Scraggly bouquets of flourishing backyard weeds.

Chirping birds up folding ladder, the triangle of the house.

Thick rain, heavy clouds soak our soils before drought.

every year fleeting flowers bloom

inspired to capture i wander by thinking i have more time

they shrivel under summer’s heat

Just me and my girl.

Half Wayish

He’s gone for maybe 40 days, 6 weeks, or almost 2 months. I’m about halfway through, maybe. It’s been a couple of years since he left me for an extended period of time and surely the first since we had Mabel.

This morning my kitchen sink straight-up fell out of the counter hole it was glued to. The foundation of the house seems to be sinking and my lawn is 5 feet high and I can’t seem to get my mower going. I am ready for him to come back now…

The money is great and I was looking forward to being solo for a while as we spent 5 years of our relationship with shift work. There’s an effervescent freedom in living alone once in a while. Eating apples or cabbage for dinner and getting lost in the chaos of my creative process. Going for impromptu half-day walks because I’m on my own. Watching girly, bad, or teenage TV happily. Reading for hours before bed because no one is here to hang out.

Of course, this was going to be different with a baby.

Leading up I started to just want him to go, rip the bandaid off, start the new phase. The anticipation is tiring.

I planned for a few days of transition, imagining getting into a season of the Bachelor, ice cream pints. I expected to bury myself in blankets, glass of wine, blubbery tears. The transitions were always the hardest.

But I dropped him off and packed my bundle of joy with me to chapters and felt a new sense of motherhood. I really am an adult. I am the one who calls the shots. I have Mabel to take care of. Upon arriving home instead of slugging out I became a manic firefly stirring my creativity and mess swirls around the house. I’ve been working on a secret home project that Thomas won’t see until he returns. I bit off more than I can chew and my physical strength and nervous system has been pushed. I am nearly finished with this now thank THE LAWD. I spent weeks pondering and reworking one design element over and over and over and over in my head. Mentally tired, trying out different ideas. It was telling why design work is hard to charge for. So much goes on in the mind while you’re just living your life.

The week he left I started a one-month intensive Spanish course that focuses on grammar and sentence structures. Subjunctives, conjunctions, prepositions, and Gerunds. The different forms of the verb ‘to be’ that we do not consider in english. The different meanings of the word ‘que’. I made it 50% of the way through the course that I ditched my 263-day Duolingo streak to begin. The unique teaching style was incredible. I was astonished by how my whole mental framework for the Spanish language was enhanced. I felt so satisfied and intelligent going through these complex oddball lessons and I really started to realize the difference between English and Spanish. I could suddenly think thoughts more common and natural than ‘¿Donde esta el autobus?’. I had to take a break, the pressure I was putting on myself was overwhelming and I realized I was the only one forcing myself to be in a state of anxiety. Every day of the course I was one day behind. Each lesson took about 1 hour and I was newly solo parenting and traveling up and down the island. I was seriously so impressed with my ability to comprehend each lesson as it is often very hard for me to grasp school, but the pressure I put on myself to enhance the house, up-level my grasp on a second language, and start a garden all while being the best mother to my 6/7-month-old baby girl - hardcore to be honest. Now that I am wrapping up the interior project I plan to dive back into the Spanish BUT my real goal is to be less ambitious, tend to my garden and the cleanliness of my home. But of course also I have begun the Manifestation Challenge through To Be Magnetic and randomly been inspired to teach myself the guitar. I’d like to start a series of children’s books and I don’t go 4 minutes without considering the plans for the house I want to design. Why am I like this? My mind is not chill.

Anyway, I’ve once again committed to being off Instagram for a while (This whole blog is just me dealing with a social media addiction). Knowing that we are about halfway through this era I feel a sense of ‘crunch time’ and I want to give the Manifestation challenge my all and put more into my blog.

Live love laugh.

Things strange men said to me recently.

Early-morning-Dallas road-ocean-side blissful-magical-wonderful walk…

A man picking up garbage on the beach looks at me and Mabel and says “Thank you for raising the next generation.” - caught off guard, I hesitated and just said ‘thank you’.

Thank you for thanking me… is what I thought to myself the rest of the day with an elusive sense of pride that I really am raising the next generation, and I am doing it consciously and with integrity.

