faubus lake

while i'm not really in love with abilene {and neither is taylor} it's taken a little while to start finding things that  really grab me about this place.  the first thing i really started to love was faubus fountain lake on acu campus.  it's not a lake at all - just a little pond.  kind of a glorified version of byu's duck pond.  at first (when it was cold), i'd just run around the track and see the lake for a good ten minutes of my run.  once it started getting warmer, i'd walk down the stone steps to sit by the water and read while i waited for taylor to stop therapatizing people so he could come play with me.  now, it's become our picnic spot.  we pack up our sandwiches and our mutual book sometimes and head over to watch the birds and fish while we eat and take turns reading to each other.  it's hot lately, but the sun is darn good for my legs!

this is our friend, the great blue heron.  he's a lonely bird that doesn't let any of the others (or us...) get close. i'm glad he's sticking around for the summer - he's about the only majestic part of abilene there is. {okay, okay, except for the lightning and thunder.  which is amazing, by the way.}

aaaand these are my toes loving the sun.  you can't see them in the pictures, but there are MASSIVE coyfish  in the pond.  bright florescent orange, red and glowing white.  and then there's one that's probably 3.5 feet long - really.  there's also a little angel fish that hangs out by the rocks.  she's pretty cute.

and here (at long last) is the grackle.  these birds are everywhere in abilene.  this is guy came over for a sip of water and was angry because the water level was too high for him to climb down.  they make an awesome sound with their heads tipped all the way back.  pretty cool birds.  sadly, everyone here hates them... well, except us i guess.  :-)

it was taylor's turn to read, so i sneaked a picture while he was at an exciting part.  we've just finished the fablehaven series and neither of us is finished grieving yet.  one of the best fantasies ever written, in my opinion.  just plain amazing.

even if most of the city is pretty sad, i'm glad there are a few little spots that satisfy my need for nature.  here's to hoping i find more!

linking

via.

this is a powerful blog about love, and the best beauty secret in the world.

something i've been thinking about lately again, from a woman who's changed the way i see the world.

finally finished with this beautiful, inspiring book.  i loved every sentence of every page.

i love love love it when someone people listen to stand up for a proper perspective.

and last but not least, here's something i've started working on again.  anyone wanna join me?

now vs. then

every now and again i'm compelled to go back through my stacks and read my writing from past years.  today, sitting on a bed in an apartment that's mostly vacant (and soon an apartment for which i won't have to pay rent) i found myself doing just that - leafing back through my old blog.  today, i was reading through a specific time period.

one year ago (plus a month) i was getting ready to leave for seattle.  my husband (then boyfriend) was leaving for japan for the summer and at the time i wasn't sure if our relationship would continue past that point.  and i didn't know how i felt about that uncertainty, either.  i remember the feeling - mostly because i wrote about it well.  it seemed as though life was based on leaving and i longed for some sort of permanence.

i wrote about getting back on track with my health habits, not wanting to part with dearly-loved roommates, leaving my scale behind, and my thoughts on my eating disorder recovery.

in a discussion with my husband earlier today i said something along the lines of it just feels like i was still really naive right before i went to seattle.  it changed something in me and i've grown so much.


and then on the bed reading my blog post from a year ago about moderation, self-forgiveness, confidence and self-love, i was taking notes (and taking to heart) what this girl was saying.  sometimes we were better at some things than we are now, and it's funny when we don't remember.

that doesn't make much sense.  what i'm trying to say (i think) is i realized that a year ago i had a pretty good (and healthy, really genuinely healthy) grip on parts of life that i struggle with from day to day the last while.  and it surprised me when i started telling myself i should take the advice of the younger-me.

basically, where we are now is a product of where we've been (right?).  but that doesn't mean that we're better in all areas.  and it doesn't mean that we're worse in all areas, either.  it just means different.  and sometimes we have to relearn lessons over and over and over and over before they really stick, really get deep down in our heads and our hearts.

so i looked back.  and realized that i'm relearning a lot of lessons that i really used to have a good, fairly firm grip on.

deep breath.

i'm not who i was.  i'm who i am.


and it's okay to not be as on top of things as i was a year ago.  and not just because of the space between.  sure, the space of 13 months counts for something, but when there's no space between (take last week) and one minute i'm fine and dandy and looking at how far i've come and the next i'm wallowing in distress because i'll never be good enough, it's okay.  it's okay that there isn't space between.

that was quite a ramble.

the whole take-home here is just that i'm okay the way i am at this very instant.  disregarding where i was yesterday or a year ago, i'm okay right now - wherever and however i am.

and so are you, yaknow?

the city that cries at least once a day

i think about seattle quite a bit, lately.  about how i've come to really love the concept of seattle in my mind despite how difficult it was to be there a year ago.  i hated seattle while i was there.  at least, i thought it was seattle i hated.  after the passage of time has dulled the experience slightly, i've been able to separate the experience (which was something close to hell) from the city, which i distinctly remember falling in love with (at some moments).  i miss it, i'll be honest.

