Adventure #1

I'm saying so long to my Blogger account, packing up my stuff and moving to my VERY OWN WEBSITE! Too excited for words about this, but I wanted to let you all know where to find me. This account will still be active, but will not be updated anymore. All of my blogs have been moved over already, but the new site is still under dusty construction...you'll have to pardon the plainess until I get it all done.

Thanks to all the single mama's and amazing women I've been in contact with the last few months - you all are an inspiration and wonderful support group! I can't wait for our further adventures down the rabbit hole at LookingGlassLane

You can now find me here :)

If you wanna know

If he loves you so, it's in his kiss...


Yep, that's where it is <3...

Feet First Down the Rabbit Hole...

I've been inspired by the many awesome ladies I follow on Twitter(@modernsinglemom, @MissIve, @fleurdeleigh, @ZenMommy, @RiaSharon & @misscriss0830) and the blogosphere. I'm joining their newest adventure Looking Glass Lane and compiling my very own dossier. I'm not very good at self description, but I'm working on it. This is attempt #1 and I may have to come back to revise later, but here we go...

My Dossier (@jrporter to the twitterverse)

Looking Glass Powers:
Ability to call it like I see it - that's just how I roll
Ability to ...
(more to come, but I'm stumped with this part and am not happy with how it's going)

Dress-up Closet:
Knee high socks, dark wash jeans, must-have Fossil watch, comfy t-shirts, and every color flip-flop you can imagine

Disguise:
Little black dress and red Nine West heels - for when I really want to go incognito ;)

Go-To Gadget:
Canon PowerShot, iPhone and my PowerMac G4

Vice:
Rag Mags at the checkout stand

Magic Potion:
Leinie's Berry Weiss in the summer and Malibu + Pineapple juice all year long - yummm!
And a bottle of Late Harvest Gewurztraminer

Battery Recharge Hub (other than Looking Glass Lane, of course):
My own backyard
Couch + Chick Flick + pint of Haagen Dazs Chocolate Peanut Butter ice cream
A pier looking over the bay in Seattle on a crisp clear morning, whole wheat apple muffin in one hand and a coffee in the other...

Bratty Spoilers:
A soak in a bubble filled jacuzzi tub
A massage and mani/pedi
Napping on a rainy afternoon with the one I love

Owner’s Manual:
When I find it I'll let you know

Weapon:
Wooden spoon and a frying pan - I'll wreak havoc on your kitchen!

Nemisis:
Words of hatred
Tears of pain

Secret Ambition:
Sexy Librarian - World Traveler

Inspiration Found

Okay, so it took the first coat of paint in our bedroom to make it happen, but I'm now so inspired to do the rest of the house I can't stand it. I don't want to do anything else now! Atleast I was able to create a retreat for hubby and I when we want to just lay in bed and read or talk. The room is nearly finished, I received the mirror I've been waiting for in the mail today, so that can go up and then it's just crown molding and a few more artistic treats and we're done.

You can go here to see the pics I've taken so far.

Inspiration lacking

I'm going to be super busy the next month or so. We've got a lot to do before our House Warming/Open House at the end of May. The problem is I'm not inspired to do anything right now. I want to get yard work done, but I don't want to do it. I want the walls painted, but don't want to paint them. These things will be eating up the time my heart really wants to spend being more creative, finishing my scrapbooks, writing and reading and enjoying life.

How do you force yourself to MAKE time for you? Where do you put it in your calendar so you don't fill it with some other thing that needs to be done?

This quote has been with me all day and I can't help but think I'm not doing a very good job listening to what lies within me. How do I fix it though?

What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.~ by Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

Soft Voices Don't Always Fall on Deaf Ears

Sometimes when you think you haven't made any headway, life goes and surprises you. Turns out the words I said did make an impact....We'll see where this goes, but for now this chick is happy :)

Still Waiting....

Good things come to those who wait...

Or at least I hope so. It's been almost 2 weeks since the talk and I'm not sure much has changed. Knowing it won't be an automatic switch, it's still hard to feel like I got through. While I did get the best foot rub I've had in years last night, I'm not sure it was done for the reason I'd hoped for.

Still waiting...

Awesome

I follow an awesome, in my opinion, blog - which you should totally check out here.

I am now addicted to Vampire Weekend's Oxford Comma and will have to go home and buy the entire album tonight. I love finding new music!

You can check out the band's site here.

