The Second Time

Everything came to a head yesterday.  I felt as if I was standing in the DC airport waiting for my luggage full of every piece of clothing I owned to (not) arrive again, sobbing in the shuttle with Val over all the things that had piled up on me over the previous 2 weeks, but had been saying “We’ll get through it!  It’ll work out!” and keeping my head up.  Until that very moment when I couldn’t hold it back and I couldn’t believe that, on top of all that had already gone down, now I was stranded in DC for a dental conference as a poor one-week old college grad without a single scrap of clothing for Ryan to send me or even a dollar to spend on new clothes, makeup, shampoo…  A single thing that, otherwise, I probably would have been able to laugh about and just make work but was, indeed, the straw that broke the camels back.

We bought a new (but old) car three weeks ago, something we didn’t realize was so pertinent as Ryan’s car broke down right before we had the car in hand.  That thing was only worth about 800 dollars when we sent it to it’s resting place and needed 3000+ in repairs.  Then, three days after we got the car, my car wouldn’t start which was quite a shock because three weeks before we had a major tune up and everything looked at.  Plus, in september we had a lot of things replaced like the spark plugs, brakes, etc.  It’ll turn over but it just wont catch all the way.  We didn’t have the money to have it looked at yet, so it’s been sitting in it’s little spot and we’ve been making it work with one car while we saved.

Then, last night the new car starting making horrible, horrible noises.  We took it right in and they initially thought it could be a pretty major repair, upwards of 2500-3500 dollars (which, we only paid 4000 for the car to start with).  All this on top of the fact that we are three months away from having a baby, trying to save the money for the 6 weeks I have off work without maternity leave plus the high insurance maternity deductable.  It seems like there are always more fires to put out, more things that we have to get ready for, or another day of work I can’t attend because I have picked up another nasty bug that my pregnant body couldn’t fight off.  AND life is about to change.  We are so excited for little baby girl to come, but I have to admit that in certain moments I am completely scared out of my mind.

So, for the second time in my entire life, I just completely broke down.  Sometimes it’s hard to see how it could possibly be okay.   Turns out my husband is an excellent judge of how I am doing, recognized a massive panic attack in the making when I didn’t and was able to retrieve the lavender essential oils I have been using as my hormones have ramped up in third trimester, giving me tiny randomly triggered panic attacks at work, sitting in the car, or just leisurely reading (pregnancy is just great =).

Luckily, the car we bought 3 weeks ago doesn’t need 2500-3500 dollars worth in repair like they initially thought, only 200.  And it’s okay our other car still wont start because we can still get to work, and they think that fix could (possibly) be an inexpensive one as well.  It’s going to work out.  As much as I wish it was all together now, that we had all the things we need to buy for the baby already and all the bill money saved up for those six weeks, I know we’ll get there.  And sometimes, you just need a really good cry to let out all those feelings you’ve been burying.  You don’t have to be strong all the time.  In fact, it just might make you feel a little crazy.

We’re fine.  And like the summer that followed the DC debacle, sometimes those things end up being blessings.  The airline paid pull price for my stuff—even though a month later they found my luggage AND returned it without expecting the money back.  And we ended up moving here right in time for me to pick up my dream job that would not have been available three months earlier. Life is freakin scary sometimes, I tell ya.  I wish I just knew how it would all turn out.

E-Reader vs. Hard Copy

I bought the first version of the nook the summer of 2010 after a day of temping, walking away with a fresh wad of money that was unspoken for and begging to be spent.  At this time, the e-reader craze was picking up speed. I spoke with a man earlier that day who was one of the higher ups in the library system here (which is incredible, by the way, if I haven’t mentioned it a million times before) who was an avid reader and loved the portability and accessibility of his 20 books packed into a small sony reader.

Here’s what I’ve determined about E-readers.

Pro’s:

