A Weekend In Montrose: Losing Ones Mind with Family

A weekend or so ago, I went with a bunch of my family to Montrose, Colorado. My Grandma has Alzheimers and even though most of us don't want to think of this: she isn't doing to well. I haven't seen this side of the family nearly as much as I'd like so I jumped on the chance of spending a few days with them.

Listening to John Mayer. Loudly.

My traveling, baby bump.

Alzheimers is a crazy, crazy disease. Seeing a family member go through that makes me wonder if losing my mind or my body first is better or not. That's not really something one wants to think about, but it feels very real to me lately. Seeing my grandma so frustrated because she can't communicate like she once did is tough. I can't even begin to fathom what it is like to literally lose your mind. Do you know? Is she aware? 

At least, I know with complete certainty, that she is surrounded by family and people that love her. This woman carries a legacy. She had 7 kids. She raised them as the strong woman I know she is. My grandpa is also one of the strongest individuals I've ever met. He loves her, even when she might not have any idea who he is, he loves her. He's there. He's taking care of her and himself the best that he can. That's love. 

My Grandpa Triplett

I understand that our lives do come to an end at one point or another. I just pray that when that time comes for me someday that I am surrounded by family, much like my grandma. 

In the end, family and God are really all you have. 

That is enough. 

Lists for Clarity

Don't get stuck. Move, travel, take a class, take a risk. Walk away, try something new. There is a season for wilderness and a season for settledness, and this is neither. This is a season about becoming. Don't lose yourself at happy hour, but don't lose yourself on the corporate ladder either. 

 Stop every once in a while and go out to coffee or climb in bed with your journal. Ask yourself some good questions like, Am I proud of the life I'm living? What have I tried this month? What have I learned about God this year? What parts of my childhood faith am I leaving behind, and what parts am I choosing to keep with me for this leg of the journey? Do the people I'm spending time with give me life, or make me feel small? Is there any brokenness in my life that's keeping me from moving forward?

From Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way 

Shauna Neiquist 

write a book. buy some house plants. have a massive garage sale. go to a farmer's market. walk to the grocery store. use natural cleaning products. revisit 26 things list. learn to mow the lawn. shop at thrift stores more often. cook dinner more. paint some walls. make curtains. bake bread. hang out with more women. plant garden. plants for porch. get out of debt. art and music room. actually follow my business dreams. new diet/gym 3 times a week. christmas cards this year. write more music. make jewelry. crockpot meals. work through sewing classes. create a business plan. etc. etc. etc. 

On this road trip, my mind was full of details. Lists. Dreams. As simple or as complicated as some of these are, putting them to paper brought so much clarity. There is much to do. 

Thoughts on Driving

Last week, we hit the road. No work for an entire week and the only thing in front of us were farms, the promise of BBQ from little hole in the wall places, and the realization that we didn't really have anything pulling us back to work. Paradise. 

I love road trips. I love the time that I get to think, to sort out all of things sitting dormant inside of me, and to dream about the details and future that I only get to grasp every once in a while when life slows down a bit and the office life isn't dragging me down. I was counting down to this trip for weeks, months. The countdown began somewhere around 80 days to go or so. I needed a vacation. We needed a vacation. 

We had one plan in mind: to visit this shop, where vintage dreams come true and where my creativity seemed to have a fire lit underneath it. 

Driving somewhere we've never been forces me to find some clarity. I wrote lists upon lists. Inspiration hit me like a freight train. After the last few months, I needed creativity to pulse through my veins once again. I needed to not sit at a desk for countless hours a day, all the while allowing my dreams to sit quietly next to me. 

This book challenged me to my core. 

It rained nearly most of our trip but I didn't mind. Rain has been a massive force in my life. It has washed me clean, metaphorically and literally, for many years when I lived in the northwest. It is the sign of creativity, a sort of nostalgic sigh of the life I once had and the life I now am blessed enough to live. 

Camping Thoughts

In four days we shall be camping out on a beach. No phones. No computers. No work. No worries. In honor of our excursion to relaxation, here are some pictures to help me look forward to our little trip away from the world. 

