Actual Conversation (or, How Hard Is It To Spell Hawk?)

I got a call the other day from ACU, my alma mater. They were calling to hit me up for money. I knew that's what they wanted and they've been calling for a while. I decided to answer the last time to see if they would leave me alone for a while if I talked to them. 

At the beginning of the conversation they wanted to update my contact information. Since we just moved, I gave them my new address. The street we now live on is called Fast Hawk Lane. When you say it quickly it sounds kind of strange, so I made sure to space out the two words and speak slowly, thinking that would help. Not so much. 

Me: [House number] Fast Hawk Lane. 

Student: Can you say that again?

Me: (More slowly) Fast Hawk Lane

Student: Can you spell that?

Me: F-A-S-T

Student: Can you say that again? 

Me: Fast. F-A-S-T. Like the opposite of slow. Fast. 

Student: Oh, F-A-S-T. Fast. 

Me: Yes. Fast. And then hawk, like the bird of prey. 

Student: H-O-C-K?

Me: No. H-A-W-K. The bird. Hawk. 

At this point I was thinking, "Seriously?  You're a college student and you don't know how to spell hawk?"

I hope this isn't indicative of how giving my address to people will be in the foreseeable future. I realize that the street names in my neighborhood are a little strange (Fast Hawk is one of the more normal ones, really). But this student is living in a town with street names like Bob-O-Link and Catclaw, so I'm not thinking they have a lot of room to judge. 

Moving Is The Worst Thing Ever

And deciding on Wednesday to move on Saturday when you haven't started packing and don't even have boxes yet is just a bad idea.

We moved last weekend.  By some miracle (performed largely by my father and father-in-law) all of our worldly belongings are in our new house.  It's about half the size of our old house, so we decided to sell all of our living room furniture and get some new things.  The old furniture is still in the garage at the old house.  We have until the end of April to be completely out, so we're using that for short term storage while we wait for things to sell.

If you or anyone you know in the area are in the market for couches, end tables, or an entertainment center, let me know.

We actually bought a brand new couch for the first time in our married life.  We will be celebrating our 10 year anniversary this summer.  Does this make us real adults now?  We have a child, we've bought and sold a home, and now we've bought a brand new couch.  Maybe.  We love the new couch.  It's big and comfy and wonderful.

Now I get to begin the horrible ordeal of unpacking.  Most of our stuff is piled in half the garage.  I don't know where much of anything is.  Most of the kitchen stuff is unpacked, but there's some stuff missing.  There's a box out there somewhere with the rest of the kitchen stuff.  I haven't even looked for it yet.  I did try to find my favorite wrap and mei tai.  I watched my dad stuff them in a box, but I can't find that box.  As he was gathering them up I thought that I should snag them and stick them in my car, but I didn't.  I do have a couple wraps and the Ergo out, and they're fine, but I do wish I knew where my favorites were.

My current goal is to get at least one thing out of the garage and put away every day.  Just one thing.  That's all I'm required to do.  If I'm inspired to do more, so be it. At my current rate I might be done sometime before our lease is up.  Just in time to do it all again.

On Public Speaking

Tomorrow afternoon I will be giving a presentation at the Baby Fair in Spokane. They call it a class, but it's just me talking for half an hour in front of whoever shows up. There's usually a pretty big turnout for the event, so in all likelihood there will be a good amount of people there.

I'll be talking about babywearing. This should be fairly easy. I have an outline and I'm experienced with the subject matter. I really haven't been too worried about it.

I mentioned something tonight about printing my outline. Michael suggested just having it on my phone. Then he asked, "Do you think you'll be able to keep it to 30 minutes?"  I replied that I would and that this wasn't my first time speaking in public.

Thinking about public speaking made me think of giving speeches at LTC. I've never been one to thoroughly rehearse or script out a speech. I hate listening to someone who sounds like they're reciting something rather than speaking naturally. But, to keep me within the time limits my mom always sat in the audience and gave signals for how much time had passed or how much time I had left.

She won't be there tomorrow. I decided having my notes on my phone was a good idea. That will make it easy to keep an eye on the time too.

Life With a Toddler

I just spent the last 30 minutes or so sitting on the stairs with my husband while our daughter climbed all around us and tried to swim on the landing.

Life with a toddler is rarely dull.

She "helped" unpack the groceries this evening by pulling the bag of cheese puffs from the grocery sack, brandishing it at me, and saying, "Chip!  Chip! Chip!"  This continued until I finished putting away the groceries, sat at the dining room table, and gave her some cheese puffs.  The child knows what she wants and how to ask for it.  Well, demand it.

