Tag Archives: self

Playing the Waiting Game–in Life, Marriage, and Motherhood

Strung out on a line

Strung out on a line

When I was in college, the largely unspoken, but prevailing belief seemed to be that smart, strong women could have plenty of fun dating around, but would want to get their degree and all their career ducks in a row before settling down. For some, random hookups were the mode de jour; for others, dating was one long stream of bad men. Only a few had really long relationships. And motherhood? That was for way later, if at all. Pregnancy would practically mean the end of your life. Taking birth control was the only smart choice.

The trouble is none of us had any idea how difficult it could be to find a good partner after college. When you join the work force, you enter a pool of widely varied, but highly limited options. There’s usually a huge age range—which makes finding unmarried age-mates more difficult, and when you spend the vast majority of your life in one office, meeting people outside that milieu gets incredibly hard. If there aren’t any suitable mates among your coworkers (and let’s not even get into in all the potential trials of an office relationship), you can be hard-pressed to find the time or place to even meet anyone else new.

I remember when I was a teenager, I used to dream that I’d go to college, get a fancy career started, find an awesome apartment in a big city, and then find my future husband, whom I’d marry, preferably around the age of 28. After a couple years of marriage, we’d have our first child, probably when I was around the age of 30. Thirty sounded like a good child-bearing age. That still would give me a couple of years to have my second child at 32 or so, and be done well before that fertility drop-off at 35.

I assumed getting pregnant was easy because all you hear, when you’re young, is about the girls who got pregnant even though they only had unprotected sex “that one time.”

I don’t know if it’s by luck or by choice, but I never had a string of bad men or bad relationships. Sure, I dated a jerk or two and a few guys who, though nice, weren’t going to captivate me long-term. But those were always obvious from the start and I never was one to stick around with a losing bet (I distinctly remember one relationship that had a shelf-life of “Four Tuesdays”—my best friend from college will get this reference; there were lots of fun, crazy memories from that episode in our lives). My relationships either lasted a few weeks or a few years—the long ones, even the ones that didn’t work out, were great while they lasted, and important learning experiences in preparation for marriage.

It turns out, I met my husband in college—though neither of us was anywhere near ready for marriage at the time. But we fell in love, probably to both our surprises, and we stuck around each other, even though “not ready” was a big light flashing above both our heads. Toby took a year to travel the world after he graduated college, and in the interim, we had both grown a lot. By the time he came back, I knew I was ready to think about marriage, even if we weren’t anywhere near ready to marry each other. We loved each other; we knew that much. I probably broke a slew of dating rules by doing this, but I told him, in no uncertain terms, that if we were going to be together, it would be with an eye towards marriage. Though we both knew there were no guarantees in this trial run, I wasn’t going to waste time with someone who was only in it “just for now.”

Luckily for me, he was on the same page, more or less, and the years following were a steady learning experience in which we tried out what marriage might look like, what commitment meant, and what it would mean to devote ourselves to another. By the time he proposed to me, I was 26 and we were ready. We had grown into marriage together. We had become ready together. When we did exchange vows, I had just turned 28.

But marriage isn’t the only odyssey one embarks on—there’s also parenthood. Having just gotten married, I wasn’t in any rush to have a child. There was my doctorate to finish and a career to start. Toby was only just getting his career off the ground, and a job in the tech industry at that time seemed volatile and uncertain. We lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment and had other dreams too, namely involving travel. Maybe living abroad for a while. There was still adventure to be had and a baby seemed more like a huge complication and intense responsibility than the next inevitable step in our life progression. The biological clock had started ticking, but I ignored the bell toll.

Though I had heard that fertility decreases with age, I still assumed it would be easy enough to get pregnant. I did have one friend who was trying to get pregnant and had started fertility treatments. She warned me getting pregnant could take time. I heard, but didn’t hear.

When I turned 30, I finished my doctorate and we made plans to move to Thailand. Work with The SOLD Project was already lined up; all I had to do was get to northern Thailand. We were leaving everything we knew behind. That wasn’t the time to start thinking about babies.

After we got settled in Thailand, and Toby’s work situation seemed solid, I was getting integrated at SOLD and halfway through writing a manuscript, I began to listen more carefully to that biological clock. I went off the pill slightly before entirely ready, thinking it would take a few months for the pill’s effects to clear my system, so that, fingers crossed, I might be 100% ready when it did.

