All in one day...

My emotions are zig zagging all over the place tonight, as the adrenaline from the weekend slows down and leaves me out of sorts.

My mom was here for a week, and left early yesterday morning. That whole visit could be a post in itself -maybe sometime. I put her in a cab at 730, then came home to fall back asleep and wake to find that one of my best college friends had given birth to a boy.

I walked to the store. Bought a $2 bag of day-old bagels from the local place that keeps them back for the locals. I baked a taco/tex mex....thing. I vacuumed.

I went to a reception down the street -the place I used to work in Kentucky was in town having a conference. I smiled and shook hands and did the "do you remember me/oh you look SO great!" bit.

Then, I walked home while talking to my dad. He wouldn't let me off the phone until I was safe in my apartment, then I hung up to learn that my very best childhood friend had given birth to a boy.

Two people, whose lives I used to be so intertwined with that I knew everything about them, down to what they ate every day. Two girls that I watched grow into women, and now watched grow into mothers. Mothers of sons. I am happy -- so incredibly happy, truly -- but I can't ignore the niggling feeling of "what about me?" Can it be my turn yet?

I've been trying out the phrase "I doubt I'll have children" to see how it tastes in my mouth. It tastes wrong and bitter, but I'll grow to acquire a taste for it. It's something I'm learning to accept, and realize that the traditional way of doing things just may not be for my path. The alternatives of adoption or other means of giving birth may well be my reality. It's daunting, as I age. My life has always taken a strange path -and perhaps that will just continue.

In the meantime, I keep trying to transform healthcare in America. Ya know, that easy-peasy thing. We're working so so hard. That's pretty much all I can say. I pulled off a successful event last week on the hill (meaning congressional hill visits and a press briefing) and it was a huge load off my mind when I finally stood up to close us out.

My mom came with me, and I sat her in the very back. I told her she could come along -- it was very strange to see my mother alongside my boss, my clients, my coworkers, all my professional colleagues that dominate my landscape here. I stood up to give everyone a job-well-done pep talk. And then, there was my mom, snapping pictures.

Some things never change.

On we grow.

Me, Russell Senate Building, April 2013

Just writing

I've probably started 10 or 20 blog posts by now. I either delete them or save them and never look at them again, and then another day starts and it's a blur from there.

Sometimes this blog is like a friend that I lose touch with -I don't want to lose touch, but it's close enough to me that it's either all or nothing. We need to talk everyday, about everything, or we can't talk at all. There's no in between with us, and when there's a gap, it's noticeable and I'm a little shy about approaching again.

So, hello. I've been okay. Working my ASS off, and finally went home last weekend for a quick break and some baby/kid niece and nephew time. I hugged each of them to me time and time again. They center me, each of their blonde heads pressing into my chest and sneezing in my face and arms thrown over me at night when I sleep in the middle. 

I'm always ready to get back home though, to my DC home. I spent the day in Lexington (where I lived for four years, and where I lived when I started this blog) and I noticed how uncomfortable I am there. I almost feel a panic attack coming on when I look out the window and see the sights of a few years ago sliding past my window. That town never fit me, and I can't breathe there. 

I didn't cry when I flew away this time. I usually don't, anymore. I am always glad to get back, and I always miss my family, and I feel like I'm always going to be destined to be missing someone, somewhere. It's how I grew up, lugging my duffle bag from county to county to one house from another. I will always feel torn, and always feel like there's something I'm missing.

In February, I met Bill Clinton. I met a few other folks that are pretty important to my industry but aren't famous, all at our annual conference, and I felt like I was doing something. All the crowded metro rides and the snowy slush that cars rain on my pants, all the late nights and wordsmithing was for something. Clinton, before he closed his remarks to us, said "I pray for your success." 

I'm not sentimental much anymore, about anything really. But for a minute, I felt that was genuine. That we were being counted on to do something amazing. And then now, back again, slogging through the day-to-day "who is going to order the water bottles and dish detergent" and budget battles and things out of my control just wipe all that out. I'm feeling discouraged and like it's all just taking so damn long to count. My brother in law this weekend asked me "Is Obamacare stupid?" I hesitated and he asked "Or, do you not know much about it?" I said "I know too much about it, which is why I can't answer things like that so simply."

