An amazing girl and a tired way of thinking...

Last week, my parents told James and me about a spectacular young woman named Victoria, who decided to go one year without wearing shoes in order to raise awareness about the need for shoes in Haiti and money to purchase 365 pair of Crocs to send over.

This girl's heart humbles me. I wish I'd been as aware of the whole wide world as she is at her age. I covet her spirit to do something, and to sacrifice herself to draw attention to a need. She is absolutely ahead of the game when it comes to loving others and wanting to serve humanity. I admire her, and I can't wait to see what she will accomplish with her life.

There is a side to this story, however, that is a little disheartening. First, watch this video so you can just totally fall in love with Victoria. Especially, I adore and identify with what she says at the very end. I'm sure that almost everyone who has been to Haiti can say the same thing, if not with such simple eloquence.



Haiti Follow-Up Shoot from Alex Jeffries on Vimeo.

To recap: Between the Jeff Probst show, this sweet girl, and Crocs, they sent and distributed 730 pair of shoes. This is great for the 730 recipients of the shoes; it's great for the economies in which these Crocs are manufactured; it's great for whatever shipping service was used to move all of those shoes; and, of course, it's great Crocs and the Jeff Probst show (PR-wise)...

But what about the Haitian economy? Are there no shoe-makers in Haiti? Although it would take more time and effort to partner with local artisans in order to perform a large-scale give-away like this, ultimately, it would be better for the country this girl wants to much to help.

We get so caught up in the "we rich Americans are going to send some cool stuff to those impoverished people" that we run the risk of doing a thing that looks great on television and makes us feel like we've done something, but if we could just slow down and try to involve the people we're trying to help in the decision-making and implementation processes, we could actually make a long term difference for a lot of people.

It's a little ridiculous, but sometimes I get the feeling that this is how we might come off to other people.

Why I Happen to LOVE Whole Foods Market

According to Google Maps, we live 1.2 miles from the Whole Foods Market flagship store here in Austin, Texas. Whole Foods, as you might know, is expensive. Like, REALLY expensive. Shopping there requires a complete paradigm shift from my days of couponing and bargain shopping. Our family priority now involves clean eating and knowing from where the stuff we put into our mouths comes. Well, that, plus...

But, seriously, that's not the only reason. It's a reason I'm drooling, sure, but... there are many more reasons I love Whole Foods. In no particular order:

1) Rubber bands. They put rubber bands around your egg cartons so they don't flop open and eject embryonic chickens all over your trunk, kitchen floor, etc. They will also do the same with berry cartons, but the cashier today was telling me that he doesn't like to do that because he is concerned that the rubber band could cut through the clear plastic and bruise the berries.

2) Ice packs. If you buy meat and aren't going to be heading to a refrigerator very soon, they will give you little bags of Sonic-esque ice to keep the stuff cold. Sweet.

3) Samples. Yes, on weekends, they have samples everywhere in the whole store. But also, the other day, my sister and I were hanging out looking curiously at the persimmons. The gentleman who was working in produce asked if we wanted to try one, then he went in the back to get a knife, came back, and cut into a persimmon, which he ate with us. The best way I can describe it is a sweet, citrus-y tomato kind of thing. It was yummy and while I didn't feel the need to spend three bucks on one of them, it was awesome that he just split one with us, and that he hung out chatting while we enjoyed it together.

4) It's biker-friendly!

5) The meat... well, the meat has some quality of life before it's slaughtered to feed me and my family. That might sounds dumb, but I really don't want to contribute to a system that has chickens hatched in cages and their leg muscles don't even work because they have no room to stand, and they poop on each other (which I have no doubt they do anyway, but at least it's their disgusting choice instead of a by-product of the fact that they're just stacked on top of each other. 

6) Homeopathy and other personal products. There are so many choices here. If you want a deodorant without aluminum, you can find several options instead of just one. Today, I got an herbal allergy symptom treatment. It worked very quickly!

7) James loved Whole Foods before he moved here because everyone he met who worked at a Whole Foods LOVED it and thought they had the best jobs in the world. All of the places here in Austin must be awesome because they're not quite as happy-happy around the flagship store. Personally, I'm fine with this. The butchers are AWESOME; I love to watch them.

8) The escalators. There are stair escalators up, for people who have legs. But when you're going down to the parking garage with your cart, what do you do? The escalators are brilliant. The carts magnetically "attach" to them so the carts will not roll down the escalator (de-escalator?) when you're heading to the garage.

