Packing

Sometimes it seems my life is this endless chain of packing. I never get to be in one place long and it is starting to wear on me. (hang on I have to rotate laundry in order to have clean stuff to pack) okay rotated. There are moments I simply can't wait to be home, most of them in fact. I prayed for this trip, thank God for answered prayers. I am however going to miss my Kel more than I can express. 13 days apart seems like a lifetime and a half. I was realizing as we were talking in the tub last night that he has become my best friend, the kind of best friend I can take birthday suit baths with. I still hold my girl bffs dearly but all this transition has certainly moved Kel into my best friend spot. Ada is so lonely without him, I still have yet to make a friend or even hang out one on one with anyone at all really, or even in a group. So without Kel this town is pretty gray. Although I am going to try to do more with my time here than I did during his last absence. I certainly need to tackle the garage. Maybe even the nursery, clean it up so we can start preparing it slowly for bebe's arrival. Ugh I need to be packing, Kel is doing the dishes and he will surely come out and expect me to be packed and yet I will blogging.

I should stop blogging when I am crabby. Its just that lately I feel as though I will never live up to my own expectations. They are so high. And when I don't jump through my incredibly high hoops I can't accept myself. This is terrifying. Just walking around your house feeling completely inadequate in every way. I blame myself for everyones problems, obviously mine but certainly Kels too.

I should just stop, Lord please in some new years miracle help me to find the ever elusive Grace for myself that you seem to have in spades. I hope. Help me to find some smile for Kel for tomorrow for the next week and two weeks and life. Help the child inside me to somehow feel love and peace despite the turmoil I feel in every organ and cell. Forgive me, love me, lead me through the fog that always seems to settle down on me.

Lifting up my heart

Clearly I am bad at being alone. Kel is gone until Thursday in Houston being refreshed I hope. And I am here, in Ada. Work keeps me busy but I long for community and a sense of belonging. These things take time but my heart keeps wandering back to Holidays past, and they all seem warmer and more exciting. I think I am just emotionally and spiritually worn out. I love our tree, I love my husband, we are hostessing Christmas this year, something I have always dreamed of! My heart is just not in it. I am reading through the Christmas story in my bible and I look over my pond in the mornings. I am trying to feel, more. I am sure It's all jus a result of being overwhelmed and that the numbness will go away. Tonight is just a Monday night, on the couch, with a microwave pizza. Not one exciting thing about it.

God, please awaken my heart, help it to overflow this season with gratitude. Give me eyes to see the moments that are small beautiful gifts of time and laughter with loved ones. My heart hurts with how much I miss my loved ones. Please fill it with love, new love, new traditions, a solidarity of this new family, and us-ness instead of what we are missing.

I lift it all up to you, and more that I can't communicate.

And now its dead.

So for the last week or so I have noticed our Christmas tree wilting and I have noticed that I couldn't smell it's evergreeny freshness. I have been checking the water line in the stand of course. Well yesterday I went to touch a branch and it snapped off in my hand. The whole thing had gone dry and crunchy! Two weeks until Christmas and our tree was completely dead! Geez... What a hassle! Kel researched it online and decided that perhaps if we cut some of the base it will start to suck up water, so we unscrewed it and tried to lift it from the stand, it was not al the way unscrewed so it got dusty sappy water all over teh velvet tree skirt and brand new carpet... yay! We finally got it unscrewed and I steadied it on a plastic bow while balancing myself up on the tv stand. He tried takin his leatherman (which has a small saw blade) to it for like ten minutes. He decided that is going to take forever so he unboxed his new curcular saw and put it together. I really didn't feel comfortable having him using the saw like that. And that wasn't working anyway so after 5 more minutes of using the leatherman saw on it he tried a hammer and chisel ( I have a ver inventive husband!) This caused a shower of dead needled and ornaments to cascade from the tree, creating a nice cover of needles all over our new living room floor. Finally we gave up, undecorated it, and threw it out on the back patio. Then we cleaned up the SIGNIFICANT aftermath and I finally sat down on the couch at 11:00 PM. I called Home Depot this morning and they are going to give us a brand new tree to replace it and we get to decorate for Christmas all over again! Yay!!! (not)

Just plain update

Well here I am on the couch Sunday night. With the smell of Christmas all around and the glow of the Christmas tree. We're watching Extreme Makeover Home Edition I am crying already.

Life has been beautiful lately, painful at moments, and then some epiphanies. Being pregnant is great, but also a struggle at moments. I am trying to redo how I define myself as successful. I can't weight my worth by being thin and sexy in that way. I have to re-figure worth to me in that way. I'm getting bigger and having a baby. My body is now beautiful in other ways. And I am working on being okay with that, but it's hard for me and I know that's hard for some people to understand.

