Week Two!  Well, the first day of week two!  Whoo-hoo!

We made it back from our camping trip, all got showered and rested.  Then spent the evening at a wonderful friends house celebrating his 50th birthday and now I’m laying on the couch watching the light change from day to evening outside.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to organize, or if I need to organize this little blog of mine for the remainder of the year.  I think my main purpose for this gift of a Gap year is to find my inner voice again.  Find out what happens when I take away some of the “I have to” actions in my life and replace them with “I want to” actions.  And when did we stop listening to that voice?  That “I want to” voice.  Do we all stop listening to that voice?  It must be pretty commonplace for women to feel this way or we wouldn’t have posts like this littering our Facebook feed:

One thing I do know is that this Gap year will be different than the ones that kiddos take.  This year is not going to be filled with backpacking adventures though Europe, it’s not going to be centered on missionary work and I’m not really trying to figure out what I want to be when I “grow up”.  This year is going to be about looking back while moving forward.  Staying present while forging ahead.  Referencing the past while steering with confidence into the future.  Clear as mud, right?

So again, maybe I shouldn’t try to control this experience.  Control, see, it all comes down to control.  Bear with me, my friends, while I rumble, stumble and bumble through these next 357 days.  Together maybe we can shine the light on the path.  Stay tuned because I have no idea what tomorrow is going to bring (it’s out of my control) xxoo

You guys….this is my favorite way to wake up:

Seriously, I don’t know why we need houses in the summer.  I could totally live in a campground for the whole season!  And Holland Lake is where we landed this weekend.  We had a great fire last night, I made the two best roasted marshmellows I have ever had and we fell into our sleeping bags around 11.

After a breakfast of PopTarts for me and Aaron and a sausage over the fire for John (I really was not joking about dishes while camping!) we packed up the backpack for a hike up to Holland Falls.  This hike is fairly easy being very short even though you gain some vertical feet.  Here we are:

And here is the view from the trail looking down at Holland Lake:

Beautiful, I mean stupid beautiful, right?.  Sometimes I can’t believe I get to live here.  And right now especially I feel very AWARE of my circumstances.  I feel like I have had my head down plowing the same row for so long, my eyes hurt for the vividness I am finding now.

Once we got back down to the campground we spent the afternoon with our butts in the clear water of the lake:

Then built the evening campfire:

And played about a million hands of Uno.  My ten year old asked me if I ever let him win at Uno when he was younger and, being a fairly honest parent, I answered yes.  He was very upset about the whole thing and then made me promise to never let him win again.  So I didn’t.  And he could not understand why he was not winning.  Then he actually said, “I used to win at Uno all the time”.  You could watch the understanding work its way into his brain as he figured out why he used to be so “good” at Uno.  So last year we learned the truth about Santa and this year the truth about Uno.  Man oh man, it sucks growing up!

Anyhoo, I am tucked tightly into my sleeping bag and scribbling away by the light of my headlamp.  Good night all, smile and breathe and we will talk again tomorrow xxoo

Super early and short post today!  Day #6 and we are headed camping :). However, a little different than we planned.  The hitch on my husbands truck is completely stuck and we did not realize that in time to get it fixed.  So instead of our trailer we will be “roughing” it in a tent.  Either is fine with me, but I HATE doing dishes when tent camping, so I foresee a lot of hotdogs over the fire for the next two days!

Anyway, I will not have any service, which is one of the best things about camping.  We will be focusing on Skip-Bo, Uno and Yahtzee instead of Fortnite and YouTube!  But I am prepared to retro-blog:

My pen and paper is packed and I’ll be sure to catch up with you on Sunday evening.  Off I go into the Gap!  I hope you have a wonderful weekend!  Smile and breathe xxoo

Hey there, friends!  Happy Day #5!  Things are moving along (fairly) smoothly.

I spent part of the morning attempting to get the comment section of this blog up and running.  I chatted for a while with the GoDaddy team who, not surprisingly, said that it is a WordPress issue.  Tomorrow I will reach out to WordPress who will undoubtedly say that it is a GoDaddy issue.  But that’s okay, breathe and smile!

I am not good at this sort of thing.  When I encounter a problem that I cannot immediately address and fix, I can feel my heart rate rise, my hackles get up and let’s just say, I’m not in a happy place.  I understand that shit happens and that life is hardly ever smooth sailing, but I want things to work the way they are supposed to work.  I get a little indignant over the whole thing.  And I’m not sure why…..