This too shall pass....or at least I hope it will

When you find the one you're going to spend your life with, magic happens. You get butterflies, you smile, laugh and love more than you ever thought you were capable of. You learn from one another through the happy memories, and the difficult times. When you face obstacles you face them together. But what happens when you've finally settled in and gotten comfortable and one of you starts to miss the butterflies?

I've been in a bit of a "funk" for the last week. I had to really think about how to approach my issue with my husband, but I finally figured it out Saturday morning. I had planned to talk to him Friday, but when the man you love tells you "I'm happy. I love my wife and our little dog and the home we have here", how do you then say "I'm not so happy?". I just couldn't do it. I woke up with it on my mind Saturday though and after coffee and some random show on t.v., I turned to my hubby and bit the bullet.

I am a VERY passionate and romantic person, I always have been. It's a part of me I let get pushed aside a lot and it finally made its way to the front again. My husband is the logical one. He doesn't understand flowers and gooshy cards. I've been able to learn his "language". He however cannot get his brain around mine. Romance and "raw" passion do not make logical sense to him and he's let them completely fall from his vocabulary.

I knew the convesation wasn't going to be easy or pleasant (I cried, I knew I would), but it was absolutely necessary. If I can make an effort to learn his language, he must be willing to make an effort to learn mine. I probably made him feel awful and it was not my intention to do so, but he needed to know where I was and why I had been so distracted and distant for the last week.

I'll let you know how it turns out, this will not be an overnight change and I'm not entirely certain we won't have to visit it again, but right now I'm taking comfort in the fact that he knows and it is up to him to decide where we go from here. I trust him to make the right decision.

Drool

I've realized that the hubby and I both want slightly expensive cars. Someone get me a lotto ticket - quick!

This is my dream car. They don't make them anymore, but someday I will drive one.


This is hubby's car of choice.

It's not real...

Okay, so I'm still on the Vampire kick. I'm secretly hoping to wake up one day and have my hubby being standing over me ready to change my world....Seriously, what is my problem? I've finished the entire series and will probably read them again, though I think it wise to move on to a different subject matter for a while first.

Brian and I watched the movie last night, which I was nervous about doing because I had such high expecations coming off the books. It was o.k. Not horrible, not nearly as bad as some people have claimed (in my opinion), but I found myself making comments throughout the whole going "that's not how that happend" or "that's not the right color", etc. Brian kept shooshing me, but I couldn't help it, it just wasn't the image I had painted for myself from the reading. All in all I suppose they did the best they could, I know from the Harry Potter experiences that some things just have to be removed or changed.

I'm at a loss right now though, for what to pick up next. I'm afraid that whatever book it happens to be will pale in comparisson to my (new) fasination of Vampires and the romance I found in those books. Stephanie Meyer may have perfectly well ruined my taste for reading....Anyway, point of this post - suggestions on where to take my mind next? Anyone have a great read?

Following the Masses

So I hardly ever read, I suck, I know. I borrowed a book from a family member, a very popular read right now, Twilight. I finally cracked it open Monday night after having it for several months (sorry Kerri!). I'm now 2 chapters away from finishing it and feel like a 16 year old girl reading it. I'm obsessed with the characters, feel like I'm IN the story and want so badly to go back to High School and date Edward Cullen...it's ridiculous and I'm very aware of how crazy I am. My problem is I can't make it go away. I hate when things that aren't "real" affect me that way, but I especially hate that I can't just turn it off.

It's also led to me realizing just how much of a romantic I am and, to no fault of his own, how much my husband isn't. He has his moments and I love him dearly no matter what, but I keep hoping in the back of my mind that someday he's going to magically figure out how to be the kind of romantic *I* selfishly want him to be and totally throw me off guard. I realize it's impossible for him to know what I expect or want if I don't tell him, but I can't b/c then it's not the spontaneous romance I'm secretly waiting for...This too makes me feel like a 16 year old girl again.

As my cousin so perfectly said, I too keep waiting for my hubby to sparkle in the sun...[sigh]

I'm almost thirty, when will I get over this?

Angels On The Moon

This is my most recent obsession, thanks to a great friend for introducing me to it ;).

Sample

Here's a little something I wrote back in High School. Now that I have my internet connection at home you can expect more of this to follow, however only a few of you will get to read everything :).

Enjoy!