Then, I didn’t get pregnant. Our jobs got even better, visitors came and went, we had grown into life in Thailand…I still didn’t get pregnant. My best friend from college was also enduring her own trial of fertility problems, and my best friend from grad school had suffered miscarriages, and another friend was going through a divorce…so by this time, I was really hearing it: Yes, it can be freaking hard to get pregnant. We traveled to Hong Kong and saw more of Asia. I still didn’t get pregnant. We spent a month in Europe, I didn’t get pregnant. We went back to the U.S. for a month…if I didn’t get pregnant soon, we’d have to think about fertility treatments. I didn’t even want to know what that cost would look like. My mother and sister had both had miscarriages before being able to carry a child to term. My cousin is 40 and still unable to get a baby to take, despite almost a decade of treatments. I knew that even if I did get pregnant, it might not work on the first try, and I had to steel myself for that possibility.

It turn out that it was only when we no longer had a stream of life and travel plans that, after more than a year and a half off the pill, I got pregnant. I’m turning 33 next week, and my dreams of having two kids are now looking more like I’ll be blessed to have one. I’m okay with that, and even saying this, I want it to be clear that I’m not complaining. I doubt I’d make different choices even if I had the chance. I love the years Toby and I have had together, and I think the stability we’ve built and the life experiences we’ve had, having had that time, will only serve our child better.

But I feel incredibly lucky. I feel like it’s only partly our choices, and mostly by chance that things have worked out for us (so far—I don’t want to jinx this!). I look at women I know who’ve been trying for years and years to get pregnant, or friends who’ve suffered miscarriages, or others who still can’t find a life partner, and I know how easily it could have gone a different way.

It’s a myth we tell ourselves when we’re young that we can somehow control life and when and how it happens to us. We make plans for what sounds like a good age to marry, and to have children…and these days, that “perfect age” is getting later and later. Instead of right after college, many push it off to their late 20s. Some women, realistic about demands certain careers make, push it off into their 30s, or even later. We don’t factor in the potential for complications. When we make our timelines, we don’t consider the possibility of divorce. We don’t consider the possibility of infertility.

Though I did get married at 28, the truth is I met the man I would marry when I was 20. It took us 8 years to get where we needed to be. If I hadn’t taken my feelings for him seriously way back then, when I still felt I had other life goals to meet first, or vice versa with him for me, who knows where either of us might be? Maybe we would have found other people to love. Maybe there is such a thing as soul mates, and we really are the only ones for each other. Who can really say? Meanwhile, people perpetuate this fear that marriage really hampers one’s freedom and independence. We’ve found this to be entirely untrue for us. Marriage has given us each a strong foundation from which we can both fly—both separately, and together. It’s made us stronger than we would have been alone.

We tell ourselves, when we’re young, that to be real strong, smart women, we have to put education and career before absolutely everything else. The truth is, life goals can exist side by side. You don’t have to put your ducks in a row…sometimes, you just kind of herd them along together. The trend now is to stave off marriage and family until you’ve lived your life first. What makes for “the right time” is an incredibly personal decision and it varies widely from person to person, but I do think we women do ourselves a disservice when we don’t make clear to each other that there are potential tradeoffs when we put off childbearing; that while you’re busy living your life, it can become increasingly harder (and harder than we think it will be) to be able to bear life. We underestimate how fragile life can be, and how uncertain fertility is. We all popped our birth control pills every day for years, each of us never knowing if we’d be the one who’d get pregnant on the first try, the one who would need years of fertility treatments, or the one who couldn’t get pregnant at all.

We can’t control when life happens to us, but we can be honest and informed about the consequences of our choices, and we can listen carefully to our inner guides about who is right for us and when we’re ready. From an employer’s perspective, there’s never a good time for a woman to get pregnant. But your life is your own. External deadlines matter little compared to the timeline we feel ticking along inside.

*   *   *

This post was inspired by this one, “26 and Already Pregnant,” by Kate from Eat The Damn Cake. If you’re interested in more fun facts about delayed marriage and child-rearing, check out this post, “The Sweet Spot for Tying the Knot,” by Susan Walsh at Hooking Up Smart.