9) So. many. choices. The flagship store is HUGE. It's awesome.

I'd articulate more, but Munchkin calls!

The Unsexy Truth About My Miscarriage

"And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and though she had spent all her living on physicians; she could not be healed by anyone." Luke 8:43

Four weeks. That's all it's been: four weeks. It's normal, and other women have done it, and I probably still have a good couple of weeks left.

The week we were in Haiti, I used my Diva Cup. I then went to pads for as long as I could handle (about two weeks) and got a new Diva Cup to start using this weekend... which was good because I am losing A LOT of blood.

We're still newlyweds, of course, and this makes it impossible to engage in spontaneous intimacy. Even if we were to carefully construct all circumstances, facilitating copulation in the situation we're in is just not attractive. It involves things like puppy training pads and full-out showers.

I might be exaggerating a little, but not much.

I feel like such a drag when James reaches out toward me and I say, "Hold on; I have to go take care of a few things." It feels like I'm killing the mood, and I feel responsible for it, even though James doesn't make me feel this way at all.

And I can't imagine going through this for twelve years. I can't imagine being considered "unclean" and never being able to go to church. And for the Jews, work-arounds were not okay. If the woman in the story were married, she'd just have had to abstain. She spent twelve of her child-bearing years barren. She did not have the Diva Cup.

So I suppose that I should be counting my blessings. Instead, I'm just counting the days...

Patriotic Cookies!

First of all: Did you know that they make half-sticks of butter now? They're TINY!

Since I've moved from the RV (my home for two years) to the Nuthaus, I have cooked a lot. We average six major meals per week at home, plus special things like making cheese and desserts, etc. But I haven't tried to do any specialty baking since we got here. Last week, I did make my first layer cake and it was delicious, but not particularly fancy. I was ready to do something fun and frivolously complicated.

Last year, shortly after James and I started dating, I went with him to his aunt's and uncle's house for the Fourth of July. It's an all-day potluck with fireworks-shooting to cap off the day, and James hadn't really prepared anything to take, so the day before we went, we made cookies. There is a recipe that is fairly "well known" in my family, and I kind of remembered how to make it, but I'd texted my mom anyway, to see if she could send me the recipe. I didn't get her message until it was too late, but the cookies turned out pretty good...

Actually, they were fairy amazing, and it was a total fluke. I'd made chocolate chunk cookies the best I could from memory, and they tasted "right." James' apartment's kitchen was... well, let's just say "low on counter space" and be gracious about it, shall we? So I put the ceramic mixing bowl on the stove while the cookies baked. This resulted in some of the chocolate chunks melting, so that the dough ended up marbled. Well, the marbled cookies were beautiful, and they all tasted good, and the cookies were gone by the end of the visit, so that was a nice compliment.

This time, though, I had an idea: American flag cookies. I've done something similar with a wreath for Christmas, and I've also done checkerboard cookies. When I showed my wreath cut-out cookies on Facebook, a friend saw all of the work I'd done on them and said, "Oh, Laura, you can buy those at Wal-Mart." Of course, she was talking about Pillsbury. Guess what? They also have flag "Holiday Shape" cookies. But guess what else? I don't care! They don't taste as awesome as mine will, and I wanted to challenge myself and make use of the extra space for which I am so grateful.

So... Friday night, I picked out a recipe for chocolate cut-out cookies, and a recipe for rolled sugar cookies. Saturday morning, I made the sugar cookie dough, divided not into thirds but into three sections, left one white, colored one red, and colored the smaller dough blue. I had to add a ton of color to get anything besides pink and baby blue, so I had to add more flour and hope for the best.

Saturday evening, I had some unexpected free time, so decided to go ahead and make the flag. James took some pictures...

The unsuccessful beginnings of the red stripes. (I wasn't quite ready for pictures yet.)

I wasn't being scientific with the ratios or even the number of stripes. I only planned to have 9 stripes, and no stars at all.

After much re-rolling and added flour, I had the shape I wanted!

See? Just like Merica!

When I was making the "chocolate" dough, after having bought groceries the night before AND having run up to the 7-Eleven for tiny butter (I hadn't noticed we'd need so. stinking. much.) I realized that we were actually out of cocoa. Instead, I substituted this organic chocolate syrup that D uses for her chocolate milk, and also a few tablespoons of this Whole Foods Nutella-type spread. It made the dough darker than the "white" dough, which was really all that I was going for. Of course, I also had to add more flour to that. Then I rolled it out.