…

The next day I was walking from my truck to the grocery store in Lake Cowichan, past a hot dog tent and a few men look at me and Mabel and one loudly yells “DOES YOUR SON WANT A HOT DOG?!” - again caught off guard, I look back for an awkward amount of time and then just say “no”.

I will never see hotdogs the same after I heard someone talk about seeing one under a microscope, microplastics and hairs. I mean I’ll still eat one, if it’s a Smokey and I’m camping but no my 7 month old female son does not “want” one.

It’s funny with gender and a baby. Mabel often gets mistaken for a boy and usually, I don’t correct people. It’s in passing and it literally doesn’t matter. She’s usually dressed in green or blue or nature-inspired clothing and so am I. I’ve had multiple kids ask the exact same question “Is she a boy or a girl?”. She has no telling feminine features and it’s just a funny reflection on gender in general.

It’s the first thing our human minds do when they see another human, categorize them by gender. And when it is not clear there is a legit glitch that happens. I love that this is being challenged and changed with the fluidity people are presenting as and standing for.

I also never put bows on my daughter because I think they are stupid and she has very little hair that does not need to be pulled back. It’s funny that girls need to be decorated to look like girls. When in reality Mabel looking like a boy is just highlighting where society is at, how could she be a girl if she is not decorated or in pink? In reality, she looks like a girl because she is a girl and gender isn’t at all important in a 7 month old’s life.

I’m doing it for my mental wealth.

One Night in Victoria

I missed two days of cold plunging and completely fucked up my baby’s sleep schedule. 2 weeks earlier this ‘trip’ would have seemed so easy, her accustomed to napping on my body or in the stroller. But after my perfect-magical-wonderfully executed life-changing sleep schedule was in place I was nervous!

Check-in wasn’t until 4 so we were on the loose in the city. Beacon Hill Park was never more beautiful and in bloom, bustling with oddly tamed wildlife. Mabel screamed at the wildflowers and the blue sky. My internal monologue scripted her to say “why am I not in my bed you monster”. I felt so guilty that I had given her that stability and regulation and then just stole it away. Billy tweaked in every direction at smells, squirrels, peacocks, and ducks.

I posted on Instagram that I was at the hotel and what felt like thousands, was probably ten people asked me why I was in Victoria and my mind almost imploded. I was there for a dumb uninteresting reason. Thomas was required to attend appointments on both days and the room was compensated so I went along thinking it’d be fun. He was busy for the majority of our time there so I was handcuffed to Billy and Mabel. The overstimulation of motherhood is unhinged. I left the room thinking I could walk 9 minutes to a bookstore, maybe grab some snacks, a couple cans of beer for later. I made it a block and a half, Mabel yelling, popping on and off the boob exposing my nipple to the blur of cross-walking side-walk wanderers. Billy whip lashing me toward every pee-covered post. Frantic I returned to the brown carpeted room to re-group. Thomas signed something that ‘promised’ our pet was under 40 pounds… (something the front desk guy forgot to mention over the phone). So naturally nervous I powered through the expansive lobby head down hoping no one noticed my one-hundred-pound dog. He got spooked by the polished marble floors, each leg splayed in a different direction and his belly hit the floor in protest. I just powered on dragging my ‘tiny’ dog into the elevator. Maybe no one noticed. (Later I was recognized and told that “it was the best thing he’d seen in a while and everyone was watching it happen”).

Mabel wouldn’t settle even late into the night so she watched cable tv with us and laughed uncontrollably at the fidget spinner, deliriously tired. I brought her into the king-size bed in the middle of the night and she slept like a queen while I kept one eye open.

Day two I sent Billy with Thomas and got to wander around with just the baby and stroller. I clumsily clunked through a coffee shop door and then slowly trailed behind a man zig-zagging with a beer can. We walked swirls through Beacon Hill and along the sea. Mabel magically fell asleep so I just kept walking in my nude flats a size too large. The trip really redeemed itself when I found a prepaid visa I got for Christmas and bought a fly pair of New Balances.

