Popular

I’m curious who has been reading the blog since I started writing about Christian. If you don’t know me personally, would you be willing to leave a comment or send me an email letting me know how you came across my blog?

Also, I found this really helpful article today about helping a friend after the loss of their baby. I might even toss in a “Give her movie tickets” because I looooooooove seeing movies in the theater now . . . weekly date night is my favorite.

And finally, I’ve been trying to limit my donut intake for the past few weeks – it’s extremely sad. Yesterday I was at the grocery store when the donuts were 3/$1, so of course I got 3, but I learned that I don’t enjoy that third donut anymore. Is 2 donuts a week unreasonable, or can I keep that up?

Recovery

For about two weeks, I was in a severe funk. I’d like to think I could call it something more serious than a funk, given recent events, but I don’t know that it went so far as depression. I barely ate; I seldom left the house or talked to anyone; I avoided the internet; I wanted nothing more than to pause existence so I could just sleep. The worst part was that when I was sad, it didn’t seem like it was specifically because of Christian – I was just sad, and I felt like I ought to be able to point to a certain memory or feeling of loss or regret about the future. Something. Instead, it was just a pervasive I-feel-lousy and I-wish-I-could-stop-existing.

Jarom had promised several people that he’d look after me and make sure I ate, even when I didn’t want to. He brought me donuts (probably the only thing that prevented me from starving) and tried to find that elusive line between obnoxiously nagging and lovingly helping. But I had no interest in food. I couldn’t think of anything that sounded good, and on top of that, I think I wanted to be hungry and miserable and wallowing in sadness. Is that allowed?

While I was avoiding the internet, I spent a lot of time outside doing yardwork. I discovered that I love pulling weeds. I also discovered that if you spend hours outside doing physical labor, and you haven’t eaten all day, you don’t feel so great – physically. But emotionally, being outdoors was wonderful. Our big chestnut tree blossomed recently and the flowers are beautiful and fragrant. It was a small but helpful reminder that there were still things to enjoy.

About one week into my funk, I was asked to make some baby shower invitations for a friend. Because of the tight schedule I didn’t have time to do more than one draft, so there’s a lot I would change if I had a chance to work on the design a little more – but the wonderful thing was that I got my paints out and experimented. I sketched. I made something. And then I left the house to go pick up the prints. A few nights later, as I was falling asleep, I realized that I was thinking about my favorite foods, about chopping the ingredients and cooking, about projects I wanted to do, about what I’d change on the invitations I had just finished. It made me feel . . . happy.

Since then I’ve been doing fairly well. I mowed the lawn yesterday. I designed baby announcements for a friend (and they are amazing – I’ll show you soon!). I held an 8-month-old baby on Sunday and actually enjoyed it.  I reread one of my favorite books. I fully expect that I’ll have moments of sadness, because I did just lose one of my children – but those moments are becoming less frequent, and I’m having more times where I smile, laugh, and do things I love.

That being said, I still really appreciate when people let me know they’re thinking of me. Although my world hasn’t ended, it has changed drastically, and it’s nice when others are aware of me. Keep sending love, folks.

Storage

In our basement apartment, we had this cool Ikea wardrobe for the kids’ room. Jarom’s grandma got it for us when June was born, and it was perfect for keeping clothes organized. We had a small dresser in the closet for stuff-that-doesn’t-fit-yet.

I’m shocked to find that I miss this little room.

Our house has built-in wardrobes in every bedroom, so the kids didn’t need the Ikea thing anymore. I knew I wanted to set up a desk in my bedroom for a work area, so I decided to use the Ikea wardrobe as a supply cupboard. After I got everything unpacked it was nicely organized. Guess how long that lasted? Actually, I did reorganize the cupboard a few times as I added new supplies. But eventually it ended up looking like this:

This morning I decided to tidy my supplies. There were plenty of things I never use, or seldom do; I’d sorted through the box of pens, markers, and pencils before we moved, but in the past 7 months a lot of the pens have stopped working. They got tossed, as did the plethora of highlighters. We had about a dozen each of yellow, pink, and orange. I think Jarom got a lot of free highlighters at law school – but neither of us uses highlighters at home anymore. (Hooray for being done with school!)

I could still use a few containers to really be organized, but at the end of 20 minutes my cupboard now looks like this: