, but damn, my knowledge is now a mile wide and an inch deep on easements, governance, compliance, bailments, anti-counterfeiting, and FORK TRUCK LEASES. If I can drag myself through one more day of rolling that rock up that hill, bless my heart.
Please, please, please, please, PLEASE secondhand gods of running – PLEASE don’t let me be getting shin splints. Please. Okay? I will use my foam roller and increase my miles by only 10% per week and ice and sleep in my ugly compression socks and wear the compression sleeves when I run and slay a chicken on your altar if you just won’t give me shin splints.
I’m getting too much pleasure and enjoyment out of Get Off of My Internets. I won’t tell you which blogs I like reading the vicious snark about.
I never thought I was a motorcycle boot kind of girl until I saw THESE bad boys on my beautiful bestie. She assented to my request to purchase the same pair. She’s an unselfish sort. They feel extremely heavy and clompy but after mincing around in heels they are undeniably solid and comfortable and the leather is just absolutely gorgeous. They are also the real deal. Steel toe, oil resistant, Good year welt sole. They are, in the words of ‘O Brother Where Art Thou’, bona fide. They probably won’t look as cute on me because I don’t curl my hair, but anyway.

Soon I’m going to do a post on how crazy my cats are. But after this week of shin splints, legal department triage, and a disastrous climb up from base camp, I just don’t have the energy to get into it. I also don’t have the energy to link to the House of Cards and Into Thin Air and everything like that, bleah.
After a summer of ruining my hair, I’ve officially turned the reins over to my stylist. Burgundy lowlights.

And those, my friends, are the lowlights of the week.

do one thing every day that scares you. – eleanor roosevelt

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One of my friends is an avid trail biker and all-around adrenaline junkie. Windsurfing, rock climbing, ex-parkour aficionado. He’s also very mild-mannered, methodical and safe, totally trustworthy and an excellent teacher, so when he invited me to go mountain biking with him I said yes. I’d never been trail riding before, my bike is over a decade old and has never seen a trail, but I felt that I am in good enough general physical condition that I could at least keep up.

One of the local state parks, which is on the grounds of a former historic sanatorium for Detroit tuberculosis patients, has some great bike trails, and so, with the sun shining on green trees just barely starting to turn their colors, cool and bright and windy, we headed there. Unfortunately, as we discovered, the only trails are yellow-grade, not green, so more intermediate. There was some concern and discussion, some initial coaching, and off we went.

So, mountain biking on an actual trail is terrifying. I don’t know what I expected but it certainly wasn’t that. I didn’t expect steep declines studded with rocks and exposed tree roots, narrow switchbacks and crumbling gravel, sand and mud, inclines that took every bit of muscle in my lower back and legs to push up. Even though we were going at an almost leisurely pace compared to what these guys usually do, the speed was intense. It took constant focus to assess what the terrain was doing and what I needed to do in turn, but no time to make decisions, so for the first few miles, I felt almost paralyzed with fear, just pointing the bike and praying. My friend was behind me, giving me tips, and then we came to a sharp corner. I twitched to avoid a rock in the trail, hit the front brakes too hard on a downhill, and had my initiation into flying over the handlebars.

My friend was very calm, picked me up, brushed me off, and on the side of the trail we did a brief deconstruction of what had occurred. I listened, nodded, tried not to look at the blood on my knee and hands, and got back on.

The lessons I learned from the first few miles and the first fall:

Right brake is the rear wheel, left brake is the front. Use the right brake more on downhills but feather the left brake as well.
Know your gears and shift them constantly. I had never known what or when to shift for different things, but at the end of the trail I was shifting all the time, and still not as frequently as my friend behind me.
Learn how to stand up on the pedals and keep them horizontal on a downhill. Lean backwards and be able to grip the seat with your legs to keep control and keep your center of gravity stable on the mid to back section of the bike.
Practice. I have to go out on more trails and get more miles in. You don’t have time to think or process so you have to react instinctively and in the moment and that only comes from practice.
Go with a good teacher who knows what he/she is doing and is willing to watch you and teach you and take responsibility for you out on the trail. My friend didn’t even break a sweat when we were out, it wasn’t even a workout for him, but I could not have finished 6+ miles of that trail without him watching me every minute and yelling instructions when I needed them.

At the end of the trail, my teacher told me that I had done very well, especially for a first-timer, and I was so pleased with myself. I couldn’t believe I’d actually done it. I was so proud of these, because I had totally earned them.