A Coffee Chat

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I got some new Lightroom presets, so I’ll be playing around with some different photographic styles. There’s so much choice! It might take me a while to settle on what I like best.

Every morning, I have a ritual. I come downstairs, sit on the couch in front of my laptop, and check my email and Facebook, getting caught up on what happened in the U.S., while we were asleep in Asia. It’s a habit I have from when we lived in the States, but the ritual takes longer now that all the activity happens while we’re still sleeping. I suppose it’s a mark of the digital age that, 2.5 years after moving abroad, my central orientation is still split between two continents: me, living my life here, yet keeping tabs on what’s happening 12 hours different over there.

It’s only after I get caught up that I go to our kitchen, with its bright red walls and gray cabinets (a color combination I never would have picked on my own, but have somehow come to appreciate for its quirks), make a cup of coffee and a bowl of cereal, and then retreat back to the couch to enjoy as I begin my workday. I figure most people need their coffee before they can tackle what’s in front of them for the day. Somehow I need this ritual to clear my head before I can properly appreciate my coffee.

_TMK2118If we were really meeting for coffee today, you’d probably hear me kvetch about the construction that’s going on along the road we take into the city. About two weeks ago, they (whoever they are) decided it was a brilliant idea to start tearing up the only road that leads from our area, which sees a heavy amount of traffic, into the city. The road was perfectly serviceable, mind you, but somehow it was seen fit to tear up the perfectly fine asphalt and start replacing it with…can you guess? Concrete. Concrete, which does not flex with the weather as does asphalt, easily gets cracks in it, and will soon be destroyed. The four-lane road is now cut down to a two-lane road as they do this, and when I had work meetings in town last week, a drive that normally takes less than 25 minutes took me an hour and fifteen. Every time we need to do anything–since everything, including the grocery stores and restaurants we frequent even when we don’t go into town, lies past the construction zone–requires driving through this schmuckus.

I get so pissed off every time I see the construction, or even think about it to factor in how long it’s going to take me to run a particular errand, because when I mention it to Thai people, their immediate reaction is “Oh, they must have just had extra money in their budget they had to spend, and the concrete guys probably strong armed them into spending their money on a contract with them.” And that is Thai politics for you. Let everyone suffer for the sake of some bureaucratic boondoggle.

In other news, I love that “boondoggle” is actually a real word.

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Do you remember a few weeks back, I mentioned how well a shock collar has been working with Dot to keep her from barking at the neighbors? I may have to revise that statement. While she has certainly stopped barking and been exceedingly good about coming home when we call, she seems perfectly happy and at ease with the collar on,  and we’ve really only had to use the beep sound with her so the shock has largely been unnecessary, there’s still one little thing that’s been off. Lately, Dot has seemed a bit mopey. She does tend to get in mopey moods from time to time, but this one seems a little longer lasting. I’m starting to wonder if, though she understands now that we don’t want her barking so much, she might feel a bit sad because her “job” has been taken away. She probably viewed it as her duty to protect house and home (and the pregnant mama), but if she can’t bark, she can’t do her duty. She might feel lost without a job to do. I know that can easily be true with some breeds. As she’s a street mutt, it’s hard to tell what her natural inclinations might be. But, knowing how strong her protective instinct is, I’d be willing to guess that curtailing that does upset her to some degree.

So it looks like we might need to find our dog a job.

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In the meantime, my nesting instinct is giving me a real kick in the butt. I’m DYING to start readying the house for the baby, to make some pretty storage & display additions with our wedding dishes that are currently being shipped out, and to organize various things that have become a little disorganized as our house has grown. The itch. It’s BAD. But I can’t do anything about it right now because I really should just wait until the shipment arrives to see what all I have. That’s what I SHOULD do. What I WANT to do is go shopping and make our house pretty. I shouldn’t be in such a rush–I mean, who is there but me to really enjoy and appreciate it? In the grand scheme of things, waiting a few months should make no difference at all.

But then again, I never said patience was one of my virtues.

So what’s happening in your pocket of the world? If we were meeting for coffee, what would you tell me?

 

A Coffee Chat

_DSF0914Happy Wednesday everyone! How has your week been going? Did you have a nice holiday weekend?

If we were really meeting over coffee, I’d share this fantastic coffee our favorite coffee shop owner brought back to share from his recent trip to Japan. It’s so yummy–it reminds us of jam-filled cookies: that kind of buttery flavor with a hint of berry sweet.