• It kicked up my reading habit in full force.
• Books are not as expensive so it’s easier to sustain a healthy reading habit
• No wait time at the library (as great as our library system is here, there are always people ahead of you for the most popular books.  It doesn’t take long, but hey.  At least you don’t have to be patient.)
• No wait time at all for that matter—you feel like reading a book?  Buy it right now and start reading in 3 minutes.
• And SPEAKING of our library system, you can borrow books from the library on your e-reader now.  What?!!  It’s awesome.  Seriously awesome.
• Make the letters as big or as small as you want.  I don’t have to wear glasses anymore when I read because my eyes don’t get tired as quickly.  (Yes. I know.  I am getting old.  Don’t remind me.)
• Wrist issues aren’t an issue.  One of my biggest reasons for e-reading is the bigger hard bound books are hard to hold.  We bought the last book of Eragon, Inheritance, a few weeks back.  I would read about 10 pages, then I’d get frustrated with man-handling it and toss it, wrists and fingers already sore.
• I like to read in bed laying on my side.  It’s definitely easier to deal with one surface instead of two.
• BATHTIME.  =)  Yes, I have slipped my e-reader into a heavy duty freezer bag so I could soak my tired bones for a bit.  I wouldn’t recommend excessive dunking per say, but it works like a charm.
• Portability.  I can continue reading on my smart phone at lunch without bringing my nook with me.  Or I can bring a whole library of books on the plane with me, changing books as I please, only having to give up a small sliver of my purse for storage.
• Space.  As we’ve never lived in a house, our book collection has always managed to dwarf the other items in the place.  We’ve hit this problem many times:  another book shelf is full—now what?!
• Anonymity.  Before it was public knowledge that we are pregnant, I enjoyed being able to read my What to Expect When You’re Expecting book without the owners of prying eyes starting up a conversation of which I was not ready for.
• Classics are cheap.  On certain holidays, they are even free.  I grabbed 15 american classics last 4th of July for zero dollars.

Cons:

• Inherent worth of the book.  You can’t re-sell a file.  You can’t write a personal message on the inside and pass it down to your kids.  What you see is very much what you get.  This is why it’s so much less expensive, however, you have to ask yourself if it’s still worth it.  When we moved, we sold a bit of our collection to pay for gas.  Even then, we still managed to leave about 4 full boxes and a giant plastic bin of books.
• Lending to a friend.  If you have friends with other nooks, there are only certain books that can be lent.  For instance, the Hunger Games series, Tarzan, the works of Elizabeth Gaskell and Jane Austen are all lend-able.  Now that my sister-in-law Nina has a nook, she can borrow them from me.  Really, anyone with a smart phone, tablet of sorts, or computer could borrow them too as long as you have the free nook application.  I don’t know anything about the lending system for the kindle or other e-readers.  This is still not super ideal.  It’s one of the only ways it makes reading less accessable because books don’t get passed from person to person.
• Books laying around the house.  This is both a pro and a con for us for sure.  As we are preparing to bring kids into our family, we’d like there to be a lot of good books laying around to spark their curiosity.  The most reasonable answer for us, one day, is to probably have a reading room or library of sorts.
• Charging.  Even the old e-readers have great charge time, but it’s still something you are at the mercy of.  I’m bad about leaving it in stand-by mode for weeks on end and only charging it when it runs out.  The newest ones will hang in stand by mode for a couple months.  What if Barnes and Noble or Amazon go out of business and I lose my library of books on the web?  Technology is excellent—until it backfires on you or stops working.  Those pesky EM pulses you see so much in movies would seriously tick me off.

At the end of the day, the most exciting part about reading is what it does to my brain.  If I were to hold on stubbornly to hard copies like I did for way too long with journaling, I’ll certainly miss out.  There are a good three years of my life that I just wasn’t writing because I was trying so hard to keep it hand written.  So silly.  So much in life is about the experience, anyway.  You can’t take much else with you and once you’ve read it, it’s in there somewhere.

We don’t buy everything on the Nook.  We keep all church books hard bound and available.  I have applications for scriptures and a few main church reads, but we own hard copies of all of it.  When we bought the book Boundaries (which I highly recommend everyone read), Ryan bought himself a hard copy he could write in and I bought another for the nook so I didn’t have to wait for him.

To demonstrate.  There are all the books I have read or are currently reading on my Nook:

Inheritance, Boundaries, The Nine Lives of Chloe King (all three books), What to Expect When You’re Expecting, FlashForward, Jesus the Christ, Hunger Games (all three books), The Scent of Rain and Lightning, Same Kind of Different as Me, Motivational Interviewing in Health Care, Confessions of a Shopaholic, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson, The Tarzan Collection (this is actually really cool.  It’s like an old school super hero series.), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (good story but pretty graphic.  I didn’t read any more after the first one), The Complete Works of Jane Austen.

That’s just on the Nook.  There are a bunch more on there I haven’t even cracked open yet.  I also borrowed books from the library and friends or read books we already had during this time.  That is a lot for me.  Especially since I am mostly a winter reader.  I get side tracked in the summer time with outside affairs.

I guess I could have just said: 

I like my e-reader.  But it’s not perfect.  =)  (BTW, the new, smallest, cheapest nook is AWESOME.  Even better for my hands!!!)

