She says it way better than I could, everything that is in my head at the moment, minus the lunch, so go check it out. Meanwhile, I will elaborate, all in the fullness of time.

I'm having lunch with a girlfriend of mine today who freely admits that when it comes to talking about what's going on with our kids, well, it's all about us. Since Callum started Kindergarten, I have worked at his school, so this year has been a considerable switch for both of us. I still work at his old school, in more of a freelance-consulting type of role, and so far that seems to have worked out quite well. I'm glad. Glad to still be there and part of things. I care for it quite deeply, and I care very much for so many of the people there. So while I'm still working for them, it's primarily from home now, and I go to campus about once a week or so for some meetings and to touch base. Other than that, I'm moving into more freelance writing projects, and my hope is to keep this moving along into a heavy part-time workload. It's a dream come true, really. Now for that $60,000 a year. Bwa-ha-ha!!

I like working at home. A lot. But it took some adjusting. In the first days I was reminded a bit of my early weeks at home by myself after Callum started preschool. I'd take a pile of books and move them from one table to another because I simply didn't know what to do with myself.

And as you can see, the Blue Rain Room looks quite different. When school started, I was juggling three big projects so I shoved things around and threw my laptop up there and started working away. I'm still juggling projects, and the disorder is starting to wear on me. I'd like to take some time to have a cup full of newly sharpened pencils and a stack of unopened postit notes. While it's hard for me to maintain, I crave order, and the weight of unpacked boxes from my old office is pressing down on me like a cement block. Unfortunately when I do have the time, I do something else with it instead. But that is a story for another day.

So, the Blue Rain Room is no longer a craft room, and I'm mostly okay with that. I think I'm an indifferent crafter at best. Maybe indifferent is the wrong word. I'm just not very good at it. If you look closely at the photo above, you can see the bottoms of some cones of yarn...I am still knitting. But I am not like these other wonderful ladies. Amanda, Blair, Alicia. I'm just not, and that's okay. I want to work on my house; I want to take care of my family; I want to take photos and I want to write. Right now I'm learning how to juggle all of that. (If I could just get things cleaned up in there!)

And I'm learning how to juggle all that and juggle working for new people and in new places with little dogs resting their heads at my feet (and barking their dang fool heads off at every leaf drop outside). I'm learning how to juggle when to shower and when to exercise and when to leave to pick up Callum on normal and early dismissal days. I'm learning how to juggle the homework train and the dinner train and the after school activity train. The rain was good for me, and it's cooler now. Fall is good for me too.

Where did I read it, that 80% of what we worry about never comes true? The thing I grieved the most last year as we said good-bye to Callum's old school was saying good-bye to our proximity to each other. Like I said before, since he first really started his schooling we were in the same place. We did a good job, I think, balancing it. I tried very hard to walk the tightrope of physically being there, but not being there too much. A kid needs his own space. But it was such a joy for me to look out my window and see him playing, full stop at recess or in the gym in PE. When I'd pass him in the hall and he'd barely say, "Hi Momma," I knew we were getting it right." There were some tears from both of us when we thought about those moments going away. But you know what? It's all good. We made this decision partly knowing it was time to move on. Time for Callum to really have his own space. And now, for me the joy comes in hearing him tell the story of his day, not just in witnessing it.

It's all good.

but finally it's raining.

A sad casualty of my headaches has been my camera. It's sat dormant, gathering dust in my camera bag, much like my creative spirit has been gathering dust in my mind and heart. My mind is cobwebby, but we're coming back. Slowly shaking out the wrinkles.

Rain helps. I'm feeling washed clean like our gutters and our walks and our little dogs' paws. We had the windows open Sunday night on our first cool day after nearly a week of ninety degree temperatures. Unexpected thunder sent the kids scurrying inside, and after that, the rain came. While I was cooking dinner I kept hearing this odd, scrabbling noise. Our dogs are convinced that there's something under the house, and all that noise had me convinced that there was something in the house! It took walking to the living room and all those open windows for me to realize it was the swish of car tires on rain-slick streets. Unfamiliar and most welcome after so many dry weeks.

The First Rain by Yehuda Amichai

The first rain reminds me
Of the rising summer dust.
The rain doesn't remember the rain of yesteryear.
A year is a trained beast with no memories.
Soon you will again wear your harnesses,
Beautiful and embroidered, to hold
Sheer stockings: you
Mare and harnesser in one body.

The white panic of soft flesh
In the panic of a sudden vision
Of ancient saints.

We're due for more over the next several days, and I'm so glad. Wash clean my heart, dear rain. Erase the dust motes from my mind and bring clarity to my days to come.

Well, I pretty much lost my shit in the Harris Teeter over the weekend. It's these headaches. I've hit a point where I feel like I just can't take another step in the pain fog I have been moving in. Some woman was mean to me in the parking lot, and what she did was totally irrelevant and ridiculous (and I was right by the way), but it hit me in that soft underbelly of vulnerability that I suspect we all have. Mine is particularly exposed these days. I could feel the tears start up almost instantly as I stuffed my reusable bags into the seat of the shopping cart, and my first thought was, "Well I haven't had a good cry in awhile."

My second thought was of course, "Oh please, not here."

I tried to muster on for a bit. Hoping that concentrating on what beer to get for Callum's cupcake party (yeah, you read that right) would push the tears back to a manageable place. (Just get in the car. Just get in the car. Just get in the car.). It didn't work. I looked at my half-full cart, knew that I couldn't face the woman behind the deli counter to order Neel's sandwich, and I had to get out of there. 