We were anticipating a late lunch with a friend and I wasn’t extremely relaxed about it because if Mabel didn’t nap again beforehand I knew I’d just be juggling her and dancing around the restaurant trying not to bother anyone. I went into Opus for the first time in years, an artist’s safe haven, stationary and paints so tranquil Mabel fell asleep again. So, naturally, I didn’t want to leave and risk waking her too early so I had to buy a bunch of awesome stuff like a sketchbook made in France. I awkwardly whispered to the cashier, secretly annoyed that he even tried making conversation.

Lunch was pleasant and heading home was surprisingly bad when all a sudden I was consumed by anxiety and invasive thoughts about being in a car crash. In the passenger seat, my foot was sore from hitting ‘the break’ so hard at any glimpse of a tail light or lane changer.

But we made it. And I am going to stay home for a while.

Doing things is hard.

The Art.

The Reality

Are Ai Images haunting my soul?

These are screenshots of some of the weirdest and most frightening things that I accidently created through mid-journey within an hour or so. I was just trying to conceive interesting interiors and architecture….. YIKES.

Half a Year of Mabes!

Cold Water & Sleep: A Love Affair

To craft a manifestation list is to set up a gift-registry for the universe.

November 29th 2023

January 13th 2024

February 12th 2024

March 12th 2024

April 22nd 2024

🏴‍☠️

When she was born it was the most overwhelming sense of love I have ever felt. I didn’t realize it would get even more intense every day. GAAAAH I’M SO IN LOVE WITH MY MABEL BABY.

Thank you to my brother for getting this wonderful shot!

Logo

Mabel was asleep in the car and I decided to try and ‘make’ a new logo with Ai. I typed in “Create a silhouette logo image of a mother wearing glasses holding baby subtly imply the setting of a forest. black and white. Faces taking up most of the space, close up.” I did not add any photo reference at all and it made this….. Other than the demented hands the baby has it legit COULD be us. 🤯

Note to self:

I feel best when my fingernails are dirty with clay and soil

When my muscles are sore from a working out

When I am walking in the woods

When I submerge my body in natural bodies of water

When I eat fibrous vegetable dishes

When I make things with presence instead of judgement

I feel best when I walk through my emotions, write, shoot pictures manually and experiment with light in no rush

I feel best when a novel is calling me to read under red light at night

I feel best when I tidy up after my self and keep my systems organized

I feel best when I do the things I am called to do

I feel best when I am connecting with people I love

I feel best when I am tapped into my present reality

And when I get the space to reflect

Real.

One day Mabel napped for a total of 1 hour. The most awake she had ever been AND THEN she had the worst week sleep since newly born. This all started around the time of the eclispe, a major swirl of energy was happening all in and around me. I decided to get off Instagram again AND I commited to daily cold dips. Best decisions ever. I had one or two of the hardest weeks and I feel like giving myself digital space and a new thrilling healthy habit enhanced my resilience greatly. I feel very in my body and in my power. We have introduced solid foods and have had a couple of good sleeps now and I feel like a stronger person.

Instagram was distracting me from what is real. I am on a serious quest towards real. I can’t have a balanced relationship with an app that is designed to be extremely addictive. Instagram, a street drug. I have a feeling we will all be moving away from it, towards what, I am not sure.

The cold dipping has helped me through the sleep regression immensely. Now I’m wondering how I was living my life without cold dipping. I live just a couple of blocks from two lakes that are very unpopulated so I can walk with Mabel and park her on the tiny rocky beach while I reset myself and breathe. Nothing has snapped me out of a bad vibe like long exhales and frozen skin. It’s something I get excited for every day now, the perfect change of state reminder that all is well and I’m right where I am meant to be.

I have a renewed dedication to this blog. It is inherently embarrassing to write, but I know I have to start out somewhere and the real value will come from the compilation of content and my own growth.

I want to write more clearly. To convey my reality authentically. So far I have only squeezed feelings out into blunt bouncy verses. Unclear ideas, poetic nothings that are as flavorless as sparkling water.

The goal for this blog is to capture life for (at least) the first year of my life as a mother - AND - in the process, grow.

Mabel is sitting up strong, starting solid foods, and leaping toward everything including life itself. Thomas and I are entering “shit’s getting real” parenthood.

A quest towards real.