Miss Evangeline.

Thanks to these super cute pictures Adriane gave me of my niece Evie, I got to use some pretty pink girly embellishments on a page. :)

I hadn't scrapbooked for SO long until I went to a crop this past Friday evening and finally got to play a bit.

Journaling reads: "Your mommy told me, "Rachel, you should have a baby girl. I could never have imagined it would be so much fun!"

Evie, she might have had me convinced if you hadn't proceeded to throw up all down my arm. LOL. :)"

I'm not scared.

I have found that the best way to start a list is to make note of things you've ALREADY accomplished. That way, you can check those tasks off and already feel like you've been productive. See how that works? I know: brilliant.

In the interest of making myself feel super awesome and forcing myself to continue living bravely, I've come up with just such a list. I turned 31 in June. I'm thinking that every month until I turn 32, I need to do something that scares the living daylights out of me. That's twelve "things" to anticipate, meet head on, and conquer. (And then in my 32nd year, I shall try to take over the world. Shhh...don't tell anyone.)

So in June, my birthday month, I took trapeze lessons. In July, I sang karaoke for the first time ever. Here's a list of other wild and crazy things I vow to tackle before my 32nd birthday:

fire a gun

commit to and follow through with a public speaking engagement

write everyday for a month

ride a scary amusement park ride

look a squirrel straight in its beady little eyes without flinching

take Eliot with me on a trip involving air travel

go skiing

take a self-defense class

play paintball

ride a mechanical bull

Each of these tasks is something Old Rachel would not have done. In the past, fear has held Rachel back. Fear of being hurt, fear of actually being successful, fear of rejection...

No more. New Rachel doesn't NOT do things because she's scared. New Rachel does things precisely BECAUSE they scare her. Because she knows that's the only way to grow into the person she most wants to be.

Okay. I'm going to stop talking about myself in the third person now. Promise. =)

Anybody know where I can find a mechanical bull?

My best side.

Socrates famously said, "The unexamined life is not worth living."

My son would probably disagree with him.

Or at least, he would point out, "The over-photographed life is also a pain in the rear."

I have hundreds of photos of Eliot as a baby, in every different outfit, from every different angle. Now that he's developed fine motor skills and all, though, it's considerably more difficult to snap pictures of him.

Scrapbookers' kids sure have it rough, don't they?!

Unfortunately for him, I like the shots where he's frustrated at me and/or trying to avoid the gaze of my camera lens just as much as the smiley, willing photos. He just can't win. ;)

Still, I have no regrets.

I'm not a bad person. There are things I've done, choices I've made, and even aspects of my personality that I'm not particularly proud of...but all in all, I think I'm a pretty decent human being.

Eliot and I were outside in our backyard yesterday, and he was playing in his sandbox. There were hornets buzzing around the area where he was playing, so I grabbed a flyswatter and killed one of them when it chanced to land on the patio. Fifteen minutes or so later, Eliot asked me, seemingly at random, "Are you good or bad, Mommy?"

"Uh? Well? I'm pretty good, I think," I replied, modestly, I thought.

"Nope," he said, without even pausing in the construction of his sand road, "You're bad."

"What makes you think Mommy is bad?" I asked.

He points out, unhesitatingly, "You were bad to that stinger bug."

How can I defend myself against that accusation? Were the stinger bug alive to comment, he'd probably tend to agree with Eliot. And from his perspective (the stinger bug's, not Eliot's), I guess I'm pretty bad...

After all:

1) My policy on stinger bugs is swat first, ask questions later. I'm not going to wait and see whether or not they'll sting my kid. And I don't shoot for the kneecaps. I aim to kill.

2) I don't like dogs. Not even puppies. Nothing you can do or say is going to make me like them, so please don't even try. I realize they're cute and all...I just don't care.

3) One time in college, I was shopping in Big Lots and opened a box of cookies and started eating them, then decided I didn't want them after all, so I just put them back on the shelf.

4) I've smoked pot before, and unlike former President Clinton, I inhaled. (Because the way I understood it, that was kind of the point.)

