I needed a day like today…a mix of relaxing, spending time with Brett and Elanor, getting outside, and doing fun things with other people.

I’m hoping to post more soon. Things have been a little crazy around our house, with our recent trip to Portland and our subsequent readjustment to life at home. Plus my Flickr pro account expired and I’m lame and haven’t wanted to spend the $25 to renew it, so I haven’t been able to upload pics in a while, or I’d just do a photo post. How’s *that* for a lame excuse?

Anyway, that’s about it. Nothing earth-shattering to report, just life as usual around here.

I started casually looking around for something, but nothing seemed right. In November, I posted about some “potentially exciting developments,” which was a job I’d been interviewing for that fell through shortly after I posted that, which is why I never mentioned it again. I had two or three other opportunities cross my path during December and early January, all of which fell through, too. It was extremely frustrating. With all of these, we’d gotten to the point of discussing when I could start when suddenly something happened that made it not work out.

Meanwhile, things were really stressful at work for Brett. Details aside, due to some changes in his role at work, we started talking about what in the heck we’re supposed to actually do with our lives, long-term. This conversation began at the end of November, and quickly came around to him wanting — again — to apply to grad school. We talked about how if he were to get his MFA (Master of Fine Arts) degree, he would be able to apply for teaching jobs, since it’s the terminal degree in his field. He’s talked about wanting to teach for years, as long as I’ve known him, really, and due to these changes at work, all of this came to a head and it suddenly seemed like applying to grad school might make sense.

I’ve resisted for a long time the idea of him going to grad school. Honestly, the way that Maine went, I was in no way eager to have him be in school again. Maine was extremely difficult on me, especially, and it was hard on our relationship and our finances in ways that still affect us, four years after leaving.

So after thinking and praying about it, I laid down some guidelines for him. He could investigate grad school, on these conditions:

1. We canNOT go deeper into debt for him to do this. His school loans from undergrad alone will take us a lifetime to repay, not to mention the consumer debt we incurred during that time, which we are still working on; we cannot do anymore. And that immediately ruled out private schools, which cost almost double his annual salary for only one year of schooling, and most programs are two or three years. Yikes.
2. He has to maintain his hours at work so as to keep our health benefits, and so I won’t have to go back to work full-time. Due to my heart stuff, I *have* to have group health coverage, and we need to be able to pay our bills (and I already worked and supported him through one degree) so he has to keep working.
3. I need a support network in place for day-t0-day life, and we need to lay out clear expectations of what our lives and our limited time together and our responsibilities surrounding our home and Elanor will look like if/when he attends school.

So, with that in mind, and with private schools excluded due to cost, we started investigating public schools, and realized that the application deadlines were about two weeks away at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University.

He quickly scrambled and filled out an application for each, and sent them off within hours of the deadlines.

And then we waited.

Meanwhile, I was still trying to find work. Finances were growing ever-tighter (with Brett’s changing role at work also came a salary change…great…just what we needed. I thought things couldn’t get any tighter, but then — hey! they did!), and my anxiety was through the roof. In desperation, in mid-January I posted an ad on Craigslist that I was willing to do childcare.

I had a couple of bites that didn’t work out, and then, just as I was getting ready to, I don’t know, sell some stuff at a pawn shop or donate plasma, I heard back from a family looking for care for their infant girl.

Within two weeks, the deal was struck, and I’m now looking after her four days a week. Obviously, I won’t blog much about her here, but there you have it.

We’re entering our third week now, and everyone is slowly adjusting to the new normal. It’s been rough on Elanor (and of course she was sick the first week, which did NOT help matters) but we’re managing. More about that in a later post.

In that same span of time, Brett’s heard back from both schools — and he was accepted to both UC Berkeley and SFSU! I’m so proud of him. SO proud!! Berkeley is a very, very big deal…he was one of seven students accepted to the MFA program out of over 200 applicants. Wow! Just…wow. I’m so excited for him.

He’s actually at an orientation there today, so I’m excited to hear more tonight when he gets home. But it looks, so far, like the practical elements of my conditions will work out: he’ll still be able to work, the cost of schooling will be manageable, there are lots of benefits available for students with families (grants, fellowships, reduced-cost preschool, health insurance, etc) at a school as large as Berkeley, and he will have the opportunity to even teach an undergrad course (for pay!) in his second year.

