Birthday Release & Receive

 Baggage I'm ready to leave behind:

- That I'm the 'middle kid' at work

- That I am not good enough and nothing I do will ever be

- That I don't spend enough time with my family

- That I can't keep up with the endless mountain of work at work

- That I drop the ball sometimes - doctor's appointments, kids stuff, etc.

- Being constantly overwhelmed and impatient for things to 'get better'

- That I'm trapped

**These things are not coming with me**

What I want to invite in:

- Peace

- Joy in the moment

- Balance

- Organization in all things

- Fun

- Love

- More bucket list

2025 Year In Review

Totally stealing this from Bridget Jones; here goes my 2025 year in review, and a few hopes (not resolutions) for 2026.

2025 Year In Review:

- Sports seasons survived:  3

- Church Youth conferences, other trips & mission trips led/organized:  4

- Son's Rock Concerts attended:  2

- Father-Daughter dances organized: 1

- Races Run:  5

- Races 'placed':  1 (3rd for age group!)

- Bones broken:  0  (this is HUGE!)

- Spring Break trips organized/taken:  1

- Poker Nights:  2-3 (who's counting)

- Kid Musicals seen live:  1 (it was Dogman, it was not worth it)

- 'Cons' attended:  1 (GalaxyCon - never again, it has grown from off beat campy to out of control in RVA)

- Kid Showcases attended:  2-3 (again, who's counting)

- Sorority events attended:  1 (this is up from a running 0 for the last 20 years!)

- Friend brunches:  6

- White House Tours:  1

- Moving a parent from a Nursing Home to Assisted Living:  1

- Commutes to NoVA for work:  countless

- Kid braces removed:  1 (Elsa)

- Kid teeth broken:  2 (Alton)

- Best Friend visits:  2

- Rock bands joined:  1

- Public concerts with  rock band:  3

- Sleepovers survived:  5

- Jobs switched:  1

- Kid ADHD heavy treatment entered:  1

- Pumpkin patch trips:  1

- Childhood houses totally cleaned out:  1

- Childhood houses sold:  1

- Childhood house lawn mowing over the summer:  Countless

- Parental finances put in order:  1

- Kid school switches:  1

- Bethlehem walks survived:  1

- Flu survived:  1

- Size of team at work:  Doubled

2026 Hopes (spoiler alert - it's all about making sense of the aftermath of my mother's death, my father's new stabilized state, and tending to all of the things I have neglected since 2023)

- Make sense of our house -- organize it

- Clean out  my Dad's storage unit

- Structure and organize team at work; clear trade offs for new work

- Successfully move my son to a different school

- Spend less money but still make memories with the fam

- Record with the band at a studio, more public appearances that aren't part of another band

- Write more blogs/ start the book I have in mind

- Actually figure out my stupid genealogy

- Do all the health things - doctor's visits, screenings, etc.

- Lose weight

- Lose the baggage - family, limiting beliefs, parental expectations, work-life balance

- BALANCE

- Time to process, think, reflect, and rest

Drudging my Grudges

My best friend recently got engaged, and her engagement and overall story inspired me to blog for the first time in about 5 years (thanks to having 2 kids!) about what came up for me reminiscing on my own engagement/marriage.  Unfortunately, the topic of grudges came to mind given some recent soul-searching and personal growth.


Grudge comes from the now dead Middle English word "grutch," which meant "to complain or grumble."

There is a fine line between 'holding a grudge' and forgiving (but not forgetting) past  wrongs, as I recently learned when listening to a KERA Think podcast on Sophie Hannah's book "How to Hold a Grudge."  I realized recently that my fine line has been something I have not acknowledged exists nor is it something I've consciously considered.

So, what is my fine line?

Let's go back in time...

Waaaaaaaaay back in the day (we're talking 14-15 years ago), I was dating my husband.  I lived in Northern Virginia commuting to DC for work, and my boyfriend at the time lived and worked in Richmond (I did my best effort to find a job after graduation in the same town, but alas, that was not in the cards). 

We alternated weekends who would go to who's place to hang.  We had been dating almost 4 years (2 in college, 2 out) when we started talking marriage, rings, moving, etc.  He made it clear he was not going to move or switch jobs and DC was not for him.  I made it clear I was not moving or switching jobs unless we were engaged.  Friends started pressing the issue.  "Why don't you have a ring"  "If he loved you he would have proposed by now"  You know, all of the usual doubters who have an opinion on a relationship they're not even in.

Right around our 4-year anniversary, he surprised me in NoVA and proposed.   (Ironically, I was planning to break up with him if this wasn't going to happen and had planned to do so pretty much that same night.)  I said yes, and the rest should have been history.

Except, it wasn't.  Let's fast forward a few years...

