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To say the least, we were always very close. I have so many fond memories of visiting her and my grandmother every summer in New Orleans, how she would bring me everywhere, the zoo, the aquarium, the French Quarter, despite the overwhelming heat. How every Christmas, we’d go on a special date just the two of us to The Oaks at City Park to ride the rides and see all the pretty lights. I remember her singing me to sleep every night to “Baby Love,” in her beautiful low alto voice. Her untimely death in 2002 came as a shock to everyone and it’s something I still feel nearly every day.

After she died, we were going through her things and came across a green, spiral notebook that said on the cover, To Shelley Lena Greenberg. I never knew it but she had kept a journal for me of her thoughts on my babyhood and an account of family gatherings from my birth up through the first two years of my life. It starts, “Dear Shelley, I am writing this so that one day you will realize how loved you are and also know something of your family.”

It was a wonderful though eerie moment, finding that journal. It’s about 30 pages of her beautiful script. I don’t know why she stopped or why she never gave it to me, but I’m just glad we found it and now it is one of my most prized possessions. And last weekend, I got four of those beginning words of hers from the journal, in her oft-praised handwriting, tattooed just under my left clavicle. It looks like this:

I love it so much. Every time I think of it or catch a glimpse of it or brush its fresh bumpiness, I feel a rush of joy. I had been wanting those words on me for a while, but it wasn’t until Saturday that I realized exactly where and that I was ready. And in part, this desire to draw her and her immense love for me in close was fueled by the fact that last week we suffered another (very early) loss on our journey toward parenthood. I can’t figure out exactly why but in some way I just needed this tattoo, this second tattoo, to find peace and closure after this our second loss.

Here’s what it looks like when I’m more covered up. I love how it just coyly peeks out at you. Those pretty, pretty letters. Those dear words. I feel like the luckiest ever when I read them.

You know what’s weird? My back and forth, love and hate relationship with blogging. For the most part, I love it. The concept of it, reading other peoples blogs, and even a lot of the time writing and creating my own blog posts.  But then I go through these bouts of not wanting to blog. It’s not even not wanting, it’s not having anything to say. Sometimes it’s just physically not being able to bring myself to the keyboard to write.

I try to think about why that is. It’s not because things get busy. Things are always busy. I’ve blogged more during super busy times than I have during the slowest, dullest days of my life.

For a long time I thought it was a feeling happy vs. feeling low thing, with more blogging when I’m happy and less when I’m low. But I’ve blogged so much about the lower points in my life, I think that it can’t be that.

I think it has more to do with head space, and the amount that’s available for extemporaneous pursuits. It’s about how much mental bandwidth I have free, I think. Or is it emotional bandwidth? See now I’m torn. Maybe they’re one in the same.

Work has been going well lately. I’ve had to step up to the plate a lot more and I feel as if I’m really coming into my own. That’s not to say it isn’t stressful and I guess it’s the industry I chose to spend the majority of my days wrapped up in, but you never reach comfortable. You can’t ever really sit back and just be. It’s like Lucy and the chocolate factory. You can’t slow down for even a second or you’re screwed, and just when you think you’re getting the rhythm of things? The boss yells, Speed it up!

Not that I’m complaining, I’m grateful just to have a job. Grateful to live this nice, cushy life with my husband and my cat and my dog. Are things just exactly as I hoped they’d be at this moment? Gosh no. We’ve suffered quite a few setbacks in our master plan for world domination for life in general. But I guess I’m past the point of being angry about things. I’m at a place of acceptance, which is a beautiful place to be because it gives you the drive for action.

And gratefulness, what a lesson I’ve learned in gratefulness. To allow yourself to feel truly grateful in your bones for what you have, is to want what you  have. You know that saying? Want what you have. For so long it plagued me because I understood in it theory but I couldn’t feel it genuinely, in my soul. I wanted to feel it, but I also wanted so much more. SO much more. I’ve spent years feeling restless.

And now I know, you can have wants, you can want anything. But not having it won’t leave you feeling sad or anxious or frustrated or anything, as long as you feel grateful for your life and the people (and animals) in it, you’ll be okay. Funny how, as leery as I am about organized religion for so many reasons, gratefulness in prayer is the one thing I must say brings me peace.

My prayers go like this nowadays. Thank you for everything. I’d like for this to happen. But most of all, thank you for everything.

And I mean it.

Thanks for reading.

I will take the best care of my body possible. I will listen to my body and I will hydrate, exercise, fuel, and rest it as needed. I will do all this while striving to accept my physical person in all its imperfect glory. I will seek the realization that it is enough, I am enough.

I will pay closer attention to sources of stress and anxiety in my outer environment and attempt to minimize them while striving to recognize that I cannot control other people, things or events, I can only control my reaction to them and their effect on me.

I will more carefully nourish and cultivate my relationships with the people in my life, friends and family, old and new, close and far. I will make bigger efforts to stay in touch while showing myself mercy when life gets in the way.

I will forgive myself more.

I will make space for the quiet. I will welcome it in and become intimately familiar with it. I will continue to learn how to tune out the “have to’s” and “should do’s,” if only for one hour per week.

I will take one step each day toward my future goals, be it reading one chapter, drafting one blog post, organizing one coffee date, or spending just five or ten minutes thinking forward.

I will aim to keep myself organized for I know I cannot have peace of mind without my finances and my house in order.

What will you strive to do in 2012?

A bit of designspiration for you as you sip your morning coffee…. enjoy!

{All images c/o Lonny mag, borrowed from here}

Last weekend, we drove out west for a long-awaited camping weekend with our dear friends from college. We met up in Monterey, Mass., at a state forest called Beartown, and there we set up camp on a lake and enjoyed a weekend of sleeping under the stars, building campfires and other such camp-like activities.

