I had meetings today.
All day.
Which means, because my husband is amazing and supportive and a terrific dad, he took the day off to hang out with Adam and do guy stuff.
Lots of napping was involved. And apparently they started reading Lord of the Rings together.
You know. Regular daddy/son things.
My heart melted just a tiny bit, but whose wouldn’t?
Why is January always the month that seems to last eight thousand years?
Seriously. January is the worst month. Why does it have to be the longest too?
Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating. And being a bit of a baby about the snow, negative degree weather, pitch black evenings, and icy roads.
Wait a minute.
No, I’m not.
Guys, I haven’t been able to get my car out of the driveway for weeks. Weeks, I tell you!
Ridiculous.
January is fired.
I’m moving to Mexico to open a chinchilla farm.
Okay, whining aside, I promised y’all a house update. Remember at the beginning of 2022, I told you that we bought an airplane hanger and had broken ground at our new house site? Everything was great, we were excited, progress was happening after a year of waiting, and we were finally going to move out of our 400 sq ft cabin and into a house that was big enough for us to walk by each other in the hallway without turning sideways.
And then . . . reality set it.
Because the next step after breaking ground was to get our plans approved and get our permits in order so we could start building.
Which means . . . the government got involved.
It took months, guys.
Months.
We couldn’t pour concrete for the foundation, we couldn’t get the plumbing in, we couldn’t do anything. We had to sit around on our hands trying to fix all the nitty gritty details so that the government would finally give us permission to build a house on our own land.
I’m not bitter about it at all.
Thankfully, we had an actual angel—for real, I’m actually pretty sure he was a real angel from heaven, you know, the ‘do not be afraid’ ‘I bring you good news of great joy’ kind—who finally got us around the last tripwire, and permits were issued.
After that, we sat around on our hands some more, waiting for the foundation guys to have time in their schedule to come out.
Building a house sounds like a lot of work, but it’s actually three or four days of crazy activity followed by weeks of waiting followed by three or four days of crazy activity followed by weeks of waiting followed by—
You get the idea.
On top of that, winter has set in. Which means icy roads, way too much snow, mud when it all melts (if it melts), and extreme cold.
Okay, maybe not extreme.
Extreme for me.
Oh yeah, and I had a baby and spent a month and a half recovering from a horrible breast infection because apparently breastfeeding is not intuitive and it’s harder than it looks so education is really important, guys, please always remember to have sunflower lecithin on hand before you start breastfeeding and don’t be afraid of pumping right from the beginning, especially if you have a clogged duct.
Inhale.
But!
The foundation is in. The metal building is up. The support beams for the second floor have been installed, as has the plumbing. Once the snow is gone and temperatures are more moderate, we can pour the concrete pad. Until then, we will be working on framing the upstairs, getting in a gas line for our propane stove, leveling the dirt work, and installing the pipes and insulation for our in-floor heating.
In other words, we have plenty to do.
Thankfully, after a year of drumming our heels, we have reached the stage where most of the work is on us, and things will proceed as quickly as we can handle.
Since both of our little families are living in cramped quarters and have been going crazy with cabin fever this winter, we are pretty motivated. Our hope is to be in the house before we have to spend another winter in our tiny cabin.
Actually, what my sister says is, by the end of summer.
That feels ambitious to me.
But you never know!
Yikes, that was a long update! Let me know what you think in the comments, and any advice you may have for lasting through a long project like this!
Until then, here’s our tiny house, lost in the snow.
It’s so cute.
But seriously, look at that sky. Good heavens. Colorado is flexing today, folks, and if it wasn’t freeze-your-eyebrows cold outside, I would be out enjoying it.
Since it IS freeze-your-eyebrows cold, however, I’m going to stick with a hot drink on my couch and a quick heads up for y’all that I have a house update coming! We’re slowly chipping away at our enormous project, and I can’t wait to share the progress with you.
My current read, which, may I add, has a fabulous title. To be honest, pregnancy kicked my reading habits in the teeth, y’all. Like, hard. It’s been so long since I’ve been able to pick up a book and read it through to the end.