With Brett finally taking steps to act upon his long-term goals and dreams, it’s spurred me to do the same, and I’m going to start pursuing becoming an IBCLC-certified lactation consultant! I realized, a while back, that I would be really good at it, and that I’m passionate about breastfeeding and helping women breastfeed successfully. I’ve been involved in our local La Leche League group here in San Francisco since shortly after we moved here, and I love it. It’s going to take me a few years to do this (the process is very rigorous, especially for someone with no nursing degree) but I’m hoping that I can sit for the exam in a few years. By the time Elanor is a bit older (say, elementary school-age), I’d love to be practicing.

So there you have it. Lots of changes. I’m working, Brett’s going back to school, and we finally feel like we have a viable, longer-term plan for our lives. We feel a little strange that we’re nearly 30 and only just now figuring all of this out, but better late than never, right?

I could keep yammering on, but I’ll stop. That’s the big stuff. Hopefully I’ll get back to blogging about the little stuff soon!

Anyway, since it’s Thanksgiving as I’ve done in years past, I’m going to talk about a few things I’m thankful for. The past few weeks have been a little hard on me, just life catching up to me, I guess. So I suppose I need this exercise in counting my blessings.

Obviously, the first thing on my list is Elanor and Brett. I think that’s a given. Elanor is an amazing kid, and although being her mom is extremely challenging at times, she’s the most fantastic little person I know. And Brett…through hard times and good ones, he’s a great guy, a great dad to Elanor, and a great husband. He works so hard and I know he does it because he loves Elanor and me.

I’m thankful that we’ve seemed to have a calm, uneventful year since May. No near death experiences, no car accidents, no layoffs…I really hope this trend continues.

I’m glad we live here in San Francisco, in our cozy, wonderful home, finally able to relax and enjoy life after a few really hard years.

I’m also especially thankful for the friends we’ve made since we moved here. Emily W and Emily K, Laura, Sarah, the La Leche League ladies, our neighbors downstairs, the greater moped and FourBarrel communities — we really have a community here, only after 6 months. Our dinner party today is a great cross-section of those groups: my stepbrother Jason (who lives in Reno and came down for the weekend), Dan, Emily, and Jack, two of Brett’s co-workers, our downstairs neighbors, and our friends Claire and Isaac whom we know from SPU.

I’m thankful, too, for what I’m learning about grace of all kinds: God’s grace, experiencing grace from other people, having grace for those around me. It’s a big, lifelong lesson, obviously, but it seems that this year has been particularly focused on this theme.

We have so much to be thankful for. It’s good to type it all out and see it in list form; I should do this more often.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Here’s my defense: first, my keyboard stopped working, just before NaBloPoMo started. And if that wasn’t enough, then my computer charger died and the battery on my computer was so low that it died, too. Then, I tried posting from Brett’s iPhone but WordPress did NOT like the iPhone so typing a one-sentence post took forever. Then I finally took my computer in to be fixed, but the lovely folks at Apple kept it for four days, so…I just gave up.

I guess there’s next year.

Not having a computer to use for about a week was strange. I would check my email occasionally on my phone and on Brett’s phone, but for the most part, I was cut off from Internet-land. It was kind of nice, albeit really, really weird. I missed Facebook and the message boards I’m on a lot less than I thought I would. I actually got a ton done around the house — it was soooo clean! — and I even had time to read a book.

My forced Internet sabbatical made me realize I’m online far too much on a daily basis. I don’t want to get sucked back in so completely, so I’m going to try to limit my Facebook/message board time to some extent from here on out.

Anyway, now that my computer’s fixed, I hope to be able to do some more of the writing I mentioned a while back, so I can share it here. I have made almost no progress since my keyboard wasn’t working, but that’s okay.

Let’s see, what else can I tell you?

We are having quite a group here for Thanksgiving. It’s a very diverse assortment of people from several different areas of our life, and it should be anything but dull. I’m excited to cook a big meal and have lots of friends here, for sure. My stepbrother Jason is coming from Reno for the whole weekend, which I’m looking forward to since we haven’t really hung out much with him in several years.

Our parade of out of town guests continues. I’ve realized we are probably going to have guests every month, pretty much, and that’s fine with me. We just hosted our friends Brendan and Arianna from Seattle, and now our friend Nate, who went to school with Brett in Maine, is here for a week or so. It’s been nice to see our friends from Seattle and elsewhere, for sure.

Elanor is amazing these days. I really need to write an update all about her, especially since I’ve slacked on the past few monthly letters. She’s just so funny and intense and wonderful; I feel all bursty sometimes when I think about her or see her doing something awesome, or when she hugs me and kisses me. Here’s a recent picture I took earlier this week with Brett’s phone. We were in his studio in the garage, and he had set up his medium-format camera to take a photograph of something that was just at Elanor’s height. She walked up to the camera and knew exactly what it was for, and loved the fact that it was right at her level.

Okay, I think that’s the update. I’m going to take advantage of the rest of today’s nap time to get some more writing done. Although I’ve failed miserably at NaBloPoMo, I’m going to try to post more frequently at least through the end of the month. We’ll see if that works out…I have my doubts but I’m going to at least make an effort!

Anyway, Elanor and I went to the grocery store today. Now, before I go any further, let me tell you t hat San Francisco has very few grocery stores other than Safeway. And I really dislike Safeway. They never have the brands (organic/natural) I want, their produce is expensive and not very good, and the one near our house is tiny and unorganized and always has the longest. lines. ever.

So if I’m going to avoid Safeway, my options are limited. There are a couple of Trader Joe’s, a Whole Foods, an awesome co-op, and the FoodsCo, a sort of discount grocery store. You know, the kind of store where it’s always packed with a very, um, interesting array of people, and where you bag your groceries yourself.

Well, Elanor and I went to FoodsCo to get staple things: beans, canned tomaotes, flour, pasta, etc. It’s great for those sorts of items — I can get a bag of pasta for a quarter — but that is about all I get there. They have some truly weird stuff in that store, lots of overly-processed foods that we just don’t eat, and a ton of off-brand beauty products and cleaners, which we don’t use. But I can’t beat paying $35 for enough canned beans, pasta, and flour to last a couple of weeks, so I put up with its eccentricities.

Today, we were in line to check out, and I was loading our groceries on the conveyor belt when I saw that the people in front of me had a very uniquely-named bottle of shampoo among their items. Being the good blogger I am, I totally obviously surreptitiously snapped a cell phone picture.

Ummm….really? Really? REALLY?!?!?!? You see what that says, right?

Placenta?!?!?

I mean, I belong to some crunchy circles and all, with some, erm, not mainstream ideas about what to do with the placenta, but shampoo? Surely, I told myself, it must just be in another language where it means something different.

But then, I asked Google, and I found that it actually does mean that kind of placenta.

Wow. Just…wow. That’s all I’ve got left to say here. Wow. I guess I learned something new today. (Don’t worry; I’ll be sticking with my non-placenta beauty products in the future.)

We’ve visited a few churches, and found them to be okay, but not exactly what we’re looking for: Bible-based preaching, good worship music, people we can identify with, and views on children and child rearing that line up with ours. It’s a tall order; I know.

We’re not sure when we should just settle down and go somewhere that we don’t feel is the right fit, just so we’re going to church, period. But a large part of why we want to be in a church is to get to know other people in the church, and if we’re just going somewhere to go through the motions until we find the perfect fit, we probably won’t get to know people very well.

Plus, Brett still works on Sundays, and Elanor’s at an age where she still won’t go in the nursery but isn’t big enough to sit still in church yet, so it’s just kind of hard all around. And I’m not going to lie, I’m a little gun-shy about going to church at all with Elanor these days, because of what happened when we got kicked out of church back in July.

I just keep telling myself that this is a season, and that it will pass, and that we will find a church here eventually. I hope that is true; I’m beginning to really miss that time of worship every week. So, I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: if you know of a church you’d recommend in San Francisco, let me know!

