and then it was summer all of a sudden

Hello, blog. It's been awhile. In the last month and a half a lot has happened, and summer is here. 

Time to play catch-up!

Here's what's been happening the last couple months:

I celebrated the epic 25th birthday with best friends. We are all April babies! This is Christine and Anna S. (They are going to be two of my bridesmaids as well!)

I decided to stop jealously stalking craft blogs and start taking action! I can make pretty things too. Dusted off the sewing machine to attempt my first pinterest craft that turned out surprisingly cute.

However, I have this issue with sewing: after all the arduous time spent picking out fabric and fighting with the machine to produce something un-crappy, I end up sick of the fabric and color combos and don't even want to use what I made. I harbor visions of selling adorable crafty accessories online but who knows if the pipe dreams will ever become reality. 

(It's easy to have existential pipe dreams when you're in the middle of a job rut...)

 My grandma turned 83 on Mother's Day weekend, and we FINALLY gave her this cross stitch that we (as in my mom and siblings, mainly my mom) have been working on for LITERALLY TWENTY YEARS. Probably more. Like, since the earliest I can remember, this in-progress bundle of thread has been sitting around and accompanying us on family vacations. The kit was from the 80's and you can't read through the glare, but it says "I'm not cluttered, I'm country." And has adorable little sheep. Basically, it defines my grandma's life.

(Here's something almost no one knows about me: I love cross stitching and go through huge binges every couple years.)

 

Gratuitous flower picture. Iris on the farm. 

(pic via one of my brother's fb friends)

The sad part of this month was having to put our cat Thijs down. He had definitely gone through a few lives over the past couple years and kidney problems finally got too bad to handle. We had him since I was ten, and he was the sweetest kitty in the world. He loved tuna, sleeping on chairs under the table, and chasing bits of food and lights from a flashlight.

Ok I can't end on a sad note.
In addition to sewing, I'm also fulfilling my suppressed desires of starting a potted herb garden. I had some bad experiences in the past that I'm going to chalk up to living in a dark basement apartment in grad school, and not because I have a black thumb. I mean, my whole family is in the horticulture industry! I need to be able to grow things. Well, now that we have a balcony in the sun, so far so good. Our basil, sage, and oregano are thriving, and baby parsley finally started peeking out (the only herb we have from seed, thanks Nicole!) He grew 1 cm just today and I'm very excited. I may or may not have screamed for Ben when I noticed the little leaves, and scared him into thinking there was an emergency. Nope, just excited. Love baby plants.

What I've learned from the past couple months: don't just dream and wish your life was better. Take ACTION and do things! Yeah, not very deep or groundbreaking but a pretty big concept for me right now.

Oh, speaking of doing things I also went through a two month stint as a substitute teacher, which deserves its own post.

And best of all, after two years of moving around the country and job hunting, Ben landed a teaching position at a charter school in Chicago, so we will be moving to the Windy City this summer !!!!!! I'm so excited to begin a new chapter of life together.

sunset on the Mississippi

 

I've spent many miles running and walking on the river path over the past few weeks. I grew up next to the Illinois River and then spent four years in college next to the Mississippi. Now I'm back and it brings memories of cross country workouts, college formals, and long bike rides. I actually had to swim in the Mississippi once to search for endangered mussels during my internship with the Fish and Wildlife Service, and it turned my white t-shirt brown. I don't think many people realize that the river doesn't really flow normally anymore; it's been made into a series of lock-and-dammed "pools" for navigational purposes and the original floodplain has been channelized and built up. If we let the river run its course the boot shaped delta of Louisiana probably wouldn't exist, and there wouldn't be any levees or floods to worry about. Rivers are supposed to flood their banks. Floods aren't a hazard until there are buildings and houses in the way. People will always try to live too close to the shore though, because we're all drawn to a waterfront.

Today is my last day of being 24 years old. I think I'm going to go for a run.

spring

 tulips from my parent's garden

 scenic hikes in central Illinois DO exist!

 a monarch caterpillar at Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids, MI

 my cousin's multi-generational and awesomely fun bachelorette party

This has been a good spring. The weather warmed up in late February and the last snowstorm we were all expecting to drop here in Illinois never really happened (knock on wood). The flowers and trees are blooming a month ahead of schedule. I took an unplanned blogging break because I've been struggling to find my place in my own life lately. This APW post on "failing up" pretty much sums up where I'm at right now:

"Sure, I have a rough idea of where we might be in a few years, but I've stopped beating myself up about having a detailed image of what that looks like.

Don't get me wrong though. I'm still a Success Kid at heart. I don't think that will ever go away. But as I put forth even more effort into my job and personal life now than I did before, I'm less worried about the outcome and more concerned with whether or not the effort itself feels authentic to me. Instead of "I must do this or else I will never end up where I want to be!" I'm approaching success with an attitude that's closer to "Hey, that might work. Let's try it!"

Yup, trying hard to recover from 24 years of "Success Kid" behavior.

It's hard for me to be ok with the fact that I'm not falling into another perfect job that will build on my previous experience and "open the door" for the next one. I have this stupid sense of panic and anxiety that if I waste this year on something unrelated to my "field" I won't be able to get into a career-track and will be screwed for the rest of my life. Well, maybe I'm not wasting time. I'm just living and taking the months as they come.

This spring I...

-served on a jury for the first time
-received my first speeding ticket and went to "driver's improvement class" for the first time
-spent a weekend dogsitting (Ben and I are cat people so this was kind of a big deal)
-FOUND MY WEDDING DRESS !!!!
-started pre-marital counseling
-reconnected with best friends and family
-spent Easter and several weekends in Michigan, practicing to be a member of the Locke family
-started running on a regular basis again
-got my substitute teaching certificate (so many hoops to jump through...)
-faced rejection from many job applications and interviews

Ben and I have temporarily moved back to our college town so that we can be together for the time being. I never even imagined we'd be back here when he graduated in 2008, so it's kind of fun. I'm substitute teaching for the rest of the school year, and looking for temporary summer employment locally so I can keep on scraping by. I crave to be able to settle down into a place of our own for more than six months years. My belongings are piled into my parents' basement and I get overwhelmed and anxious whenever I have to dig through to find something important.

With the whole world open before us, it's hard to visualize where we should be job hunting, or where the best place to live will be. However, I'm learning that sticking close to home and family is not "giving up" or "settling," no matter how un-glamorous the Midwest seems. Last weekend my mom and I went to my cousin's bridal shower and bachelorette party and I realized once again that family and friends are more important than where you live. Yes, I had to move back home and yes, I'm unemployed and feel like a failure lots of times whenever someone asks me what I "do." But I'm so lucky to have a solid relationship with someone who supports me, and a family who literally opens their homes to us when we have nowhere to go. I trust that someday I will be hired for that dream job, and I also trust that my dreams can continue to grow and change in new directions that I can't predict.

I've put over 50,000 miles on my little Ford Focus since I left for grad school three years ago, and those miles represent some of the best times (and hardest times) of my life. This year I am not earning a degree or traveling to far away mountains, but I am getting married in October so ultimately, 2012 is the year I'll remember forever.