But! Now I’m nursing. And when you’re nursing and hanging out with a newborn who insists on being held while he sleeps at two AM, you find you have a lot of time for reading.
So glad to be getting back into it!
Guess what!?
I’m alive.
I know, miraculous, right? I can’t believe it’s been six months since I’ve written for this blog. I think that might have been the last time my brain worked properly. When was that?
July.
Yes, July. That was the month I lost my mind. I remember now.
In case you didn’t remember, I was pregnant in July. Just hitting the second trimester, and expecting things to get easier from here on out.
Ha.
Ha. Ha. Ha.
It did not get easier. Hense the six month absence and my foggy, glitching brain.
Growing a human is hard, y’all. It takes way more work than I was expecting.
But! I am here now, and I do, in fact, have a tiny human to show for all this work.
He’s cute, right?
I made that.
Super proud of myself, if you can’t tell.
Recovering from pregnancy and giving birth has been a little more intense than I expected. (Read: horrible and soul-sucking.) But we’re finally done with doctor’s visits and infections and I didn’t die, so there you go.
And now . . . now I’m trying to find my feet again. Remember who I was before, what I liked to do, what I wanted out of life. I can do my dishes again and workout and feed my bunnies, thank goodness. My writing is attempting to come back too, and these days I’m rethinking where I want it to go and what I most want to put my time into.
I don’t have a lot of time, see. Newborns are needy little creatures. Gotta squeeze those chubby cheeks, y’all. Every day. And count those tiny toes. And give him all the kisses. It’s exhausting.
Thankfully, this blog is going to make the cut, and I’ll still be around to talk about writing, bunnies, greyhounds, tiny babies, and that one housing project that is still not finished.
So here’s to a new year! Hopefully my brain shows up for this one.
I’ve missed hearing from you all in the last six months! What’s been up in your world? Tell me about it in the comments!
Summer is here!
Shockingly.
Every time winter comes to an end in Colorado, there’s always a chancy few weeks when I’m not quite sure if spring is here or if winter is just waiting for me to get my hopes up so it can crush all my dreams.
Case in point, we planted our garden at the very beginning of June this year, as you do. In fact, we planted both gardens—our huge, family garden down by the barn, and my own small flower garden next to our house.
Then, two days later, it snowed.
Like, six inches.
Thankfully, it was a wet, heavy snow without the freezing temperatures to freeze the ground, and we didn’t have any sprouts up yet to get murdered by the cold, but still. Colorado always has a trick up its sleeve.
I’ve learned not to trust its false springs or cheerful sunshine.
But, it’s the mid-July now, and snow is behind us, so I am starting to relax. Our enormous, three family, barnyard garden is full of zucchini and pumpkin plants that are, thankfully, winning their own battle against the weeds, and we should have an abundance of vegetables—and maybe even some watermelon and cantaloupe—in a month or so.
Gardening in Colorado is always a challenge. Besides the tricky spring snows, we have the altitude to battle (7,000 feet above sea level), and the desert climate, which makes rain an event worth celebrating. Deer jump over the fence and decimate our plants, our chickens do their share of damage while digging for bugs and possibly a few tender roots of baby plants, grasshoppers chew our leaves—and sometimes whole gourds—to bits, and July always greets us with at least one rainstorm that turns to hail.
Still, hope springs eternal, as they say, and every year we plow up our garden and plant our seeds and hope for something better than a whole garden of disappointments.
And yet, despite all the challenges and the very best resistance that Colorado has to offer, we almost always end up with more zucchini than we can feasibly eat, enough pumpkins to satisfy our Halloween cravings, and sometimes even a few surprises in the shape of cantaloupe or a watermelon that really, truly tried its best.
What more could you ask from a garden?
What are you planting this year, if anything? What kind of battles do you have for a good garden around your home? Tell me about it in the comments!
Okay, I’ll admit it.
Lately, my husband and I have been a little, teeny bit stressed. You know, with the new baby coming, and my traveling for work, and watching my nephew several days a week, and our house project stalling every time we get some momentum going. (Gotta love those government regulations.)
Between me hating food and falling asleep two or three times a day and struggling to keep up with deadlines, articles, this blog, and a constantly dirty house, the last three months have been a little . . . interesting.