Later, we did some urban biking on the Detroit riverfront. The wind was blowing up some storms and I wish I’d had my camera for more of the trip, because watching the freighter move up the river was amazing, and the Dequindre Cut made me happier than anything.

I already know it was the day that I will look back on and feel was the last, best day of summer, poised right on the edge of fall.

throwback

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If you’re on Instagram, you are probably aware of #tbt – Throwback Thursday. You put up an old picture and hashtag it and you can go through and check out all sorts of retro views of your connections and the world, if you are so inclined.

I love IG and although I don’t have a prolific following, the portability and simplicity of the app has transformed photography from a hobby to a true passion for me. What I could never accomplish with a digital camera, I can do with my iPhone and a couple of apps. Now, I move through the world looking for photo opps and taking pictures and the thing I love about it so much is that it allows me to be fully present in a moment, to see the beauty of a little corner of the world, and through very simple cropping and filtering techniques, let my friends and family see it in the way that I saw it. Or, more accurately, in the way that I felt it. I used to be mildly socially anxious and dislike going places or having engagements and now if I start feeling that come over me, I think to myself that there are probably a few good pictures there, and it gets me out the door.

When Miss L was tiny, we gave her a Fisher Price camera for her birthday (I think her third) and recently I plugged it into my computer and downloaded years of blurry shots. There were some really beautiful ones and I love seeing the world that we shared several years ago through her eyes. All of these photos, except the top one of her own little self, are hers (the top one was, however, taken off the FP camera).

Although I will be happy with whatever she chooses to do with passion and excitement (within reason), I would love for her to keep taking pictures, and sharing them.

the gambler

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Last night I dreamt of a post-apocalyptic nightmare world that I was trying to adjust to, living in some stunted way and trying to act as though everything was normal and happy. I clearly remember thinking in my dream, as I switched on an emergency radio, ‘maybe someday everything will go back the way it was. can it ever go back the way it was?‘ and knowing that the world was never, ever going back the way it was.

Then a familiar tune slowly began to filter through the walls of the dream, notes and a refrain, entirely out of place with what was going on in my grey dream state. I rose up out of sleep, slowly, and the street outside my window was full of Kenny Rogers warbling “The Gambler”. I considered calling the police (who has a Kenny Rogers themed party on a quiet residential street at 12.31 on a Sunday night?) but instead I lay there sort of blearily humming along with it. Then it was over = there was just that one song – and I lay awake for another two hours trying in vain to fall back to sleep. I didn’t quite remember there being so many choruses.

So today I was thinking about that dream, and the wish for things to be a way that they aren’t, that they never can be again, and for the first time in a long time, instead of feeling like I was just staunchly ignoring a familiar pain and thinking that if I just rode out that wave, soon it would be over, just breathe through it like a contraction – there wasn’t any pain. There was, instead, a realization that I am EXACTLY where I need to be and SOMETHING helped bring me through this, directed my boat and helped me steer when I felt blind. I looked at where I could be, the different choices I could have made, the other paths, and instead of feeling regret and loneliness, I realized how much stronger and better I am for what I have been through and what I’ve learned from it. Instead of feeling like a passive victim of circumstance, I can see the choices I made and how they got me where I am now, to the right place, and how miserable and out of sorts I might have felt in any other place. I’m not quite sure what the Gambler has to do with it but he definitely fits in somewhere (because God knows there can’t be anything random or coincidental about Kenny Rogers in all of this) even if it’s as a midnight reminder that the secret to surviving is knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep.

what you believe it to be

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I don’t think I’ve been to the Michigan Renaissance Festival since I was a kid, and although I don’t remember it, I would imagine that my father probably hated it and made us leave promptly. It’s just the kind of overheated, excessively crowded place that would make his skin crawl.

I think in order to understand this, you have to understand my good friend K and her family. They are a big family and full of similarly beautiful, elfin girls and they’re all kind of Ren fans. They don’t exactly dress up, but they don’t need to, as their normal fashion sense of riding boots and fingerless mitts and floating skirts and scarves makes them fit right in as they drift dreamily up and down the mazey Renaissance alleys.

I expected that the whole day would be a bit of an ironically humorous situation but it was actually incredibly fun. There were of course a lot of drunk people weaving around the labyrinth streets, there were ankle-deep seas of mud and indescribably horrible privies, but there were also a lot of craftspeople. And there were a lot of people dressed in elaborate and wonderful costumes, performers, face painters, and little dreamy fairy girls wisping and wishing that they had been born in a Pamela Dean novel, and honestly, who doesn’t wish that. Every time I saw someone in a carefully constructed dress or costume, I had to smile, thinking about them in their office cubes all week long, looking entirely different and probably not telling any of their colleagues that they saved their money for steampunk, fur, and a stitched leather jerkin to feed their fantasy life and their deep wish to have been born in another time and place.

