Popsicles on the front stoop. After dinner walks. Bare feet. Sprinklers. Fireflies. The smell of chlorine in my children’s hair when I kiss them goodnight. Beach reading. Wrinkly-pool-soaked-toes. Impromptu visits. Late mornings. Sandy PBJ sandwiches. Canoes. Reunions. Tomatoes off the vine. My husband wearing shorts. Flip flops. Eating outdoors. Strawberry margaritas.

(And a selection of pictures from my project 365 taken over the past month.)

just for today i allow this.

no. it’s not like me to let these thoughts seep into my consciousness. banished some years ago with the combination of the proper dose of antidepressants and that first look at my baby’s clear eyes, i’m usually the one expounding on the virtues of how beautiful the mess can be. but some days it fills up too high and one last drop falls in. the bucket overflows. of course, i have it all. my children are wondrous beings and i’m growing closer to being their perfect mother every day. but just for today i’ve eked every last ounce of beauty out of the crap that’s flung around my less-than-perfect home. just for today i feel sorry for myself and how much harder this all is than i ever imagined. just for right now i want to go back to the safety of my parents’ home and have them make everything okay again.

i’m told that the aging and eventual illness of our parents causes fear to seep into even the safest aspects of our lives. the idea, maybe, that one day we’ll really be the only grownups left. today it’s too much and i don’t want to see how you’ve found just the right sunbeam to photograph that giggling child. i embrace the darkness.

and i know, because i’ve been here before, that tomorrow i’ll be grateful too, for today’s weight. i will allow that light to shine again and it will be that much brighter as it illuminates the beautiful mess on my kitchen table. but just for today, please indulge me.

postscript: the lapse between this post and my last one is due to a computer hacking which resulted in the loss of a few months worth of posting. i gave up trying to save them and am marching onward. shit happens.

Last month hundreds of these women (I don’t mean to be sexist, but I can’t actually think of any men in my network) took part in an annual ritual of thanksgiving. We counted our blessings in images every day for thirty days. We went about our days considering what we had to be thankful for (and photographing some of them). And while I’d like to tell you that I spend my entire life like this, it wouldn’t be true. But for one month all the nit-picky crap was overshadowed by the small blessings of every day. And of those, there are many.

At the onset, I thought of it as a useful exercise in creative photography. Before long, though, my thinking had begun to change. New habits perhaps? A movement toward a glass-half-full mentality? I’m hoping.

Insert reality check: the things which annoy me daily did not go away. Scrubbing toilets did not become a joy and long dark cold afternoons did not suddenly become light and warm. But truth be told, things I may have previously ignored became drops filling my glass beyond that halfway line. So today, though I might not write about it, or even photograph it, I will walk through my day looking for the things I’m grateful for.

And I’ll start here. With you, my friends.

It’s a month that finds our nation collectively giving thanks. As individuals many of us take this time to count our blessings. Last November, one month after my husband had lost his job and facing very grim prospects, I distinctly remember the guilt in not being able to feel thankful for what we still had. Our health, family and friends. Each other. Seeing those things through the darkness that had set in over our house took more effort than I had most days. It was a rough year.

This November things are looking up.

We have work and we’re warm. The lights are back on around here (literally and emotionally) and it feels easier to take stock of the good. But just between you and me, this gratitude stuff sometimes feels a little forced. Truth is, we’re lucky. So very lucky. Our list is long and plentiful and reading through it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

But I’m not a big fan of winter in these parts. Four o’clock comes ’round and it’s dark out and there are cranky children and mountains of homework to contend with. Chores feel impossible and the days never end. I hate that I feel this way and wish I took it all in stride but oh, how I miss the extra hours of daylight already. I am eternally grateful for a thousand things, but if I’m being honest, I’d tell you that I’m also counting the days until March.

while summer’s logistics were complicated—the juggling that came with two children home and a business to run—i’ve admittedly been dreading returning to this schedule. perhaps it’s the transition that i find difficult, but i think it’s more likely the pace. everything is suddenly on superspeed and i just know i won’t be able to keep up. gone are the lazy mornings when the boys roll out of bed on their own timeline (toddler and teenager—you can guess who sleeps late and who rises early). gone are the impromptu evening visits from neighbors and late afternoon trips to the pool. and in their stead, alarm clocks and homework and charts.