Anyway. 

I dated someone, and I think it may be over. More about that another time. Another blip on the ever-ending radar screen cycle of things-that-don't-work-out. It makes me so tired to even write about, because I've been writing about this for years. I've been writing about how I'm working on accepting that things just might not turn out in the way that I had thought. And yet I'm not accepting it, and forging on, and dabbling in the heartbreak and hope again and again, and it's just getting so very old.

I turn 32 next week. I've been writing here since I was 26, and I feel paralyzed sometimes when I think of how little has changed even though so MUCH of course has. I am a completely different person in so many ways. 32.

32, and what have I done? What does it matter?

I'll leave you all with some pictures of some absolutely beautiful kids that I adore, and thank all of you very few (and very treasured) readers for hanging with me all these years. Keep writing.

Me and my teenage nieces

 Little guys, Easter morning

 Brooklyn with our found baby rabbit

 My dad, and his grandkids. I love how much they love each other.

 Me and my sister that keeps me sane.

 All five of our babies, a moment totally unposed and captured on the sly

Niece with baby bunny

 Nephew, being a dreamer.

 Nephew that holds my heart.

Thanks all. 

The rain falls. The dryer hums. The dog upstairs runs in circles barking at the thunder. His owners chase after him. The cat lifts his head to the ceiling, then settles back down again. The TV is on, but muted, and it's 10. The hour where I hear that reasonable people go to bed during the week. The hour where I usually start to rev up -I'm a night owl. Always have been.

I took the train home tonight, shuffled with the masses, my Audible book playing from my iphone. It's been a long time since I've done the subway thing.

I came home with the first raindrops. Ate supper, put the laundry in the dryer. A quiet night. I opened my laptop to begin to work. I work every single night now. I've never been so work-busy in my entire life. The problem is -that isn't even extraordinary anymore. It's expected.

"I'm leaving now but I'll be back on around 8," I say to my boss. Sometimes I want him to protest.

He never does.

Tonight, I'm not going to work. I'm going to lay here, under the white blanket and read my book and listen to the rain.

The world will wait.

Obama2013

It was a wonderful weekend.

Spin

And we spin and we spin,
as I let the world in
And we dance and we dance
as I watch the days pass.

My little poem there pretty much sums up this month for me. I honestly can't remember a busier one, and I'm so uncertain about everything that I broke out in stress acne on one side of my chin. Awesome.

Let's see. I had a friend stay here for about 3 weeks -we've been friends for so long, and even though we go such long gaps of time without seeing each other (he's a professional campaigner for democratic politics, and hops around the the country on different races), we generally can pick up where we left off. Somewhat. Knowing, too, that he is guarded  and knowing that our lives over the past ten years since we sat together sharing a desk in 2003 as summer interns in DC for the first time....well, they've changed. And we've changed.

But not so much that we didn't have three great weeks of cooking, and watching TV and reconnecting. Talks until midnight. Wondering will we/won't we? What is this?

He left mid-afternoon today, bound for another state -taking all his things with him. I didn't know. He sent me a hasty text while I was at work.

"Thanks for everything."

Gone. Abrupt.

Gone but gradually, is my best friend. The one I reference just a few posts down - we stopped communicating around the fall, and then Thanksgiving went, and Christmas hit, and I never called. And I would watch those with that easy give and take of comfort and it would hit me -I don't have a best friend anymore. Not a day-to-day one, as I did. I do have my wonderful best/forever friend, but we've been without each other for so long that our long absences don't phase us. We are just us. It's different when you lose someone that you had almost constantly.

We started reconnecting just this week. I am glad, but not glad at the same time. I have my arm out, keeping this at a distance.

It's interesting -- only in the last three years have I lost friends. Out and out lost them due to either a falling-out or an intentional separation. I've had those I've drifted from, certainly. But, it's a recent thing for me to shut people out. And even if those shutting outs have been for the best, it's still a different hat for me to wear.

Difficult, too.

But the tide ebbs and flows. Things come back even if they go away.

We can't blink.

