Chocolate Frosting

Relocation is hell on a marriage. It's hell on an individual and it's hell on a family.

This is a story about how it has taken me three long years to make peace with living in what I have affectionately come to call "the swamp".

My last blog no longer seems appropriate. I am never going to give up on the previous title, because I would like to think someday I am going back to San Diego, but for now this is my life, and so it goes.

Some decisions in life are so easy. The ones with definitive answers never phase me because I am a pretty black-and-white kind of girl. I never balk at those decisions. It is the decisions with the infinite unknowns that torture my very existence and cause me great turmoil.


The decisions that are difficult are the ones that leave me wondering if I might regret them later. How many times have any of us wished for a crystal ball to foresee the future so we might choose the "right" path. Choosing to simplify my life has been an emormous and exhausting undertaking, but suddenly, the weight on my shoulders feels so much less. Some of what I have chosen might have dire consequences, but in this moment, it simply feels right.

Part of this blog is going to be dedicated to the jubilant feeling that often sneaks in when I least expect it. I like to think of these delicious moments as, "I love my life when..." because they are fleeting moments when I look around and drink in the feeling and something washes over me. Without warning, I am left with a safe and satisfactory feeling knowing that there is so much to love. There is so much beauty all around me to celebrate. There are so many things I can vent about or become agitated with, but the reality is, there is so much more to be joyful about and those are so often the moments that get lost in the shuffle.

And so, on this day, I love my life when the puppy is sleeping on his doggy bed, fat and happy from being fed and walked, and the kids are making joyful kid nosies as they eat graham crackers with chocolate frosting. They rarely get chocolate frosting, so their joyful sounds are just as unique as the experience itself. I love my life when they are swimming with their team and I am walking the puppy on the trails that surround the pool and I think to myself how perfect the weather is today when the sun is shining, but not scorching, because there is just the right amount of cloud cover to keep it pleasant. The wind is moving, and so is my mind, because the possibilities appear endless and I just might get everything done I have set out to do today.

These are the small--but HUGE--things that make me so grateful for another day to be a mom and experience the wonder of the world with my kids, even if it is something as trivial as chocolate frosting, because I ate it, too (and that just never happens).