I should probably try to get her to say please now and then.  But, she's only 20 months, so I'm not too fussed about it.  We say please to her when we ask things, so she'll pick it up eventually.  She already says thank you and you're welcome.  Well, she says a combination of the two that comes out as "Thank'em," and she uses it for both purposes.

After our apres dinner snack, we went downstairs where she helped me put the laundry from the washer into the dryer.  That is one of her favorite things to do.  If I even say the word, "laundry," she starts saying, "Help!  Help!  Help!" and running for the laundry room door.

She does like to help, or try to help, even if she isn't very good at it yet.  She can pull small things out of the washer and transfer them to the dryer quite well.  If I need to pull a load out of the dryer before transferring the wet laundry over, I'll open the washer, pull the laundry out of the dryer and take it upstairs while leaving her to start the transfer.  Most of the time when I come back down she's close to halfway done.  Not bad for not even being two years old.

Things I Love About My Daughter

There are many things that I love about my daughter, and this is by no means comprehensive.  We had a bit of a rough day today.  She's teething (these should be the last teeth for a while, thank God) and hasn't been sleeping well lately, so that doesn't help anything.  Plus she's entered the stage where being told no for anything immediately sets off hysterics of the fling-yourself-on-the-floor-and-flop-around variety.  So, y'know, fun times.  And our driveway is a steep, curvy, sheet of ice, so we're pretty much stuck inside.  And I was tired today, so we didn't go for our usual walk.

Despite all the unpleasant aspects of today, there were, as always, many times when I just stopped and thought, "Wow, I love this kid."  So, without further ado, here are the things from today that made me think that.

1. I love that she waits at the top of the stairs for me, so she can hold my hand as she walks down.  She's getting so good at walking down the stairs.  She sort of skipped over crawling down the stairs backward.  She has always wanted to walk down them like Mommy and Daddy.  At first we had to walk backward in front of her and hold both her hands to keep her steady.  Now, she steadies herself with one hand on the wall and one hand in mine (or Michael's).  So sweet.
2. When she walks up or down the stairs, she says, "Step!" for almost every step.  It actually comes out more like, "Dep!"  So cute.
3. She almost always wants to listen to music.  It's one of the first things she asks for when she wakes up in the morning.  
4. She loves to dance.  This goes with the music thing, of course.  The kid's got moves, too.  For 19 months, her rhythm is pretty solid.  I know adults who can't keep a beat as well as she can.  Lately she's been grabbing her doll and shaking it around and saying, "Dancin'.  Baby dancin'."
5. Spontaneous hugs.  She runs up and says, "Hug!" and wraps her arms around you.
6. Spontaneous kisses.  'Nuf said.
7. Her laugh.  Toddler laughter is so unrestrained and joyful and never fake.  I relish it.
8. She loves pushing the button to hang up my phone.  It's hilarious and adorable, though it can make phone calls interesting.  She's usually ready to hang up before I am, so I have to keep the phone away from her.  If I have it against my face, she literally tries to peel it away from my face as she's saying, "Bye bye.  Bye bye."  If it's on speaker, it's a weird game of keep away until I wrap up the call.  And then she laughs when she pushes the button.
9. The way she snuggles up to me in her sleep.  She still sleeps in our bed because she still nurses at night.  Sometimes I think it would be nice for her to be in her own bed, but mostly I enjoy the baby snuggles.  There's nothing sweeter than snuggling a sleeping baby.
10. She's fearless.  While I sometimes wish she were a little less fearless for her own safety (and my sanity), mostly I'm glad that she's brave enough to try things, and trusting enough to know we'll be there for her.  

Redefining

I'm not sure if it's because I'm now 31 or because I'm now a parent, but I've come to a place where I feel like I'm redefining who I am and what I am about.  The goals I've been pursuing for the last 10+ years I am no longer actively pursuing.  The realization has been weighing on me for a couple of months now.  So, the question, then, is where do I go from here?  If the things I wanted before no longer hold the appeal they did, or at least not enough appeal to put forth the effort to pursue them, then what should I do?  I am a mother now, so that affects my choices and ability to pursue certain things.  While I do realize that I could still pursue things like auditioning for professional symphonies, my heart just isn't in it right now.  I don't have the motivation to practice for several hours a day, which is what would be necessary to achieve that goal.  I have a 19 month old at home, and she is more of a priority.  Over the last year, I have been letting my teaching commitments dwindle as people decided to stop taking lessons and I have deliberately not replaced them.  I still enjoy playing.  I participate in the local symphony and take gigs as they come my way.  But, it's not the driving force that it has been for so long.

