A warm breeze.

It seems the season of life I find myself in is dry, sad, and frustrating.

Even writing or celebrating anything feels empty and strained.

I know there are times in life that will simply be gray. But I love the few rays of light that bring warmth into the seemingly overwhelming and deep darkness. I have a hope that is greater than any darkness I find myself in. I hope you do too. And, my sweet but quiet confession, is that lately the light has been small but present, bursting forth in the simple things.

Today I found light. Or maybe it found me. I walked outside and found myself enveloped by a warm breeze. I took time to sit and quietly welcomed the warmth in. The soft rays of sunlight were even strong enough to reach in and warm my heart. It was as if the sun had compassion on me.

My hair gently brushed against my face. My eyes closed themselves. My shoes were disguarded. My hands lay loose in my lap. I didn't even know someone was taking a picture of me in such a beautiful moment.

Here's to the other "warm breezes" I graciously encountered the past few weeks... a sweet acoustic serenade of "Stand By Me", truly enjoying each sip of hot chocolate, reading words I needed for that particular moment while bundled up in a soft blanket on the floor of my laundry room, accepting failure then taking a step to move on.

Let's celebrate the kind warm breezes. Simple, temporary, and so gentle.

Our "Family Thing"

It's December 22, and Christmas is ever before me. Christmas is the only time of year my parents, siblings, and I get together anymore... Our family feels so mature and grown since none of us live at home. I having older siblings whose lives have been in full swing for years (that means they're big kids, with real jobs and rent to pay). We grew up about as fast as it takes my dad to assemble our phony Christmas tree (i mourn the year we reverted to a fake tree... and still hold some bitterness in my heart when I can't smell the fresh pine). With one in The Netherlands, another in New York, myself in California, and our parents in Texas, we just don't get to "bump into each other" all that often.

I love "family things".. It seems like every family has its own quirks and quibbles, but I love seeing a family have that one thing that is unique to them. The thing that sets them apart. Ours is cookie decorating.

We keep a few holiday traditions, but the one that stands out to me the most is our annual Christmas cookie decorating extravaganza, which could more appropriately be named "I can 'decorate' at least 20 cookies in globs of icing and eat them ALL without barfing before the night is over" extravaganza. My brother has probably never decorated as many cookies as he has eaten... but, between you and me, I'm pretty sure I come in a close second to him. And since Christmas is so wisely and strategically celebrated right before everyone's new years "no sugar" resolution begins, I have no remorse for the amount of sugar I intake.

I call it a homemade heartattack. I'm not a chef or baker. I don't know a food recipe from a grocery receipt, but I appreciate my mom's homemade brilliance when it comes to this tradition. Homemade red and green icing. Homemade cookies. Way too much butter and powdered sugar. We would be at a loss if one year she decided not to make them.

So here's to my families cookie craze. Even though the red icing looks pink. Even though I've never figured out why our Christmas cookie cutouts include a sheep, a plane, and a windmill. Even though my sister wins "most creative cookie" every year... I can't help but celebrate our "family thing" and those deliciously deadly sugar packed treats.

What's your "family thing"? And don't you think it's about time to celebrate it?

sunsets.

You and i both know that there's that one sunset you hope you never forget.

The one where each color was more beautiful than the last.... the one where you couldn't help but find yourself grateful, for once, for pollution and the way it made the colors ten times more beautiful...the one you knew you shouldn't stare at for so long because it was bad for your eyes and you knew you'd be suffering a throbbing headache later....the one you wish you could have kicked into slow motion because the person watching it with you wouldn't be there for the next one...the one that gave you a sliver of beauty and hope while driving a long and mournful roadtrip... the one that made Iron and Wine's "Such Great Heights" make so much more sense... the one your camera didn't do justice... the one your plane chased down while flying across the country.

I had a dear friend visit me a few days ago and even though we both were exhausted from a busy week, the first thing I did was take him to the beach. I feel obligated to take "non-west-coast-ians" to the beach first thing. I also feel selfish, because I love the people-watching opportunities at the beach almost as much as I love the sunset; hence, I take my guests with cheerful obligation. We walked the pier, talked, people-watched, and allowed the sunset to mesmerize our tired eyes.

We took a playful stroll down the beach and aside from too many couples making out in the sand, we saw something that didn't strike me as beautiful until now... a week later. A man was walking down the beach, drawing the same phrase in the sand every few feet: "I love...". He never finished the phrase. We stole a glance at him and he caught our eyes. He had a snicker of a gleam in his eye... as if he expected us to finish the sentence for him. We didn't, but I wish we would have.

In todays world, I think everyone would have a loss as to what goes after the "i love...". I have at times. Sometimes I busy up life so much I don't even know what I love anymore. Who I love. What dreams I love. Why I love. What I love about myself. Who I should love. Why I don't love.

So often we're searchinig for what we love, yet we don't separate ourselves from the world long enough- not even a walk down the beach- to draw in the sand or settle deep within ourselves what it is we love. Who we love. What dreams we love. Why we love. Why we don't love.

Today I choose to fill in the blank.

Because sunsets and I have quietly accompanied each other during some of the most sacred and beautiful moments in my life.

Here's to filling in the blank...

...I love sunsets.

Bittersweet memories.

It's all about thoughts. And memories. Getting stuck on them. Not able to escape them. I love embracing my thoughts after not being able to spend enough time with them. I hate them sometimes...angry because they overanalzye or because some of them are useless and waste my time or lessen my character. Today I'd like to celebrate beautiful memories and thoughts. The sad ones too.

I'm living with college freshmen girls this year. Everyone knows that in the first semester of school, most anyone who was in a relationship before school, breaks up with their he or she...or they get broken up with. I've been preparing myself mentally (as well as stocking up on some sturdy tissues) for the day one of my girls comes to me in tears because it happened. So I dwelled for just a little while on that particular letdown in my own life and though it was sad, I found a few things worth celebrating along the way...

I had fallen for a boy who hadn't fallen for me. I had been told he wanted to dive in and call me his, yet after a long while he bowed out. I had foolishly kept my hopes high. I had invested too much emotion in something that was not going to happen. I had wrongfully idealized him. I selfishly wanted him.

He told me over the phone it wasn't going to happen. We hung up on a note that sounded pretty, yet on the inside, in that place where your dreams, and reality meet, I was being taunted by heartbreak. My heart felt hunched like Rick's withered shoulders in Casablanca as Elsa walked away from him for the last time.

 I hung up the phone and walked into the kitchen to find my mom because I didn't want to be alone. Quiet tears were sliding down my face. They felt like weights, pulling on my face, my heart, my thoughts. My mom turned around and because she is wonderful she simply knew. And without a word I cried and she wrapped her arms around me and for the first time in my adult life I sobbed into someone else. I can't imagine what it was like for my deeply empathetic mother. To hold a precious, shaking and sniffling part of her world. To watch me hurt so deeply. In that moment I have never been more grateful for my mom and i have never been in so much anguish. Simultaneously. Beautiful. Broken.

I think it's possible to celebrate sadness...or maybe I'm celebrating the fact that it's ok to be sad. For a time at least. And I think it's always ok to celebrate the role of a mother. And here's to embracing heartache for a time then slowly letting go of it. Ready to embrace new things.

Waiting.

When I do something that's worth writing about, there's usually food involved. Jesus was always doing stuff that revolved around food. He was always hanging out with people and eating. He even made dinner for a few thousand people a couple times (that's a lot of people).

The other night a dear friend and I decided we wanted to make ourselves dinner. After consulting our hungry stomachs, we decided to make Calzones. We scampered around the grocery store for the ingredients. After three hours of adding, mixing, rising, stirring, and tasting, we ate our Italian masterpieces. Honestly, I made a horrible culinary sidekick. I gave up on asking for guidance and ended up sitting on the kitchen floor with a guitar in hand, serenading my culinary Cook while she did the hard stuff. We popped them in the oven and then we waited. And waited. And waited.

Waiting has been the theme of my week. Waiting in line to ride the thriller-est rollercoaster at Six Flags. Waiting on good food. Waiting to see a certain someone I haven't seen in a long time. Waiting for Thursday (my favorite day of the week) to come around. Waiting in ridiculous traffic, while watching in my rear view mirror as a menacing thunder storm slowly crept toward my car. Waiting for loved ones to stop holding onto life in their final days; letting them know that their wait for "a better place" is over and its ok for them to let go.

Calzone waiting was never such a good thing - we sat on the floor and talked about life's struggles and heartaches. We talked about things we wish we did but don't do and things we do we wish we didn't. We drank a deep fuchsia colored pomegranate lemonade and paraded around the kitchen trying to hip-hop dance to accoustic music. We sat and allowed silence to seep into the deepest parts of our souls.

I love how "waiting" is really not simple, yet it's the simple things we do while waiting that makes it worth while.

Living life amidst the waiting.

Lists.

Lists act as either motivators or monsters in my day to day life.

I've never experienced a love/hate relationship with anything like I do with lists. Having a list of "things to do" over the summer agitates me often; yet, I love making lists and getting to cross off an accomplished task. Do you write down easy and hard tasks on your list like I do? That way you can quickly do and check off a lot of the easy things and you feel like you've been more productive than you really have.

I have decided I like fun lists. And to make up for my entire two months of not celebrating anything on the Simple Side, I figured I could make a very condensed list of all the simply wonderful things I have seen and celebrated:

1. The other day I ate stringed cheese. The strung way though. You know, the way you used to eat it when you were a kid; peeling off each individual strand and dangling it into your mouth. That's before you became a busy adult and had to start swallowing the cheese stick whole.

2. It's June. I'm pretty sure I saw someone driving down the highway a few weeks ago with a giant Christmas Tree strapped to the top of their car. I had to admit to myself that I have felt the urge to celebrate Christmas in June before. I hope, if a Christmas urge was what that person was experiencing, that they acted on it.

3. Whilst dogsitting I walked by my neighbors house and found my neighbor with a hose in her hand, graciously spraying a gang of ducks that had decided to congregate in her front yard. Every time I walk by that house now, the sprinklers on and the ducks are playing in it. I hope they get the ducks a slip and slide soon- I'd love to see that.

4. Lake encounters. On an all too boring day, I spontaneously decided to kayak across the lake, float down a river, and dive into the latest "must read" book. I floated peacefully and closed my eyes to embrace the beautiful stillness.... until I realized I had to go to the bathroom and really didn't want to embrace nature in that way. So I paddled back. On another not so exciting day, I found myself worn out after an unwilling visit to the workout center. I'm trying this new thing lately, where I try to do something spontaneous or new to make each day different from the last. I pulled up to the lake, threw off my socks and shoes, and ran with my limbs flailing clumsily in all directions and fell into the mirky water. It was beautiful. 5. Reading Children's Literature with my closest friends. Honestly, this one's going to get it's own blog post some day. But for now, I have to plug it. It's life-giving. And freeing. And laugh worthy. Go try it.

Treks.

Any Treky's out there? I grew up a Star Trek junky thanks to my dad's sci-fi obsession. Being empathetically driven, I thought it was ridiculous Spock's species, the Vulcan's, were robbed of emotion. To live without emotion- no thanks. I thought it was cool that the badges the Enterprise crew wore on their out of style space uniforms, served as walkie-talkies. My number one desire was to fly like Peter Pan, but I always thought a good substitute to flying was to stand on the Enterprises' transportaion deck and sl0wly disappear to find myself on some other ship or planet. I wish travel was that easy.

I trek a lot in life and with all the traveling I do, I secretly wish someone would invent a transportation deck (My other secret wish is that I'll get a letter from Hogwarts informing me I need magical schooling... my owl must have gotten lost, I'm still waiting for my letter). Today it's a roadtrip from California to Texas. A grueling 19 hour drive.

I look out my window and see flat. Did you know the terrain is different depending on which road you take from California to Texas? The road there is much prettier than the road back. Times ten.

Like I said, it's flat. On the celebration side of treking, I've decided terrain is a lot like breakfast food. And I love breakfast food. Sprinkled donuts specifically (in case you ever want to buy me one). Southern California resembles waffles. Hills and valleys. With smog for syrup. What I see as I look out my window is a pancake. Flat land- with no chololate chips or blueberry lumps. Just flat.

Yesterday my traveling companion and I took a little detour to the Grand Canyon. It's probably against Simple Side rules to compare one of the wonders of the world with breakfast food, but if I had to try... it kind of looks like granola with a big hole in the middle. So if you ever find yourself on a road trip, wishing the world would start spinning faster so you could get to your destination sooner, just start picturing the terrain around you as breakfast food... or try to invent a transportation deck. Both are acceptable and both tend to make the time go by faster.