5) My therapist says I need to stop mothering people (with the exception of Mog, of course). I didn't really take him seriously until this afternoon when a total stranger pulled her car to the side of the road to ask me directions and I felt the overwhelming urge to just hop into the passenger seat and guide her all the way to her destination.

6) On more than one occasion, I have eaten mass quantities of chocolate until I reached the point of vomiting. What can I say? I like chocolate.

7) Sometimes I pretend to like people that I don't really like. It's just easier.

8) My son calls my ex-husband's girlfriend "Heifer," and I don't bother to correct him. (Her name is Heather.)

9) I'm kind of hoping my son is gay. I hoped he would be left-handed, too, and he isn't, so shouldn't I get SOMETHING? Come on!

10) I feel very little guilt about being narcissistic. I feel guilt about almost everything else in my life, but not about that. So what if I indulge in near-constant navel-gazing? My belly button is FASCINATING, okay?! Don't try to pretend that it's not. :)

Does all of that make me bad? Nahhhhhh. I don't think so. Not one bit. So long as you don't ask the stinger bug. And he's not talking anyway.

The one where I join the flying wallendas.

Go Ahead and JUMP! from Rachel on Vimeo.

It's true: I was the fattest kid in trapeze class. I was pretty sure my attempt would go like this: jump off the platform and immediately fall into the net due to pathetically nonexistent upper arm strength. I knew there was no way I could support the weight of my body hanging onto a bar like that, and there certainly was no way I would be able to haul my legs up over my head and dangle from my knees, much less extricate myself from that position in order to properly dismount the trapeze. (Is that what it's called in trapeze? "Dismount?")

What I didn't know is that the forward momentum of flying through the air pretty much propels one's body and makes those positions, if not easily, at least relatively likely achievable.

Aside from our visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, trapeze lessons were my favorite part of my trip to New York. I've forced myself to be brave so many times this year. Back in February I claimed that performing a part in the local production of The Vagina Monologues was my brave act of the year. Little did I know, it was only the beginning. Since February, I've created a new home with my son, divorced my cheating husband, adjusted to life as a single mom, driven by myself in downtown Chicago, vacationed in New York City, taken trapeze lessons, and SUNG KARAOKE. The karaoke was definitely the scariest act. ;)

But back to trapeze lessons.

Before I even knew I was signed up for them (The lessons were a surprise birthday gift from my super cool friend Megan), I wrote about feeling like I was on a flying trapeze. You have NO IDEA how liberating it was to jump off that platform and feel myself flying through the air. No idea. And to know that no matter what I did, everything was going to be A okay.




The Catch from Rachel on Vimeo.

As it turns out, all those things you tell yourself you can't do...when it comes time...and you HAVE to...you just do it. Because you can do ANYTHING. Anything.

(It also didn't hurt that the guy catching me was super cute and totally ripped. I'm just sayin'.)

Nostalgia.

I've been going through my photo files lately, trying to clean up, organize, and make back-up copies of everything before my laptop dies completely. (It seems to be in its death throes ever since Eliot spilled almost a full can of Sprite into the keyboard.)

During this task, it's been pretty difficult NOT to get nostalgic. In a lot of ways, I miss my kiddo being a baby. I miss that gummy smile he used to have, before his teeth came in. I miss the way he toddled around all tipsy until he developed more balance and became a confident walker. Of course, the hardest photos to go through are the ones with all three of us as a family. Eli, Eliot, and I, all grinning wildly for the camera. Looking at those photos, it's easy to believe we had it all. Obviously, we did not.

Old photos also remind me of all the stories I've never told, ones that, for whatever reason, I never got around to.

Eliot's first swim. He was fourteen months old the first time I took him swimming. (I was a little a lot crazy overprotective of him when he was a baby. Many of his firsts came late not because he wasn't ready, but but because I couldn't let go.) His first time in the pool, he was pretty hesitant. I LOVE this series of shots, because they so clearly tell the story of his first pool adventure.

I love that even when he realizes he loves the water, he's still not about to release the death grip on my swimsuit strap.

And then he discovered splashing, and all was right with the world.