Pregnancy Surprises!

After seeing many of my friends and family members going through multiple pregnancies, reading books and gathering all the info I could, I didn’t think it was possible for me to be surprised by anything.    Here’s about what I expected:

Morning sickness and nausea (the key word being “morning”), heart burn, fatigue, feeling more “emotional” or touchy than usual, weird craving combinations and later on when I am big, feeling really uncomfortable, getting kicked in the ribs, having to pee a lot, and needing to rest more.

Seems reasonable, right?  Wrong.  SO wrong!

• Morning sickness?  Yes.  And afternoon sickness and evening sickness.  That name is seriously misleading.  =)
•  I used to be able to take my vitamins 4-5 pills at a time.  Now, one is seriously pushing it.   Getting that omega 3 pill down on the first try calls for high fives all around!  Yessssss.
• Cravings were not what I thought they’d be.  Especially early on, nothing sounded good.  I force fed myself, knowing I needed to, but eating was a chore.  Days go by like that until—-I found ONE thing that didn’t sound repulsive.  It’s like the only thing in the universe that I could enjoy.  It lasts for days and days.

• I can eat about 1/4 of what I used to and the menu has completely changed.
• Nobody does heartburn like pregnant ladies do heartburn.  I have had prescription medicated heart burn before and it was nothing like this.  Not necessarily better or worse.   It’s just a whole different animal.
• Overall, I feel more emotionally ‘even’ and optimistic than before pregnancy.  Occasionally, I will get anxious or a bit snappy if I stay up too late (which is just me).  All in all though, I’ve felt really good.    This was a very legitimate concern for me.  Really low dose birth control pills made me seriously crazy.  Like, ‘poor Ryan, who did you marry?’ crazy.   I was terrified it was mimicking what real pregnancy hormones would do to me.
• A lot of the symptoms I thought would happen later have been popping up super early.  My hips, shoulders, back and SI joint have been killing me.  After one seriously sleepless night, we invested in a memory foam topper.
• Many more non-glamorous surprises that need not be mentioned.
• And my favorite of all, my seriously bat-crap crazy impossibly unforgettable dreams as explained in the previous post!  What entertainment!

Bat-Crap Crazy Hormone Induced Pregnancy Dreams

Aside from seeing cute little arms and legs wiggling around on the ultrasound, this has definitely been my favorite and most entertaining part of pregnancy.  Most of them are either stressful dreams or nightmares but they are so absurd they make us laugh in the morning.  Here’s a sampling of the dreams I’ve experienced thus far:

1.  Zombie apocalypse.  Everyone’s a zombie now and we are fighting amongst ourselves.  You can either choose to be an evil zombie and be super strong or keep most of your humanity, but be consequently weaker and more likely to be taken out by the baddies.  Then, suddenly I am attending my friend Liz’s mission homecoming.  I spent the night before at Tiffany’s house working on my talk and, in-consequently, her family had remote control cars that did their house work.

2.  Ryan is engaged to Kim Kardashian and I am the wedding planner.

3.  We decided to send me back to college even though I am pregnant and already have my degree.  I live in some co-ed dorms and I can’t figure out why I am back at school.

4.  I am running ten minutes behind at work and my next patient was angry that we started late.  After I brought her back, she said “If you waste ten minutes of my time then I will waste ten minutes of my your time!”  She proceeded to pretend sleep in the chair until I left the room.  She then snuck out!  The funniest part:  it was a real patient I had seen earlier than week.

5.  My co-worker Diana was pregnant with a group of devil babies.

6.  Ex boyfriend nightmares.  These are the WORST.  Some include them  pursuing me or showing up constantly when I don’t want them there.  Others are that we are still together or engaged, and I don’t want to be with them or have a horrible feeling about it and I don’t know why.

7.  A big group of friends are 30 minutes late to a movie, and we go out to dinner after.  It’s getting really close to curfew and we can’t get the attention of the waitress for the check so everyone leaves me behind to pay the entire bill.  Then, when I get home I am in trouble for being late and spending a ton of my parent’s money.

8.  I am a cat person (If you’ve seen the now cancelled TV show The Nine Lives of Chloe King, that is the character I was in the dream) and held hostage by a group of people that can create weaponry with their minds.  I overhear them plotting to kill all the cat people.

9.  I had to do cleanings in the audience (in the dark) of the Broadway musical Cats.

10.  The hygienists I work with were all lifeguards in a high-end country club pool.  I switched shifts with Liz and accidentally showed up during my usual time.

