Dear Darla Diaries

one liner Monday

Going to spend $3,500 of the governments money today for work. Should take me a good 12 hours. And people think shopping is an addiction. I prefer to think of it as a distracting and foot killing vocation!

foiled by the web tool

My daytime computer has been foiling my attempts at a long satisfying vital vomit ! Pardon me while I whoop it. This is why I go Mac.

who you calling a fat boy?!

it's called a Traffic Jam

Stuck in traffic while exiting base - oh joy
I really need to stop procrastinating and finish my women's study homework and write out my testimony for Tuesday and Wednesday
Oh look my future car!
This better me an amber alert or nuclear fallout
Yea 60 min to finish work get home and prep for party - ambitious much
Twins face is so skinny
I'm so lazy - if she can do it and eat tons what's my excuse
Oh that's right - lazy
What if I were pregnant? With twins? With twin puppies? Mom would get it
Shameless is utterly shameless and I am soo addicted
If cars are coming in why have we parked for 25 min?
Cross another thing off the bucket list
Speaking of lip service
At least it stopped raining
Ew the calves of my jeans are soaked
I really could use some deodorant
I wonder if it would be quicker to walk
Seriously . Dead child.
Facts can't be morbid
Battleship rocked. I must google the story behind the retirees and ww vet - they rocked
Dududuhhhh
Yes iPhone I did spell that incorrectly
This notepad app rocks. Thank you semi functional iPhone4
How serious can it be if all those cars are coming into base and we can't leave?
Great now I'm thinking in circles
Hungry now and way too over caffeinated
Pie would be awesome
Where's a mobile pie vendor when you need it
30 minutes. Seriously. I don't see aliens or transformers or fire.
Hmm 34 min ... I wonder how much trouble I could get in for photographing all the passing cars
I'm so glad this is on the clock
40 min. Ahhhhh. I wonder if the car battery can outlast the phone battery
I totally blame the militant alien barbarians
Horse and buggy? Walkie talkies? Loudspeaker? Useful gate police with any indication on when life can resume?
Wow, enough time to proofread this post and spellcheck
Engines are starting! Do they see something I don't?
2,917 seconds and counting - thank you Mr Calculator
False alarm - back to deathly silence on the parked thoroughfare
*wonders why more cars don't jump the short curb and turn around
*remembers not a rule breaker and doesn't have enough clearance
*kicks self in shins*
Oh look passengers have trekked the .75 mile walk to gate and back again
And I'm blogging in 3rd person
Time frame for that party is dwindling ... Seriously want to be a drinker tonight.
Ti Kcuf ... Ya you heard me
My husband says I have a potty mouth. What does a potty mouth look like exActly?
19:50, 19:51, 19:52 ... Someone needs a whooping
It's hard to run out of words when stuck in traffic for nearly an hour
63 min and I finally moved 6 car lengths. Progress
oh look - stuck again
Frack me

stop staring at me like that

With the exception of a few bad moments when my body reminds me that it's dysfunctional (read every 28-35 days) I'm not generally wallowing in my moroseness. Lately our house has become quite the hostel with funny rumbles and multiple personalities and some severely saucy boys and girls. Just this week my BFF's boy Lar moved in with us for the last weeks he's in country while the government packs up his home and sends him to his wife.

It's hard to stay in a despressive pit when you share your abode with adult size versions of young teenage mouth pieces. Wah wah - smart ass much? Don't mind if I don't. Sometimes I'm sure the hubby just wants to find his old high school football helmet to protect him from becoming a casualty from the zingers flying around the house. It doesn't help that Lar partnered with the hubby is a force to be reckoned with. I've learned to distract them with pretty shiny things like Full Metal Jousting! and Top Shot!

Speaking of pretty shiny things (thank you CraftGawker!) ... I am absolutely in love with JulieBlackmon's family photo session art found at drollgirl, Allenaim does cute work with funny faces, DeerLittleFawn is my newest craft muse, and the girls behind AnnaDelores, Scathingly-Brilliant and A Beautiful Mess hold my own form of catnip.

