the last decade 00 - 09

New Years Eve '00 - I spent it with friends at Pere's house. We weren't dating yet but by March we were together.

In 2001 Pere and I were living in Virginia. I was doing copy writing and tech writing. I gave up my job to become a stay-at-home mom when we had our miracle baby, our precious Zoe.

In 2002 we were living in Los Angeles. Over the next six years we lived in the city, by the beach in Oxnard, on the grounds of what used to be the Camarillo State Mental Asylum (now it is a University), and in The Valley.

In 2003 and 2004 we lived a block from the beach and on a water channel and Zoe and I spent many afternoons watching the sunset over the water. The pace was slow and the living was easy.

2003 was when I found Hoagies Gifted and realized what my problem was. ;)

Summer of 04 I bought the bookstore and named it Book Nation. Do you remember it Wendy? Did I still have the bookstore when we met?

Zoe tried out a year of preK and really liked it. Except for that mean faced girl... That was her only foray into a school setting. It wasn't one of those academic preschools but one where they sing songs and bake and take nature walks, etc.

In 2005 I got Zoe tested, we were thinking about sending her a the school for Highly Gifted children. The tester recommended her for Davidson and we realized that school wasn't going to be a good fit.

I also sold the bookstore in 2005. When I was working I felt like I was a bad mom and when I was with Zoe I felt like I was not getting enough work down. I realized that having a start up retail store that is open 7 days a week and trying to homeschool a PG four year old was more than I could handle.

2006 we moved to The Valley and made a lot of new friends. We went to our first Davidson Gathering and made even more wonderful friends. Zoe turned five and I started blogging.

I finished Nanowrimo and wrote my first book!

The highlight of 2006 was vacationing in Paris and Antibe, France. It was the trip of a lifetime!

Zoe started acting and by Jan 07 she had been in 2 commericals, a print ad and two voice overs.


2007 we moved again, this time to the Midwest. We bought a beautiful house in a historic neighborhood, one block away from my mother to the west of me and one block away from my older sister to the east. A couple months later my oldest niece and her son came to live in our little Midwest town too.

With my mother's help I made our first Halloween party. We celebrated Thanksgiving at our house and I had my mother, father, sister, BIL, two nephews and several other family members filling up my new big dining room. That Thanksgiving was also our first snow.

07 was the first Christmas with my family altogether. But already the cracks were starting to show.

In 2008 my mother wouldn't stay in town to celebrate Zoe's birthday. In May, on Mother's Day in fact I remember sobbing in the shower and wondering why, Why, WHY did I ever move to live near my family. Mother's Day is when it all started to go bad, and it went bad very quickly.

In September I confronted my mother (first time in my life) and was painfully punished for stepping out of line.

September 08 - July 09 - Those 11 months were very dark times but I was changing for the better almost everyday. It was struggle. It still is. But I have become much more the person I want to be.

I went No Contact with my mom when she left town Nov '08. I broke No Contact a few times since then. No Contact has lead to me not being able to talk to or see my step-father. One casualty I should have predicted. My mother is the gatekeeper. Since then I have also gone No Contact with my sister.

The official decision for total NC came in the summer of '09 and by that time I had worked through most of my situational depression. I realized at some point that I was able to stop obsessively thinking about them and start thinking about my future.

In 2009 I started writing the novel that I have been developing since 2003. I started running. I started protecting my time and my feelings. I stopped having time and patience and endless amounts of understanding and forgiveness for people that just weren't going to change.

Fall of 2009 I was finding my happy self again. I, not only came out from under a cloud of grief over losing my mother, I also came out from the cloudy thinking she had oppressed me under for 36 years. I saw that I was lovable and realized the goals I had gone to therapy for.

So 2010... On New Years Eve I was driving to Chicago and thinking. Thinking, that is what I always do. I am always analyzing, picking apart, wondering, theorizing, predicting, and fixing. I ask a lot of questions and diligently find the answers.

But I realized one thing I rarely ask is "What do I want?" Really, I don't. I ask "How should this be? 'What would make this better? "What is the right thing to do?" "What do I believe about this and given that what is my next step?" and "Why would someone do something like that?"

But I never ask the simple question 'What do I want?" And it is simple. At least the answer is.

What do I want?

I want to love my husband. I want to treat him well so that he knows I love him.
I want to spend time with my daughter and give her a joyful childhood. I want to share life with her while I still can.
I want to spend time with good people.
I want alone time to write my book.

When I ask that question and listen to the answer I find that things can be much simpler than I have ever allowed them to be.

So, my resolution is to remember to ask myself what I want. It is such a simple question. I am kind of shocked I never really thought to ask myself that before. It is simple question but it is a big one.