i have yet to embrace what will eventually be the joys of this season. the colors and the slow cooking and the sweaters.

today i’m just going to mourn summer’s departure.

but these last days threw me for a loop.

i’d like to tell you a tale of family bonding and epic board games, and indeed there was some (i kicked some go-fish ass). but the moral of this story is addiction. it wasn’t the lights we missed. no, candles and flashlights are adequate (at least during the last days of august). it turns out that i’m a power junkie. my dishwasher and laundry machines provide a sweet taste, but the delicious whirring sound of my laptop was the fix i was jonesing for.

news, communication, entertainment—contact. the hand crank radio that was a gift from my ex-mother-in-law for holiday 1999 (impending millennium doom) provided some small measure, but at around day three i would have given away one of my kids for some wifi or a working cell signal.

after whining a few times about not being able to watch tv, the little one took it in stride (as they do) but the big one clearly takes after his mama. cranky, jittery, moody—classic signs of withdrawal.

three days in, out of sheer desperation, i took a risk. i gave him a job. a job that usually falls outside of the scope of stuff he does around here (stuff he does around here being a frequent bone of contention in our family). i asked him to help with the littles. and, guess what? he stepped it up. at dinner at a neighbor’s he took six children under the age of five upstairs and gave me and two other weary mamas a break. for hours. who knew that he had camp counsellor abilities hiding under all that teenage angst?

so the next day during the witching hour i asked him to do it again and crossed my fingers. five dollars and an hour to myself later he had babysat his little brother for the first time. and no blood was shed.

silver linings people. silver linings.

i have a few (confessions) of my own i’d like to share here in the midst of my own blog-istential crisis.

first, i suffer migraine headaches. if we know each other or we’re flickr friends you already know this. last july i started taking a daily medication to treat them. i was pretty desperate suffering almost as many days in a month as i wasn’t. i really didn’t have a choice.

thing is, though, one of the ‘side effects’ of the medicine was trouble recalling words. sounds awful, i know. and in reality it wasn’t as debilitating as it sounds. it was occasional and frustrating but, hey, it happens to everyone sometimes. you can’t find the right word. you pick another and move on. and i was feeling relief. so i sucked it up.

but i couldn’t write. i couldn’t find the words. for a year now, my words have been locked inside my head. and the headaches came back after just a few months. sneaking up on me. taking days away from me. so i’ve quit it. and slowly, i feel the words coming back. slowly.

maybe that’s why i’ve been quiet here. or maybe it’s time. you know about this one. there’s never enough time so when you add something to one side of the scale, something else has to give. or the debate about whether to keep this a personal space or promote my business here. i’ve gone back and forth on this one but in the end, i need a personal outlet so i’ve decided to blog about all things business somewhere else.

or maybe it was something else entirely. i’ve been making excuses to friends who’s places i haven’t been visiting. feeling badly about not leaving comments for them. being there for them. pressure isn’t my friend. if i were talking to you, i’d say ‘it’s your space. use it when you feel like using it. don’t let it become a burden’.

so that’s what i’ve been doing. but truth be told, i miss this neighborhood of ours. so i think i’ll be visiting more often. taking some of the pressure off and adding small posts more often. not trying to outdo myself. some honesty and accountability. not every post is poetry. not everything i have to say is interesting. just truth.

i cried twice yesterday, on the occasion of my youngest child’s 4th birthday

i get up early for the express purpose of having time with no kids (or husbands) around

i don’t fully understand the debt-ceiling thing

i almost never have breakfast

i honestly don’t get what the big fuss is about gay marriage

i don’t like kale or broccoli rabe (or arcade fire for that matter)

i write (compelling and thoughtful) essays in the shower but forget them before i can get to the computer

i can’t stand wearing my glasses but can no longer see two feet in front of my face without them

i hate sitting at a desk

i love being near the ocean but almost never swim in it

i didn’t keep baby books for either of my children and can’t remember any of their stats

today’s date makes me sad