I've Been Avoiding You...

It's not you; it's me. I suck. And, per usual, I've been all angsty about blogging--why I blog, is it fair to still be blogging about my kid as he gets older (I can see the reams of paper scattering his future therapist's floor as he shares entry upon entry from my blog as evidence of how I screwed him up forever), is blogging keeping me from doing things like thinking about what I want to do with the rest of my life (how much longer can I look people in the eye when they ask me what I do with my life & I say, "I'm a stay at home mom. And I blog. Aaaaaaand that's about it,") ?

And then there's the sheer amount of time being taken up trying to organize for a yard sale (I will need a bigger yard for all the crap I plan on getting rid of) & a 3-bedroom-house move within the same month. My house is overrun with boxes, piles of random shit stuff, boxes, beds flipped up and pushed against the wall to make room for more shit boxes. The cats each have developed visible twitches & one has taken to pooping right outside the litter box in protest of the approaching upheaval of their daily schedule (because you know, it's going to be hard for them to adjust to eating, sleeping and pooping in another house. Poor kitties).

We're having a yard sale next weekend & moving over Labor Day Weekend. Fortunately our landlords have decided NOT to put the house on the market before we move out. I'd like to think it is out of the kindness of their hearts and their desire to make this process as stress-free for us as possible. But I think perhaps it's got more to do with the fact that their realtor took a look at the inside of the house (read: recognized my complete inability to keep a house from looking like an all-out disaster zone) and strongly advised against bringing potential buyers in while I am in any way responsible for the state of the house. Fair enough. Either way, it means I get to pack (and by "pack" I mean throw things all over the house until they happen to land in any one of 10 boxes I have lying open at any given time) in relative peace.

And then there's the training for my 3-Day Walk next month. My teammates went up to the city this week and walked 22.5 miles in one day! I couldn't join them, but it really hits home how close the walk is getting!! And I love everything about the walking except the vast amount of time it takes up. Walking more than 6-7 miles a day ends up eating a huge chunk of time up, at a time when I don't have a huge chunk of time to eat up with it. But that's okay; my reminder to myself when the alarm goes off at 5am, or when I'm walking in the heat, or huffing up a hill, of thinking of the blog posts I haven't written because I've been walking, or the boxes that have yet to be packed and the yard sale items that still need price tags, is that even the crappiest aspect of this training and the 3-Day is SO much easier than having breast cancer. Really, EVERYTHING in my life is easier than having breast cancer. My life is such a blessing, even in the chaos of the move and the training and the "what do I want to be when I grow up" angst.

And then there's the pictures. About a year ago, I started a photography blog (that really went nowhere--I think the link might still be on the sidebar of this blog). While the site went nowhere and was eventually abandoned (have I mentioned I'm pretty sure I have ADD?), it clicked something on in me & then I found Instagram on iPhone & all the funky filters available through various apps & another app that allowed those pictures to be printed out true to the filters and in a 4x4 format. A couple women from my walking team suggested that I print out some pictures, mount them onto cards & sell them at our big concert benefit (have I mentioned that this team of 8-9 women has raised $35k for our walk???!!!). So I spent hours in the backyard with an aerosol can of spray adhesive (sorry, Mr. Ozone and braincells), 5x6 cardstock cards, 100 of my photographs and voila! Photo cards made to sell at our benefit concert.

And people bought them! Not all of them, but a lot of them. I wasn't able to attend the concert, so I"m not 100% sure that at the end of the day my teammates didn't look at the massive pile of cards and say, "well, shit; let's all just buy 10 so she doesn't ever find out no one even looked at them," but they swear there were no pity purchases. So that means people bought pictures I took. And that kind of blows my mind.

So after I get the yard sale put to bed, and the move is over, I'm considering opening up an Etsy shop to continue selling my pictures. EEEEEEEEEEP! Did I really just say that?! I've battled internally a lot with the idea that the pictures are iPhone pictures & I just press a bunch of buttons to make them look a certain way--that can't really be art, can it? I can't really call myself an artist, can I? That's insulting to people who actually take "real" pictures with fancy cameras, isn't it? Is it? I don't know. My concept of myself as an artist has always been the biggest struggle for me. It is the area where my inner critic is loudest---she will let me eat that 4th cookie without berating me for the size of my waist, and she'll let me go to the bookstore instead of doing the dishes without giving me a hard time about being a lousy housekeeper. But when I dare to say aloud, "I"m an artist," she kicks into overdrive with the "I can't believe you just said that!!! You are so NOT an artist! Take that back right now or people are going to laugh at you!" Oh yeah, she & I have a really great time together.

But I'm working on making her shut her big fat yap, and I'm going to open that shop regardless of what she says. It helps that up to this point, (and through a certain amount of time once the shop is open) ALL proceeds will go to Susan G Komen for the Cure for breast cancer. Its hard for anyone's inner critic to bitch about doing good deeds, so hopefully that will shut her up long enough for me to start really believing myself when I say, "I'm an artist." (seriously, people, I cringe when I type that; the inner critic is a tricky one.)

So how about a few pictures of the kiddo? He's in a Sand, Dirt & Water camp this week. He's come home with shaving cream art, a sand & wax candle, built ice sculptures, made volcanoes and created his own fossils. He also comes home every day face painted like a vampire. He's discovered the world of "squinkies" and "go go"s, which are akin to the Silly Bandz in terms of the "why didn't I think of that?!! I'd be a freaking billionaire by now!" factor (and the "WTF?!" factor, as well, if we're being honest). Next week he's in another camp called "Broadway Babies," where he can put some of his mad melodrama skillz to good use. We spent a few days with family on the east coast and another few days at the beach with good friends--all in all it's been a pretty fantastic summer so far.

In the Virgin American terminal at SFO, waiting for our flight east.

couch surfing with his wife.

Ethan took a break from our house hunt in early July to watch a colony of ants on the front entry way of a potential house.

And he has developed a penchant for drinking his cold apple juice out of a tall Starbucks hot cup. Because of course he has.