Two

Oftentimes, I don't write because I think my life is too boring. The mundane, the Congressional politics, the regulations, the endless writing of healthcare specs -- then home, dinner and drink, two grumpy cats, what's on Hulu tonight? Tomorrow let's do it all again. Then I wake and say to myself as I stumble to the bathroom, "when is it going to be too much?" But I shower, make a pot of tea in the kettle of one green tea bag and one english breakfast, put the bagel in the toaster, feed the meowy cat, listening to NPR on my phone the whole time. I wonder when I got so old---NPR and green tea? Really?

I work all day and my TV is on cspan which I watch out of the corner of my eye. The interns run around, laughing, and I remember when I was one of them. I wonder if they know that sometimes I still feel 22? I'm asked important questions and sometimes don't know the answer. Find myself deferring, googling, fast talking, backward stepping.

I took a break for almost two weeks when I went to Kentucky for Christmas. All in all, it was a great trip. I wish I were the type to blog every day -I wish I could update all the time on my thoughts, so I could have that and look back. Instead, I see a blur of baby boys dancing to U2 and doing the cha-cha slide -- I see a five year old girl niece crying to me on the phone because I'm not there to sleep with her that night. I suggested she sleep with her sister instead and she sobbed back "But she doesn't smell the same as you, Aunt Steph."

I see the many glasses of milk I drank. The many, many, many arms of family members I hugged. The conversations held in the dark of night -it is so interesting to hear so many of my family's perspectives on my life. Some think I'm doing some awesome, amazing, thing by being here and others think I'm simply biding my time until I come home and buy a farm.

I have absolutely no idea what I want, almost all of the time. I do know that right now, I don't want to overthink it. I pop the bagel in the toaster, heat the tea, and put one foot in front another.

New Years Eve, I drove back to DC to avoid a winter storm. I drove, ahead of the snow, and thought about how I moved into my apartment on New Years Eve three years ago. I am home. I have another home, two states away.

Growing up, I had another home, two counties away.

I will always be torn. It will always be bittersweet.

To quote the immortal genius of Led Zeppelin...."because you know some times, words have two meanings."

Seems like all of my words do. All my thoughts -all my deepest desires.

Thanks for being here. On to 2013 -on we grow. (Thank you Mel, for this video)

Paradise

She walks down my street with her eyes darting everywhere, absorbing every single detail at impressive speed, inhaling energy from the constant movement and the people. She turns to ask me a question, and I yank her back on the sidewalk as she starts to cross against a Do Not Walk. 

I am the little sister. I'm not the one who is supposed to be looking out for her. I'm not the one who should be living the city life, free and easy as I go. This is her paradise, her energetic eyes jumping here and there.

It wasn't supposed to be me.

She had her first baby at 18, and then two more followed.

But me, the little sister who wrote down the names of the ten children I wanted to have and pictured them all while daydreaming in my closet of the life I was going to have--I got to leave. I walked across the graduation stage, and straight to DC and my life exploded into something else.

I'm not hiding in my closet anymore, throwing a softball in the air, daydreaming, and getting quiet if anyone came in the room to listen for me.

My sister (step-sister, technically) brought up my older nieces and nephew up for Thanksgiving break. We did so much that I don't even know where to start--let's just say there was no museum or monument left unturned and untouched. We never, ever, ever stopped. The kids and I collapsed into our beds and air mattresses each night.

My sister has emotional issues, and veers and swings wildly from happy to sad to pissed to manically ecstatic. I've said it before and I'll say it again...how my nieces and nephew turned out to be such wonderful, balanced kids, I'll never know.

The kids had a blast. All 3 want to move here.

So does she.

She is awed of me, proud of me. She also looks at me with a bit of resentment under her gaze, a little bit of defensiveness. Pride.

It was never supposed to be me that didn't end up on the farm - yet...

She has no idea how long I've plowed this city ground to turn it into a fertile life. No idea of the struggles, no idea of the things unsaid and unmentioned. The tears and blood in your mouth and empty lonely feeling in your stomach when you realize that no one is going to ever rescue you but you. And I can't explain it -- there are some things that you can't tell someone who thinks you have a perfect life. They'll never believe you.

"After all, those were passionate times, when children were pioneers... on the road to find out, wherever that road might take them. When brothers and sisters, looking back... wished they'd known each other better." --The Wonder Years

Me and my niece Carlee; she is the one who will get away.