I married him.  I found a job in Richmond, I gave up a job I loved, working for a company I loved, and I gave up the life I had made - friends and all - to start over in Richmond.  I moved in to HIS place, not one we had jointly moved into together.  For a long time, it didn't feel like I had any friends of my own that I hadn't met through my soon-to-be husband.  Our church was his, family hangouts were dominated by his extensive family.  Every time we met up anywhere, he would name where we were going and just assume I knew where that was (this was back in the days of Mapquest) and didn't understand why I just wouldn't magically know what he meant by "Boulevard".

Subconsciously, I kept score, but consciously, I had no awareness I was doing it.  My judgment:  I had given up so much I loved for 'us' and he had not.  He hadn't had to do anything for 'us' except buy a ring and tolerate my presence and my stuff in his townhouse. 

So, I kept score.  I didn't even realize I was keeping score but I was.

From the beginning, I have had an underlying resentment of what I gave up and what I have had to do "unsupported" since (orchestrate our house sale and move, grow and bear children, babies not sleeping, career growth, working mom mental load) that plays out in very subtle ways that are pervasive in our daily life.  One might say I recently became aware to a more realistic realization of our daily existence.

Every time he had a meeting after work vs. every time I did.

Every time he had an out of town conference vs. every time I did.

Every time he went out with friends vs. every time I did.

Every time I cleaned the house or did a chore vs. every time he did.

Every time he did something with just the kids vs. every time I did.

You get the picture.  I was keeping score on who was giving up more for 'us'.

It was eating away at our significant interactions, and exploding in some pretty dramatic ways that were unexpected.  For example, when he went to an all-day conference one Saturday  and our then 2-year old son had been relentlessly whiny all day.  I practically had a nervous breakdown when he came home and we had a huge fight on our front lawn.  Not our best moment.

 And then I realized something -- I was keeping score.

That simple realization, that ah-ha moment....didn't necessarily change everything, but definitely put things into perspective.  Another big ah-ha moment was hearing my boss describe his struggles with his wife when he was my age and his kids were my kids' ages.  "Ahhhh, you're at the age where each person in the relationship doesn't think the other is pulling their weight."

*And there you have it*

Needless to say, I have now realized what I was doing and also realized where we are in this stage of life.  We're both trying to survive and he likely has similar feelings about me.  I strive to not keep score and our kids are finally getting to the age where they're slightly more independent and the burden is not as great on one parent vs the other.

Here's to awareness and trying to overcome the shortfalls we know about!

It's All About Timing

Sometimes in life, the timing has to be right.  I took a 'StrenghtsFinder 2.0' test this afternoon, and one of my 'strengths' is Adaptability -- apparently I like to live in the moment, rather than planning too much for the future.

At first, I totally thought the results wouldn't reflect me...but they actually did (after a series of choices for which I had no clear preference).  And at this point in my life, I actually embrace living in the moment much more than I ever have before.  I used to be one of those people who experienced great angst over uncertainty in my life (even though I have very little control over anything), and so was also anxious to stick as much to a plan as possible.  This annoyed my then-boyfriend now-husband to no end (still does).  I still kind of am that way, but am much more accepting of unanticipated turns in the road than I used to be.

Over the last few years, I started to think the pendulum had swung too far the other way because a lot of my peers at work had '5 year plans'.  I never could make myself come up with one, because I think that sort of spoils the fun in life a bit.  There's only so much influence I can exert on my future.  Yes, I can take that photography class and keep at it.  Yes, I can volunteer to play guitar at my church and keep that up.But at the end of the day, it's also just as much about the timing being right and the right opportunities presenting themselves that lead to a seize the moment kind of thing.  I love that.  There's nothing better than something completely unexpected and awesome coming together because of a complete confluence of factors that just makes something wonderful happen!

I just came to this realization while watching CBS News Sunday Morning.  They had a piece on the coming back together of No Doubt.  I remember loving them when I was a teenager, and listening to their songs again literally makes me that age again, with all of the drama and angst that went with it.  I'm not quite as enthralled as I used to be, but it does take me back.  As I was watching, I realized that they probably split up because they were at different places in their lives.  Two band members wanted to keep going, one band member wanted to pursue his golf career, and Gwen Stefani went solo and started 3 clothing lines.  The timing in their own lives changed their minds about being in the band.  Ultimately, after 8 years, everyone had kids.  And now, they're getting back together.  The timing changed their minds. They were again probably back on similar life paths and that made the band make sense to them again.

I do feel like I'm blathering here a bit, but I think sometimes we don't give our instincts enough credit.  That we second guess ourselves unnecessarily, and in so doing fail to realize what's right in front of us and how awesome it would be to just seize the moment for good or bad.  Because if we didn't realize the perfection of the present moment, we would also fail to recognize the potential for greatness it possesses.