Okay, dull and stressful.
There, I said it.
Pregnancy is hard, y’all.
Being pregnant and trying to maintain a business and move a career forward is hard.
So, since school ended with May and June has been more open and fluid for our schedules—and I’m no longer quite as sick or tired as I was during my first trimester—we decided it was time for some fun. Grown-up, adult fun.
Since neither of us are particularly good at grown-up, adult fun, and gas prices are through the roof and currently building a ladder, we had to be a bit creative. No more long drives in the mountains. I get carsick now anyway.
Yay, pregnancy!
Turns out, finding ideas for dates is really hard, especially dates that don’t involve a large amount of cash or a plane ticket to another state. I’ve cruised Pinterest for ideas a thousand times, and if one more blog encourages me to take a ‘sexy cooking class’, I will probably scream.
What is a ‘sexy cooking class’? What does that mean? I cook every day, and I am here to tell you that there is nothing sexy about peeling floppy, wet skins off of thawed chicken thighs while trying not to retch because your pregnant body loathes raw meat with every fiber of your being.
It is not sexy, y’all. It just isn’t.
But, I have lately discovered that date ideas for teens are way more fun than the adult lists. So we’ve been min-golfing and rollerskating, to ice-cream parlors and pizza joints, touring museums, going to the movies, and strolling through Manitou Springs, which might be the most touristy thing I’ve ever done in Colorado.
It’s been great!
Since we’re both adults with jobs and are exhausted by the time Saturday—our designated date day—comes around, it’s been a bit of a struggle to convince ourselves that going out sounds more fun than lying in bed all day and binge-watching our favorite show again. But making the extra effort has shaken off more stress than I would have ever imagined, and we always have a good time once we actually get to town and start having fun, so we’re going to keep at it.
Just . . . no sexy cooking classes.
Do you have any dates/activities that you swear by for a good time? Let me know in the comments!
I love being a writer. I love being a full-time writer, and I’m looking forward even more to being a full-time writer who is also a stay-at-home mum.
That’s still a weird concept for me, by the way. Me, being a mum.
Probably will have to get used to that at some point.
Existential crisis aside, I love being a writer. But there are things about this life that I wish I had known before I started.
Three things, in particular.
1) Writing Is… Different
I started out in my writing career because I loved it. I loved stories and I loved words, and I wanted to make my living with them.
But writing as a career is . . . different. I still write to enjoy myself. I still enjoy what I write. But the time I spend writing for pleasure is significantly decreased, and I’m more often motivated by impending deadlines and a paycheck that I need than I am by an urgent desire to write. I still love writing, and I’m certain that I always will, but it is a job, not a hobby, and a job means writing when you don’t necessarily feel like it.
2) Stability Who?
I am the sort of person who thrives on stability. I like a paycheck that comes in promptly every other Friday at the same time with no exceptions.
Writing is . . . not that way. Freelancing is not that way. The paychecks come in when I finish a project, and if I don’t have the energy to be creative, I don’t get paid. Money comes in, but it’s not regular or very predictable, and I have to trust that God is my provider and that the checks will continue to come in, even when I can’t see it.
3) Writing Isn’t The Whole Story
Yes, I’m a writer.
I’m also a business owner, an accountant, a publicist, a social media manager, a director, a public speaker, and my own personal life coach, because apparently someone has to keep me motivated and moving forward in my career.
Basically, every part of my career is my responsibility. Taxes, publicity, social media. All the hats are mine, and I have to be far more savvy in things that I never would have dreamed of when I was still writing the first drafts of my books ten years ago, dreaming of getting to where I am now.
To be honest, I didn’t know almost anything when I first started writing. I didn’t know how long it would take to start earning money, I didn’t know how much I still had to learn, I didn’t know how much of my job would consist of me constantly being out of my comfort zone and forcing myself to do things that were difficult and felt too big for me.
If I had known, would I still have chosen to pursue it? It’s definitely different than I expected it to be . . . definitely harder, and definitely less glamorous. Would I choose it again?
I’d like to think so. Personally.