So, now I am revisiting things that I thought were cool when I was a teenager.  I'm writing more.  Not always here.  And we're talking about traveling again.  I have been thinking about all the places I want to go and see and wondered if it would ever happen.  Or if I'd have to wait until the kids are grown and gone and we're retired to start living that life.

Michael has been feeling a similar need to redefine.  It seems we've both been floating along doing the expected things (more or less), but we're both dissatisfied with that as a life goal.  Things have gotten boring, dull, uninspiring in the extreme.  We love our daughter and she is a delight, but we must do things other than hang out and watch television.  We need to experience life more than that, and so does she.

And so, we've set some goals.  I don't want to go into all the details now, but suffice to say that it feels good.  We're making plans.  We're going to get ourselves in a position to save money so that we can do more of the things we want to do, rather than just making ends meet.  I am more firmly rejecting those expectations that do not serve me or fulfill my needs and goals.  It feels good.  It's exciting and frightening at the same time.

First, we're going to be slimming down the stuff.  I look around at all of it and feel weighed down.  We know we will be moving at the end of the summer when our lease is up, so now is a good time to start reducing the burden of things.  I'm rather dreading the task, in all honesty.  I want to have less, but the thought of going through it all and deciding what to sell, donate, or keep is daunting and overwhelming.  I get overwhelmed rather easily at times.  But, it must be done.  I have some things set aside already to be gotten rid of (clothes, mostly), I just need to decide if I want to try to sell or consign them, or just donate them to a thrift store.  I should probably just pack them off to the thrift store.  Then they'd be out of my house and I wouldn't have to worry about them anymore.

Approaching 31

In two weeks I will be turning 31. I must confess that I'm not where I thought I would be at this point. I don't have a clear picture of exactly what I thought (maybe that's part of the problem), but I can say for sure that this isn't it.  For one thing, I expected to have a Master's degree by now.  I don't regret not finishing my MA because of the circumstances that led to my dropping out of that program, but, still, it was part of the plan at one point.  It was the plan for quite a while, really.  But, I am unwilling to return to the program I left, and I'm also unwilling to move somewhere in order to pursue that degree.  An online program is out of the question, because music performance programs can't be done that way.  So, that's out.

I also thought I would be playing for a symphony that paid by now.  But, I'm still playing in a volunteer community orchestra. On the one hand, I'm sad that I haven't accomplished that goal, while on the other hand, the freedom to not worry too much about it is nice at this juncture.

I suppose a fair amount of the tension I feel about where I am versus where I thought I would be is due to the expectation that all the important things must be done, or at least started, before 30.  The currently famous concertising violinists are not much older than me, but they've been performing publicly (and getting paid for it), for at least a decade, if not more.  That means they started in their early to mid 20s.  And I am 31, playing for an unpaid community orchestra and on the verge of shutting down my teaching studio.  I barely play outside of rehearsals.  I could play more if I put forth the effort, but finding the motivation is difficult, and having a 17 month old who cries when I practice doesn't help.

And that brings me to my next point.  Nearly everyone my age has multiple children by now and they're all older than mine.  You see, you're supposed to start a family in your early 20s, too.  Or, if you don't, at least have a career to show for it.  And me?  I'm 31 and have barely started.  My friends with children the same age as my daughter are several years younger than me and have been married for less than 5 years (put together).  I will be celebrating my 10th anniversary in July.  It's a bit strange to be the oldest (or one of the oldest), when I've nearly always been one of the youngest.

This has all been on my mind lately as I approach my 31st birthday. I don't regret my choices along the way.  I am happy, though it may sound a bit like I'm complaining.  I suppose I'm in a transitional season righ now.  Maybe I will still complete my Master's in Music or win a position with a professional symphony.  At the moment I'm not even pursuing either goal. It's strange because I've been doing one or the other until about a year and a half ago.  Maybe in a few years I will resume the pursuit.  And maybe I won't.  For now I'm focusing on raising my daughter, growing Riverview Naturals, and writing again.  I guess the important takeaway is that plans change. Sometimes it's because of your own decisions or because of things that happen to you. Sometimes you let go of long held goals and pick up new ones. Sometimes you can even pick up a goal you had put down a long time ago.  And putting down a goal now, doesn't mean it can never be picked up again.