My Best Birthday Intentions

As I sit here in a coffee shop by myself, (I KNOW!  What’s next?  Human sacrifice? Dogs and cats living together…mass hysteria!), on my 39^th birthday, I want to not just think about what I wish for, but what my intentions are for the last year of my thirties.   After all, intentions are the building blocks to the reality you create. 

I have had a great decade.  My thirties have been a time of growth and prosperity.  I went to college and graduated with a degree in art, I got married to the man of my dreams, I had two awesome kids, we bought two wonderful houses, I traveled.  Sure I had some major losses, the death of my mom is the biggest, but I have had many, many more incredible gains.  I want to round out my thirties with a running momentum-filled leap of prosperity into my forties. 

Right now I’m in a coffee shop called the Wayward Cafe in Seattle.  I love this place, not only because it is the only place I know with a Firefly theme (I KNOW RIGHT?!), but it also has some lovely art on the walls right now.  And that inspires me to make the intention to do more art this year.  I love doing art, but I have barely eeked out so much as a teensy little drawing since graduating from UW with a degree in Interdisciplinary Visual Art.  I think it’s partly because, even though IVA should have been a super fun and creative major, the building block classes that I was required to take were quite mundane and dry.  I think I could only take so much in the still life/figural drawings with charcoal-type practice art, and had to take a long break.  I also think that it’s not that easy to have messy non-kid-friendly art supplies lying around, so I don’t usually bother.  But PISH I say!  I am going to find a way to make art happen this year, and it doesn’t have to be painting if that’s too hard right now, it can be sewing, it can be paper art, it can be more refurbishing of cool furniture.  I just want to be creative.

I want to write more.  It has been so wonderful starting this blog!  I love to write, and I have a lot to say.  I have also been “writing” a book for a while now.  It’s a young adult book that I started writing right before my mom died.  I stopped writing it for the most part because I had the excuse of babies and grief, but I don’t want excuses anymore!  It’s started and I want to continue it (if now finish it).  I think that writing this blog is a great outlet to get me writing more, and I look forward to continuing this as well. 

I want to continue my healing.  I think I’ve done a good job healing from grief after my mom passed, and this happened, which was a major shift for me, but I feel like there is so much to do.  I want to continue to heal any lingering crap that I deal with on a daily basis.  Sometimes it feels like a tornado of crap, sometimes it feels like a light dusting of crap.  But, I think I’m done having crap in my life.  No more!

I want to be a more patient person.  And I am thinking about my kids when I write this.  I am tested a gazillion times a day.  Bajillion, really.  And sometimes I pass with flying colors and do a little happy dance, but a lot of times I look and feel like a tired zombie-meanie-mom who just wants to snap at them for climbing on the counter for the hundredth time or for having a temper tantrum for no actual visible reason.  I think I need the patience of Mother Theresa and have not illusions that that’s how I’ll actually be, but a little more patience for now with suffice. 

I want to continue to have a great relationship with Brennan.  I think that in the last 3 ½ years (hey, isn’t that the same amount of time we’ve had children?  Huh, go figure), we’ve struggled to maintain smoothness in our relating with one another.  It’s been more of a “let’s survive this day of pandemonium so we can get to the next day of pandemonium” thing with us.  I do not want to have the energy of survival in my family and my marriage, I want the uplifting energy of THRIVING.  I want to take a breath, bring some peace to our house, and more connection with us. 

Finally, I want to just learn to BE.  I actually really struggle with that.  I tend to let my internal voice get me down, or let the external (ie: internet, facebook, the latest episode of Who Cares tv), influence me and divert my attention.  I want to stay in the moment, be present, and just be who I am.  That would be lovely. 

SO.  Here’s the list of my birthday intentions (in no particular order):

1   .     Art

2   .     Writing

3   .     Healing

4   .     Patience

5   .     Relationship

6   .     Being

I’m going to do it people!  Happy birthday to me!

My amazing sweetie

Today I read an article that showed pictures of men overcome with emotion as they watched their bride walk down the aisle and it made me smile to myself.  Here is what my wonderful husband Brennan looked like when he saw me.  I love it when he comes from the heart and shows his tears.

My husband is such a wonderful person!

The moment I became happy

     It really was just a single moment, like magic!  I know that I've actually put in a bunch of work towards this and it really wasn't some miraculous bolt of lightening or anything, but when it happened it was amazing.

     It was my dad's 66th birthday and he got us all free tickets to go see an Eagles tribute band at the Ste. Michelle Winery in Woodinville.  I love my dad, and I was eager to spend time with the family celebrating his birthday.  It was a hot day in August and Brennan and I were meeting Dad and Sherri at the already packed venue.  I didn't have much time to change and so I ended up wearing the clothes I had on all day: elastic waisted sports shorts and a t-shirt I got from running a 5k.  Plus my hiking sandals and a baseball cap.  Not what you would call a styling outfit but so comfortable that I just didn't care.

     In fact I think that whole night was all about not caring.  It was a beautiful sunny early evening at a gorgeous winery.  I had wine.  I had my awesome family.  There was an hilarious drunken haze in the air and all of the middle aged (read: the entire crowd) concert goers were three sheets to the wind and getting awfully chummy.  Dad had already made friends with our entire section by the time we got there.  Everyone was happy and mellow.

     And then the band started.  Now, I did not have high hopes for this band.  When I think of tribute or cover bands, I think of a second rate, cheese-fest that pales in comparison to the real thing.  But these guys were AWESOME!  They were note-for-note identical to the Eagles and who doesn't LOVE the Eagles?!  From the very first song I just wanted to dance.  Dad and I were some of the first people on the dance floor and from that moment I just let go.

     I hadn't danced in...well...years I think.  Something in me--the wine, the sunshine, the cabal-frenzied middle agers, the comfortable I-don't-freakin'-care-what-people-think-of-me clothes, the night off from kids air of freedom--made me just dance like a wild and carefree dork.  It felt a-maaaazzzinggg.

     It was a few songs into the Hotel California album that it happened.  I was singing at the top of my lungs, dancing like it didn't matter, and feeling so good, and I felt a physical sensation on my chest.  Like a bolt being removed from my sternum.  Remember in Star Wars episode IV when R2D2 cons Luke into removing his restraining bolt and then hightails it to find Obi Wan Kenobi?  (If you don't, shame on you).  Well, that's what it felt like.  My restraining bolt had been removed.  I felt free to be happy for the first time in my entire life.

     I fully expected this new feeling of freedom to wane since every other time I've had a similar epiphany it has only lasted a few weeks at most.  But I'm still going strong.  Not every moment of every day, but for the most part this wonderful lightness has prevailed and I think it's here to stay.  Now I'm in maintenance mode and blogging and facebooking have kept it going.

     And as an added piece of joyous kismet, Star Wars just came on the TV while I'm writing this at the EXACT SCENE WHERE R2'S BOLT IS REMOVED!!!!!  R2D2 is cheering me on.  :)

How I created something perfect

     Okay, after yesterday's epic and emotional post this is going to seem utterly mundane.  But they can't all be tear jerkers and without the simple bits of life, the dramatic parts would become tedious.  

     Today Brennan, the kids and I went to the Snohomish car show with my brother in-law and sister in-law.  I am not at all interested in cars but it felt good supporting my husband's interest and the kids loved it.  It was a gorgeous, sunny fall morning and Snohomish is an insanely cute town on a river so walking around with blue sky and red leaves and antique shops all around felt really good.  

     But the very best part of the morning was the walk back to our car.  The kids were done, you could just feel it, but we just happened to pass a furniture store that the perfect modern style dresser in the window.  We have been looking for a new dresser for months, and we had a very specific style in mind to go with our newly remodeled master bedroom.  I mean, we have checked every website out there, gone to every store and had no luck.  

     Uncharacteristically, we had decided to put whatever spare cash we got into an envelope and save up until we found the perfect dresser.  This is something new for us; spending willy nilly is more our style so this was a pretty big step.  We also happened to have saved just the right amount in that envelope.  We had two checks coming in for royalties on our book, and Brennan had another royalty check for his other book, plus a few odds and ends saved up.  It was perfect timing and a perfect piece of furniture.  We braved our kids' impending melt downs and, on a total whim, bought our new dresser.  

     This is such a great reminder for me that what we create can be perfect.  When we set things in motion with positive intention and patience, then things that were once difficult can be as easy as peasy.    Nothing in life needs to be hard.  We can always have what we want and need.