11.  I’m in high school and I can’t get registered for the classes I need.  Then, a bunch of people leave a painfully long class early and we are all brought in for militaristic-style questioning.

Ramblings of a Crazy Woman

“I’ve had a really, really messed up week…”
Well, at least I didn’t find out my girlfriend cheated on me.  Or get a tattoo of her that kinda looks like this guy:

(That song makes me smile.  Also, Zach Galifianakis is freakin hilarious.  And yes, I had to look up how to spell his name)

I was hoping to come to you with great news this week of how awesome I am feeling and finally spill the beans that we are PREGNANT.

But, alas, I falafel.   As I rounded the corner last week, I was starting to get cocky and thinking I had passed the 1st trimester morning sickness “stuff.”  Then monday hit.  Out of nowhere, all the things that normally make me feel better (you know, all my go-to items that I have been stuffing my face with constantly for the past eight weeks) suddenly made me want to vomit with renewed fervor.  I am now on the search for replacements for crackers, string cheese and bagels.  Sad day, bagels.  Farewell.  For now.

Really though, we are super excited.  I am 13 weeks and am due May 18th!  I feel really great most of the time and know I have it a lot better than many of my pregnant counterparts.

I’m just whining tonight because that it what I do on Tuesdays.  I work late and get cranky.  Also, I think the pregnancy hormones are making my back, arms, and hips hurt worse than normal which is making work a bit of a challenge.  I’m definitely looking forward to a few days of R&R during Thanksgiving.

As I click publish, I have to say, it feels a little weird.  It’s been a secret for SO long (we’ve known since my birthday mid sept).  I guess the cats out of the bag!

More Awesome

#127  Roughing up the carpet before the company arrives so it doesn’t look like you just vacuumed.

• The  carpet must be clean–but not too clean.  You don’t want to look like you are trying too hard, right?.   You definitely can’t get the effect* with those lovely just-been-vacuumed lines.  Notice how you never see them in photos of celebrity homes or family photos?  It’s because it was someone’s job to roll and stamp around on it until it looked like it was vacuumed yesterday.

#128  Driving through stray leaves

• Autumn is my absolute favorite season.  I love the colors, the feel of the cool air, the breeze, the fall/winter vegetables, and the holidays.  But, oh, the leaves.  I love how your car kicks up leaves from nearby trees way into the air, leaving streams of orange and red flitting behind your car.  I always want to roll down my windows and try to grab them in my hand!

#129  The shower that gets really hot at the gym

• There is one shower at my gym that is particularly frigid.  When I was new there, I saw a lady go in and brrr and shiver her way through her shower.  She emerged with exclamations and complaints!  That’s when someone told her—that’s the bad one.  The knob doesn’t turn all the way.  If she had abandoned ship and tried a different one, she’d be singing a different tune.  Just as there is a bad one, there is one particular shower that is far better than all the other showers.  It gets soooo toasty and is incredibly satisfying after a long swim.  I never want to leave.

#130  Swimming with just the underwater lights on

• There is something so serene about gliding through glowing water, the rest of the world an afterthought.  I feel like I’m apart of the undersea world, weightless and free.  It’s also rather nostalgic for me. It was always a special day at swim practice when the overhead lights went out and the underwater ones came on.  It also usually meant a fun, less-than-serious practice, lots of laughing and swim-cheer-nastics.  Over the summer, I walked in my gym pool right when it opened and the room was still dark…except for the underwater lights.  It was the best day so far.  Like magic.  They were still off when I left 45 minutes later.  =)

#131  Getting more snuggles from loved ones when they are tired or cold–or scared (but hopefully not).

• I love holding loved ones close!   Ryan gets some of the best snuggles out of me when we watch any kind of suspenseful movie.  Lately my nephew Max has enjoyed holding on tight to my neck while I spin at unearthly speeds.  He giggles and gasps the whole time, immediately wanting more.  He doesn’t get dizzy like the rest of us so he inevitably goes through all the adults in the room before he’s satisfied.

#132  When the TP is replaced the “right” way

• Over or under (although, I think the majority of people are with me.  Over!  I don’t like fishing for the paper on the underside…), it’s always nice when the last person put it on just the way you like it.  The night crew at work does not share my paper philosophy.  I flipped them around the other day only to find them returned to their original, under-fishing way the next day.  I have other suspects as well—Dr?!?!  Mmmm.  Investigation commenced!

#133  It’s a small world after all…

• Wow.  I started this post a really long time ago.  I was going to talk about how the new associate in the big practice I work in had all these connections to me!  We met our spouses at the same college, he’s from the same place I am and we married people from the same town in WA, we graduated from the same university with our bachelors (different from the initial spousal meeting place) and even lived a few miles apart for a year or two!  We were in the same church ward as her parents when we were first married and it turns out his wife went to high school with my sister in law.  That dude was cool.  We definitely liked him, but he moved and his last day in the practice was last week.  So.  Our most recent associate, who has now come and gone, had all kinds of crazy similarities with us.  Sad day.  Oh well, I hope they like Denver!

*Have I mentioned my arch nemeses—affect and effect?  In some cases I still can’t figure it out.  So if you can explain it any differently than everyone else, please share.

Learnt Stufe. TOFW: Part II

I realized there is something dental hygiene school taught me that is more valuable than a salary, a job I enjoy, or the expertise and knowledge I carry around.  It gave me power.  I learned through that crazy hard time that in no uncertain terms:

I can do anything.

This also came with the realization that:

I can’t do everything, but I can do anything.  

I may need a lot of time, tools, friends, support, a helping hand, the guidance of an expert, or an added degree of patience.  I don’t have to do it alone, I don’t have to do it the first time (in fact, I probably wont) and I don’t have to be a “natural” at it.  I may have to approach it 6 different ways or, depending on the difficultly, I may have to sacrifice a lot of other things in my life in order to make time for the learning process.  I stopped telling myself “I’m not the artsy type” or the “smart type” or any other type I believed I wasn’t.

There is something rather empowering about this knowledge.  I take it for granted and am surprised to realize that not everyone knows this about themselves.  It really is true for everyone.

I think I mostly become discouraged when I am trying to do everything.  I start to confine myself again, and tell myself what I can or can’t do.  Or think I should be able to do it on my own.  When really, what I need to ask is:  Is it worth the sacrifice?  Is it worth all the things you’d have to give up to be good at that thing?  What are my priorities and how important is it?  Can I increase my ability a bit without needing to be an expert?  Is it something Ryan and I can work on together?

In a very weird way,  I miss hygiene school.  In those really hard times I find I was most humble, malleable, willing to learn and accept my shortcomings.  I was more kind to others because I knew I needed a lot of kindness too.  In some ways, I was broken.   I knew I couldn’t do it alone.   I would never willingly go through that again, and yet, I wouldn’t trade the way it changed my life either.

It also taught me to embrace  the hard stuff.  It’s supposed to be hard and it’s okay.  It can be a good thing.  Some things aren’t worth doing unless they break you a bit and make you see the world differently.  So, for that, I am grateful for the hard times (at least when they are over).  I still don’t walk into them willingly, though.  =)

Time Out For Women

A few weeks ago, the local ladies in my family took a little “Time Out” in Denver over the weekend.

We listened to talks friday night, spent the night, and went back for more on Saturday!  It was so much fun.  We were exhausted by the end, but I heard some things I really needed.  Between President UchtdorK’s talk  (Do you do that too?  I totally slip and call him that.  That’s what you get for having a hard-to-pronounce-name dude!  I have a feeling he wouldn’t mind.), the rest of conference and last weekend, I’ve had a lot of food for thought.

Also, it was quite the adventure.  There was a fire in the kitchen area of the conference center in the night so lunch for 1,800 women would only be available for 150!  I’ve never seen Subway so crammed full of women.  Then, after lunch in the middle of someone’s talk, all the lights in the entire block went out.  The next two speakers kept going with the help of a few flashlights and a small, battery powered speaker system, hoping the lights would eventually come back on (getting all of us out of there in the dark would have been a pain).  We could only hear if we were completely quiet.  The lights were out for about an hour.  The musical numbers were also played on the piano while someone held up a flashlight!  Just as they were going to end the program early and shuffle us out row by row, the lights came back on and we were able to hear the last speaker.  It was awesome.

Quarantined

Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve been up since 4:30 or that have been locked in battle with a particular strain of streptococcus bacteria camping out in my throat.  Or that General Conference was two weeks ago and Time Out For Women rocked my socks.  Or that my forced relaxation is giving me some one-on-one time with my favorite playlist.  But today, I am feeling particularly emotional.

Plus, I’ve been keeping secrets.  Nothings stoppers up my writing power like secrets.  Or rather, things that are always on my mind but are too personal for the oh-so-public interwebs.  We are doing great, don’t get me wrong, but it’s been a seriously weird summer.  I guess it’s safe to say that I over-react about just about everything.  At one point I was SURE I wanted about a million different things.  The way I was acting, you’d think I was terminal or something.  Or just at a changing point in my life.