So go out there and do the thing that scares you.  Be that guy/girl.  Ask them out.  Sell yourself into a job.  Reconcile that relationship.  Bare your soul.  Admit your longings.  Live your life and take the good and the bad.  The timing is now.

Papa

There are three distinct memories I have of my grandfather.

"Let's go out on the back porch for a drinky-poo and a little discussion."

My grandfather thought this was the most hilarious thing to come out of anyone's mouth, so the fact that it came out of mine at the age of 7 was just fuel on the fire. From that day on, our tradition was to spend our Saturday afternoons just before dinner on his back porch with our drinky-poos and talking the afternoon away. (And, no, there was no 'poo' in the drink....just alcohol in his, and soda in mine.) I don't know why we had so much to discuss, and I didn't know it would mean more to me later than it did at the time.


"Over-over-down-down."

Again, at the age of 7 I still had not mastered the fine art of shoelace tying. Much like bike riding, it remained an elusive skill that everyone else knew the 'secret' to, except for me. The shoes were my first lace-up shoes, and they were Keds that had pink and green flowers all over them. I thought they were the coolest shoes that ever existed, and I certainly wasn't going to not wear them just because I was a shoelace 'tard. When Papa found out that I STILL didn't know how to tie my shoes and was wearing the ugliest Velcro shoes EVER (once you got to the bigger sizes in Velcro shoes, your choices were limited to ugly...and ass ugly), he took matters into his own hands. That day we had a drinky-poo and a little shoelace tying intervention.


"Laura, something's wrong with Papa."

I LOVED my grandfather. We were pals. We went for walks around his neighborhood. He bought me my first bike, and although I taught myself how to ride it once we had hauled it from Baltimore to Fredericksburg, it ranked up there among those life events that fathers just do. He was my second father, the one that picked up the slack when mine was too tired from working, grad school, and Reserves.

So, when my grandfather could no longer mask his Alzheimer's with silence, pretending to know what was going on, or drinking...our family mourned...no one more than my mother. He had been everything to her, a father to me, and provider to us all. We entered into unchartered territory - mourning a loss that was unseen. It's grief that is not obvious, a grief that hides behind closed doors. You're forced to leave the person you knew behind and live with the person your loved one will become. 

The thing no one tells you about Alzheimer's is that it robs you of a 'normal' and quick grieving process once your loved one is gone.  It takes almost as long to grieve for their true loss as it did for them to degrade into mental oblivion - very slowly.  Rather than a ripped band-aid, you're forced to slowly rip it...hair by hair.  Your memories become as those who have Alzheimer's - foggy and from long ago, since it's been so long since you made any ones you'd like to keep. 

Papa is hard for me to carry around with me.  He lives within me, but as the grandfather I knew until I was 18 rather than the one from 14 years later.  He doesn't visit me in my dreams, and my soul does not seek him out - and that's the real tragedy.

Hello, World!

The time had come, and it seemed impossible to believe the moment had arrived...it was time for us to leave the confines of the hospital and venture out into the 'real' world with its latest addition, our new baby girl.

I had been delaying/denying/postponing this moment for quite some time already. I had secretly been telling myself that as long as we hadn't left the hospital, we weren't *really* parents yet. We weren't really responsible for this little life, and all of the ups & downs it would have on its (her - what a hard concept to get used to) journey.

It took Russ several trips out to the car to get everything (hospital bags, tons of flowers and gifts, etc.) to fit. Meanwhile, I wanted some help breastfeeding one last time before leaving...so, that was another half-hour spent in our hospital room. I loved my nurse, Connie, and I loved having support. I loved being in denial that I would have to leave this safe place and care for our daughter...all...by...myself (well, not for the first week - but solo thereafter). The thought scared me shitless.

And then, as the hospital volunteer helped me into the wheelchair (I thought I wouldn't need it, but it was exhausting just walking down the hall to the ward's kitchen!), and handed me our daughter...the waterworks commenced despite my best efforts to pretend like everything was fine. I was spun around, holding our little baby girl who was staring up at me, and we were off to see the world. Her new eyes were full of wonder and confusion, while my not-so-new eyes were made new by the whole experience.

Russ was well ahead of us to gather the car and wheel around to the hospital entrance. It was just me, Elsa, and the volunteer. As the flourescent lights and shiny tiles flew by, one by one, I knew we were getting ever closer to our final destination - the real world. I had entered the hospital a pregnant, in labor, childless person...full of hopes and dreams for delivering the child inside of me. This wheelchair ride marked the end of the Introduction to our journey into parenthood. The little person inside of me had made her entrance into the world, and for better or worse, we would be in for a long and exciting ride for the rest of our lives.

The real reason for the waterworks? I could protect Elsa while she was inside of me, and I could protect her (though not as well) while we were still in the hospital...but protecting her essence, her innocence, once we had left those safe confines...that will be the hardest job I'll ever have.