 

No seriously, do not google 'So Cute'. There are some things that arent in the realm of cute!

 

Speaking of catnip, I'm currently cracking open the spines on two emotional boosting pieces that help bring the zen and the calm and align my soul, One Thousand Gifts and Duty or Delight. As I work through both pieces I will be sharing the bits and the pieces of rock candy goodness. The first is a book that local friends did through a book club and since the tips they kept spouting chipped through my sidetracked attention span I took them up on it. The second is connected to the house that Beth Moore plays with. For those of you who know Beth Moore ... it's Beth.Moore. 'enuf said.

Since I am a random squirrel, however, it should be no surprise that it's quite easy to distract me from nonfiction spiritual goodness, regardless of how helpful it really is. Cheese! Blog! Cake! Kitteh!! Soft spongy silly topic! So I do have to share with you the bits and pieces of a memoir I've been sucked into on my ereader that husband hides from while I quote.

But Honey look here! Her dad used fresh roadkill as a finger puppet! (Spoiler: sorry!) (Spoilers should go before the actual spoiler? Sorry again.) I'm sure I shouldn't be so hysterical from her trip on acid but they were licking lead paint walls! Honey you can still hear me under the bed! Are you really asleep? You are so fake snoring I can see your finger moving your game on that ipod! Honey she called them meth cupcakes!*

The piece in question is Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson aka The Bloggess. No  it's not language my mother would approve of, but it is still a witty tale of smarcastic brilliance that reminds me of why I started loving blogreading in the first place. When you get it you Get It.

 

*That quote is me talking to my spouse about the book and not the book directly because you can read her brilliance Here and plagarizing is bad for you and it's just easier that way! So move along people. Move along. Nothing to see here *awkward silence, crickets chirping, cats staring* just a girl needing caffeine and to get her late ass to work.

faith for the weary

Being a Christian isn't always for the weak or faint hearted. There are Those that have these stereotypical mindsets that Christians should be perfect and strong and not hyprocritical. Christians are humans that bleed and have emotions and feelings and faults. The main difference is they should strive for love and sacrifice and believe in eternal hope. That isn't too say we aren't weak or make mistakes or forget.

One of the hardest struggles of faith for me is maternal. I don't question love or salvation or many of the core elements of Christianity. I truly believe we should help each other, and live as a community. I believe that Christians screw up. A lot. 

I was raised believing that God Can Do Anything! But it was tempered with He Won't Do Everything. God will answer your prayer the way He sees fit ... which isn't always our hearts desire. I've also been raised to believe that God can answer any prayer. It's such a juxtaposition. The whole will He?/won't He?/why? struggle. The struggle we deal with over death, cancer and limb loss. The struggle we deal with when life seems to be going full speed ahead in the wrong direction.

I know I believe that at the end of any destination is God. He is always standing with us, bearing with us and helping us forge through even the ugliest things in life. Life doesn't always make sense and it's not always ours to understand.

All of that being said, it doesn't make it easier. When I'm wrapped up in my husband's arms and the words are tumbling out in a flood of tears it doesn't make any sense. I don't understand why God has given us such a heart for kids, with totally unexplainably poor working ovaries. Our families, by definition, created the term 'fertile mertile.' I can wax on for days about our kin filling every type of stereotype of who should/shouldn't/could/couldn't become parents and did otherwise. We have Jerry Springers, Teen Moms and dysfunctional wrapped up with a bacon bow tie. And yet, Not Us. We are the anomaly.

I'm told wait for the still small voice. You'll hear it. And I do. For some things. I don't ever doubt the confirmation that my husband was The Right One. I don't doubt that the military and Germany weren't the right decisions. I just don't understand this. I don't understand prophetic friends and family feeling at peace that This Month! or This Year! or This Week! God will answer your prayers. I get so frustrated by the fact that after nearly a decade I still get caught up thinking 'Am I a week late?', 'Could these be pregnancy symptons or just PMS?', 'Should I google these symptons?' and my favorite 'Is it worth it to take yet another pregnancy test to confirm that it's not true and thus disappoint me regardless?'

