It’s Monday morning, the 4th day of my “week off.” I woke up early, took the kids to school, worked out really hard at the gym and then found myself leaning up against the kitchen counter in my sweaty workout clothes while I waited for the espresso maker to heat up, switching frantically between apps on my phone in a desperate attempt to find something to fill me up. What the hell am I doing? I am so tired. Deep-into-my-bones tired. Something that feels like a week or a month off won’t cure, isn’t curing.

Over the last few weeks everything has melted down, like nuclear meltdown. There are a hundred people needing me and pulling me and asking me questions and waiting for replies and needing things that only I can do and I’m wondering how I can do it all. Because I really want to do it all. Every single bit of it. And I’m trying to figure out if I can… how I can. Josh got mad at me the other day, “Why do you take care of everyone but yourself?” I don’t know. Why do I want to be all things to all people? I think it’s time to go back to therapy.

It seems like every single thing in my life is weighing on me, even if it shouldn’t be. It feels like my brain ping-pongs back and forth, back and forth between all of the things I’m worrying about. So many things feel like they’re really, really hard right now. Work and money and clinic and kids… oh the kids… I’m pretty sure that Josh has mascara on the shoulder of every tee shirt he owns. Last week I mustered up the courage to say the scary words, “I’m really not OK.”

I’m looking at my house. It’s filthy. Like really, really filthy. I don’t remember the last time I had the energy to really clean it. Right now there’s a moth on the floor that the kids squished last week, with bright green guts plastered to the floor boards, shouting to me that I should have cleaned it up days ago. I’m so tired.

I need to get my sprinklers going. I don’t know how. I hate asking for help. I hate being a single mom. It is SO HARD. I hate saying that because I hate thinking what my life would be like if I were living the alternative.

I think, now that it’s been two years, that I am starting to feel the secondary pain of getting divorced. I’m past the heartbreak and the loss and the grief (and also the grateful buoyancy and relief that freedom brings) and now I’m onto realizing how trained I’ve been to expect rejection at every turn. How shocking it is when Josh takes an interest in my life, that he’s there, always there, no matter what. I can’t get used to it. I feel really, really damaged. Now I’m grappling with trying to figure out how to have a relationship with a healthy person who loves me with everything. I just seem to flinch every time he makes a move. And I’m scared. All the time, scared. What if it doesn’t work out? What if it DOES work out? What if I make the wrong choice.. again? Can I trust him with my heart and my life? I want to… so bad. These questions run through my mind everyday, all the time, always. And underneath it all is this tiny thread of hope, gold and shining. Maybe I can make a good choice this time, maybe things will work out for me, maybe I do deserve this and maybe I can actually have it? Maybe? Really?

I’m watching the kids feel, really feel, the weight of having divorced parents. And I can’t fix that for them or take it away. It is so hard. We bring our kids into the world and all we want to do it protect them from the inevitable heartbreak. Instead we are the ones to break their hearts. This doesn’t feel very much like winning.

I’m reading books by authors that I love and I just get angry at them. Rickelle had to remind me the other day, “Everyone’s life looks charmed in a book.” They talk about walking through hard times surrounded by their families and I don’t feel surrounded at all. I keep mourning things I lost a long time ago. And I have to keep reminding myself that I am surrounded, just maybe not the same way other people are. On a particularly rough night a couple of weeks ago, Josh sent out a text and my people showed up around a campfire in my back yard. I sat there tired and fragile and they took turns talking about who I am to them and how much the love me, filling my empty heart back up. They reminded me: I AM loved, I DO belong to something bigger than myself. I CAN trust. They won’t leave.

My propensity is to feel alone. To feel like I have to do everything by myself because the past has shown me that asking for help doesn’t always end up in getting help. I’m so used to taking it. Taking disrespect, taking burdens, taking extra work, taking responsibility… that I don’t know how to let someone else carry the burden. I don’t even know how to hand it off. And I don’t know how to trust that I will actually get help, in the way I need it, when I do ask for it.

I’m sitting in this space of not knowing how to fix anything, but knowing that I can’t keep going like this. I don’t know how to ask for help and I really need it. I don’t want to give anything up, but figuring out how to juggle it all is weighing so heavily on me. All the things I need or want to do are feeling overwhelming when I think about doing them all by myself. I don’t have any answers, but here are all my questions.

So, really, I guess this is just me saying, I’m not even going to pretend right now that I have it all together.

We’ve been overhauling Tangle. We’ve been here on Main Street for nearly 5 years, so it was time to change a few things up. The store is rearranged, the windows are new and the class schedule is completely re-deisgned. This doesn’t sound so bad when it’s written down all in one little sentence, but it was an extraordinary amount of work. So thankful to be finished!

Everything for the windows is handmade. The paper clay barnacles, the egg carton seaweed, the clams, the jelly fish and the sea urchins made from knitting needles, skewers and foam. It was so much fun. Also, so much work!

We celebrated Easter at my aunt’s house. It was the last meal we had with my cousin and her husband before the Air Force moved them across the country to Florida. It was a perfectly warm, spring day and we all enjoyed each others quiet company. Josh and I had fun hiding eggs all over the farm for the kids to find. My favorite place to hide them was in the chicken coop, how apropos.

Gunnison and I at church.

Carrie says to me, “How is a person supposed to fit into one of these?”

We threw Carrie a baby shower on a warm Sunday afternoon in April. I created a secret board on Pinterest and invited all of our friends to help make the food. I have this thing about needing every event I throw to be exactly how I envision it, so being able to send someone a recipe with a picture was the perfect way to have things the way I wanted while still being able to have help. I’m pretty sure this was the biggest baby shower we’ve ever had at Tangle with over 30 people in attendance. It went perfectly.

Carrie, being a lover of all things mustache, designed the shower invites.

