a little embarrassed

Friends.

I'm a little embarrassed by my lack of blogging lately. I'd apologize, but I think sometimes it's necessary to take a step back and kind of recoup from the blogosphere. The month-long absence wasn't entirely intentional, but a friend of mine put this quite well: I've noticed that I tend to feel "burnt out" on blogging especially when life includes a lot of big decisions and/or hard, weighty things...

That's kind of spot on for me. When there are things that I may not want to post about or am distracted by, coming up with my quota of weekly blog posts feels draining instead of inspiring. There has been a lot going on in our lives lately, a lot of stresses and decisions and shifts. It felt unnatural to try and force constant, lighthearted posts when I simply wanted to focus on life, and take lots of naps to recover from the day to day. For the month of June, I am working 10 hour work days Monday-Thursday which has proven to be very tiring. I know it sounds stupid, but sitting on your butt in front of a computer all day is a total energy sap. I have to go lie down just to recover from sitting down.

AND, we finallllyyyyyy closed on our house yesterday!! The house hunting emotions are over, and it's finally finally finally time to turn this house into a home. You know, now that it's 111 degrees all day err day, let the summer projects begin! We are so thrilled. We kind of naively thought that the hard part was getting The Bank to accept our bid, but that was just the beginning of nearly two months of struggling to get to this point. The journey was an exhausting one but now we have a [not-so] brand new home that's all ours [as soon as we replace the carpets, paint every wall, and deep clean the bajeezus out of it].

I've been working on a video tour of the "before" of our house, and I will be posting that here probably this week! I can't wait to show you all how grimy the place is, and hopefully spread our incredible excitement for the potential it has. You just gotta look past all of the scattered gummy bears stuck to the stairs and the moldy refrigerator, and you'll be running up inspiration lane.

See you soon!

here i am

I absolutely love life.
What a mysterious, nebulous, spectacular thing it is. It can be baffling and surprising.
I love the way I constantly try to imagine the future and make goals and create ideas, only to be proven wrong in ways I never thought possible. Is that just me?
It's a wonderful kind of graphic novel that only I can see. My eyes alone are living this particular experience, and for that I am in a constant state of awe and gratitude. Life is unique and strange.

All that to say...I truly never thought that at 25, I would be married and living in my parents basement.

There, I said it. We successfully moved from Virginia in the middle of May, leaving behind our home of three years and many fantastical people, places and memories. There were many tears involved. We're living the cliche, the poor broke married post-grads that are desperate for housing and love and money. 
I can't possibly say that it's terrible, though, because in so many ways we're living the dream. There's a lot of ice cream in our basement freezer. We're living in Arizona, finally, again, for good. The desert has welcomed us home in its typical summer way: scorching, sunsetting, wind-blowing, monsooning, stunning.
We get to see our families again. I get to see my parents all the time! We watched SYTYCD together and get to hug and talk and just be. We're being taken care of. We're watching our nieces and nephew grow up in-person. I get to drink my dad's coffee every morning. I am finally able to get my hands on the basement, the crazy boy-dorm that has been destined for messiness and boyish grime for the last 20+ years. We've scrubbed and painted and settled and decorated. It's cozy.
I have a job, too, as of yesterday. I am officially a Technology Media Communications Specialist, and I'm going to let you guess and figure out exactly what that means.

The last few months of our lives have been hectic and hard and sad and triumphant all at once, and I'm here to say hello, I'm back. I never truly left, I've just been living my life away from this screen. It feels good to be moving forward. The beauteousness (I love making up words) of life is always there, even if it's hard to see.

For us, though, it's not hard to see, because Arizona is the greatest place in the world to call home.

Welcome home, us.