Neel came to the drive way to help me bring in the groceries that weren't there, and as I sat there and sobbed, I felt like such a... loser. You know things aren't going well when your husband doesn't have shorts to wear to work because you haven't been able to do the laundry (Who among you is going to say, "Poor baby, put on some long pants?"). Or you don't have bread for toast or sandwiches because you can't take the five minutes to fill the bread machine? Or your son says, "I really hope you don't have a headache on my birthday." Aw man. I do not like it that the first question that Callum asks when he sees me is, "Do you have a headache?" These days, the answer is almost always yes.

I am behind in my work. I am behind in caring for my house. I am behind in loving my family. Callum's couldn't-be-easier-cornhole-in-the-frontyard-neighborhood-party felt nearly insurmountable to me because everything feels nearly insurmountable to me these days. That, almost more than the pain, is the hardest part of migraines, the sense of despair...the feeling that you'll never be able to do anything again. Ever.

So I'm back on the meds. This is some strong medication. You have to inch up on these things. Ease your body into them. No instant results. The past two days have not been pain free, but they've each had a few hours that were pain free. Progress, yes. Has the corner been turned? I hope so.

It's the last week of summer vacation, so I'll probably be scarce around these parts for the next little bit. Here's a quick list of things I'm loving...and not these days.

Loving:
1. Preseason Football
2. ESPN commercials for preseason football
3. Babies
4. Board games
5. Regular rain in the forecast
6. Making borscht with Callum for the third summer in a row (see our beet-stained hands?)
7. The term "Jackwagon"
8. Our CSA

Not so much with the loving:
1. Anxiety
2. Still-muggy mornings
3. Little League World Series (They're little kids! I hate it when someone loses!)
4. Still with the headaches
5. Yale University (Just kidding. Sort of. Long story.)
6. Jackwagons. You know who you are (not really), and you don't read this blog.

So there you have it. A little snapshot of where things stand around here. Peace out

I had my first migraine when I was fourteen. I have such odd recollections of that experience. I was at school, a freshman in high school. I would not consider my high school warm or nurturing. Oddly enough, the gym was where you could find some of the warmest people in that place. It was true for me that day at least.

The sun was bright. The room was bright. The wall was cold when I leaned against it. It was a measure of how awful I felt when I let our P.E. teacher (a wonderful, warm woman who died of cancer within a couple of years of my knowing her) drive me home. It was only five or six blocks, and I don't like asking for help. She always called me Julie after that, and I never had the heart (or confidence) to correct her. I still have trouble with that.

Since that day 26 years ago, I've had headaches. Not always migraines, but headaches. There have been periods of my life that have been rather blissfully pain free. And there have been periods that have not. These things come in cycles, I suppose.

This summer it feels as if I've had a headache or a migraine every day.

Every.

Day.

Everyday.

Not blissfully pain free.

It's been a migraine summer. I'm tired of it. What can I say? My family is tired of it too. Who can blame them? On our drive back from New York, I had one of the worst migraines I've had in years. Trapped in the car, all I could do was rest my head on Callum's blanket and blast the a.c. vents on my body full force. Poor Neel spent the drive dealing with weather and hoping to come across an Urgent Care or ER somewhere along the way. I was hoping we would too. Note to self: the Eastern Shore of VA is NOT the place to look for a ER in the dark. During a storm. Not so much.

I have medication that I take when I'm having a headache, and it mostly works. I've been on a medication that works pretty darn well at preventing them. I'm not currently taking it because I don't love the side effects. Wondering though, if it might be time to reconsider.

Maybe.

I do live in my head too much. I think it's safer to be stuck in there than to venture forth, I suppose. I've had a lot in there to keep me company too. Thinking about writing. Thinking about photography. Thinking about this blog. I've been wanting a project, a way to focus both the writing and the photography, but I'm spending a lot of time looking around for just the right project. There are so many options. Habit, 365, 100 photos. I start to look, to dip a toe and then I get scared and fall back to trolling photography blogs. Safer to sink into the work of someone else than to try to focus my own, I suppose.

The woman who's been teaching the few photography classes I've taken this year pointed us to this blog. I love it. David's posts really resonate with me, and he seems to be speaking what I feel of late. The title of this post is a play on two of his recent articles. Clearly a brilliant photographer, but a gifted writer as well, what he shoots and what he says stretches me. I like that, and I need it too.

So, as David points out, you just need to begin. Worrying overmuch about what kind of project to do is merely a way to keep you from actually doing. 

But what to do?

What to do?

I'm wondering if it's time to shift things around in the Blue Rain Room.

I'm wondering what kind of photography project to do.

I'm wondering how to jump in and start writing again.

A couple of times now, I've mentioned to my family about making a shift to Blue Rain Room. When I do,  I get a chorus of "No!" And I hate the idea of saying good bye to my little blog. But things are changing. I've changed in the nearly four years since I started what was meant to be primarily a crafting blog. I don't craft as much. The actual literal Blue Rain Room is piled overflowing with yarn and fabric and things needing to be put away and ironed. I'm doing different things now. I do take a lot of pictures. When people ask me about my blog, I say that it's a testimony to my family and our life together. It's not about what I just knit or that quilt I still need to finish. My family is the most important thing. While I don't think that all that many people visit this space, well, it means a lot to me.

Do I still want to keep telling the story of my family? Well, yes, I do. Am I ready for that story to be a part of something more? Well, yeah. I think I'm ready for that too.

Like I said, what to do?