I’d tell you how we spent our Saturday scoping out and booking a room at the resort where we plan to spend our 5-year wedding anniversary, which is coming up in just a few weeks (already! can’t believe it!). We had fun checking it out, and getting in a little lunch at the restaurant overlooking the infinity pools. It makes me very excited for our romantic getaway weekend. I can’t wait–and boy, will we appreciate it! Probably our last bit of real alone time that we’ll have for quite a while, with the baby coming soon.

_DSF0915Speaking of the baby, today marks 6 months of pregnancy. Normally, I’m really excited for the coming of another month, but this time I feel more ambivalent about it. I feel like the second trimester bliss is coming to an end, and after that, the business of birth looms large and, well, shit’s going get real, y’all.

But I’ve been really good about doing prenatal yoga on a regular basis (about 3x a week), and that helps me a lot. I’m getting stronger and more flexible, and it helps relieve tension and sore muscles in my back, for which I’m grateful.

_DSF0916In a little bit of fun, I came across a pin on Pinterest that led to the discovery of this free app called Tagxedo, which takes any text (your favorite poem, a meaningful excerpt, etc.) and puts it into fun, customizable shapes. Here’s what I made with a selection of my favorite things:

wordbird2

 

 

I think it would be cute and fun to print something like this out and display it on a shelf like this lady did, or to have it printed on a nice coffee mug for myself. If you could do something like this, what words would you use?

Today, I’m a little crazy wired because I went to a workshop attended by other organizations working to combat child trafficking in Thailand, where we discussed assessment tools to help screen children and identify potential mental or situational health problems to better serve them, and they served instant coffee, which I don’t normally drink. I didn’t realize how much more of a caffeine kick it has than the coffee I usually drink. By 11 a.m., I was being tortured. I couldn’t sit still for anything and the baby was throwing all kinds of punches inside my belly. I felt better after some lunch, I guess it helped diffuse the caffeine, but wow, did it really take me out for the day! Note to self: instant coffee is no bueno.

Anyway, hope you all have a fabulous Wednesday! Tell me, what’s going on with you?

 

A Coffee Chat

_TMK2933Happy Tuesday! If we were really meeting for coffee, I probably wouldn’t be able to wait before I showed you this cute goodness we got from our friends, mailed to us all the way from the U.S.:

A baby onesie that says "Made in Thailand" and an Edamame & Edapapa card

A baby onesie that says “Made in Thailand” and an Edamame & Edapapa card

I totally laughed out loud when I pulled it out of the package, and isn’t that card the best?

If we were meeting in person, you might notice that I’m looking both frazzled and happy. My parents arrived safely at nearly midnight on Sunday and we’re so glad to have them here! We’ve had a lot going on between unpacking–it’s like Christmas come early in our house with all the great stuff they brought for us and the baby–and heading over to their new house, which is currently being built, to pick out floors, paint, and landscaping. Plus, they’re super excited to get Thai food again, so we’ve been hitting up our favorite spots to eat.

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But it was a bit of a whirlwind getting ready. I had been prepping things here and there through the week before they arrived, but I had left some stuff for our maid to do, as she comes on Sundays.

She didn’t show up. Didn’t call. No explanation. Just didn’t show. So Toby & I spent Sunday scurrying around mopping and scrubbing, sweating like crazy because by the time we realized she wasn’t going to come it was no longer the cool morning, it was pretty much the heat of mid-day. (Is this a first world problem or a third world problem? High class problem, most probably. I kept stewing in my annoyance that if this were the U.S. this totally would not have happened, and if it did, that maid would be fired unless there was a good reason for it. But then, if this were the U.S., it totally would not have happened because I wouldn’t be able to afford a maid in the first place. So there’s some perspective.)

_DSF0630Anyway, the rains seem to finally have come, and there’s usually a wet spell around 4 or 5 p.m., so I take that hour and sit in our comfy chair by the front porch, with my dog at my feet and everything turned off except a string of Christmas lights, and I’ll just listen to some classical music and the rain. I love that time to just be quiet, rub my preggo belly, and enjoy just being for a while.

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On Thursday, we’ll have another doctor’s visit, where hopefully (fingers crossed!) we’ll finally find out if the baby is a boy or girl. I can’t wait! Let’s just hope the baby isn’t so shy this time around!