I get to go home for Christmas, over the new year. I can't wait to step off the plane and see the faces of the people that I love. To just hug and laugh with those that I love.

I'm distracted but here are some updates. Love. Leanne

Finally Home

I really do finally feel home. I'm sitting in our new place, exhausted with a mug of homemade apple sauce just enjoying my new house. There are going to be so many memories in this place... It's small and beautiful in every way. We already cooked for friends and had people over to watch football and we haven't even slept here yet. When we do it we do it up big. Plus OU is in the midst of putting the screws to Texas Tech. Woo for that.

I finally feel like me again, I have a place to call home and it feels like home. It really feels like home. And it will only feel more so like home.

I have nothing else to say, I am totally at peace. I never want to leave. :-)

Tuesday Night Update.

Well here we are, Tuesday night. We are not in our house at all yet, although it's completely finished. Red tape will get you every time. There is a good chance that we will be able to move in this weekend. But we won't close until next week, but I suppose closings get pushed back often. Am I pissed??? I mean... I was supposed to be in last weekend and close last friday... but no dice. Whatever, it will close eventually...I hope. I know... it will...

The Penny's life is moving along otherwise. I am sitting on my couch after some Italian takeout from Papa Gjorgio's here in town. I also had a pudding cup. I'm trying to get my calcium intake up for bebe'. I am watching the biggest loser, which is pretty much my favorite show on air right now. I love top chef but we don't get bravo in Ada, or comedy central. Vicki is crazy, if you watch biggest loser you know what I mean... totally. We eat a lot of takeout these days, we are in transistion and our kitchen is barely functional for us so I don't really have to motivation to cook. Also I never know what my pregnant tastebuds want for dinner until the moment of eating, so takeout is a safer bet. We keep it healthy though.

Kel is in Norman right now, he will be there for the whole evening. So I am all solo tonight, which isn't so bad. The heat is out in our house, so I also went out to buy a space heater because I am frigging freezing. I might start working on some christmas cards. I am totally for sure going to crack on on NBC programming, so sue me, I know my brain would be better of with other things... lol... I'll get to those things.

Much Love to you reader.

Leanne

Big Beautiful Heartwrenching life

Kel and I may be back to sharing music and life again, we've been cheap and well we don't really get radio in ada, per say.

Life is and always will be a huge crazy mess, I think. This uncertainty may very well prove my opening statement to be true but, true or not there isn't much I can do about the tidiness of life. Not at the gut level anyway. I can put the scissors back in their correct place to reduce the "have a hanging sweater string and need to cut it on my way out the door" madness. But the straight up messiness and uncertainty of life. Right now I feel like I see where all the puzzle pieces of my life go. How they fit. Everything I ever wanted on the horizon, the the practically dawn horizon. Brand new house, career for kel, baby on the way, two respectable and functioning cars, no credit card debt, etc. Two days ago, with a perfect ultrasound picture in one hand and a cup of half-caf coffee in the other I sat at my breakfast table solo over a grapefruit and felt deeply and sickyl empty. I felt like the emtiness inside me extended out past the bottom of my feet, under the floorboards and halfway to china. I almost hit my knees, I would have killed to have a best friend to scoop me up, someone to make me laugh, to complete the part of me that feels so far away. Family. My family. They continue on without me in Michigan, i miss them and it physically hurts.

How in the midst of everything I thought I ever wanted do I feel so empty handed? I think I lost myself in all of it, in pulling stuff together, soul was sacrificed. I haven't been selfless, somehow in loosing myself I still managed to selfish. This is all starting to seem like a really tangled up necklace chain. You know when you want to wear a necklace and you realize that in the jewlery box it has somehow tied itself to another necklace in about 24 knots? The sort of knot mess when you are sure you have to send it to a knot specialist to ever be able to wear it again. In your despair you try a knot, and you cuss as the clasp gets caught up in 4 loops, but somehow it all comes apart in a neat pendant controlled straightness. And you put it on and run out the door feeling well accesorized.

I am just taking this tangled mess of metal out of the jewlery box and realizing I have to undo a whole bunch of knots. But in all honesty I shall be wearing my shiny diamondy soul soon. But today, with hope on the horizon I feel like I have a mess again.

Sorry about all the bad metaphors. Will you still be my friend? What if I left these cool lyric ex excerpts?

"So maybe you could walk with me a while
And maybe I could rest beneath your smile
Everybody stumbles sometimes and needs a hand to hold
'Cause it's a long trip alone"

"What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilage to carry
Ev'rything to God in prayer!
Oh, what peace we often forfeit,
Oh what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry
Ev'rything to God in prayer!"

Ive looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
Its loves illusions I recall
I really dont know love at all