Taking "be-ing" time...

The last several days have been difficult.  It seems that graduating from college is rather like coming home from a long, long, grueling travel.  That's it!  I feel like Bilbo coming home from his adventures with the Dwarves.  That must have been quite an odd thing for him if you pause and think about it.  He had gone from this quiet person who was more concerned with a good bite with tea, checking for his daily post, and the perfect bowl of pipeweed than anything else.  He is then swept away without so much as a pocket handkerchief, the put into danger, adventure, foreign lands.  He fights for his life.
Cornish isn't quite that crazy in the adventure that is the journey to a BFA however the bewilderment of finally being done must be quite the same.  I haven't the foggiest idea of what to DO with myself.  Obviously, I'm still working at my dear little theatre, but there is all this time to be accounted for.  I can finish knitting and sewing projects that have languished for months, and years.  I could spend all day watching movies and no one will get mad at me.  There is no more homework.  It's utterly baffling.
I have been out of sorts due to this change; crying spells, poor sleep, etc.  Sweet and kind friends remind me that this is okay.  There is no right or wrong way to feel about graduating college.  I am pleased to have finally accomplished this goal, but never really considered how it might feel.  You imagine it when you first start out, how the end goal will feel.  Ultimately it feels so very far away.  And it many ways, it is.  Four years away.  Before you know it, before you have time to turn around and draw a breath, there you are, standing at the cross roads seeking a new direction to turn.
Much of my life will remain the same.  I'm living in the same place, loving the same man, working at the same job.  Only there is more space for breathing, and feeling human, and doing life things.  If I sit down and start thinking about all of them, it gets a bit overwhelming, so I have compromised with myself.  One simple, super easy list each day.  Something out of the house, something around the house, something so easy you can't help but accomplish it.  When it's done, that's all one needs to do. Nothing more, nothing less.  Breathing, just allowing myself time to be.  Organising, ordering, cleaning, and arranging.  Little silly things that give me peace of mind and help me remember who I am.  

Sunlight through Fog

Today Seattle is covered in fog.  The air hints of the fall crispness yet to come.  Weather like this makes me reflect on life, not really sure why, but it does.  This September will be the last time I go to college.  It will be my last orientation, my last few classes, the last time I get grades.  I don't know quite how to feel about it.  Certainly there is the feeling of elation, I'm finally going to get that pretty piece of paper with some calligraphy on it that tells the world I have spend over $90,000 and am now a completely qualified human being.  Then there is the apprehension.  How am I going to make a living?  How am I going to afford anything after this?  I need a car, and insurance for that.  I need a heart monitor, and insurance for that.  The list is endless.  I know I will make it all work out, I always do.  I just have to sit a worry for a spell first.
When one is a child, we spend all our time wishing we were older, bigger, stronger, faster.  Wishing ourselves into adulthood.  When one is an adult, you wish life were slower, simpler, quieter.  Wishing ourselves back to the peaceful simplicity that is most childhoods.  You don't worry about repaying your college debt, or buying a house.  These things simply are there for you.  It is the beautiful, dreadful thing of being responsible.  Or worrying over where the money is going to come from to pay for this or that.  You can sit around wishing your whole life away.
I'm not wishing I was a child any more, nor am I wishing away being an adult.  Today I do wish I knew what the future held.  I wish I could peer into it's depths and know where I'm going next or what I am doing after this chapter.  But then, what fun would life be if we knew everything to come?  Yeah, we might be able to be more prepared or something, but still.  You'd end up dreading things rather than being elated to have them.

So I sit at my desk and watch the crows quibbling on the rooftops and I reflect on where  I have come from and where I want to go.  I consider all of the ways to make the future my reality.  

Morrison - Part Two

The rest of our days consisted of cleaning out all of the places we could find (or think of) in the attic, basement, second & first floors.  Up around 7:30 and in bed sometime around 1:30 am because of the heat.  Work until it was time for lunch and giggle at how we were all eating like farmhands.  Work makes you hungry!  In between cleaning were moments of beautiful discovery, such as this letter from Levi Handford dated September 14th, 1795.  1795 people!!  That is the oldest thing I have ever held in my two (clean *ahem*) hands.  Wowza.

Enormous Ledgers 

(It was as big as a two-year old child!)

Family photos & tintypes

Sunday we went to church.  My mom and I attended the Presbyterian church and then walked over to Ann & Aunt Marion's to have cake and coffee.

The County Farm Bureau was once the Fallout Shelter

We think it's very cute that Ann attends the Church of St. Anne.

