Outside it’s dreary and wet, and I’m glad to stay in, alone with my baby and his propensity for show-stopping diaper changes.

Staying home in the rain is good for soul searching. Staying home in the rain is good for pondering this mixed bag that is life.

And a mixed bag it’s certainly been this year. I keep repeating to myself and anyone who will listen, “I had a baby. We moved. My dad died,” as if this mantra will help me make sense of emotional upheaval. Such simple little words with so much wrapped up into them. “I had a baby. We moved. My dad died.”

It’s bittersweet, this mixed bag. And I keep thinking there must be some lesson it. There’s got to be a lesson it, right?

This I know is true. I keep going. Slowly, perhaps. In a haze, often. Some days it’s treacherous and heartbreaking. Others it’s golden and euphoric. And most days it just is.

goofy dance

Lately I’ve had this feeling. It’s a good kind of feeling to be sure. I suppose it’s coming because I’m getting more rest now than I have for the better part of a year, or because I’m feeling more like an interesting person and less like a food source, or because I feel my post-partum bod getting stronger, or because cooler weather means I get to hang out on my fabulous deck, or because there are so many awesome people in my life I want to spend time with that I’m having trouble fitting them all on my calendar, or because it was a rough summer and I’m ready to plan some fun.

This feeling that I get when Madeleine lunges after a soccer ball protecting her team’s goal, or when Dax sits with a paper and pen intent on writing letters correctly, or when Richard gets a picture hung on the wall without me asking him to get it done, or when Jean-Paul shoots me a slobbery grin, or when I think about making gumbo soon — it’s like I need to do a happy dance.

I really do feel like dancing sometimes. Just because it feels good. Just because I’m happy.

I haven’t actually started dancing when this feeling comes on, but next time I think I will. I know, I’m goofy. But if you’re one of those awesome people I’m getting onto the calendar, you know I’m a goof. And I think you love me anyway. Or maybe you love me because I’m a goof.

So if you see me dancing around like the goof that I am, you’ll know why. And maybe you’ll even join me.

Audacious

Maybe I’m having a mid-life crisis, like all those affluent 40ish family men buying high-end racing bikes.

Maybe I’m ready to move on from all the indignities of pregnancy and post-partumdom.

Maybe I’m mourning my dad.

Either way I’ve been feeling the need to be audacious. I suppose it might seem silly, or even mundane, to someone else, anyone who’s already tackled the challenges I want to take on.

But mainly I want to prove to myself that I can set myself to a task and accomplish it without hiding behind any kind of “I can’t”.  I won’t be asking permission, and I won’t be worried about what anyone else thinks I should be or do.

Life is short, and fear is only going to waste my time.