We served tea and scones and clotted cream. Mustache cookies and fruit kebabs and chickpea tomato salad and avocado chicken salad and guacamole deviled eggs. All served on my vintage china collection with red and navy napkins and red striped paper straws. I love having showers at Tangle, the colorful yarn backdrop is perfect and requires very little decoration!

Eden got accepted into the Challenge Program for middle school. The competition was tough and I am so proud of her!

We spend so many hours in the backyard, around the fire, staring at this sky.

My first try at making Risotto.

Me and baby Cal and the blanket I made him.

New table at Tangle that Josh helped me build.

Headed out for another of our hot springs day-trips.

The Fox theater in Montrose is amazing! It’s full of old tile in pristine condition. Tickets and popcorn are actually affordable. It felt like we had gone back in time 50 years. LOVE IT.

new twine at Tangle

find all the veggies you have in the house, toss them with olive oil, salt and pepper and roast at 400º for 20 or so minutes.

The thing I love about living where I do is we can drive for two hours and find an amazing place to relax. After I killed myself to pull of the big conference, I needed a break. Josh suggested our usual trip to Ouray and I was feeling a little bored of Ouray and not sure I wanted to go. We ended up deciding to spend part of the day in Telluride and it was just perfect, exactly slow enough for me to recover from the craziness of the week before. I’m also starting to feel such a connection to that area. It’s becoming a symbol for me of rest and peace and relationship. Even though I wasn’t sure I wanted to go at first, I’m so glad I did. That trip grew some roots for me in those mountains.

We were there on the last day the mountain was open so people were out in crazy force, soaking up every last minute of snow. After a delicious lunch of mexican food in town, we road the gondola up to Mountain Village and sat in the town square drinking coffee around the big fire, watching people. I love ski culture, even though I’ve never really been part of it. People are so friendly, especially once you get a few beers in them. I love to watch the camaraderie. I loved sitting with the sun warming my face while the fire warmed my toes. I needed to just sit, doing what was exactly counter-intuitive to my personality: relaxing. I’m thankful that Josh knows exactly what I need, even when I don’t.

Haagen Daz with cocoa nibs and whiskey drizzled over.

wrote out the menus for Downtown Coffee, the church’s new coffee shop that helps support the Good Samaritan Clinic.

workin on Tangle windows

We wanted a fire pit in the backyard, so Seth dug one.

my biz parnter’s daughter went to China.

rearranged the yarn at Tangle

family Monopoly night

Eden now wears a woman’s size 6 shoe…

more rearranged displays at Tangle

mustache

Eden shaming the dog.

Spring Break tradition: Ouray hot springs and Mouse’s Chocolate.

Finished blanket for baby Cal.

conference materials being made

We pulled off the conference. It went amazingly well. Our pastor gave the opening talk and gave me a really special shout-out, talking about what a good leader I am. Then we showed the Good Samaritan Clinic video. I felt a little like a celebrity.

little girl kid

We took the kids camping over spring break and they both learned how to skip rocks. I am still terrible at it.

My mom’a dwarf nectarine tree right before it did this:

4 inches!

Dexter as Princess Leia.

fluorescent

This is a sad snarf. We know he’s sad because he’s green. That boy and his imagination…

A new present for to myself.

love this little guy

I helped Brian plan and run a one-day conference with local leaders in our community so this was my view for the month of March.

Learned how to rug hook on our class at Tangle.

Fiestaware

I stayed in this position on the floor for a long time after doing an insanity workout.

Josh and I went to Denver to see a couple of shows and it happened to be Restaurant Week. mmmm.

At the Churchill show at the Ogden Theater.

Churchill. Love them.

Every time we go to Denver we seem to hit a huge blizzard. It was fun to cozy up in a little tea shop with tea and scones and clotted cream.

On our way home from Denver we stopped in Glenwood Springs and ate at the Pullman. It was AMAZING. Very Bin 707-ish.

Love him.

This is what happens when you get so busy, there’s no time to blog. I’m working on having better boundaries with myself so this very thing doesn’t happen again.

Key Lime Pie at my favorite, Bin 707.

My sister begged me to take him home with me. Maybe a puppy and twinzies is a little too much…

Mountainy storm

We gave out free flu shots at the Good Samaritan Clinic.

Eden turned 11 – way back in February.

One of Eden’s presents.

Tangle finally got custom price labels.

Josh and I made Valentines day Brunch.

Eggs baked in avocados… good but not awesome. I prefer my avocado room temp.

Eden and her BFF prefer to eat by themselves.

look who got his first lollie from Aunt Al.

new little planter.

Silly hat day at school turned into silly hair day.

Part of my plan to live on a budget. Love this debit card.

A few months ago I got a top-secret letter in the mail inviting me to a pop-up cocktail party in an empty space above Tangle. The theme was “speakeasy” and I had to email in my RSVP to receive the secret password, which was gimlet. After tearing through everything I owned, I settled on my black-sequined party dress that I got at Pollux several winters ago along with the feather hair clip that I wore to my cousins wedding.

The night of the event, we entered through the door in the alley after giving our password to the “bouncer”, climbed the stairs, hung our coats up on an old ladder in the hallway and were greeted to a live jazz band playing in the most beautiful, dimly-lit loft. Bin 707, which is hands-down my favorite restaurant in GJ, provided all the food and drinks which were AMAZING. And my darling friend Robin had decorated the whole event.

We were introduced to the idea of the West Slope Supper Club, which will be a pop-up dinner party that happens once in awhile that features local food or drinks. Josh and I had such a fun time and were really happy to be welcomed in on the ground floor of what is going to turn into something amazing. I told Josh, as were were sipping away on our gimlets, that Grand Junction just got at least 10% cooler.

(This photo by Cat Mayer. Thanks Cat!)