Waiting in the beautiful garden beside St. Anne's.

After church there was a jaunt to the Morrison Museum where bits of family history can be found such as this High School portrait of Aunt Marion.

The football team from 1915 and a Shia Lebeouf look-a-like!

I put coins on the rail road tracks.  I know you're not supposed to do that, but when in Morrison, do as the Wildi girls do.  It's a rite of passage.

Great Grandpa Carl's work room in the basement.

Tired and happy toes at the end of a long, good day!

Dear Scott.  This was shot by a family member and stuffed.  My Uncle Scott wanted it so we took to calling it "Deer Scott".  

In the cool of the evening we gals could be found lounging and chatting on the front porch of Grape St House.  Since we had to do a Radon Test (closed windows and doors for 48 hours!) it was the only place with a cool breeze.  Apparently the neighbors found our lounging on the front porch to be amazing.  Aunt Marion hadn't sat out there once in the 25 years she lived at Grape St.!

The 92 year old Ginko Tree that was planted the day Aunt Marion was born.

The Sun Room

The fabulous bricks that make up the front porch.  These bricks can be found in remnants of sidewalks around the house and I was sorely temped to wiggle a lone one free and take it home.  But I resisted.

Aunt Margarete was affectionately referred to as our "German Cleaning Lady."  Originally from Germany, she found Grandpa Carl a delight to chat with since he was raised speaking German in the home.  Aunt Margarete cleaned the kitchen and made us lunches while we hauled dusty everything out to the dumpster.  We gals all aspired to clean things as well as she, but never quite got the hang of it.

Do not be fooled by the seeming solemnity of this picture, Margarete is quick with a giggle or a conspiratorial wink.  She is darling and I enjoyed every moment with her.

Some of the sunsets were gloriously orange and this picture had to be filtered to get the accurate colour!  It was amazing.

All of the fire hydrants in Morrison are silver.

The Sauer (correct spelling Miss Editor?) House across the street.

To finish this edition of Morrison I leave you with a collection of photos, family and otherwise. 

There was an empty frame hanging on the back of the garage door, so we filled it with this charming little lady.  There was debate as to whether she was a boy or a girl.  I like girl.

Great Grandma Martha.

I believe this is my namesake, Anna Handford Kentfield, but I could be mistaken.  

My Editor will let me know.

Martha, a lady, and Carl out for a canoe ride.

Aunt Marion and Uncle Bob circa 1953

I believe this was a prom dress of Aunt Marion's.  Very cute!

We ended at Dairy Queen one night for salad and ice cream.  Mom found they had Mini-Blizzards (on the right) and I got a small (left).  It was very nummy, I can't remember the last time I had a Blizzard.

Ta for now my dears!  Third installment to come soon and once I finish editing the videos I took there will be "Movies from Morrison"!  Whee!

xoxo,

Anna

The End of Hatred

I have spent a great deal of my youth being angry.  Angry at circumstances I could not change, angry at the past for mucking up the present.  Angry at my perceived imperfections that I could not magically change.

Today I spent time cleaning up my pictures.  Innocuous enough, you think, yes?  I spent several hours looking through photos of myself.  Pictures I took during various stages of life in various degrees of self-hatred and self-love.  And you know what I discovered?

I am who I am.

Oh, yes, I can change a few things about me; keeping up with good diet, regular exercise and all that rot.  But what I found as I looked into my own eyes was that I didn't hate who I am anymore.

I don't secretly hate my curly hair, my near sightnedness that requires glasses, my seemingly oddly shaped body.  For a long time I have lamented my apparent "lack" of curves, my lack of femininity, and it wasn't until I actually sat down and looked at myself that I realised I am precisely who I am meant to be.  This may be a bit "old hat" to some and for those of you who know me, this may sound a little silly.  Truth is, I go about my day worrying about what you all think of me.  I worry about my appearance, I worry about my body shape and how people perceive me.

Today that all stops.  

Today I am tossing worry, self-loathing, self-hatred, self-mutilation out the bloody proverbial window!

I am Anna.  I am Anna More.  

I am 5' 5" tall, I am 170lbs of awesome and I don't care who knows, and FUCK the BMI ratings.  

They are wrong.

I love every inch and ounce of me.

Now, this isn't an instant thing, what happened today was a turning point in my personal thinking, in my personal journey.  I am taking a different path.  Perhaps parallel to the one I was traveling along previously, but even large ships travel in small gradients to make vast turns.  And what is life but one long jumble of turns and jogs? 