Seattle: Day Four (In Black and White)

Little words this evening. Seattle in black and white.

When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs.  When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.  

-Ansel Adams

Seattle: Day Three

I JUST REALIZED THIS IS MY 100th BLOG POST! Exciting!

Anyways....

Being in this city makes me realize just how much I miss this part of the country. You breathe a little easier (literally), the culture is rich with the bizarre and the out of the box, and there are a billion record stores in which I could drop entirely too much money on entirely too much vinyl; not to mention the fact that there is a good coffeehouse on nearly every corner that is just as unique as the city itself.

We began the day slowly with a french press and lounging around for a few hours. I rarely ever get the chance to just chill and rest, so those few hours were very welcomed and very needed. I tend to run at about a million miles an hour or more, depending on the week. Our lives are filled with band practices, photoshoots, church, work, etc, etc, etc. Our schedules carry on swiftly, usually far before us, to the point where I never feel like I can successfully catch up.

Vacation is needed. Rest is needed. That is why we are here.

We ventured out to a lovely shop called Cupcake Royale and indulged in a cupcake and a coffee.

We then found our way to probably two of the most glorious record shops I have stepped foot in. They were filled with people that actually seemed to love their jobs and were deeply passionate about vinyl. Can I own a store like that? Pretty please? We picked up “Heartbreaker” by Ryan Adams and “For Emma” by Bon Iver. Once we return home, our musical ears will thank us.

We just returned from Mars Hill Church and I feel encouraged and even more rejuvenated then when we walked in the doors.

I even got a new Bible. I have so many sitting upon myself that are falling apart, with binding falling out and covers missing; it was time. This one I am intensely excited about as well. It a “journal Bible” with sections on the side to write to my heart’s content. That is yet another reason why I love to buy books instead of borrow them: I mark them up like it’s nobodies business. That’s the way it should be. Every page you read becomes more of you and what you’ve drawn from each word and sentence.

Tomorrow, we are journeying to a Vintage Mall. I can hardly hold in my excitement. Tomorrow’s goal: find a typewriter.

I love this city.

Seattle Bound: Day Two

We have been on the road for what seems like an eternity today, yet an enjoyable one. After we ate a continental breakfast that was far from extraordinary and managed to leave our own pillows at the hotel, causing us to turn around again before we really even got started, we found ourselves once again on the road to the beautiful northwest.

It doesn’t quite feel like we’ve hit the northwest I know and love due to the fact the part of Washington we are currently driving through is almost as dry and brown as the state of Colorado from which we came. I firmly believe that the heaviness of excitement and nervousness will hit me once the scenery turns to the greenery that one can hardly see through to the other side. I pray for the rain that I once grew to love. It seems to wash everything clean; granting a new beginning every time the sun decides to peek through the blanket of clouds above. I used to thrive in that environment.I spent many hours writing, playing music, and sipping on one after another cups of coffee as the rain fell outside every evening. I discovered a lot about myself in those days.

I am known for bringing far too many books to read on road trips and jump due to the excitement of being bound to a car for hours and hours to consume another book that I’ve let gather dust on my nightstand at home. I just finished a book called, The Help. I highly recommend it. It is set in the late fifties-early sixties and is a novel regarding the time before and during the civil rights movement, told from multiple different points of view; all the way from a white writer to the maids that inhabit their daily lives. These women are daring and do the unthinkable: a white writer and a group of black women pen a book about the households they care for and the women the work for. I like the risk of it, the fact that these women saw the grave importance of the words on the pages of that book and dared to tell their story.

It makes me want to be a writer. At times I have a glorified image of a girl with large glasses hunched over a typewriter, next to a window looking over some grand city, with a cup of steaming coffee in her hand. She wakes early in the morning without even looking in the mirror to brush out the tangles in her hair and walks to her desk and sits. Then she writes. She just writes. For hours upon hours until the words suddenly start to make sense and connect to other words, forming sentences of thought and prose. She crafts her characters carefully yet daringly; praying that somehow they will tell the story they were created to tell. The next day, she gets up and does the same thing. She writes.