• Writing: A post manifesto piece about our child rearing ideas. It’s gotten really, really long. It may wind up being a series of posts, actually, but, then, that would be great if I do NaBloPoMo again. So keep your eyes peeled for that. No promises on when I’ll have it done, but I’m hoping in the next few weeks. It’s morphing into something way bigger than what I intended it to be, so I’m just going to let it lead for a while and see where it takes me.
• Reading: Some more of the books from my childhood that my mom brought me when she visited. Two of my favorites were in the box she brought: “Nickel-Plated Beauty” and “Hail Columbia” by Patricia Beatty. They take place in the Astoria area around the turn of the century and they are funny, heartfelt books. I love them just as much now as I did when I was younger.
• Cooking: Not much. I have been a very lazy cook lately. I did make two apple pies last week, which was fun, but other than that, I’ve been mighty negligent on the cooking front. It’s getting close to being soup weather here, though, which should help. I always feel more inspired to cook when it’s cold outside.
• Looking for: Some more work I can do from home. I am not super eager to do this, as I don’t want a repeat of how stressful it was for me in Seattle when I was working from home, but our budget needs to be expanded so I am looking and praying God will provide the right thing at the right time.
• Thankful for: Our home here and the friends we’re making. I still just love our apartment, and I’m really enjoying getting to know on a deeper level some of the people I’ve met. (I’m looking at you, Emily, Emily, Laura, and Sarah.)
• Loving: Elanor’s increasing verbal ability. It’s astonishing to me! She says something new every day, and I love it. She’s getting to be such a kid! And yet, at the same time, she’s still such a baby. What a fun and exhausting challenging stage this is!
• Anticipating: That Brett and I are going to be an aunt and uncle again! Brett’s sister Amy and her husband Seth are expecting in March. We’re thrilled, and we can’t wait to meet the little he/she!
• Learning: More and more about myself every day, as I work through the things I’m writing about in the piece about our child rearing philosophy, as I realize that I have long had issues with anxiety, as I continue to learn about how Brett and I function as a couple, and as I learn to trust in God’s provision.

Anyway, that’s us these days. Nothing terribly exciting, really. The weeks have their ups and their downs, but for the most part, life is good: full of good food, new friends, good coffee, a comfortable home in an awesome city, and a great husband and kid. I can’t really ask for anything more than that.

Now, though. Wow. Every day is a challenge, it seems, a huge one, and I struggle some days to just keep my head above water in terms of making sure we are fed and clothed (although for Elanor these days, that often means wearing only pants, as shirts seem to have become a uniquely painful form of torture overnight) and that we are both relatively physically unscathed by the end of the day.

Other days are better, but I still find myself not blogging on those days because I’m just worn out from chasing a very spirited 30-pound toddler who likes to climb everything.

I don’t want to complain too much about it here, partly because I know that I have a tendency to go overboard with the whining if I let myself, and partly because I know the choices we’ve made in terms of how we’re parenting Elanor are a little different than many of my friends, and I don’t want to start that discussion in this forum, at least not yet. So I’ve been quiet for a while.

And then once I’m in a quiet cycle, it’s like anything else: not posting becomes habit, and it’s harder and harder to break that habit. And then Brett notices that I haven’t posted in a while and he starts bugging me about posting, and that makes me even less inclined to post…and it’s basically a vicious cycle that means it’s weeks between posts.

But okay! Enough justifications about why I didn’t blog for several weeks.

I HAVE NEWS! Exciting news! (NO, I AM NOT PREGNANT.)

To me, it’s more exciting than that, at least for the time being.

WE GOT A CAR!

Woo-hoo! My mom has been jokingly talking for years about how she may just get up one day and go buy a new car to replace her ’98 Acura, and when she did, she’d give that car to us. And then, a few weeks ago, out of the blue, at 9:30 on a Saturday night, I got a text from my sister: “You are now the owner of a ’98 Acura!”

Turns out my mom really did just get up and decide she was going to go look at cars, and she bought one. She had a visit here planned at the end of September, so she just drove the car down instead of flying. So for about 10 days now, I’ve had a car again.