This is the woman who my children will know as their mother.  This is the woman who will make a name for herself in the world.  This is me.

thank you for reading this far.  Thank you for loving me this long and this far. xoxo ~Anna

The Trip to Oregon!

Over the weekend Nate and I traveled down to Oregon to visit his family.  We got up at 5:30am (!!) to fly into Eugene.  Nate's dad picked us up at the Eugene airport and we made the 3 hour drive through beautiful country to Medford where Nate's Grammie Janet lives.

Quick stop for  brunch, then back into the car that felt like a shuttle from Star Trek!  It had onboard GPS computer that would talk to us.  Creepy and cool at the same time.

The sweet little green house on Clover Lane is where we stayed.  This is the house where Nate's dad spent part of his childhood.  Two bedrooms, one bath and a spacious backyard in a quiet little neighborhood.  Each night as I fell asleep with the windows wide open, a chorus of chirping crickets serenaded me.  It was so peaceful and quiet.  

I  had hoped for a weekend that would be relaxed and lazy.  Sitting about with Nathen's family chatting.  It turned into helping get more of Janet's things into boxes for Goodwill.  She recently moved into an assisted living facility because she has small strokes and just needs a little more help caring for herself.  She can putter about just fine, it's remembering how to do the little things in a day that are troubling.  

I am very comforted to see how well cared for she is by Nate's family.  Aunt Cathy loves on her just like my mother cared for grandparents.  Gentle bullying because they need it and won't ask for it.

She had a minor stroke while we were there and it was hard to watch her sons watch their mother change into a woman who needs their care.  It was all so old hat to me; elder care has been a part of my life for the last several years that my taking care of Grammie Janet was second nature, but was remarked upon by family.  I am happy to take their hands, carry and fuss over elders, they've all loved and cared for young people that it shouldn't be any trouble for us to fuss a bit over them.  Regardless of if they are family or not.  Alright, on to another soap-box...

I played around with taking pictures through the lenses of a broken Brownie Camera (It was a No. 2A Folding Cartridge Hawkeye Model B) made sometime between 1926 and 1934.  Very cute little thing.

Finally Bob and I dismantled it for the lenses and felt very cavalier for our treatment of this artifact of early photography.

I was given many, many utterly adorable pictures of Nate as a little boy.  I'm being good and not posting too many (he doesn't like it) but I must leave you with this one.  It's too sweet!  In retaliation Nate guarded a ceramic hand print his dad had made as a child to give to his mom.  Bob may or may not have tried to help the ceramic hand have a tragic accident before it reached Sue.

I took home many pictures that no one needed or wanted.  I believe it is a reflex that comes from growing up in a family that is very genealogy oriented.  I couldn't let the stories fall into the trash.  The above picture is of Nate's paternal grandparents, Janet and Bill on their wedding day.  They married in 1951.  She was only 16, and so very pretty.

I also got to take home Grandpa Bill's wedding band, seemed to be fitting since I have her wedding ring too.  If Nate wasn't allergic to nickel he could wear it.

The Elephant Dress made its debut for dinner on Saturday night.  I still have some tweaking to make on the fit of it.  Our plans to see Henry V at Ashland were thwarted by misreading the tickets, but it worked out just fine.  We were pretty bushed anyway so we went out to dinner at a local pizza/salad joint called Kaleidoscope.  Very good food.

We found some relics of hair care in the bathroom.  It actually smelled kind of nice.

And so, early on Sunday morning we departed sweet Clover Lane for probably the last time (my first and only) and made our way to Eugene for a family picnic with Nate's mother's side of the family.

We met Nellie.  She is absolutely sweet but gives new meaning to the phrase "dumb blonde," for a dog, she got herself wrapped up around all the table legs and posts in the picnic lodge.  She then whimpered when she couldn't reach her family.  I spent much time giggling at her and helping get her untangled.

Nate tried to nap...

...Bob was about ready but didn't take one.

I soaked up sunshine by the river.

It was a good trip over all.  I am very glad that we went to spend the time since we're not sure how much longer Grammie Janet will be with us.  She is at that stage in life where she's just tired and is ready to go to sleep one night and not wake up in this world.  So I am glad we had the time to hold her hand and stroll along with her.  

I'm only sorry I didn't take more pictures.  My usual camera is on loan to a friend so I was armed with the iPhone and several processing apps.  While I am happy to have such a good little camera on my phone, I miss having an SLR that I can play with.

Edit - Many thanks to my personal editor for pointing out my gross grammatical error and making sure I spell things correctly.  xo