what really keeps my attention though, when i think of the whole three-and-a-half months that was my adventure on the west coast is how impossible it was to write.  sure, i tried.  for the first few weeks, i woke up early and wrote while i was eating breakfast.  and then i started work, and then i started feeling less and smaller and not enough.  and then i stopped eating breakfast and stopped running and didn't wash my hair for days and days and days at a time.  after which i stopped writing altogether.

several times i've heard eating disorders described in a nutshell as simply not-wanting-to-feel.  yeah, there are a multitude of other things that go along with it, but if i had to boil it down to one thing, at this point in my life i would say the same thing.  the desperate suppressing of emotion, to the point that everything becomes distorted and simple tasks like getting out of bed and dressing yourself are. so. impossibly. difficult.

during the past five years, my struggle with food has dragged me underwater several times.  sometimes it's been a fight to keep my head above, and every so often i've had a short period where i simply floated.  in seattle i was drowning with my hands tied.

and that's why i stopped writing.  once in the cycle of negative emotion, numbing and food abuse, it makes complete sense to do all you can to stop feeling the negative emotions in hopes that you'll be able to feel happy and function normally again.  so i stopped writing because in order to write i had to open myself up.  i had to be vulnerable and ask myself what i was thinking about and what i was feeling.  and i couldn't do that without risking the start of the cycle all over again.


so i stopped.

it's still a wonder to me that from a place so void of self-compassion i exited my stay in seattle with something akin to determination.  toward the end, there was healing.  or the seeds of it.

but it's taken me longer to be able to write again.  at first, the idea of writing at all was daunting.  i didn't want to be that vulnerable ever, ever again.  old habits die hard, i guess.  i've always loved to write and after forming a three-year habit of writing several times a week, a summer-long hiatus didn't break it.  i started writing about every day things, common things, at first.  in places no one would ever see.

but i'm getting braver.

and if there's anything i've learned from my experience in seattle and the relationships that spanned over and through the dark time, it's that you can't bury those emotions forever.  they'll always find a way out.

so i'm going to start writing more about my adventure on the west coast.  because it's been on my mind.  and because i'm working on feeling again.  and because a lot of things happened in seattle that most people don't talk about. and because we'd all be a lot better off it we did talk about those things.

so here goes.

the elderly of abilene

tonight was grocery shopping night.  actually, that should have been last night, but other things came up and grocery shopping was put off until tomorrow - which is fairly typical.  the list was long, my husband and i were both tired, it was late and we were hungry.

once we got to the check-out stand and started putting groceries on the conveyor belt, i remembered we needed bananas.  so i took off to grab some.  while i was gone, taylor finished putting our groceries on the belt and began swiping his card and punching in the numbers.  as i walked back up to the stand, the older woman behind us finished placing her groceries behind ours.  it wasn't much: a couple bags of chips, a few bottled drinks.  she had a plastic separator between our items.  but as i walked up behind her to place the bananas in our section, she reached out quickly {sooo discretely} and took the can of olives from our section and placed them in her own.  just one can of olives.  with her groceries there was no way she could have thought it was hers - she had deliberately taken the can of olives from us to pay for them and take them home herself.

confused, as i set down the bananas i looked at the can of olives and then up into her face.  she looked away quickly.  i had seen her take them - she had seen me watch her take them.  i was only standing a foot away from her {and right in front of her} when she had.

my first impulse was to reach in front of her, take the can of olives and give it to the cashier to place safely in a bag and into our cart.  but i froze.  i couldn't do that - what if she started a scene, accused me of stealing her food?  i wanted to say something.  ma'am, those are my olives.  that's all it would have taken, probably.  but who knows?  i froze.  my husband paid, and spun our cart away and out into the parking lot.

she took my can of olives and with it my hope for american society {for the day}.  have we really fallen so far and become so used to instant gratification that we would steal from a stranger on that kind of an impulse?

she didn't break any laws - she paid for the darn can of olives.  all she did was greatly inconvenience the people in front of her to satisfy her instantaneous craving for olives.  she could have waited until her next shopping trip.  she could have asked the cashier to wait while she quickly grabbed another can from the isle we were standing right next to.  heck, she could have told me she was tired and asked if i would grab her a can of olives while she paid.  i would have.  happily.

but steal my can of olives?  really?

while working at red mango {which thankfully is completely over-with} i heard many an ancient person come for a cup of coffee and complain about my generation's sense of entitlement.  after today, i have no sympathy for them at all.  they may have lived in a better world once upon a time.  but today, 70 year old women feel entitled to steal from the grocery carts of twenty-something-year-olds.  if that's not an entitlement complex, i don't know what is.

thanks to you, old woman, my pasta salad will be entirely without olives this week.