I tiptoe the midline of Route 139 and feel the summer breeze of 1986
strawberries and cream on the back porch of grandma’s house
overalls and hay fields on an old john deere and
grandpa’s rough hands still holding a fragile love and
growing older riding on an old ceramic cow pretending to shoot down all the bad guys and never getting used to the smell of a farm but finding comfort there still and
eating supper at 4:00 in the afternoon and playing bingo for gum balls and
each day that passed was a new adventure for me to behold
daisies in fields for me to pick and vegetables in grandpa’s garden and
as years passed the visits grew shorter and the time passed more quickly and
school took the place of the grandpa’s life lessons and I bought my own gum balls and
I out grew the old ceramic cow and could no longer find the bad guys or
feel the rough hands that held our fragile love and
I still love the feel of the breeze on my face as I walk the midline of Route 139

Take Me Back

As I was digging through our "room of shame" last night, looking for my empty Christmas tubs, to FINALLY put away the tree, I happened upon one filled with some of my old stuff. Laying on top were 3 notebooks, first a small green journal sized one, the second a teal standard smead notebook and the third one covered with random magazine clippings that had been set into a collage on the cover. The teal and collage notebooks were full of "notes" that my best friend and I had written back and forth to each other throughout my sophmore year in HS. The smaller notebook was my writing journal from my creative writing class. It's chock full of a HS girl's best writing, poems, streams of thought, everything. What a time warp that ended up to be.



As I thumbed through the notebook, I could feel what it was like sitting in that class, one of my favorites, actually. We had a young teacher, who was always dressed in a slightly hippy manner, perfect for creative writing. I could remember what each exercise she had us do was as I turned the pages. There was the day we brought in music and just wrote down everything that came to mind as we listened, our What is project, where we wrote poems based on government, music and other general subjects. My favorite though, was our stream of consciousness. Anything and everything that you though you wrote, mine was 3 pages full. I wish I could go back to that class, I truly miss writing...

Toward the back of the notebook, I also found a poem I had written to Brian, long before he and I ever were a couple. It amazed me that even 11 years ago I must have known we were destined for each other. I'll post the poem up sometime later, but the feelings it brought back were amazing. I didn't say anything to him about how it made me feel, though I did have him read it. He didn't really react, but I don't know what I was expecting him to say or do anyway. It probably means more to me because I know what I felt when I wrote it and to him, they're just words.

I'm starting to be inspired to write again, I'm hoping I can take the time to do it. One of the assigments in the book had a note from my teacher that said "Jen, I expect great things from you. You have the desire to write, more than others...and I expect you to try and be published someday". Throughout life we wait to know that someone thinks we're good at what we're doing, I had it handed to me 11 years ago and didn't do anything with it. I was *going* to go to school for writing, I was just *going* to work for a year first and then go to college...somehow life got in the way of that. I can't go back and fix it and I may have to do some serious searching to find what was alive in me back then.

Gone but not forgotten

My husband's grandmother passed away last Friday. I was out of town when he called me, standing in the middle of a Kroger grocery store in Indiana to be exact. He wasn't going to call, but his brother (correctly) suggested that he should let me know, even if I was on "vacation" for the weekend. I took in the information, asked him a million times if he wanted me to come home and, after he assured me I should stay, put it away. I just shut it off in my head. I thought about it, but couldn't react to it. I went through the rest of the weekend, accomplishing what I was there to do, spend time with my friend who I don't see very often and finish my Bachelorette scrapbook.

On the drive home I thought about Grandma Porter, all of the times I got to spend with her, what a truly classy lady she was, how I always enjoyed her stories and how she always made me feel like I was family, even 6 years ago when I was B's "new" girlfriend. I still didn't react though, I just thought.

Her memorial service is tomorrow. Starting at 9am and going until 2:30pm. I'm nervous. I'm afraid the emotion that has been sitting in reserve will spill out and I'll be a big mess. I'm afraid that the things I haven't "dealt" with yet will flood over me and some one is going to have to mop me off the floor. I'm also afraid that this won't happen, I'll stay composed and the emotions will be held in reserve again.

I don't know how to cope with this one. I can still hear her voice telling stories in my head, almost as if she's right there next to me. I can see her face, and her wide smile. She had such a soothing tone, so soft spoken and so full of love. I keep feeling that if I had known the last time was the last, I would have given her a bigger, tighter goodbye hug.

Cross your fingers for me that I make it through tomorrow retaining some form of composure, but letting myself grieve too. I hope my husband can do the same, I don't think he's completely dealt with it either.

The Difference

Jenn: Some days I am reminded how much I truly love you...today is one of those days.

Brian: Oh yeah? Neat....