I want to cling to the faith that Mary was given a virgin birth, miracles happen and people get pregnant every day in ways that completely and utterly define science ... and it could happen to me. I want to NOT believe that our lack of parent status isn't attached to our faith. I want to believe that this time the still small voice isn't me telling myself that it could be true. I want to be able to dream what it could be like to be pregnant, just once, and talk to my husband about it and him not be utterly heartbroken because he knows how utterly heartbroken it makes me.

I just want one baby. One pregnancy. One life. I don't want a million dollars, a fancy home, the perfect job, the perfect pet. Bring on the 'morning-sick-all-the-time.' Bring on bed rest, gestational diabetes, blood pressure and prayer. Bring on something besides my barren womb craving a fetus and the irritation I feel around the plethora of baby spawn makers at my job (which are not the same as Friends! edible babies! nomnomnom!)

As my husband and I seek to renew a healthy and hopeful relationship with God and mend many broken fences that have happened as a combination of life changes and our infertility struggle, we are trying to start new habits. We are starting with communication. This week we are purposefully and deliberately praying for the same topic. Sunday we hope to discuss the scemantics of Adoption, not just the theory. My hope is that one way or the other God can show us direction so that each month I don't try to salvage my weakening faith with a band-aid created by the theory of something instead of it's reality.

I can't imagine struggling with this same issue and not being Christians. I know that without Faith and Love our 11 year recommitment would've been divorce paperwork and a shack by the sea. I hope that if any of you are dealing with this you can be surrounded with the love and support we face. I much prefer the well intention and yet often misguided support than the lonely bitter pill I'm great at hoarding and swallowing.

arguably a crazy idea

So. I can't believe I started this post with So, but there it is. So I've been thinking lately. A lot. Matters of my heart and soul are becoming more and more about who I am. I am embodying my belief structure. And I'm feeling convicted to put it into my blog. Because if this is me and this is what I do and how I want to speak and how I feel - than this is what it looks like.

The dilemna. I have been torn about scrapping this blog and starting a new fresh blog or just changing with each post. With that being said I wanted to change the title of the blog to capture more of an Inside Out feel - and every option involved with that, either through Typepad or moving my content to another server or a fresh blog requires work, work and more work. I currently have more than a few, and less than a dozen, semi-purposed blogs in the hopes that it would be a 'good' idea. Ha.

So this is me, and you've been cautioned. I hope you won't flee. I hope it won't come across as religiony or churchy, but just honest. My daily effort, for the next year, to highly chronicle the better me. The better me and the honesty of the totally crapshitfuckitiquit days and the greatgreatgreat days. The days where I stick my feet so far down my throat I can taste flesh and other days when I'm stumbling all over myself in apology. The life lesson of how to embody believing in God and Hope and Love and Faith and the reality of hiding in a dark corner, under a blanket because we are all like children and we all can forget in a blink of an eye and sometimes, sometimes life hurts worse than IED blast.

So there you have it. Why I have been so AWOL of late. And I apologize in the meantime. I am coming back with a Vengence. I may still pepper you with my freaking awesome cat. I love my flippant photography. Life is beautiful and I love to capture it. I also love poor punctuation and paragraphs today but Who's Counting this isn't a news report!

I will promise you this: More Words! More Blogging! More adjustments to a cleaner blog and links to goodness and helpfulness and inspiration. More stalking and less avoiding.

And ... that's all I have, but there you have it.

precocious by any other name

borrows from own FB

Just discovered the Diptic ap (thank you Jess!) While I work to launch my new blog - I had to share this snazzy collage from our day at the park.

little instigator

I'm sure that in no way shape or form was doodling Tang.led with and for my friends cute daughter Ali a detriment to my carpal tunnel.

For weeks my numb and fiery wrist and fingers had beat my alarm clock to bring me to a wakeful status. Thank you pain. Because they won't flare up at the dr office I get to eat NSAIDs and bully through it. Go team.