Well, that’s what’s going on over here. What’s happening with you?

 

 

How Pregnancy Changes The Skin I’m In

4 months preggo

Before I became pregnant, I don’t think I had much of an idea of what happens to your body in pregnancy. You get bigger, you get crazy cravings and eat more, and might have to throw up in the mornings. I think that’s all I thought happened.

{Insert a long stream of slightly manic laughter here.}

While I seem to have lucked out on the whole morning sickness thing, my body is changing faster and in more myriad ways than Aladdin’s Genie let out of the lamp Robin Williams style.

First, I got the dry skin. I seemed to be trying to compete with the Lubriderm gator. So I started putting lotion all over. Until I noticed that every time I did, I’d suddenly break out with an unsightly body pimple somewhere. So I stopped with that.

Then I got the dry eyes and had to start putting in eye drops.

Then there’s the stretch marks. Not on my belly. On my boobs.

Then my nails started growing three times as fast as normal. I’d scratch an itch (see dry skin above) with my suddenly uber-long witch nails, and break out in a mini rash.

Thankfully I work (*smirk* there’s an overstatement, when in the first trimester I could barely stay upright) mostly at home so I can hide the fact that I now find underwear supremely irritating.

Sleeping on my left side is good for my growing belly, but now I wake up with numb hips and pins & needles.

Speaking of that growing belly, it was growing at a nice, steady, slow pace right in line with what the doctor recommended during the first trimester. Second trimester hit and suddenly I’m clocking in a new number every time I get on the scale (which, admittedly, is less frequently these days because, heck, I gotta’ hold on to some scrap of sanity).

Apparently, there’s supposed to be some sort of pregnancy glow? All I know is I’ve had to switch to a super mild face cleanser and then follow it up with a super strength moisturizer strategically placed on certain spots on my face, since spreading it across my whole face makes me break out.

Add to all this, chronically sore feet, a complaining bottom & back, constant trips to the bathroom (all pee and no poo), cravings for sweets that I now find too sweet so that I end up having to bake them myself with a third of the sugar (Toby doesn’t mind this part because I’ll eat maybe three of the cookies, and he gets the rest) and cravings for steak (which is really expensive here, and normally I don’t eat much red meat), crying at the slightest provocation, and throw in a little bit of hot season so I sweat all the time and need more A/C than my husband wants to have, and it’s like: Who AM I? Where did my body go?

To cope, I now have a full skin regimen every time I get out of the shower. I apply a tiny bit of Bio-Oil to my boobs (I don’t know if this will help with the stretch marks, but it does smell nice and make my skin soft, so for $10 I consider that a win). Then comes tummy butter for my tummy, hips, and butt. Aquaphor strategically placed on the very dry or itchy patches of skin, rather than all over. Baby powder on my inner thighs to reduce the sweat. H20 moisturizer spot-placed on my face. Aveeno lotion spot-placed on semi-dry patches of skin. And occasionally at night, Burt’s Bees coconut oil foot creme on my toes & heels.

I’m pretty sure I smell like a pharmacy. Or at least the beauty section of CVS. And I have to trim my nails every five days or so.

Oh, and in addition to dryness, my eyes started getting more sensitive to direct sunlight, so now sunglasses are a must when I go out. I think I’ve officially become Thai now too, because I’ve started carrying an umbrella for sunny days. (What? It keeps the sun off.)

There are a bazillion articles on how to “get your body back” after pregnancy – most of which seem concerned with erasing any sign of pregnancy as quickly as humanly possible to become fitter than you were, with firmer boobs and younger more nubile skin than you had before getting knocked up, like there is some ideal version of you, and as Kate from Eat the Damn Cake observes, whatever ideal that is, it’s probably not the body you have right now.

But the thing is, as much as I jest and kvetch about my changing body, I’m also kind of proud of it. Though sometimes I feel like a little alien has taken over (which, let’s face it, is kind of true – I mean, for crying out loud, if you don’t get enough of a certain nutrient, the baby takes it first, so if you don’t get enough calcium, the baby will suck it up, leaving you with rotted, decaying teeth and osteoporosis), I’m thrilled to be the party host. While I don’t always recognize my body anymore, and new changes spring upon me almost daily, it doesn’t mean I want the old me back. Because the old me didn’t have this little one who dances around doing somersaults and waves at us in ultrasounds. I don’t want to be who I was before, because, before, I didn’t have another tiny heart beating inside. I don’t care if I bounce back tight as a virgin three months after the baby comes, because these rounder breasts and hips are proof I bore life separate from mine. Stretch marks aren’t unsightly. They’re reminders that I became something more than just me. I put on the cream less from vanity and more just to keep my skin supple and smooth, to match the calmness I feel inside. I don’t want to erase that.

I don’t want to erase the fact that I am becoming a mother.

A Conversation

Her: So you’re telling me you live in a gated community with security guards that salute you and click their heels every time you pass through the gate. And you’re in a 4-bedroom house. For $670 a month.

Me: Yes. Except for the first full year I felt incredibility guilty about it, like we had somehow found a way to game the system and it’s all great now, but someday karma’s going to come back and bite us in the ass.

Her: Right. Because God clearly hates people who try to prevent children from being trafficked into prostitution.

Me: Yeah, well, and yesterday I felt like a total schmuck because our maid came, and she normally comes on Mondays, when I’m working, so it’s fine and makes sense, but this week she came on a Sunday, which is my day off, and I felt like a total asshole sitting on the couch reading a book while she cleaned up around me.

Her (blink, blink): Because…why?

Me: Well, you know, it’s guilt. I’ve got this whole white liberal privileged guilt thing –

Her: White liberal privileged guilt — You’re half-Thai – white liberal privileged guilt, and you’re not even all that white. Do even you hear how ludicrous this sounds now?

Me: (nodding while tears of laughter stream down my face)

Her: It’s like the Thai side makes it worse; like your Thai side is warring with your white side…and um, I barely know you, but here’s my assessment of your entire cultural identity. You’re welcome.

Me: (still laughing, but not, because it’s totally true and I’d never thought of it that way before)

::

We met to exchange written words and ended up talking for hours. That conversation stuck with me for days afterward, and I wanted to preserve a piece of it, even if I only caught the gist of how it made me feel, because it made me feel better. I love people who can make me laugh; I really love people who can make me laugh at myself. I wanted to thank her for that.

Each Thursday, we come together to celebrate living life with intention by capturing a glimmer of the bigger picture through a simple moment. Have you found yourself in such a moment lately? Share it with us! 

Live. Capture. Share. Encourage.
This week we’re linking up at Melissa’s!
BE SURE TO CATCH HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE PREVIOUS WEEK
And head there for your daily dose of creativity:
prompts for photos, for words, for inspiration,
and for a life lived mindfully!

A Coffee Chat

Happy Tuesday everyone! So, I normally write these posts while sipping a cup of coffee, but today is one of those days that just kind of got away from me – you know what I mean? – so I’m actually sipping a Coke at the moment. Another thing I almost never do, but I had pizza for dinner and it just does not work to follow pizza up with water. So, a Coke it is. But a chat over coke probably sounds like something it shouldn’t, and I figure a lot of you are probably reading this over coffee anyway so it’s not that big a stretch.

I’m rambling. I do that from time to time.

How was your weekend? Mine was intense. The SOLD Project, the NGO I work for, was participating in a challenge hosted by Nike & The Girl Effect. The organizations with the most donors would win. We were just hoping to be a finalist, but in the last hours we suddenly jumped up to a neck-and-neck race for first place against last year’s winner. They were giving us a serious run for our money BUT our friends, families, and supporters are AWESOME, some of them even going so far as to pull over to the side of the road in the middle of the night to donate and we won with a margin of just 15 donors (we had 660 donors total). So each donation seriously mattered. PLUS we raised over $18,000 – not including the grant we’ll get from Nike and the added exposure which could result in more donors coming our way.

The Thailand Director and I were sitting up in the wee hours watching the leaderboard and having a mini heart attack every time our competitor surpassed us. Then, when we won, we sat in shock and a sense of overwhelming gratitude for all the people who had helped us out along the way.

(If you’re one of them, by the way, I’ll be sending out a proper thank you note with details of what these means for SOLD as soon as we hear the specifics from Nike, which they said they’ll send out on Dec. 6.)