I’d hope so, anyway. I’d hope I’d have the courage. I’ve faced a lot of challenges in the last ten years, and a lot of moments that felt like more like an end than a beginning.
But I hope I’d have the courage to face them again.
Really, though. Maybe that’s the reason we can’t see everything that’s coming, and everything that will be required of us.
Three months ago, I would have considered myself a foodie. I loved food. All kinds of food. Exotic, diverse foods. Every kind of food you can imagine.
Except for fast food, obviously. If I’m going to waste the calories, I want it to be worth something.
Anyway, that was three months ago.
Now, I’m growing a tiny gremlin inside of me, and the first trimester was a little rough, to say the least. Better than it could have been, but not . . . great.
So now I have a list of foods that are not my favorite.
It goes like this.
1) Meat.
2) Eggs, except when I’m in exactly the right mood.
3) Literally everything else depending on my mood, except for cereal with milk and, weirdly enough, cheap grocery store cake icing, which I crave with all of my being but refuse to eat because WHAT??
Food is weird. Food while you’re pregnant is even weirder. I’ve given up trying to predict what is going to sound good at any given moment. Meal planning has gone out the window, because what sounds good when I meal plan will probably not sound good when I start to make dinner. So we’re back to being spontaneous.
Which means I end up in the kitchen half an hour before dinner, praying that God will give me a dinner idea that doesn’t make me gag.
This generally works, actually.
And if it doesn’t, I text my wonderful, handsome, understanding, and kind husband, and he declares a pizza night and brings me pizza.
Because food is weird.
Any weird food craving stories for me? Tell me about them in the comments!
I flew down to California a few weeks ago.
Wait. Let me be more specific.
A few weeks ago, I woke up at 2:30 AM and drove forty five minutes into town to the airport so that I could catch a 5:45 AM flight to Burbank, California.
Then I got picked up at the airport and drove straight to the studio, because the whole point of getting up at ridiculous-o-clock in the morning was to first watch Phil Lollar direct two episodes of the radio show we both write for, then direct my own episodes the following day.
What is my life, right?
Did I also mention I did all this while I was ten weeks pregnant?
And having regular bouts of morning sickness?
And taking at least one nap every single day, sometimes as early as 8 AM, because I am currently growing a tiny human who is committed to sucking away my energy, brain, and most of my sanity to fuel his (or her) growth and development?
Yeah.
Anyway, it was a miracle that I made it through without puking or falling asleep on the floor. I’m pretty sure God was looking down from heaven on me and thinking that if he didn’t give me a double shot of caffeine/adrenaline to run on for the two days I was in-studio, I was probably going to die.
Probably because I spent the two weeks before I flew down telling him that if he didn’t give me a double shot of caffeine/adrenaline to run on for the two days I was in-studio, I was definitely going to die.
Thank you, Jesus, for grace.
And adrenaline, because pregnant ladies cannot have caffeine. At least not in the dosages I would have needed.
Once I got over the nerves of being in the studio to actually direct for the first time, I had a lot of fun. Recording sessions are wildly unpredictable, and I’ve learned in my nearly-three-years working with this radio program to say ‘yes’ on the fly and worry about the consequences later. This particular session, that meant jumping into a booth to read opposite a few of the actors for one of the longer, more populated scenes, which was missing a character.
Yup, I had my own mic and headphones. Nope, you will never hear those recordings. There was a reason I became a writer instead of an actor.
But! It was fun, experience, good memories, and it helped the team, because the real actors in the scene didn’t have to do any awkward pauses to leave space for a character who wasn’t there.
I made up for it the next day, when I was the one in the director’s seat, and one of the guys on the team was filling in for one of my characters.
He had a lot more pages than I did, but I didn’t feel too bad. He’s got more experience. And talent. He played a pretty convincing teenage girl, although I think the part will still go to the original actress.
Once my episodes were recorded, we flew home the next day, and to make up for two packed days without a nap or pregnancy symptoms of any kind, I was sick for four days straight and barely got out of bed.
Growing a tiny human is hard, y’all. But at least I can now tell people that I have two skeletons inside of me. And one of them is growing.
That alone is worth the lack of sleep.
Ramblings of an Obsessive Bookworm 