Been too long

So does every blog have one of these posts? I would say "I've been busy" or some other lame excuse but I really have been trying to decide...do I pour my soul out to the internet or post pretty pictures for grandma to see each week? So, I decided I'll email grandma pictures and I'll drink a glass of wine and see what comes out of my fingers:)

So, the first big thought I remember thinking I should blog about was about a week ago. I got a chance to ride my bike. This is my passion. For sure. And if nothing else it brings me back to my teenage years when I was able to do this every day if I wished. But I biked all the way until I moved to Seattle - when HILLS and mountains got in the way. We did haul our bikes around sometimes, and if we lived near a path, I rode on it. But as far as regularity...not so much. I was riding around in springtime thinking about this and that and it dawned on me...oh my gawd I am a bit of my father. He has all these stories of how he goes in his "think-tank" AKA "hot tub" and comes up with these fabulous ideas on what the next step of his life is. The one I love best is "I will be a farmer." So he bought land and an antique tractor and hired out people who knew what they were doing. I love it. I love being like my dad. So I was riding around on my fabulous bike path that I am still mad I never discovered for the first 2 YEARS I lived here, and thinking "There is so much more to me than this. I am not living my full potential." You know when people have pass away and their eulogy is all about losing this fabulous life on the earth...well I feel like I COULD be this fabulous person. I try to be the best possible to my kids. And really you would probably puke at how much fun I have with my kids. I really do adore kids. I offer to babysit other people's kids, but they usually turn me down:)

I guess I turn on the mom guilt sometimes and feel like I need to do more. But at the same time I feel like I'm kind of biding my time and it hit me a week or so ago that there is something BIG waiting for me. I'm an architect. I love it. It makes me happy to draft away, to create space. I interviewed for this job downtown and I wanted it so badly. I wowed the interviewer ( a partner in the firm) to the point that she said "wow!" after I finished speaking about architecture and what it means to me. She kept pushing me to see if I would go full-time and I would not. I had gone from a SAHM and moved from Seattle and that life to Chicago and this life and it was not the time. I got the call that I did not get the job based on not letting go of my part-time dream. So I got a slew of part-time jobs that have not fulfilled me completely. And the last job, I was really getting into it, and work slowed down to a crawl and he let his employees go. A huge life event I got through.

Did I mention yet that I have this fantastic husband who is truly my soulmate? When he is gone, I don't worry about how I will survive two crazy children like most people do, I worry how I will survive my days without him. 11 years and counting.

So it's been slow in my current office and it's hard to decide whether I should move on. I think I should stay. Now is not the time to move. Yet I see it there someday. Something big. Something that will overwhelm me and fulfill me. But it will be hard to leave raising my kids to someone else. But it is me. I see it...and I hope when I need to jump on that train, I am ready.