Top 5 Friday

5 Things I Will Do Before the Honeymoon Vacation Ends:

1. Try to turn the Craft Studio (Himself calls it the "Crap Room") into an organized, visually appealing space

2. Call Deshka, Kristin, Sister, Eric, Mum, the grandparents, and LoPrete; write my Soldier

3. Order wedding prints

4. Make some yummy dessert with my Kitchenaid Mixer (thanks, step-mother-in-law)(dude, I have in-laws?!?!)

5. Plan a dinner menu for the week ahead.

And...the feel good-picture of the day, which totally captures my mood:

"& i'm on my way to believing..." by Kelseyela, found here.

There's No Place Like Home (Part 1)

I never was much of a summer girl.

In theory, summer is lovely, of course...cookouts and lazy days and all the rest. Growing up in Florida, however, where summer was 8 months of the year, kind of killed (okay, brutally slaughtered) any love I ever could have harbored for this wretched season. The most I liked about it was the violent thunderstorms which would cloud up the blazing sky, and the cacophony of talkative crickets, tree frogs, and cicadas which emerged after the storms passed.

My too-brief stint in Indiana revived my love of this season...it was much easier for me to love summer when it only lasted four months, maximum, and was followed by a beautiful and distinct autumn. And then, too, summers in Indiana had...summery things, like fireflies and lazy hazy evenings and, of course, those lovely summer storms.

But now, here in the desert, summer is worse than ever. Usually well over 100 degrees, with no relief from the advent of thunderstorms. Indeed, it wouldn't be the desert otherwise! I don't do well with the heat...at all...and will, from June until the end of September (at least) closet myself in a darkened house with the air set at a reasonable 79 degrees. Since the condo becomes my haven during these brutal months, I think it only sensible to make it as lovely, welcoming, orderly, and comfortable as possible, and in the days before I must return to work, I'm concentrating on making this happen. Himself pitched in, too, and here's the first set of pictures of our hard work:

Austen surveys the domain.

Okay, so Himself was the one that did all this work. Outside, at noon. In triple digits.
But I helped pick out the plants and flowers!

I also picked out and settled the little IU garden gnome peeking out from the corner, by the rock.

He's not too thrilled to be in the desert, either!


I also picked out this succulent...representative of my (relative) adaptation to the desert.
For now.

Entrance to the condo; pictures to come!

Domesticity rocks

Lucky me, I have another 4.5 days before I return to the Library and work! But Himself is not so much with the luck, and has to return to the real world tomorrow. Still, we're making the last day of the joint honeymoon-time off, and are spending the day engrossed in domestic activities. He's outside in the courtyard, in the wicked desert heat, planting a metric f-ton of purdy flowers we picked up at Lowe's, and I am in the climate-controlled condo, doing laundry, unpacking our wedding goodies, cleaning, and--only occasionally--taking a break to succumb to my internets addiction.

I daresay I have the better end of the deal.

Wait, actually, no. Miss Magdalene's got the better end of the deal.

Lucky little wench.

I think my real life began a long time ago

We're home.

But more importantly...

We're married.

There's much to say, about the trip, the wedding, my 30th birthday, all of the many ideas that are scampering about in my head, the adventures, the experiences...And to make things more emotionally complex, towards the end of the trip, I got unexpected and very sad news, from more than one quarter. Some of it can be mentioned here, some of it not, but none of it now. Now, the only thing that matters is that we are home, and I am so very, very happy to be back. Austen and Magdalene are fairly disturbed by our absence and then reappearance, and in typically neurotic feline fashion, have alternated between meowing, purring, and hissing at us, fighting with each other, and giving us little "presents" in inappropriate but nonetheless creative places.

I think we'll all need a few days to settle down.

Woman On the cusp

(This post is brought to you via one very strong vodka gimlet).

Wow. It's been a while...I see myself falling back into my old wayward blogging ways, which is to say, I go MIA for months at a time. Which kinda sucks, because that's not what I want, and it's not the way to get people to read you. But then, I'm not here to get people to read me. I'm just here because I can.

I am on the cusp of two very important things in my life: turning 30 and getting married.

What this translates into in modern palance, is, I am becoming an adult. And a wife.

Still haven't figured that last bit out, especially because most days I feel like I am a selfish kid, playacting at maturity. And I suppose if I feel like it, I am. But at least I'm acknowledging it. I'm not pretending to be something I'm not. I'm just me, Melissa, trying to bumble along and make the best of the amazing gifts in my life.

I'm not certain about much, but one thing of which I am certain is this: my life is getting better with each passing year. Each year, I become more proud of my accomplishments, more comfortable in my own skin, more able and eager to pursue my creative endeavors. Whether or not I become a better person remains to be seen.

One other thing I know is this: I have been so lucky, so blessed. I have known love from many people--family, friends, lovers, mentors, colleagues--and it's enhanced my life and made it beautiful and even, a time or two, quite literally kept me alive. Here's hoping that the next 30 years bring me the same amount love, luck, and good people.

Crazy isn't Sexy.

My goodness, time passes quickly. A few crises come down the pikes and all of a sudden, almost a month is gone. The pros? We're less than a month out from the weddingmoon...the cons? Uh. OMG HOLY COW WE ARE LESS THAN A MONTH OUT FROM THE WEDDINGMOON!!!

Other than that, what's doing? Too much. The weekend lurking just ahead promises not one, but two bridal showers. One's work related with some of my desert library family; the other is a little more wild, with dirty mad libs, Twister (the game, not the movie), and copious amounts of alcohol. I have developed an alarming and wallet-depleting addiction to scrapbooking (TOTALLY did not see that one coming), and I get to see Peter Gabriel in concert next week at the Hollywood Bowl. Fun abounds.