I’m really excited about it. When we made the decision at the beginning of the year that we were going to try to get a car, it was very, very hard for me to reverse that thinking as things at Brett’s old job went south and it became apparent that adding any monthly expenses to our budget was a bad idea. I struggled a lot with having to get myself back into the no-car mindset. And then we moved here, and it was easier for a while, but it started to get hard again, especially as Elanor became impossible, er, difficult, to take on the bus or to confine to a stroller.

I won’t lie; despite how excited I am, I’ve felt a little guilty about actually using the car. We were on our way to a playgroup this week and I saw a mom waiting for the bus with a toddler in her arms, and I felt like if she could take the bus with her kid, I should be, too. I can’t become too reliant on the car; I need to keep riding my bike and I need to stay active. I feel good right now, healthy, fit, etc, and I don’t want to lose that.

Other than the car, we’ve had a very busy (but fun!) month filled with lots of friends and family in town. I’ll leave you with some pics from those visits, and a promise that I’ll try to blog more frequently in the next few weeks.

First up, our friends Josh and Crystal came to visit. We went on a bike ride through Golden Gate Park and out to the beach with them, which was one of the best parts of their visit.

Then, our friend Bree came to visit. She and Elanor had a fun time playing together.

We also took a trip to Sacramento for a moped rally. My friend Emily and I spent most of the weekend watching babies sleep, or trying to get them to sleep, or nursing babies. I think our total time spent at the actual rally totals around an hour. Haha. Times have changed.

Then, when we arrived home from Sacramento, my dad and stepmom were waiting for us. We had a fun visit with them, too!

Finally, we had my mom’s visit, which was wonderful, too. I haven’t gotten those pictures off the camera yet, but when I do I’ll post some here…soon!

Yesterday, to escape the sauna that was our apartment, we went down to the beach, stopping on the way to get treats like beer and hummus. We’re only about a mile from the beach, but we don’t go down there too often since it’s usually cold and foggy. But yesterday, it was hot down there: for the first time I didn’t have to wear a jacket, and the freezing cold water felt great. That’s all I’ll say…the pictures speak for themselves!

We feel very settled in already, although we’ve only been here for about two and a half months. We have more art hung, things put out and arranged, more of our trinkets out and displayed than we ever did in our Seattle house. Something about this place just made us want to get settled in quickly. (Not to mention we’ve been kind of addicted to Apartment Therapy.)

Plus, our furniture and other things just feel right in this apartment. And we do, too.

Without further ado, the pictures…and there are a lot of pictures. Almost everything you’ll see in the photos has a meaning for us; either it was given to us by a friend, made ourselves, or we bought it for a specific reason. I’ll tell you about some of them as I share the photos.

Front door, stairs to the landing

Bookcase in the entry area, including a tea light lamp given to me by some dear friends, the Solex model we bought in France, and a letterpress "please remove your shoes" sign made by our friend Rosanna

Living room

Close-up of the shelf over the fireplace: mouse doorstop from our friends Marci and Caleb, and "The Big Little Book" that Brett's Great Aunt Ging gave him when he was a child

Close-up of the mantel: the boutinniere Brett wore in Joel and Rosanna's wedding, and the camera my grandpa carried with him when he flew as a pilot in WWII

Bookcase in the living room with Elanor's books and toys. I love how we still manage to have toys and things that show a chlid lives here without making our whole house look like Toys-R-Us threw up in it

Dining room, looking into the butler's pantry and then the kitchen

Reading nook in the butler's pantry

China cabinet in the butler's pantry - probably my favorite thing about our new house since I finally have a place for my Fiestaware!

Fiestaware, and other nice dishes and glasses

Kitchen counter evidence of my green-ness: composter and crunchy-granola hand and dish soap

Hallway, looking down to the bedrooms

Bathroom, with a big old tub that's long enough for even Brett to stretch out in

Maneki Neko, lucky cat, who sits in our hallway. Elanor loves him.

Our cozy, bright bedroom

Brett's pile of books that he's in the middle of reading on the dresser

Elanor's room, toys, books -- so fun

Elanor's colors

That’s it…we love it here. It really is home, and being here makes me happy.