THANKS!

I just wanted to say Thank You! to everyone who has visited and read my blog in these past few years. I am  2 page views away from reaching 7000! Thank you for your amazing support. I've come a long way since starting this as "Confessions of a College Graduate" and though I still have many confessions (and still openly share most of them with you guys like this recent confession) this blog has grown into so much more (and I'm very happy about that, I hope you guys are too!).

AN OVERGROWN PATH, A DREAM

I have a knack for loving things that are depressingly, beautifully sad. Like the graveyard song, which I originally heard on the show Parenthood and that since has been stuck in my head inevitably. I just love the line about getting clean and waking at a decent hour. Oh how many times that goes through my head in a day. Waking and going for a run, losing the gut of drink, but my life is too set in stone, sometimes things are just too difficult to change.  I will always love that which is sad and beautiful and lonesome and true. I think that’s why I love to write. To delve deep into the unknown of myself and pull up things that don’t exist, but are so beautiful and so true.

Right now I am writing this on the end of my business plan. And writing this business plan is like writing a chemistry lab report, difficult and unknown (and something I truly hated in school). I am struggling. I am truly struggling. I have this vision of myself, but I’m not sure how to get from where I am now to where I’d like to be. So I take it slow, I start to write a plan, I take a fork in the road and as I follow the path I begin to forget why I’m going in that direction and my mind starts to imagine how wonderful the other path could be and then suddenly I’m on that path instead, or I’m nowhere at all and I am lost in desire.

I have this fear mostly. Or maybe it’s that I truly don’t know what I want out of this life. Am I alone in this thought? I see people with such clear life plans. Those working hard in grad school to get jobs, “real” jobs in finance or public health. Their path is so very defined.

What does this say of me?

Sometimes I wake up in the morning exhausted. I look under the covers to check my legs for cuts and scrapes and little signs of where I have been, but then I remember it is all just a dream. I remember my path is overgrown and thorny and that it’s not really a path at all but a track of land, woods in which I roam. Sometimes in my dreams, I am running through it like a nightmare. That’s when I wake and I am sure I am bleeding around my ankles. Other times I am hacking down thorns and vines with a blade, blazing my path, but most of the time I am sitting, deep in thought wondering where to go next.

This business plan is not helping. It seems like a desire that will never be reached. Am I putting too much into this? This something that I will spend the rest of my life doing, should it really matter that much?

In the meantime, I do the little things. Kiss my baby on the lips and say I love you. Rub the pup’s tummy when she rolls over. Paint little encouraging things. Till the soil and encourage things to grow. Work on a business plan or two and listen to the graveyard song. 

Listen to the gravyard song here. It's not the original, but you get the idea.

REGROW CELERY // HOW TO

I've been learning lately how to harvest veggies from food scraps. It’s quite an enlightening project as I’ve been throwing away usable vegetables for years now. Part of me is slightly embarrassed by the fact that I’ve trashed such valuable resources in the past. But no longer thanks partially to Pinterest.

Cut the base off and instead of tossing it, rinse and put in a clear plastic container with a lid. Add about an inch of water to cover the base of the celery and put in a sunny spot. Since it was still cold outside here on the OBX I put the celery in my east facing spare bedroom and forgot about it. When I returned a few days later it had grown so much it was busting through the lid.

At this point it’s ready to be planted in soil. Be sure to use rich soil as celery needs lots of nutrients to grow big and strong and green. I’ll be planting my celery this weekend and updating you on the process. Check back soon. . . 

COME ON SPRING

You know that old Christmas song, the familiar country lyrics beckoning Christmas to come on? I know it as Dwight Yoakam singing his twang (Listen here). Lately, I've been singing that song with a few tweaked lyrics, mostly "come on Spring" and dying for the warm sun to beat down on my face and jolt my garden to life.

Yesterday we had a taste of spring and today on Lo's ninth birthday, April showers.

Here's a little taste of my Sunday Funday.

"Count Shell-u-la"

Happy April! Playing any jokes today?