So that’s exciting. The fun didn’t stop there this weekend either. I was at SOLD, spending time on Saturday teaching the kids how to bake Christmas cookies and cut snowflakes. And it snowed in Chiang Rai!

Haha – just kidding. If there was any snow in Chiang Rai, it was the window spray kind:

Photo by Tawee Donchai

But I did build a couple of snowmen for the kids.

And then I scurried home because we had (yet another) visitor come for the weekend. The night I got back, we went to see The Impossible. Have you seen it or heard of it? It’s with Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts, and it’s about the tsunami that hit Thailand (among other places: India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, etc.) the day after Christmas in 2004. Do you remember that?

It’s a time I can’t forget because my husband, Toby, was actually down at the southern beaches in Thailand right when it hit. He was on a 7-month trip around the world with his best friend, just after college. I had gotten an email from him two days before saying he was on one of the islands – one that, when I saw the news about the tsunami, I knew had been decimated. I was at work back in the States when I got the news, and I literally went nuts. Seeing the death toll rise into the tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands, and not being able to get in contact with him while I saw scene after scene of absolute terror and destruction, I couldn’t work I was shaking so hard and feeling so nauseated. I have a vivid imagination and it was doing me NO favors just then. It was a few days later that I found out a friend had convinced him to go to a full moon party on the gulf side of Thailand just the day before the tsunami hit, and thus, he was completely safe and unaware a tsunami had even happened. Full moon parties are notoriously crazy…but that one might have just saved his life.

Seeing this movie, then, was super intense. It’s already an intense film with what happens in it and knowing all that was real. It was even more intense because it made us relive that time again. It was also both poetic and strange to watch it in Thailand, where it happened, and to sit in a theater full of Thai people who were all in tears – many of whom know people who were hurt, lost, or killed by the tsunami – and have the movie be almost entirely about foreigners. Whoever made the film made it about foreigners traveling to Thailand, and there were seriously only about 3 Thai people in the whole thing with any speaking parts. It was like the tsunami happened to the tourists, not the Thai people who were there as well.

So it’s been quite an emotional weekend. But I’ve recently started getting back into yoga after a few years away and I’m remembering again how much lighter, and more energized, and more at peace with myself I feel when I’m practicing yoga. And I discovered I’m much less stressed driving through crazy Thai traffic when I sing. So, if you see me out there, I’m the nutty woman belting Christmas carols into her helmet as she nonchalantly swerves around the motorcyclists going the wrong way up her side of the street.

Hey, whatever works, right? Do you do anything funny to help reduce stresses?

Happy Thanksgiving!

:: from my house to yours ::

On this day, I give thanks for

family – friends, old & new – opportunities to grow – challenges – days of rest – health – laughter – coffee – a husband who makes said coffee (and makes me laugh) – soft, fluffy blankets – books that touch my heart & open my mind – music that I can’t live without – Calvin & Hobbes – love when you’re happy – love, even when you’re annoyed – the opportunity to travel – food safety regulations – kisses on the corner of my mouth – kisses from a puppy curled up beside me - Love Actually - my Macbook Air, pretty journals, and cocktail napkins (everything I write on) – Toby’s D300 – my Kindle – my wedding jewelry  - words & inspiration - cinnamon & nutmeg - cozy coffee shops - fresh fruit and tropical flowers – fall days & summer nights -

…and for roads less traveled by…

 …for they’ve made me who I am.

A Coffee Chat

Today, I’m sipping my coffee with a piece of toast and marmalade because I’ve got a jippy tummy again. I swear, I’ve gotten sick more times this month than I have in the past year – and I’m just going to be up front and tell you right now, when you’ve eaten something spicy, stomach issues really encourage dialogue with God. So I’m going to stick to small, plain foods for a while. Which is sad, with Thanksgiving coming up. Then again, Toby and I are so desperate for some peace and quiet, we might be grateful to give thanks over a feast of small proportions.

I was back in Chiang Rai last week for work – and you know you’re doing what you should be doing when going to work feels like vacation. We hosted a group of university students, who were really great and asked lots of great questions. And I got a call from my cousins, who were randomly in town, which led to a tour of a bunch of artist galleries & homes and a potential network where we can send our kids for apprenticeships in the future. We also hosted a big meeting, where all the families came for updated information and to participate in some community projects.