We ate giant turkey legs and big pickles and K knew where to find the best honey place and the schneeballs. (“What’s a schneeball?” asked the man in the polo shirt standing in line behind me, looking dubious. “I don’t know but it’s probably good,” I said.) Miss L had her face painted and while most little girls might have picked the unicorn or the fairy, she wanted the spiderweb, to the delight of our fairy girl escorts. (And yes, in the morning it was definitely cold enough for scarves and mittens.)

We watched a joust and Miss L screamed with delight and terror when our knight Sir Tyler (…Tyler?…just sayin’.) advanced to the final round.

I have to admit, I was yelling too, and shelling out money for a wooden sword and striped knee socks. I sort of wished that I’d dressed more like K and her girls. K is the kind of woman who always looks like she should be walking down a cobbled street in Europe. Her long fair hair is always perfect, just a bit mussed, she wore good boots and an artful scarf and I felt pretty out of place in my all-weather running clothes with my hair pinned up haphazardly. You can’t catch the eye of a hot bagpiper when you’re wearing Nikes at the Ren Fest (not that I am in any way ready to bring home anyone, much less a bagpiper).

By the end of the day, my wallet was feeling the hit and Miss L was drooping down the alleys, eyelids heavy, dragging her little sword behind her; but one last piece of magic. A woman in an incredibly elaborate dress, petticoats and corset and wool stockings, bustled up to Miss L in the crowds and presented a plastic tiara.

“Begging your pardon, miss, but did you drop this?”

Miss L gawked. “No, it’s not, mine,” she said shyly.

The woman ducked her head and said, “Well then, will you be keeping it? It seems to suit you, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

Miss L bent her head and let the woman slide the tiara into her red hair, then step back and drop a deep curtsy. We were all smiles as we continued on our way, and made one last stop at a dark little shop selling pixie dust.

“And what is your name?” the shopkeeper inquired. Miss L told her, and the shopkeeper raised a shout, “ALL HAIL PRINCESS L!” The window shelf was full of necklaces dangling tiny stoppered bottles, catching the light. The shopkeeper ran her finger along them, setting up a tinkle of glass, and describing the kind of pixie dust in every bottle. Dreams of dragons, dreams of fairies; images of your own true love, but take care, just take care, because magic is potent.

“It’s just GLITTER?” another round-eyed child said, sounding very much like he wanted to be convinced otherwise, and the shopkeeper tsked.

“It is if that’s all you believe it to be,” she said, and for that, she earned her $10 and Miss L got herself a little bottle of magic pixie dust.

shinin down like water

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The first few months of being a solo homeowner have been fraught with Interesting Situations. You know, things that people say build character but really just kind of suck. Two power outages in thirty days (leaving me deeply concerned about the capability of good ol’ Detroit Edison’s mouldering infrastructure to sustain their huddled masses during what the 2015 Farmer’s Almanac promises to be another spectacularly heinous winter) and an air conditioner that crapped the bed during the only three days of the year in which I really needed it. Last weekend I had to sneak into the Y during a power outage (the Y had power, but was closed for maintenance, mind you) and, as part of a phalanx of disheveled women who couldn’t bear to face their weekends with bedhead, defy bewildered workmen to blow dry and straighten my hair before a social engagement.

Ever since I crashed and burned during my big presentation opportunity a few weeks ago, I’ve been discouraged and demotivated at work. The last several days all I want to do at the office is plan my running schedule, check Instagram, chat with friends, and read snarky online gossip about a popular blogger that I am a wee bit fascinated with currently.

I have to remember, though, in the midst of these cycles of low energy, that I’m not only really lucky to have a job that allows me to BE a solo homeowner and a single mom, I’m lucky to have a boss who sends us home early on a bad weather day to spare us bad traffic and potential risk to our well-being. The same boss who lets me work from home on the first day of school and when the dudes need to come fix my air conditioner and prep my furnace and chimney for another polar vortex.

So, after a departmental offsite at a nearby seminary that has been converted to a conference center (and a Catholic golf course – true story – I wish I’d snapped a pic of the huge painting of Pope John Paul that presides over the concierge desk), I did a brief meditation at the on-site reflecting pool. I am not Catholic but I love the beauty and dignity of Catholic icons and rituals. I could have hung out in the chapel for a long time, soaking up the Romanesque architecture. However, the driveways were already awash, so I dodged raindrops to head home.