I realize that there is so much connected to that profession: deadlines and publishers, agents and rejected drafts; yet deep inside I want to keep my fantasy writer close, as if she is there to just faintly whisper in my ear every morning to just “....simply write...”

Truthfully, I don’t even know what I would write about. Maybe I should just take those words to heart at times.

Simply write.

“E.L Doctorow said once that ‘Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.’ You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I have ever heard.”

Anne Lamott

We will be in Seattle in about three hours. My heart is full of anticipation.

Until tomorrow...

Seattle Bound: Day 1

We are bound for the northwest. We are bound for the very place in which I discovered who I was and the place I am to hold in this world. Many days were spent learning, loosing, and learning how to love my surroundings and the people that inhabited them.

Currently we drive through Wyoming; a barren stretch of wind forsaken land and little gas stations that are just simple little dots on a map. As we get further and further away from Fort Collins, I am a swell of emotions. Much of my mind is directed back to my to do lists back home, all of my work responsibilities that will quickly show themselves the second my suitcase hits our doorstep at home. Every mile marker is an omen of the fact that I can let go of all of those things for ten days; ten glorious days.

When you travel, you have a destination in mind. Yet, part of the journey is letting go of your everyday with every mile and just allowing yourself to live and take in all of your surroundings. That is my goal for this trip. Life has taken us on a wild ride in these past few weeks. I had a medical scare that reared its ugly head into our lives. My beloved neon completely broke down and now Firestone has just given a hefty amount of money to get the poor little thing working again. Work has been crazy, each of us logging too many hours.

But, here I sit facing vacation. Finally. It felt like this day would never come and that I would constantly be glued to my office chair staring at spreadsheets and dealing with employees; that the dishes would continue to pile up and the laundry basket would just continue to overthrow.

This is a swift journey now into my past, which always has its own worries and surprises with it. I welcome the stretching. I ached through that long gone season of my life and now that I dwell on the other side, I find that I have a much greater appreciation for all of the breaking and learning. Truthfully, I wouldn’t be sitting in a car with the amazing man I love, if I hadn’t gone through that season. Those seasons are the ones that shape us, even through the hurt and poor decision making. That season birthed in me so many things I didn’t even know existed.

So, without further adue, Hello Wyoming. As much as I’m surprised to say this, it’s good to see you.

But We Are Still Young......

I’m moving slowly today. My only desire is to go back and crawl under my covers and neglect the piles of dishes in the sink and the pile of laundry in the basement.

I find contentment in the mug of french press sitting next me and the warm weather sits upon my skin like a blanket. I need to do something today. To be productive. My infamous to do list is staring me down as I type this and each box is left unchecked and unnoticed. Those boxes taunt me with the knowledge of the satisfaction I find as I mark each one off. I find it is easier to get things done when I find even the slightest satisfaction in marking off a box, even if it only for finishing a load of laundry or clearing off the countertops in my kitchen.

I need a vacation. We need to get way. I want to feel the air upon my face as the mile markers pass us by. To not know fully of our destination but live in the journey of the unknown. I long for the disgusting road stops along the way, the feeling of the salty ocean mist upon my eye lashes, the last sip of the espresso from the city in which I came from, the place in which my soul died away for that period of time.

Routine is the word that sits sickly upon my tongue and heart this morning. My list is filled with all of the grown up things that grown ups do. So many times I feel as if I’m not getting anywhere, just simple passing through one day onto the next. Our weeks fly by us quicker than we are able to take our next breath.

The house behind us is full of children whining and screaming this morning. Their cries at each other make me thankful that we haven’t started that process yet, the process of beginning a family. At times I feel like I’m ready. The maternal bug rears its life changing head as I am dreaming of touring and getting away. Once children come, those dreams will fall away, maybe never to be seen again. I fear that those last statements drip of selfishness, but still we are young.

But we are still young.

Within that statement I will find hope today. Within a month or so, we will be on the road, even if it is for a week. I pray that I can make it til then, before the get up, grab some coffee, go to work, come home from work, have band practice, pick up the house, read a book, go to sleep routine overtakes all of us.

I’m longing for a good adventure. It couldn’t come soon enough.