Oh.  My.  Gosh.  Quarter life crisis.  I teased my friend Jackie for feeling old and having a hard time when we turned 25 because we aren’t “that old”.   I did too, just not right when I turned 25!!  Wow.  I should probably apologize.  Sorry Jackie.

This will now commence the “awesome” items again too.  Nothing makes me smile like noticing the little things.

(Pst.  I know this wasn’t much of a real post.  But, I had to start somewhere, yes?)

Twenty-Six

I’ve had a lot of mixed feelings (this year especially) about my birthday.  To be honest, I’ve been dreading it and I didn’t understand why.

I met this amazing man a few weeks back.  He restores WWII airplanes and helps with a  new WWII museum  that my father is also involved with.  He headlines some pre-opening tours once a month because he is so passionate about sharing his experiences and teaching there is always more to say than the history books do.  Our stories are important.  He was 5 years old when Pearl Harbor happened in his home state of Hawaii.  When I asked him about it, he said it has weighed on him his whole life and is seared into his memory, still effecting the person he is and the choices he makes.  His first experience with death was seeing a bloodied, lifeless Japanese pilot.  When the twin towers were attacked in 2001, he said the same feelings came rushing back.  It connected us, and I can understand a bit of what he went through because, in a sense, we went through it together.  We are all brothers and sisters because of that, he said.

For years after 9/11/01, every time I’d have to give my birthday for verification purposes at my bank or the gym or wherever, people would remark on it.  ”Ohhh wow. That’s too bad.”  I would wince knowing it was coming.  I never realized how often you give your birthday until then.  After a few years, it died down.  I was glad.  I didn’t want it to be something interesting about me.  I like being interesting.  I like those little surprises that are different and unexpected when you get to know someone.  But I didn’t want to include that.

I guess it bothered me because people felt it worthy of their attention.  That maybe I needed the assurance, that I was like the immature friend pitching a fit that her best friend will miss her birthday party because there was a death in the family.

10 years ago today, I was sitting in my Psychology class with roses laying across my desk, decked out in a new set of clothes and 16 year old smile, excited about my upcoming first date and realizing I was one step closer to driving!  A classmate hurried in late bringing news of a plane and the World Trade Center.  My teacher rolled in the television and we tuned in, curious and underestimating the import of it all.  Until it came on.  After sitting in silence and horror, then watching the second plane hit, my friend James glanced over to me and with a sad look said “OH man.  That sucks Maria.  It’s your birthday” understanding full well what that would mean in the future.  I didn’t care.  At all.  I couldn’t think of anything but burning and smoke and death and how quiet it was and how words like “nuclear” and “NORAD” and “target” were dropped in worried, hushed tones all over town.

Here’s why it really got under my skin that people felt sorry for me that something as massive and time altering as 9/11 ruined a silly little thing like a birthday.

I am human.  I think part of me has wanted to skip over my birthday ever since then because I am afraid of what I will feel.  Sometimes for a brief moment I do feel sad about my silly little birthday.  Maybe it bothered me so much because sometimes they were right.  Sometimes I felt guilty for wanting to celebrate and have fun, almost like laughing with a friend when the rest of the room is joining in a moment of silence.  As if it can’t be a day for both.  And even completely apart from my birthday, sometimes I resist it because of what we all experienced 10 years ago.  I am not always brave enough to feel all of those things again even when I know that remembering is exactly what we need to do.

I was only 16.  You are never “mature” enough to deal with something like that, but remembering brings me back to that place.  That year, I saved newspaper clippings and added a page in my scrapbook about it.  It seems jarring and out of place when you find it pressed between pages of smiling friends and musicals, but I needed it there.  In many ways, that’s exactly what it was.  Jarring and horrible, and yet, happy days came again.  That was my first real lesson that rememberance and respect include living tomorrow better and brighter than ever before.

I know this is all incredibly personal.  It’s something I’ve never really addressed before.  Even so, that is what today is for.   I doubt I will ever come to terms with it.  As my friend said, it will likely always weigh on us all and has shaped our path.  That is our experience.  It’s our joys and sorrows, and even our pitfalls.  I can get so caught up in trying to be so strong and feeling the “right” way about everything.  I have to acknowledge we are human together and be okay with being in-between who I was and who I want to be.

So, here’s me acknowledging all of that.  How I felt that day.   How it has altered me completely.  And how I want so much to honor the lives lost and the war fought because of it.