Investigating the flooding in my yard in ballet flats was likely not a great idea, but at least I had a slicker.

There’s something about the combination of the religious surroundings and the weather today that has reminded me to be grateful for my blessings. The social engagement that I broke into the Y to prepare for last weekend ended with my gutters being fortuitously and unexpectedly cleaned, and this afternoon, as I watched the brown rainwater burble merrily out of my clean downspouts, feet damp and cold in my wet flats, I am again reminded that in the weird intermeshing of little details and large weighty matters, things usually do work out.

sunburns and root beer

Miss L and I arrived in the land beyond time – Up North – and have officially started our vacation with a beach day yesterday. There was a bit of debate until we decided that Peterson Road Beach in the Sleeping Bear was the right place for us. It’s a winding drive through the woods along a narrow dirt one-track, and the beach itself is much less crowded than other Lake Michigan beaches. It was cool and sunny and perfect, the water is still ice cold.

I got a little sunburned and later in the afternoon I had to stop at the A&W in Frankfort for a root beer. The A&W has been there for as long as I can remember, since I was a little kid coming up here for vacations, and everyone knows that root beer is the best summer afternoon drink for sunburns.

It’s been a heck of year already, and this vacation feels like such a gift. I’m glad I’m safely here for yet another major astrological shift. I know I sound like a wingnut, but every time something happens in the sky, I honestly do feel like my boat has been tipped yet again and I’m swimming in a rough current. According to Mystic Mamma, tonight’s Full Moon in Capricorn will be another big one:

“This year began with a New Moon tightly conjunct Pluto, square Mars and Uranus. That was a harsh chart. It all but guaranteed a year in which skeletons tumbled out of closets and ulterior motives and ruthless ambitions were released into the general population like a rapidly mutating virus. A series of frustrating retrograde planets in the first half of the year ensured we would have to work very hard, against incredible odds, to accomplish the smallest things; even harder to nudge the dial monitoring our soul’s growth even one point into the black.

“This Full Moon, hovering again near the same celestial companions, signals a turning point. After six long months, we wish to squirm out from under Capricorn’s stern and melancholy thumb. Whatever your prison, you are gearing up for a daring jailbreak. New Year’s resolutions about earning more money, getting in shape, or finishing a novel seem a little trivial next to the overwhelming desire to end whatever is hurting us.”

Today we’ve planned some bike riding and farmer’s marketing. My sunburn already feels better, thanks to all of that root beer.

june end

I’m not sure where June went but here we are with sparklers in hand ready for the 4th of July. I feel like I should be baking an angel food cake with whipped cream topping and the stars & stripes laid out in blueberries and strawberries.*

In June of 2014, here is what I loved:

Getting back to a more normal routine of running and getting ready to break my 2014 record for monthly miles logged. It’s not much, mind you, but around 35 miles run for the month, breaking the previous record, January (oddly), at almost 33. Again, I’m no silly girl ultramarathoner, but you know what? If you want to be a runner, all you have to do is – run. And enjoy it. I did a great little 5k in Glen Arbor this month, broke my PR time and came in around 26.13, and am trying to get out a few times a week to do anything I can – two, three, four miles. Shin splints seem to be in the rearview and I’m just running because I enjoy it.
McD’s strawberry lemonade. Now, I don’t eat at McD’s regularly – a Happy Meal is a treat for Miss L once in a great while and mostly I would rather pack a sandwich in my purse for myself than eat fast food (although I really do love a good two-cheeseburger meal with a strawberry milkshake, I just hate how it makes me feel). But Miss L and I are absolutely hooked. Summer fave.
My peonies – shown in many tedious pictures in this very blog – until they were beaten to submission by a driving rain.
Earthing. Okay, I hate having dirty feet. I wash my feet before bedtime every night (you already knew I was a freak) because I literally cannot stand the thought of getting into my bed with dirty paws. But for some reason I really do seem to sleep better when I can get outside and walk around in bare feet. I could probably break this down into a logical analysis of what I am also doing to promote better sleep on days where I am most likely to be barefoot but oh hush. I love rolling out of bed on the weekends and going straight to the yard in my bare feet to water, weed, and putter, step on something spiky and hop around cursing. So I have to wash my feet more, and vacuum my floors more? Maybe this guy is on to something. (I feel like I should be inserting a punctuation wink here, which is the proper way nowadays to indicate that you may just be kidding about something when more than likely you are not.)
Hot dogs. Wow, it seems like this June I’ve thrown caution to the wind – dirty feet, fast food lemonade, and nitrate laden processed foods. I know. I try to be careful about what kind I buy. My mom will only buy Hebrew National and although I scoffed at this, I just bought a pack of them and I probably won’t be going back to Ballparks. Say what you will, there is really just something summertime awesome about a chargrilled hot dog on a wheat bun slathered with sharp mustard, cold coleslaw, and baked beans. Yum.
Alaska’s Last Frontier. I am nuts about this show and wish they would hurry up and load more episodes onto Netflix already. I had no idea that they were in any way related to that 90’s brokenhearted hippie warbler queen Jewel!! That’s not exactly a selling point, but I can overlook it. I love this show. After I’ve watched a few episodes I wander about my garden and yard pretending I’m a homesteader.
Yoga Journal. I am still a runner girl, but as I wander somewhat away from the more competitive, stern aspects of that sport, I find myself incorporating more yoga-style stretching into my workouts. This site has given me lots of good direction on poses to help me stretch into wakefulness, warm up or cool down after cardio, and an entry into meditation. I would love to find a great yoga class in the Ann Arbor / Northville area but Bikram is hugely popular right now and I shy away from hot yoga. I’m too much of a germaphobe for a sweaty nasty studio even if I bring my own mat.
Mike Rowe on Facebook. You may know him as Dirty Jobs guy, or Ford pitch man – but his Facebook page is hilarious, smart, subtle, and clever. He doesn’t shy away from controversial topics and his posts come across as highly intelligent, thought-out, and sincere. I kind of think this guy is the real deal and as I drive to and from work listening to audiobooks of John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee, so far he is the only celebrity I can imagine as any kind of Travis McGee. (Shame on anyone who thought Leonardo DiCaprio could ever, in a million years, in the remotest possible place in the universe, be fit to step foot on board the Busted Flush. Let’s just cast Zach Galifiniawhatshisname as Meyer and totally sell our souls to the same devil who cast Jar Jar Binks.)

I hope you have had a blessed June and solstice and are enjoying your summer / winter according to whichever hemisphere you are in. We are enjoying warm, humid weather, storms passing, green bursting gardens, and the prospect of a short work week in advance of the US July 4 holiday.

*I might have to make this cake, I just sold myself…

more birthday

Despite having a bit of a meditative birthday overall, I still managed to rake in some pretty nice birthday awesomeness. Love can, after all, take the form of cool shit to cackle over. GB got me a dream of an antique brass birdcage, on it’s own beautiful stand, it’s just gorgeous and just dying to host a long trailing vine or a starry flowering plant…if Emmett can be persuaded that he shouldn’t a) swing on it and b) try to fit into it. I got money from my folks and a gift card from my bestie, all of which, especially now that I am financially independent and on a budget, allows me to splurge happily on the new Coldplay album and some new cute running clothes.

And from my work colleagues, cake pops from Starbucks (salted caramel!) and a beautiful rose-mauve orchid; and a field trip.

The Matthaei Botanical Gardens of the University of Michigan are just a hop, skip, and a jump from our office, and, in addition to the usual spectacular gardens, plants and flowers (including bonsai, above) there is a once-in-a-lifetime botanical event occurring. The century plant, an Agave that has been in the collection since the 1930’s, began the process of flowering this spring. Over the course of the last couple of months, it has shot up a 25-foot stalk that forced the conservatory to remove a pane of glass from it’s ceiling to allow it to grow out the roof! At its most rapid pace, it was growing 6-7 inches a day before it began sending out side stems and buds, and slowed its upward rate. The century plant will bloom once, set seed, and die, and the fact that it is doing this at over 80 years old is pretty remarkable.

So, with a sack of Greek takeout – grape leaves, pita, salads, and fattoush – we set out for a lunchtime field trip, a picnic under warm and windy, cloud-gathering spring skies, and a peek at the century plant. Although my colleague promised me that it would burst into flower the moment I stepped my magical birthday ass into the conservatory, it’s not blooming yet, so hopefully I can get back again for another photograph when that occurs.

All in all, a pretty nice birthday, and a lucky girl.

Six Ten

of this be sure: you do not find a happy life, you make it.

Category Archives: Good for Me

making room

lowlights

do one thing every day that scares you. – eleanor roosevelt

throwback

the gambler

what you believe it to be

shinin down like water

sunburns and root beer

june end

more birthday