And more cousins arrived, and I got to show them around the area too, occasionally taking the scenic route when I thought they knew the way and they thought I knew the way only to find out we’d just been driving and talking and none of us knew where we were going. I think I might have lost all credibility as a navigator just then.

But it’s okay because I got to meet this creature:

I’m kind of a little bit obsessed with that face.

I should also tell you my cousins came up to visit us in Chiang Mai too. They saw the house that my parents bought (which is still currently being built), and sneaky-sneaky, popped over and bought one in the same neighborhood on the sly (who does that??). It’s meant to be a surprise house-warming gift for when my parents move into theirs, except my parents went to the neighborhood office yesterday to put down next month’s payment and one of the girls in the office let the secret out. I imagine the other girls in the office slapped her a good one afterward. So we found out, but we’re just going to pretend we don’t know.

Except, of course, I’m sharing it with you now. The secret’s safe with you, right?

Plus, I’m inordinately excited that they’ll have property up here, so we’ll probably see them more often. I really like my cousin and her husband, and as my Thai improves, so does our ease of communication joking.

I killed a snake this weekend. Putting it that way probably sounds like there was some epic battle, but really, I was just driving and didn’t see it in time until it was too late to swerve around it, as there was oncoming traffic in the other line. Car meets snake. Car wins. I was traumatized though. I’m not a fan of snakes, but it was still a little life, right?

I also spent a whole morning yesterday watering the lawn, and about a half hour after I finally shut off the hose, it started to rain.

Okay, I think I’m starting to ramble now. Or did that happen a long time ago? Anyway, don’t forget! You can help The SOLD Project (my organization) get tons of added exposure, credibility, and donations, which would be AWESOME! Just click onto our Global Giving page, toss in $10, and help spread the word!

AND

I’m giving away a pretty necklace right here this week, so put your name in the bucket and see if you can win it!

With that, I’m off, ostensibly to work, but more likely to browse Pinterest. I’ve noticed the more scattered my brain is, the more time I spend on Pinterest. It’s as if reading about 17 tips on how to beautify the pantry, bake peppermint Oreo snickerdoodle bars, and willpower my way to tighter abs will somehow declutter my mind too. Who knows? Maybe it works. I find it soothing.

A Coffee Chat

A week from today, I’ll be sitting on a plane, headed home to Southern California. A part of me still can’t believe it’s been two years since we left; it feels like just a year in my head.

When we go back, we will witness two sets of friends getting married, one friend being pregnant, another two having had babies, one surviving cancer, another having lost both grandparents, a few major career moves, publications published, a new house, a divorce, babies growing into big kids, big kids turning teenage, and one friend quitting his job and selling his home to backpack around the world.

Whatever the politicians and the pundits say about the state of the world, life moves. There is no stasis, just the slow revolution of earth and millions of traces of the passage of time.

Even if we never see time itself.

Meanwhile, Toby and I are getting ready. We have transportation sorted out and are just culling together the last few gifts to bring for friends and family. We’re tying up loose ends at work and snagging dinners with friends before we go. We’re trimming down the necessities.

We travel light.

I have an uncle who once told me he believes that when one travels they should be able to fit everything in one suitcase they can carry themselves.

That stuck with me. While I’m not quite that ascetic, I try to keep the general principle in mind and limit myself to one suitcase (or backpack) and one carry-on (generally for my laptop), neither of which should be too heavy for me to manage easily on my own.

That’s for overseas travel. For domestic or weekend travel, I stick to one carry-on whenever possible.

Which means I really hate the stupid liquid restrictions because it means I can’t bring things like shampoo & conditioner or toothpaste and either have to buy new ones or rely on the ones available at my destination.

What about you? How do you travel?

As I write this, roofing guys are pounding and scraping away at our house, which has been eaten up by termites, so it’s making for a noisy work environment. So I’m going to leave you with part of a poem from Rumi and then make my way towards some place a little quieter to write.

Here it is:

There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street,
and being the noise.

Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.

Open your hands,
if you want to be held.

Sit down in this circle.

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd’s love filling you.

At night, your beloved wanders.
Don’t accept consolations.

Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover’s mouth in yours.

You moan, “She left me.” “He left me.”
Twenty more will come.

Be empty of worrying,
Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.

- from “A Community of the Spirit,” Rumi

Isn’t it kind of amazing that he wrote that nearly 800 years ago?

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