Shiny Days

The sun in shining in Seattle...and that makes for a beautiful day. You'll never be able to take the Idaho from my heart and soul - I'll love my home state until I die....but nothing in Boise compares to my new home on a beautiful sunny day. The green, the warmth, the water, the mountains...it just fills me up with such a sense of well being.

It's weird...sunny days here almost make me giddy. I want to strip off everything but the bare essentials and go running through the grass, dip my toes in the water, laze and lounge in the sun like a cat whose found the best spot for warm sunny rays. I sometimes wonder if I wasn't a cat in a former life....I so love to laze away my days in sleepy, sunny splendor.

I'm very much looking forward to this weekend - I'm spending a bit of time with some friends and I'm hoping to get a wee bit of gardening in the mix. But truly, the part that just fills me with glee is that it's going to be sunny. Beautiful, beautiful sunshine.

I have a particular uncle who is weaved so thoroughly though the memories of my childhood, he's inseparably, really. He is my mother's youngest brother and was always the uncle most involved in our day to day lives. This is not to say our other uncles were any less loved, they just had familes of their own. But this uncle was late to having children of his own and thus adopted us as his own. I've been thinking so much about him. He is so like the men in my family, fairly unemotional, fairly strong in his convictions of what is right and what is wrong, opinionated, strong willed....all descriptions that could be used to describe me. He had called me about three weeks after I miscarried and left such a sweet and funny message. I played that message over and over again. It was so good to hear him say he loved me. I hadn't heard him say that for several years. Not that he didn't feel it, he just didn't say it. I can't put my finger on it exactly...but it seemed that as I aged, we softly grew apart - were not as close as we once had been. That is natural, I am sure...this soft distancing. I grew up, took on a life of my own. He married a wonderful woman and had two beautiful children, whom I adore, and we got busy. Add into it we live states away and it's natural, no doubt. But a big part of my heart misses him very much. The little girl part that desperately wants the approval of the men in her life. I feel that way about all of my family. I wish somehow we could take ourselves back to the small town we came from - eat in the same restaurants, talk over the fence post, go to church together on Sunday, all one big happy family. That's idealized, I know....but it doesn't mean I don't want it.

So here I am, so many months later and I haven't called. At the time, I was still not in a place where I could talk to people. Writing about it on the internet is one thing; posting on a board, emailing, chatting via IM...all of that I could do very easily. But talk to someone face to face or voice to voice? That I just couldn't do. My parents can attest, I still cry very easily. And the first time I talk to someone I haven't talked to since Christmas, I'm a basket case, even still. So time has passed and each weekend I think - this weekend I need to call my uncle. But I chicken out and don't do it.

How do you breach that? What do you say when you call? Hello? I was an emotional basketcase, I'm sorry I didn't call? Hi, I love you, I really do - and because I love you so much, I can talk to complete strangers, I can go grocery shopping, I can do this and do that, but I can't talk to you? No matter how I practice the conversation in my brain, it just leaves me feeling like I'm a complete and total idiot, and a bad niece to boot.

I want to call....I need to call....it weighs on me, the distance and the guilt.

Maybe this weekend when I'm planting some flowers I'll pick up the phone. But I think about when I should...what time would be the best....how to fit it in with this responsibility and that...and I chicken out - again.

Ahhhh....procrastination and lack of gracefulness at it's worst. These are the times when I am embarrassed by my own emotions.

"Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, drink the wild air..."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

It's Spring!

Or at least it's trying to be! I'm so looking forward to the projected sunny skies and warm weather we're supposed to be in for over the next few days. This has been the longest winter ever...


This last weekend it was at least gray and not raining, so my husband and I got started on some much needed yard work. Two weeks ago, he'd run his Dad's (the Ron variety of Dad) yard edger around our entire yard, but I'd never gotten around to doing the post winter weeding and pulling up those edges. Bad wifey! So, while I started on that, he worked on cleaning out the garage. Exciting times at our house ;) I joke, but honestly, when our house is clean, organized, and pretty, I feel really content and calm. Does that mean I'm getting old?


I am pretty darned proud of my husband, he's been going through the garage and selling off all of his scuba equipment. He finally agreed that if he hasn't used the equipment in ten years, he's probably not going to. He's made a mint from listing them on E-bay! He's my little E-bay super stud!


We've also nearly finished our first home improvement project - all without fighting! I know, I know, I mentioned it before...but we have one last finishing piece and I'll post some pictures for all to see. I just love the space though - it's now warm and inviting where before I hated going into that room. It always seemed a mess and messes stress me out. I'm such a product of my sign...I love comfort and beautiful things. Who doesn't really, but we Tauruses seem to like it more than most.


This weekend marks the first of many upcoming graduation events for my step-daughter. She's having her senior portraits done. I'm really excited for her - we're doing them at the japanese gardens where my husband and I got our engagement shots taken. We also have a really fantastic photographer, I'm really excited to see what she comes up with! My step-kiddo also played in her regional golf tournament as a final qualifier for the state competition. She made it as a alternate, so she gets to go, but we're not sure if she gets to golf. I'm excited for her...and hoping she gets to play.


I'm a little ambivelant about the coming birthday I'm about to have. I just don't feel like I should be this age. I know that people say age is a number...and in some measure that's true. But it's still there...staring me in the face and I'm not so sure I like the look it's giving me. I almost wonder if Father Time is giving me the stink eye...


But these feeling will fade, I'm sure, as the day to day reality of life moves on....and as warmer weather continues to grace us with her presence.



The seasons are shifting,
The winter shades lifting,
The springtime is filling
Earth's children with mirth.
The daffodil yellow,
The south wind so mellow,
The gentle rain falling,
Upon the green earth.
The song sparrow singing,
New life quickly springing,
All nature is telling
A tale of rebirth:
The deep wells of being,
Beyond each day's seeing,
O'er flowing with new Life,
Restoring the earth.
-David E. Bumbaugh, "Spring", 1998