The Adventure

A promise is a promise.  Here are the pictures of my finished project that I pledged to share.  I am sold on hats thanks to this free pattern.  If you've been lacking crocheting motivation, a little project like this is just the thing to get you back in the game.  Take it from me.  

I had been wanted very much to write a little post earlier this week, but life (and children) came crashing round my ears.  There are periods of time where I feel like I'm on top of my game.  I got it all figured out.  Kids?  Pish!  No sweat!  Queue the times where everything falls apart and suddenly I'm back to square one.  It's almost like being a teenager with raging hormones again.  Almost.  Except I'm an adult.  With little ones depending on me.  Plus my hormones only rage when I'm pregnant.  And even then, they are much more subdued.  

So yes, this week was one of those times.  My body automatically kicked into survival mode: finish meals, feed kids, do laundry, break up fighting, bathe monkeys (optional?), etc.  It wasn't pretty, my friends.  But I have D, and he's literally my other half.  At least, at the end of the day, he's there with me.  And that's a very comforting thought.  

To top it off, I spent another week lamenting the delays to my dream balcony garden.  After all, time is ticking and seeds need all the care they can get.  After hearing friends speak about their gardens, the panic started creeping in.  Would I be able to grow anything at all?  Would this year be another failure?  Would I ever have a little garden to tend with the two monkeys?  With these questions swirling in the back of my thoughts, I was absolutely flabbergasted when D told me this week that not only would I get a garden, he was going to make sure we had a real full out, in-the-ground, plot-of-land garden!  

But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself a little.  I am excitable like that.  (Especially when it comes to gardening!)  Obviously it's not very common to have a garden when you live in a condo building, unless it's a community garden.  Or a rooftop garden.  And yet, here we are without either.  What gives?  Allow me to start at the beginning...

This week, D's work told him that they'd be terminating his contract early due to outsourcing.  It wasn't entirely unexpected, but it still took us by surprise.  We sat and talked together a lot in the evenings after that.  Not so much about work, but about our dreams.  Life passes by quickly, especially when you're distracted with young children.  Before you know it *poof!* you're 30 (shhh!) and you don't know where the time went.  We've been married for 5 years (!) and our lives have become a comfortable, predictable routine.  But it' not one that we want in so many ways.  Life has become for us something like sleepwalking.  (Although, that could be due to J waking up so much at night teething...)  

So we talked.  And talked.  And the more we talked, the more we resolved to carpe diem.  How?  By going on a 6 month vacation to Lebanon, obviously!  It's actually a pretty neat and tidy solution to our little conundrum.  Low expense staying with family, the chance to sit back and reevaluate our lives and the direction we want to take, a little R&R for D's carpel tunnel and other related health problems.  

So, my friends, in mid-June, our adventure will commence!  (And if you know me, you know that I'll be pushing for a side-trip to Europe too...)  Imagine what the monkeys are going to get out of this!  A generous taste of the world outside our four-walled apartment.  The richness of traditions and family overseas.  The gift of language.  Did I mention a garden?  How fun is that!?  

By this point, I'm sure you've realized that I'm finding it tough to organize coherent thoughts, but I figured it would be good to give you at least a general sense of what I'm feeling right now.  I'm excited.  I'm trepidatious (did I just make up a new word?).  And I'm pretty darn pumped to be planting a real live garden!  (Whoo!)  Here's to the summer and beyond!