I know our world wasn't coated with sugar and populated by friendly unicorns back then. I do. But that's what nostalgia is about, right? Looking back and seeing only the good, banishing the bad? Yearning for a past that never truly was?

I'm sure there was plenty bad going on that day. Just two summers ago, and my marriage was slowly unraveling. I was too busy to notice. Or too secure. Or too trusting. Too something.

But...when I look back at these pictures, I don't remember the bad.

I remember only joy. I want that again.

The incomparable Miss Z.

Yesterday I had to try to explain to my precocious 5-yr-old niece why her Uncle Eli never comes over anymore. This was perhaps the most heart-breaking conversation I've had about my divorce yet, harder even, in some ways, than the things I've had to try to explain to Eliot about our situation.

I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me that she would notice his absence from family gatherings, and maybe the conversation was made more difficult by the fact that I was caught so off-guard.

It began with her asking me about Mumford, our family cat, and I sort of stammered that Mumford did not live at my house anymore. "He lives with Eli and Eliot now, not with me and Eliot in our new house," I said. And a confused look came over her face. Slowly, she came out with, "Yeah. I wanted Eli to be here for my birthday, but Mommy said he couldn't come because you and Eli weren't together anymore and I was like, 'What?!'" She made a face and spread her hands wide to show consternation.

I do adore this girl. She speaks and looks and acts so much like a smaller version of my little sister that it cracks me up. She's sassy as all get out, with a teenager's attitude and stubbornness. She comes up with the wildest sayings and ideas, and sometimes I think she's an absolute sage. She once told me, apropos of nothing, "Well, Rachel...sometimes it's whatever you want, and sometimes it's whatever you don't want." You aren't kidding, girlfriend.

A few months ago she told me, "Aunt Rachel, I just love Eliot so much, it's like he's my boyfriend or something." In truth they act more like brother and sister. They are always overjoyed to see one another. When I pull our car into my sister's drive, Z is out the door before I can even get Eliot's carseat straps unhooked. They immediately embrace and run off to play. Z acts like the big sister, showing Eliot how to jump on the trampoline ("jumpoline," in their vocabulary), or explaining the "right" way to play with a certain toy. But then, it won't be long before they are fussing and fighting over whose turn it is to drive the Barbie jeep. Z will try to physically haul Eliot out of the driver's seat and he, in turn, will get her in a headlock and bite her arm.

When it's time for our visit to end, however, they are back to loving on each other. Z fetches Eliot a chocolate covered granola bar from the kitchen pantry, asking, "You want a snack for the road, Eliot?" They hug and kiss and wave and Z watches from the door as we drive away down the road.

It's easy to forget sometimes that Z, with her mother hen tendencies toward Eliot, her extensive vocabulary, and her surprising insights, is still a 5 yr-old. She isn't just a tiny adult.

So when Z presented me with her confusion over her absent uncle, I said plainly that, yes, it was true that Eli and I weren't together anymore. I told her that Eliot lives sometimes with his Daddy and Mumford and sometimes with me. "Eliot has two houses now. Isn't that neat?," I proposed, hopefully.

She frowned and said, "I don't ever want MY daddy to leave."

And how could my heart not rise to my throat?

I assured her that her daddy wasn't going anywhere and explained that Eli is still and will always be Eliot's daddy and that he loves him very much. "Eliot still has his mommy and daddy," I said. "We just can't live together anymore."

Z twirled a few straggly strands of her long wild hair around one finger and concentrated on it for a moment. She cocked her head to the side and looked up at me.

"Well...why?" she asked, and the look on her face was so childlike, so innocent. Not like the face a kid gives you when he's asking why he can't wear his muddy boots to daycare when he knows perfectly well why. Z was looking at me with blank face, free of expectations, waiting patiently and trustingly for an answer from me that would make some kind of sense.

I didn't have one.

I pulled her little body onto my lap and squeezed her tight to me. I buried my face in her hair and muttered, "I don't know why, SnickleFritz. I just...don't know."

I don't have the answers. Sometimes I wish I did. All I could say when I pulled away and looked her in the eye was, "Well, Z...because sometimes it's whatever you want, and sometimes it's whatever you don't want."