After I wrapped the flag roll in chocolate dough and froze it long enough for it to be cut-able, I eagerly sliced into it...

Success!

I put the dough back into the freezer between batches because I wanted it not to get too "wilted." But it wasn't frozen, which would have made it crumbly when cutting.

Ready to cook the first tray!

Fortunately, the cookies didn't spread a lot and I realized that I could actually fit almost twice this many on one sheet, so the rest of the batch got completed in just a couple more trays.

In the end, I had almost as much scrap left over as I had usable dough. It wasn't in the right ratios to make more flag cookies, though. Instead, I put it all in a bowl and made a "tie dye" log. That's the round 'uns.

Ready for our 4th of July celebrations!

Radio Breakdown

A strange thing happened on the way to a play date today. Daphne and I were driving up Mopac when a two-year-old song came on the radio. Maybe you've heard this little ditty. It's called "Titanium." Daphne and I have listened to that song a lot, and its release in early August of 2011, during which time I was going through Round Two of what I consider three rounds of craziness surrounding my personal life, made it my anthem at the time.

Since it's not a brand-spanking new song anymore, the song doesn't see as much radio time as it used to. For some reason, as I processed the lyrics, I found myself with tears streaming down my face. I could picture myself, standing, with arms open, during the chorus... something I used to play over and over again in my brain in order to steel myself against my reality.

In case you haven't heard it, or you just weren't paying attention to the lyrics, here they are:

You shout it out,
But I can't hear a word you say
I'm talking loud not saying much
I'm criticized but all your bullets ricochet
You shoot me down, but I get up

I'm bulletproof, nothing to lose
Fire away, fire away
Ricochet, you take your aim
Fire away, fire away
You shoot me down but I won't fall
I am titanium

Cut me down
But it's you who'll have further to fall
Ghost town and haunted love
Raise your voice, sticks and stones may break my bones
I'm talking loud not saying much

I'm bulletproof, nothing to lose
Fire away, fire away
Ricochet, you take your aim
Fire away, fire away
You shoot me down but I won't fall
I am titanium

Stone-hard, machine gun
Firing at the ones who run
Stone-hard as bulletproof glass

You shoot me down but I won't fall
I am titanium
You shoot me down but I won't fall
I am titanium
I am titanium

Why did I cry so much? Why did it hit me on this day?

There were several things:

1) Titanium is hard. It is very strong and not easily worn down. For years, I lost myself under layers of protection. I got to the point that nothing could hurt my feelings. I had to in order not to have a breakdown. I think about how vulnerable I am privileged to be with James, and it makes me sad for that person who existed for about a decade. It kind of also makes me sad that James sometimes has to navigate a minefield that might still be lurking, but just last night, I was able to talk to James about something that was bothering me in a way that I would not have felt safe confiding several years ago. And he listened. He might not even have agreed with me, or thought that I had a point. In fact, a lot of times, he probably thinks that I am absolutely ridiculous. But there is the safety here to express my true self and not be mocked or reprimanded or resented.

2) When the person who is supposed to love you the most doesn't trust you and you can't trust them, then it skews your view of the whole world. A few years ago, I felt very much on my own except for my child, and she's a child, so I never leaned on her for emotional support. I came to a point of hopeless desperation where it seemed to me that, if I were ever to have a chance at emotional well-being again, I was going to have to seek it out for myself.

Because of my circumstances and my own weakness, I did not believe that I could trust anyone. Honestly, I probably didn't think that I could trust God at that point. I felt like, if the situation stayed the way that it was, I would be better off just dying, but... I have a kid and I love her very much. However, so many very well-meaning people tried to pour into me the prudent advice to avoid the appearance of sin, and I felt a lot like the time that a friend's brother's wife tried to physically accost me, I said, "I'm going to get the *eff* out of this house," and the elderly mother told me not to swear. I was incredulous. "She can threaten me physically, but the 'f' word is unacceptable?"

I don't know how to explain what was happening to me except that I had been in a deep, dark hole for years and years, and I was finally in possession of the strength to climb out, and once I hit the light, the people standing outside of the hole were yelling at me that my clothes were inappropriate, and trying to shove me back into the hole until I could find something suitable to wear.

This all made me very, very angry and very, very hesitant to trust anyone with the full details about what was going on. Consequently, if you were involved in my life at that time, I owe you an apology. If you tried to give me advice, I most likely did not listen. If you asked me how I was doing or what was going on, I probably lied to you. I was extremely open about my life and my struggles up to a point. Then a couple of things happened: Even though I told the absolute truth, I was treated as though I were guilty. After that, other people started telling their own versions of what was going on. And a lot of people believed a lot of lies, and I'll admit that I did NOTHING to dispel any of the rumors because, after years of sacrificing relationships and trying literally everything that I could think of, I was DONE.

I am not making excuses for the way I conducted myself; lots of it was rebellious and wrong. I'm just explaining that there is a survival mechanism that kicks in after years of being undermined and betrayed by the person who is supposed to be your most trusted companion, and it skews one's view of how much to let anyone else in, and how much to let anyone else speak into your life or demand answers of you. Two years ago, I was very much in the, "Screw you; I'm just trying to survive here" mode. And I truly am sorry.

3) My sister knows a lot of stuff about me. She grew up with me, true, but over the years, as we've led separate grown-up lives, I've also told her just about everything. She is, I believe, a "safe" person in whom I can confide. Now, if she ever got mad at me, and if she were mentally disturbed in some way so that it became her goal to manipulate me into a certain outcome by threatening to air my dirty laundry AND to add some of her own embellishments to the stories in order to curry favor or turn people against me, it would come as a huge shock and pull the whole "trust" rug out from under me. This happened to me TWICE in just a couple of years. Two people with whom I'd been close did not like the path I was taking, and took it upon themselves to contact people we knew in common with information both real and imagined in order to... I don't know? Shame me? Cut me off from everyone else so that that person was the only one left who would still talk to me? I will never understand this. I have  been plenty pissed at plenty of people, but I cannot imagine trying to ruin someone's friendships, reputation, etc. by spreading gossip.

That's the worst thing ever: When someone you've loved and trusted enough to be open about your faults and fears takes those things and twists them around to use against you. The second worst thing is when people who weren't as close, but whom you also admired and respected believe the stories and/or distance themselves from you.

When all of that was happening, I had to bow myself up against the constant pain of people I thought knew me better falling away from me. I had to convince myself that I was bulletproof. Otherwise, I was going to be ripped to shreds.

In the end, I could not fight anymore. It's the main reason I moved to Austin. Well, that and Austin is just an awesome town. :)

There is so much healing that has happened over the past year or so that I can barely even fathom it. It's my nature to want to "fix" and I hate leaving messes in my wake. But sometimes, you have to give up and walk away. 

My heart is so much softer now than it was for a long time. I am grateful to James for his patience and for his creating an environment where I am free to be who I am, to have the feelings that I have (whether they make sense or not), to express myself, and to explore my passions. And I can do it as myself, not as a fake version of me that I've had to build up to protect myself.

Now, this is more the speed of my heart:

The beginning of the real end...

This post is not for everyone. I'm not publicizing it on Facebook or G+, and I'm just telling you now that if you are at all squeamish or you just don't care to hear about the end of my failed pregnancy and all of the physical stuff that goes with it, now is the time to bail. Might I suggest The Doghouse Diaries?

Okay, for those of you who are still with us...

As you know, on Sunday, June 2, I started spotting. I vacillated with being scared and hopeful and even went to see a midwife, but cancelled my Thursday ultrasound when I woke up bleeding a lot and passing tissue on Thursday morning. For the next two weeks, it was just like having a period. And, actually, because my periods are so long, it was really only a couple of days longer than a marathon episode, lucky me.

Then, finally. last Wednesday, it seemed to let up.

Until Thursday night, when I woke up and we had a major clean-up in the bedding department. *sigh*

Yesterday, I felt crampy, but not menstrual. It was almost like gas in my side, but I was tempted to think it was almost like mild contractions. One or two stopped me in my tracks. I walked a couple of miles with Daphne and felt better.

This morning, I got out and rode a couple of miles on my bike to run errands. Except for the chain coming off of the gears when I was crossing 24th, the ride was pleasant and uneventful.

After I got home, I went to the restroom and, here's where it gets potentially gross and a little weird, I heard a sound you'd expect to hear if you were dropping a deuce, so to speak. Except that I wasn't.

Those obnoxious "fetal development" charts tell you that, at 9 weeks your baby is the size of a green olive and that Doppler might pick up a heart beat (ours didn't, but we know why). I don't know when the baby stopped developing, but I have to tell you: What I found deposited in the water resembles one of the things you pull out of the bag of gizzards they stuff back into the chicken after butchering. It is approximately 1.5-2 inches long, and I'm guessing is the whole thing: embryonic sac, fetus, etc.

This is both fascinating and disturbing and reassuring, and I'll tell you why.

The disturbing part is that, well, it's physically icky. And might have been more emotionally icky if several weeks hadn't already passed, and I hadn't gone to Haiti, and life hadn't gone on in its marvelous way.

The fascinating part is that, somehow, something that tiny, can conceivably grow into a whole person. Daphne was encased in that two-inch chicken-organ-looking thing. It's crazy. I've read that people say they can make out features of their miscarried babies at this age. I'm not squeamish, but I don't think I'm up to trying to remove it from the sac for closer investigation, either.

The reassuring part is this: When the pregnancy test was positive, I was so shocked, I just looked at it and threw it away. James never saw it. He took my word, of course. But still. Then I had so few symptoms, except for being sleepy.

A few times, it's crossed my mind that maybe I wasn't actually pregnant. Maybe I am just peri-menopausal, my crazy hormones delivered a false positive on a pregnancy test (I don't even know whether that's possible), I missed a period, and then had a REALLY heavy one the next time.

So this, at least, confirms that. To me and, should he wish to investigate, to James.

Now, the question is: What do I do with this? Do I put it in a box and bury it in our yard? What is the protocol? James is on his way home from work. What a sweet man. I love him so much.

An Electronic Anniversary

Facebook Mobile has been reminding me all week that today is James' and my anniversary (Facebook Online has remained oddly quiet about it). It's actually a pretty silly anniversary, to be honest. But I'll take it.

Last year, I went to visit James in Tulsa the second weekend in June. Our communication over the years has been spotty but consistently present. But the weeks leading up to my seeing him had me concerned about him. And I was heart-deep in nearly a full year of heartbreak; I needed to get out of town and reconnect with an old friend.

After that weekend, James contacted me and requested one more visit before I moved to Austin. He came to see me and also interviewed for jobs in Dallas while he was in Sherman. After having spent the better part of a week together, getting reacquainted, we realized that we were becoming pretty special to each other.

When James got home from that trip, we were chatting online and I mentioned that it'd be funny to change our Facebook statuses; James was game. And that was June 24, 2012.

It's been an eventful year!

Since the last time our Earth was in this position relative to the sun, James and I have become best friends. We have fallen in love. We have shared stories, and laughed a whole lot, and cried a little.

We have wrestled with setting boundaries for a relationship with a person who was coming from a completely different mindset. Stunned, I have said, at least twice, "If this is the reality, then we need to break this off right now." James has sat in Dallas traffic the morning after one of "those" talks and asked himself, "Do I really want to be involved with someone who has this many needs?" We have compromised and found common ground, and gained more in the process than either of us had ever imagined.

We have cooked together, and learned together, and made cheese and made a home. We have moved James twice (including once in August with just the two of us!) and me once. We have maintained a long-distance relationship.

We have faced down scars together, and carried each other's baggage, and jettisoned some of those bags over a cliff.

We have explored Deep Ellum together, and have become enamored with Austin together. I have met some of James' family and have become reacquainted with others. James has seamlessly become a part of my Texas family. I have met James' friends, and he has met mine; we have developed new mutual friends, and have reconnected with old high school buddies. We have visited the Texas coast, and another country, and a couple of Buc-ees.

We planned the simplest and most fun wedding ever, we got married, and long before that, we were a family. We merged households. James bought fully into parenting, and we are partners in home and family management. We know our strengths, we contribute as well as we can, and we forgive each other's foibles. We made a baby together, and we lost that baby. We have seen each other healthy and happy, and we have trudged through each other's injuries and illnesses.

We are for each other. We are for us. We have come a long way in a year, and I am extremely grateful that I have every year for the rest of my life to live with this man. I love him dearly, I respect him completely, and I am over-the-moon happy that I get to be with my best friend every single day.

Happy silly little anniversary, James.

Alec Hilliard Photography