J-U-L-Y

This has been a crazy last month. I feel like I could write a book about everything that’s been going on. But books don’t fit into blog posts.

So here’s a bullet list in chronological order:

• At the start of the month - I traveled to Philadelphia and Maine with Andrew to spend a week with his family. It was my first time to Maine, my first time eating fresh lobster, my first time watching a lobster race, and overall a pretty intense family trip. It was beautiful and exhausting.
• One week later - I delivered my colloquium (thesis defense) for my MFA in Creative Writing. After six years I have finally completed all of my degree requirements and I will officially receive my degree in December. You can listen to my reading here (I’m the third reader - about 20 minutes in.)
• One day later - My friend, teammate, and supervisor Kathy Peterson committed suicide.
• One day later – I played my first wedding as a part of the wedding band. The wedding was beautiful and logistically crazy (but was totally amazing and awesome) and took place with 200 gorgeous people in Pelican, Alaska (pop. 163). Sydney Akagi put together a wonderful video, my band is around 3:45: 
• One week later – I attended a lovely memorial for Kathy with some past roller derby teammates, which made me realize how even though those relationships sometimes fade, they still have great meaning and impact.
• One week later – I led my first foraging walk. I took out a group of chefs and food writers including Anita Lo and Elizabeth Falkner. It was super fun and very successful (as far as I can tell) and made me want to do that for the rest of my life.

And now we’re in August.

And I’m 32 and I can’t stop thinking about how it feels like my life is just as crazy and just as all-over-the-place as it was when I was 25. Except with more debt. How can it be that I still have no idea what I want to do with myself? I’m writing another novel. I’m trying to make the food blog take off. I’m toying with the idea of getting an accounting degree. I'm toying with the idea of writing a foraging book. I want to start a small business – catering? tourism? bookstore? party planning? astroid mining?

It feels stupid to complain. And I’m not quite sure that’s what I’m doing. I’m more trying to express how completely overwhelmed I am.

And I’m planning a wedding.

And our folk fest meetings start next week.

And I’m working on my cajun chops, getting ready for a trip to Louisiana.

And there’s a weasel living in our garden shed.

And we need to kill the chickens before the weasel does.

And.

And.

And.

No wonder I’ve spent the last three days barely able to keep my eyes open.

Time to suck it up, buttercup.

Second Sight

I knew that my sight was not as sharp as it had been, but I put off going to the doctor for about a year. Finally a month ago I had that long dreaded appointment. The doctor confirmed that I was nearsighted and needed glasses, I had been expecting to need reading glasses as well, so her verdict was slightly more positive than I'd allowed for. I was feeling okay. Then she put drops in my eyes to dilate the irises and told me to go look at frames while the drops took effect.

And there I stood, facing walls and walls of glasses. Panic set in. I randomly put a pair on my face. All I could see was a face with glasses, I didn’t even register how the glasses looked. I picked another pair. With each pair I got more freaked out. This was going to be a permanent part of my life now. When a shop assistant came over I told her I didn’t know what I wanted and I wasn’t going to buy glasses today anyways.

Maybe I didn’t really need glasses? The doctor said I would only really have to wear them when I drove, and I don’t have a car. I was functioning fine without glasses. Maybe I could get away without them for another year. How bad was my sight anyways?

I gave in and ordered a cheap pair online.

On Wednesday my first pair of glasses arrived in the mail. We were on our way to my parents house for a delayed Christmas dinner. I unwrapped them in the car and put them on. I had been told that I would really see the difference when I looked at trees. And there it was, instead of seeing a tree as a collection of branches, I could see every twig, every twist of bark and layer of snow, slight and thick. And not just with the trees closest to me, but all of them, everything I looked at was minutely detailed, as if I were looking at an exquisite engraving or a finely detailed miniature.

“Are you going to be okay?” Andrew asked.

“Probably. But this is really freaking me out.”

I couldn’t stop staring at everything. We drove over the bridge and the guardrail, a grid of steel bars was lit up by a streetlight which threw square shadows and was lined with glistening white snow all of which stretched into the distance, swelling in its approach.

“I can’t believe that I haven’t been seeing all of this. What else have I been missing?”

I look like a different person and feel like a different person, but that detail is addictive and the act of putting on glasses, of making one simple movement which instantly brings the world into clarity, is stunning.