It is possible that I have a minor (or major) control issue.  I want to know things, I want to control things and I want things, and people, to DO what I want them to DO.  I don’t relinquish control easily….and my husband just chimed in “ya think?”  I have been known to throw things, but no people yet, across the room when they give me trouble.  It does not solve anything, but hells bells, it feels so good!

So after I was totally bitchy to the poor woman at GoDaddy (she started it), I felt like having my laptop locked and loaded over my right shoulder.  But then calmer heads prevailed.  I realized that maybe tossing my Apple would not be the most productive action.  Maybe I should understand that bumps in the road are just bumps, not the road.  And maybe since I just quit my job I shouldn’t launch my $1200 investment across the living room.

So, smile and breathe (and maybe have a beer) and realize that 50% of it is out of my control, okay 70%, okay, okay 98% and that’s as far as I’ll go.  And as I relinquish control I also moseyed down to our local bar, the Northern, met my husband for a pitcher and controlled what I could.  Smile and breathe and remember to look up 🙂

Talk to you tomorrow, and hopefully soon you’ll be able to talk to me!  xxoo

 

Welcome back, friends!  I hope you had a beautiful day.  I had a day bookended with walks and an amazing afternoon with this crazy boy:

laying by our lovely local lake:

As you know, one of the biggest reasons for slowing down and backing off is to spend time with my kiddos.  I know you have only met one so far, but the other one is 17 and as soon as I see him again (probably next week sometime) you will get an introduction 🙂  But the little one and I had such a great day.  And I just have to share!

As we were driving through our town on the way to the beach, we spotted a man, on a scooter, wearing an avocado shirt.  And my little boy came up with a song that went a little something like this:  Old man, Driving a scooter, Wearing an avocado shirt, AVACADO!  Old man, Driving a scooter, Turning to the left, TO THE LEFT!

Now, I know it’s not in contention for a Grammy or anything, but these are the ridiculous, silly, spontaneous moments that I have been missing so, so much.  I had nothing to do today other than to learn this song and sing it at the top of my lungs with my 10 year old.  And I guarantee you, my friend, that it meant as much to him that his mom was letting him direct the day as it meant to me.

There really is no substitute for laughing and smiling.  Really, none.  I’m so glad I have surrendered to my Gap year because it’s only Day Four and I have never been more sure of the direction I am heading.  Smile and breathe and I’ll talk to you tomorrow xxoo

 

 

 

 

I was thinking on my bike ride home from the farmer’s market tonight about what am I going to do tomorrow.  It has been awhile since everyday was not:  get up, go to work, come home, make dinner, fall in bed.  And I was concerned about why anyone would want to read a blog about my Gap.  I am beginning to feel like this whole endeavor is very self serving.  But truly, when a teenager takes a gap year, many people don’t think twice.  I could be wrong, but it seems natural for a younger person to go out into the great unknown and discover the secrets about themselves before they enter the “real word.”  And we older folks are not afforded the same luxury.

So what it boils down to is that I am trying to figure out what the hell I am doing when I tell people I am entering the Gap.  What do I hope to find and how do I hope to find it?  And as I was riding home I remembered a time when I went to a family reunion without my small, immediate family.  My kiddos had been super busy during this time: both in baseball, I was working a ton, my husband was busy and I was always doing what had to be done next.  And when I woke up alone on vacation in a little cabin by myself, I was paralyzed.

I knew that I had six mornings all to myself.  Six mornings where I could go outside and talk to my aunts, uncles and cousins.  Six mornings where I could lay in bed and drink coffee.  Six mornings where I could go for a walk or run.  I did not HAVE to do anything and I had no idea what to do!  I was afraid of using up my six mornings doing something that was not EXACTLY the thing I wanted to do but I had no clue what I wanted to do.

I do the same thing when I get a gift certificate.  If I get a gift certificate from Target for $100, I will walk around the store, put something in my cart, change my mind, because I might not be in love with it, put something else in, decide I liked the first thing better, and stress that I am not spending my $100 in the best possible way.  My $100, my six mornings, they are finite.  They do not go on forever.  I have to make the best possible decisions.

But the fact is, all things are finite.  Every day we should be choosing how we want to spend our time.  Who we want to spend our time with.  And making the best possible decision.

So, my friends, after the lovely, mind-clearing bike ride home I have figured out that this year is about our finite-ness.  It’s my own new word.  And I will be spending my year finding things worthy of filling the finite.  And I’d like your help along the way.  Smile and breathe! xxoo