Happy Anniversary! Heart versus Brain and the Ficus

Happy Anniversary!

Today is the one year anniversary of my blog.  Yay!  I feel like I need some super cute pink, yellow and green celebratory clip art with confetti here.  Maybe I'll find something.  Better yet, I should ask my daughter to look something up for me or make something herself.  She is really good at things like that.

I suppose Sept. 12 was an interesting date to start something new, given it is after the anniversary of the most tragic dates in recent American history.  By itself, it is a September day.  The kids are back in school, and it is one of those last days where summer is hanging on before it turns to fall.

I have had 158 posts in this time.  My first post was a list of my favorite quotes from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.  I am still in my long-term relationship with Jean Valjean and friends, plugging away.  I hope to reach the end of the story soon-- I am well over halfway done and still have a few hundred pages left.  The hard part is knowing that I'll be done.  The best thing of any book is knowing you can always go back and read your favorite sections.  In that way, a good book never ends.  Take Where'd You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple.  This book struck a chord and I read it three times, each with a different perspective.

This past year, I was working on a quilt for the Big E out of her old dresses.  Most of the clothes are taken apart.  The hard step is figuring out what pattern to make.  Fear is holding me back.  I want to make something beautiful, but don't want to destroy my raw materials if I make a mistake.  I watched Brene Brown's Ted talk on Vulnerability last night.  I need to accept that what I create might not be perfect or as wonderful as I imagined.  But it might be better.  And "done" is better than "not done."

This past year brought the happy distraction of a dog into our family.  Thank you, Fox!

This year also brought the near collapse of marriage, which is still on life support.  The subconscious pain and struggle was typed into the ether here.  (I was going to say written on the page, but no.)  All of the pain my heart felt for years was brought to the attention of my brain and intellect on May 27 when I thought the world was ending.

I have been trying to figure out the theme of my blog.  Instead of picking a theme and writing about it, I just wrote and hoped a theme emerged.  Looking back, I would say the theme would be Heart versus Brain, the intellect versus emotion.  What happens when you heart feels things that your brain doesn't have words for?  I suppose that is one of the reasons Rough Draft is a reasonable name for this blog.  Sometimes the hardest communication in the world is between the head and the heart.

In closing, here is a picture of the ficus tree on my front porch.  (I often call these trees figs, even though I know they are ficus.)  I didn't write a post about this on my blog when this happened, as my life in too much turmoil to figure out what was going on.  Jack ignored my birthday this year.  (My neighbors and friends came to the rescue.)  My birthday is a few days after the Boy's, so it is impossible to forget.  Nope, he ignored it.  So, after the world crashed on May 27, I moved in with a friend on May 29. On May 30, Jack brought me a fig tree.  He took the Boy to Swanson's and they picked a tree.

I have always loved ficus trees.  I had a ficus in dorm in freshman year of college.  Between my junior and senior years of college, I got an internship at a telecommunications company.  They had a silent auction on a bunch of office plants as they were getting new ones.  In my junior year at college, I studied Game Theory.  I decided I'd bet $2 on each plant, knowing my maximum outlay would be $34 if I were to win everything.  I took a wild guess that not all of the plants would have a bid.  I was right.  I took home seven lonely plants that no one wanted.  I got two ficus trees, one I left at home with my parents.  When I graduated, I collected a few ficus trees for my apartment.  Instead of buying a Christmas tree, I would decorate my trees.  Jack would always tease me that I thought all growth was good growth, as I never trimmed or shaped my plants.  When Jack and I moved to St. Louis, we rented a minivan and brought the ficuses.  When we moved to Seattle, the moving company brought our cars and we flew.  There was no way to bring the trees, so we gave them to David, our next door neighbor who loves houseplants.

After I moved out on May 29 and almost ten years after we moved here, Jack realized what he should have gotten me for my birthday: a ficus for our home in Seattle.

Fox and the Ficus

Thanks to everyone who reads my blog and who has been my friend during this time.  I'd like to thank the Big E, the Boy and Jack for letting write about our lives on my electronic page.  I am curious what the next year brings.