This last weekend, however, was not so much with the fun. Last Saturday was rather sluggish, and I spent most of the day laying about on the couch, not cleaning or doing laundry or anything productive, simply filled with a dissatisfied sense of ennui. Himself came home from work and my mood didn't improve. After a couple of hours of wheedling and nagging, he pretty much just hauled my ass out, put me in the car, and started driving to a quaint little restaurant deeper down in the desert. As soon we began to drive, I stuck my head out the window, took in the early evening air, and felt better. My mood only improved after we got to the restaurant and found ourselves seated in a lovely courtyard with twinkly fairy lights and a nice, strong gin gimlet. As is usually the case, I began to reflect.

It occurred to me that I tend to wait for my life to be perfect--my laundry to be folded, my kitchen sink to be scrubbed, my errands to be run--before I allow myself to live my life, enjoy simple pleasures, try to be present in the moment. But that evening, amidst the gently happy crowds, the evening darkness closing in, Jason's bighearted smile, and the feeling of utter relaxation, it occurred to me--this time, this particular moment, this was life. Nothing else. And it was perfection.

There's this chick that I know back in Indiana. She's...how do I say...a little bit not all there. Actually mentally ill. Functional, more or less, but mentally ill. And to add insult to injury, she's not at all intelligent, and also dishonest and manipulative (added to her general lack of functioning brain power, this generally means she gets caught in her copious lies on a fairly regular basis). All around, not a particularly pleasant person to know unless you get off on that kind of manipulation and melodramatic nonsense. But I'll say this: the chick knows how to live in the moment.

(Of course, that might be because she's genetically incapable of thinking beyond the next three minutes, so the present moment always looks pretty good). But I'm trying to be magnanimous here.

So anyway, back to the pleasant Saturday evening...for some reason, Crazypants and her ability to embrace the moment popped into my head at that time, and the best thing that I realized that evening in my gin-induced reflections: Even the crazies have something to teach us.

I just hope I don't have to become crazy to learn! Ultimate moral of the day: crazy isn't sexy.

But then again, neither is falling-over drunk.

Erring on the Side of Hope

California is...an interesting place. To most, it's a glorious place, with the promise of sunny, temperate days, glitzy glamorous nights, and plenty of potential success and dreams to lure many an unsuspecting soul here. But there's so many invisible (and sometimes visible) hazards. There are so many faultlines, ready to rupture and break us all apart.

So it is with Himself and me. There's always a faultline, in each relationship, even the most happy and blessed. In our case, the faultline is Himself's son (we'll call him Himself Jr), my soon-to-be stepson. All is not sunshine and harmony in our life right now, and much of it has to do with Himself Jr.

He's a mere fifteen years old...probably the same age as my mother was when she first started to hit the skids. I haven't seen Himself Jr. since before his dad and I got engaged last October; even before then, Jr. had been painting the town a little too red, experimenting with some too-dangerous drugs, getting into too much trouble with the law. We thought he was going to be going to a drug rehab/bootcamp center for a year, and just a day or two ago he was moved to one. Himself and I have had too much experience with addiction and criminal behavior in our families to do or think anything other than "One day at a time," but we still breathed a cautious sigh of relief.

Too soon, it seems. We got the call that Himself Jr. took off from the rehab place (apparently, in California, they can't force minors to stay. Bunch of damned liberal nonsense claptrap, if you ask me) and now no one knows where he is. I have to believe that Himself Jr. is as scrappy and resourceful as ever, and will show up sooner or later, probably sooner rather than later, and almost certainly worse for wear.

But I mourn for Himself. I see the worry that is beginning to carve lines of disappointment in Himself's face. I mourn for his happy-go-lucky streak, his sense of self-worth, his optimism, each of which takes a hit each time Himself Jr. raises hell. I have never reared a child, most likely never will, but I have enough empathy and imagination to conjure the emotions that plague Himself now. And all I can do is just hug him, listen, refrain from making any conclusions or judgments.

The damned pickle of it is that I like this kid. The few times that we've seen each other, we've gotten along. Even laughed a couple of times. He's smart, he's honest (even with everything else, he's honest), and he's absolutely determined not to give a damn that he is wrecking his body, his mind, his life.

As I've said, both Himself and I have seen what addiction can do to a family. And so I worry for us, for our fledgling marriage, for its tender fragile state. I worry about what could happen if Himself Jr. continues down this path. But then, if the worst can happen, and our partnership suffers as a result, I suppose it is just as possible that the other extreme could also happen...

Out here in the desert, the San Andreas Fault runs right through, a volatile flaw in our otherwise stable earth, just ready to open its yaw someday and unleash untold destruction upon us, 2012-style. But here's the cool thing about the Fault--you can see where it is, because there's a band of green foliage growing on it. Green, in the desert. Even in the summer time. Because of the Fault. Water percolates up from the Fault, you see, so even this potentially frightening thing brings some good to us, some life to our region. And of course, it's just as likely as not that the Fault won't get faulty in our lifetime, thereby reducing all of my anxieties to naught.

I'd like to make it so that this faultline in our relationship can be like the San Andreas--despite what happens, or perhaps even because of what happens with Himself Jr., I'd like to see that something else, not awful at all, can come out of it...I'd like for Himself and I make it so that, like the greenery on the San Andreas Fault, something good comes from the faultline which runs through this...I'd like for us to make this a relationship strengthened, a love enhanced through even the most dangerous flaws that lurk at the heart of a home.