Andreas and I went camping this summer by ourselves (bought the tent, the air mattress, the cooler, the fire grate, etc.) and I have to say I like fall camping much better. For one thing, no bugs. For another, sweatshirts and cozying up and actually appreciating the fire’s warmth. But we did severely underestimate how low the temp would drop at night and how grossly inadequate sheets and a single old blanket would be.

On Saturday we had a big breakfast at a diner in Great Barrington and then continued on to Goshen for some climbing near D.A.R. State Forest. One of the couples in our group climb quite often and had all the gear. They were nice enough to guide us through the whole process, set up the line, loan us their gear, and talk us out of a panic when we reached a spot and began shrieking “BUT THERE’S NOTHING! NOTHING TO HOLD ON TO!”

After climbing, Andreas and I headed over to Pittsfield to visit Dick’s Sporting Goods and bought ourselves some good old fashioned sleeping bags! I couldn’t believe it when I woke up and asked everyone if they were just as frozen as we were the night before and they weren’t.  The secret? Sleeping bags! DUH. For some reason I didn’t realize that you were supposed to use sleeping bags with the air mattress. I thought sleeping bags were for the ground. Rookie mistake. Anyways, we picked up some super discounted mummy sleeping bags from Marmot and they were a DREAM to sleep in!

Now Ava, I’m not so sure how much she loves camping. I know she loves the fact that we let her sleep with us when we’re camping (well, she pretty much insisted on it and since she so rarely insists on anything, we relented). I know she loves any kind of hiking or walking in the woods, especially when she can be off leash. I’m not sure how much she loves campfire time. There’s no real place for her to curl up when the ground is all cold and wet and muddy. We try to pull her up on our laps but she’s a bit too big for that to be really comfortable for anyone involved. Plus I think she’s just kind of scared of the fire. She was shaking the whole time we were sitting around it.

But when we got home, she curled right up on the blanket we had brought with us and refused to budge. So who knows!

We had such a great time hanging with everyone at this beautiful spot. And now that we have everything we need to be comfortable, we want to go camping one more time before it gets too cold.

So, I did it. I finally pulled the plug and got my first tattoo. It still feels surreal to say that. Me? Tattoo? Really? Really.

To answer your questions, yes, I love it and yes, it hurt. But not too bad, honestly. The whole thing only took about seven minutes and the last half, as he moved toward my wrist, was definitely more painful and wince-inducing than the first part. But as one of my inked coworkers told me beforehand, it does hurt but it’s manageable.

The words are in Latin and they translate to “love conquers all.” It’s long been a phrase that holds great meaning for me. The short story is that Andreas gave me a bracelet with these words on it when we first started dating, for Valentine’s Day in 2003. We’d then occasionally scribble it in notes to each other, most notably in the ones we exchanged while I studied abroad. I even had it inscribed inside his wedding band. The deeper story lies in the way these words have served as a constant reminder of the strength and truth of our relationship. I think of that now everytime I look at these words, written in Andreas’ handwriting on my wrist, and they give me peace.

Next, I’m going for a sleeve. Kidding! But I do plan to get more. In time. For now I’m just enjoying the one I’ve got.

One year ago today, we brought this precious pit bull puppy into our lives. She has brought us more joy than I ever thought possible and my heart explodes with love every time I look at her. I am so thankful for our Ava.

Second, I am getting a tattoo. Yep. Finally pulling the trigger. It’s funny, I’ve always wanted one but wanted to wait until I knew for sure exactly what I wanted to put on my body forever. I had been playing with getting the phrase “amor vincit omnia,” which means “love conquers all” in Latin, on my wrist for some time. Andreas got me a bracelet with that phrase on it, oh, 300 billion years ago when we first started dating, and I had it inscribed on his wedding ring. So it’s always held special meaning. But it was seeing the same words on my boss’ arm a few months ago that really set the wheels in motion. I think something’s changing in me because I also recently put two bumper stickers on my car where the thought of that used to freak me out a little bit. Oh the commitment! Apparently that’s all changed now and next Wednesday night I’ll have the real, live fresh ink to prove it.

What. Else. Oh! I recently lost 10 lbs. Which is obviously exciting. Between all we’ve gone through over the past couple of years and moving out to the suburbs, I managed to pack on quite few since our wedding. Now I’m just trying to get back to where I was then, which means 10 more lbs to go. I’ve set up little rewards for myself to stay motivated. 5 lbs down was new gym shoes (it’d been over 10 years since my last pair which is beyond embarrassing to admit but we’re embracing things around these parts). 10 lbs down was an outfit from the ridiculously pricey Lululemon which I splurged on last weekend. You guys. Their stuff is so lovely and fits so well. You can feel how well made it is. I see why it’s so expensive but yeah. No spending for me for awhile.

Also. We were trying to get Ava certified as a therapy dog but unfortunately it’s not going to work out. We went to two classes and gave it a fair shot but some combination of all the other dogs present in the classroom (to be fair it was like 10 dogs, some of them huge, squeezed into a room the size of my bedroom), our lack in getting her professionally trained and the stress of the whole situation that made it pretty clear, pretty fast that this wasn’t her cup of tea. She was seriously the worst student in the class, which would surprise anyone who’s met her because she’s typically such a calm, quiet, obedient, loving and loyal dog. But we’re hoping that once she gets a little older and gets some training, we might be able to go back. Now we’re going to seriously look into hooking up with a trainer and maybe even working toward getting her certified as a Canine Good Citizen (it’s this whole test you have to take).

So, those are the major things for now. Much. More. Blogs. Coming. Soon.