fat talk

i was re-reading a few of my favorite posts from the brunette bombshell on body image, eating disorder recovery and food, when i came across this video.  sure, it's a few years old.  but it gave me goosebumps.  it has me thinking of how many times i let the way i look {or my perception of my appearance} dictate my actions.  this week i'll be more aware of what i say and think.  i don't want to be one of the many perpetuating a culture in which losing weight is the ultimate goal.

bb&b and some captain america

every once in a while, my husband will call from the front room something like "you have to come look at this!"  this captain america comic is one of my favorites of his finds yet.  someday i'm going to either buy or make a really massive reproduction and hang it on the wall in my living room.  really.  i love it that much.

also, i probably love it that much because we watched captain america this last weekend.  fantastic movie, really.  it's fun, smart, and the characters are just flat out good.  and that's my favorite thing about it: characters that make you think yeah, i wanna be more like that.

as part of the same date {sub shopping and a movie for dinner and a movie}, we went to bed, bath, and beyond to blow the $50 gift card we've had since our wedding.  it was one of the funniest shopping trips i've ever been on.  it took us well over an hour and a half to figure out how to spend 50 dollars.  typically, i'd have that money spent in a flash.  we even had a list!  but we wandered around the shopping loop about six times before buying more kitchen supplies.  as if our kitchen wasn't stuffed enough.

we ended up with a garlic press, a new can opener {which will restore taylor's sanity}, a beautiful glass pie pan, a big-enough bamboo cutting board, ice trays, and a misto.  yes, i've wanted a misto for several years now.  ever since ari moved into the fleur-de-lis apartment and brought with her the coolest little olive oil sprayer to replace our pam.  the misto is one of the coolest things ever.  i think.  and now i have one.  it was a last minute grab as the store was closing, and it put us $5 over, buuut since i've already used it about twelve times, i think it was probably worth it.

the things we wanted but didn't find have been on my mind, though: a littler box, food and water dishes for a little creature, and a food processor {that one might be a few years...}.  but the cat stuff... well, that's in the making.  after we both get jobs.  oh money.  sometimes i love the left-over wedding gift cards just because they let us buy things that aren't exactly necessities, but are pretty darn desirable.  like a misto.

and yeah, the cat's a necessity, but it'll just have to be pending for few months more until we pay tuition and can find money for food afterward.  then we'll go look at cats.  until then, i'm avoiding them for fear of not being able to resist.  you know..

the LOVE game: stormy weather.

1. i love eating breakfast in bed.

2. i love that sparrows and blue jays live in abilene.

3. i love thunder and lightning in texas.

4. i love salads for lunch in the summertime.

5. i love having a declared pajama day {to get me feeling better, you know...}

6. i love when shaving seems to last a day longer before prickles appear.

7. i love dark chocolate with almonds and sea salt... and that my husband was kind enough to indulge the craving today.

8. i love listening to something new while on the treadmill - made the time go back so much faster today.

9. i love rainy days when it fits my mood - when it's much much more than a drizzle.

10. i love feeling like i've finally made a decision.  finally reached my endpoint where something new has to start.  and has to start soon.  still looking for a different job - a new one better be on the very near horizon...

the LOVE game: on a saturday.

1. i love not working on a saturday, sleeping in a little, eating a massive egg scramble and some cookie-dough almond butter.
2. i love listening to good music in the quiet place.
3. i love the idea that i won't have to wake up at 7 am on a sunday again for a very, very long time.

{male grackle}

4. i love the grackles and blue-jays and other little birds that flock around abilene. i don't know why they like it here enough to stay, but they sure are cute and pretty and nice to listen to in the mornings.
5. i love jean kilbourne and brene brown and the good done by researchers like them who are passionate about the safety of women and relationships.
6.  i love meeting my husband for dinner on my work breaks.  it's the opportunity to sit down, slow down for a minute and just be.
7.  i'm really loving the classic crime lately, specifically their album vagabonds.  it's stellar, really.
8.  i love the idea of going back to ivins for christmas.  no, it's not set yet.  but it's the thought i'm really loving - that i might get to still have that big-family sense with all the treats and traditions.  with all the games and movies and long talks late into the night.  yeah... it's really far away.  but the thought is really fantastic.
9.  i love whole foods recipes.  i'm getting back into the swing of it.  drooling over a dish with brown rice and chicken instead of crappy tex-mex nachos.  looking up desserts with peaches and honey instead of sugar and white flour.  it feels...nice.
10.  i love wearing real clothes - clothes that are not my work uniform.  i love not being covered in sticky yogurt.  i like thinking about the fact that my shirt is from anthropologie.  in it, i feel pretty today.

ps. grackles are the weirdest birds i've ever seen and i love them.  some day, i want a dog named grackle.

a change in the making

a haircut is coming. i can feel it.
lately, i've been daydreaming about myself with one of these:

leaning toward this one i think...

but then. i love this one more than just about anything.

and this is just awesome.

obviously, i have no idea what i want, yet.  but it's coming.  and it's coming soon....