white picket fence

32.

Photos by my brother Josiah, taken last weekend at my parent's house in Iowa. 

I turned 32 last week. Adult birthdays are weird. It was one of those days where i SUPER missed working in an office. No one brings in a treat buffet or takes you out for lunch when you're a stay at home mom. David was clearly puzzled that a birthday could occur despite the lack of cake and candles. 

We did have a nice normal day. Costco shopping in the morning, a trip to the playground with David's neighborhood friend in the afternoon, takeout sushi for dinner. And my mom made a cake this weekend so the birthday wasn't completely cake-less. Oh, and I bought myself a pair of shoes and Mike got us a family pass to Brookfield Zoo and I get to go on a Wild Encounter (zookeeper for a day!). As far as adult birthday presents go, not too shabby. 

The past year has been HUGE for me. Tons of changes, both internal and external. After working as a graphic designer for almost exactly one decade, it took me a while to get the hang of being at home with little ones. Actually, I'm still working on that one. It's shaken up a lot of the ideas I had about myself, for better and for worse. 

But I can't stress enough the few things that have been unexpected blessings for me. I'm not sure how I would have made it through this year without my weekly women's bible study, yoga, and roller derby. Pursuing both spiritual and physical disciplines in tandem has been beneficial and I think the two things have supported each other in ways I'm not even fully aware of. 

Uh, sorry to get a little fruity on you. It's just that I've grown up and evolved a lot this year. I'm not sure what this means for this blog though. I'm in a "i'm totally over the internet" phase right now and sort of feel like the things that are important to me right now are not best shared with the entire internet.

You know me though. In a week I'll probably change my mind and be all up in your grill with pictures of the kids and art projects. and I'll thank you for still reading along with me and my ever changing rambly blog whims. 

right now I'm...

(inspired by Robyn, who sometimes feels like a parallel universe version of myself)

Buying: these red saltwater sandals. I'd been wanting a pair for years and finally went ahead with it. Good summer sandal purchase. 

Creating: digital/vector versions of my little doodles. Continuing the experiments.

Eating: Blueberry Streusel Muffins from Ina Garten's Back to Basics cookbook. I made 2 half batches, one with fresh blueberries and one with fresh raspberries. Maybe the best muffins I've ever made. I lost track of how many I ate yesterday. Ummm. Probably like 7. 

Listening: Johnny Cash Bootleg Volume 5: The Soul of Truth. Old gospel songs. Of course I love it. 

Loving: Norah's new words (Fox, Jesus). 

Reading: Hunger Games. I gave into it! And then I finished it in one day since I couldn't bear to go to sleep without knowing the ending. I know, I know, it's not "real literature" (say it with a stuffy british accent) but you can't deny that the story is fascinating and it's tough to put down. 

Seeing: we go for walks almost daily around a little pond near our house, and we love the animals there. Alway Redwing blackbirds, Mallard ducks, Canada Geese. And if we're really lucky, little turtles, a beaver, bullfrogs, a Blue Heron or two.

Watching: the same thing I always watch, DVRed episodes of Daily Show and Stephen Colbert. Oh, and also Word Girl, David's new favorite show. I actually enjoy it too because the animation is super cute. 

Wanting: so many little things (new curtains! haircut! a pair of white converse and t-strap flats from Seychelles! extra hours in the day! etc. etc. etc.) But not a lot of big things. I'm trying to remember rightly these days, remember the big amazing blessings I have. Staying home with the kids. Being healthy. Having a great family. There shouldn't be anything else I want. 

 

nighttime drawing

Right now I have a few paper projects in the works, but I can't settle into any of them. A little mini book, a new art journal. I want to work on them but it never feels right. Fits and starts. I'm so itchy though. You know that feeling? All day long I think about drawing or painting or just MAKING SOMETHING. There are so many projects in my head that it hurts. I literally get a pang in my chest when I think about all the things I'm not doing.

Of course, I AM doing things. They're just things like making toast. Disclipining. Sweeping all day long so the dang ants don't overtake our house. (Side note: if there is a single tiny morsel of food on the floor a little ant parade comes marching in to take it away. There are 2 small children and a dog in the house. There is never NOT a morsel of food on the ground. So that's the story of my ant battle of late.)

But the time I do have is the night time. That precious sliver between the children's bedtimes and mine. And it's just a little sliver, since I'm not one of those sleepless warrior moms that can get by on less than 7 hours a night. 

So in the evenings I get into bed and basically lurch at my drawing book. I can't get the pen to the page quick enough. Doodles. Lettering experiments. Rough attempts to actually draw things that look real and not like weird cartoons (this mostly means portraits of Stephen Colbert or random stuff from commercials)

I have to remember not to leave my books out during the day or they get scribbled on. 

And drawings of my new favorite animal: the Musk Ox. Do you know about these things? They're badass. I discovered them while watching Frozen Planet, which I cannot recommend highly enough. Fascinating and beautiful, plus it's given me so many new animals to learn about. And draw!

time capsule: ages 21, 22, 23

I don't consider myself a hoarder. Clothes, household items, magazines, clutter-y stuff. . . all those I can get rid of easily. Off to Goodwill you go! 

But. I'm kind of a memory hoarder. I found a box in our attic while looking for my passport the other day. Inside I found a treasure trove of STUFF from my early 20s: from my senior year of college to my first years in Chicago. I don't think I'd opened it since we moved to this house 7 year ago, so it felt like a time capsule. 

Full of notebooks, old photos and postcards (I was already a collector of weird old stuff, even 10 years ago), letters, pictures, art projects, meeting notes, phone numbers, post-its. . . you name it, I kept it. 

This little metal case originally held chocolates. When I opened it, it literally spilled with stuff. Photos, bus tickets, lire, business cards, those free advertising postcards they had at all the bars in Rome. 

"DJ Friendship" was my on-air name at the college radio station. And there's a little setlist for one of my radio shows. 

Such a random set of photos I found in this box: childhood pictures, photos my mom sent of relatives, and some college photos (that group shot is my Rome classmates and I at a buffalo farm where they made fresh mozzarella). I found that little playing card on the ground in a park near the Tiber River. 

One of my little robots. Katie Licht: drawing things with eyepatches since 2002!^®

A "family photo" my friends and I had taken at the Wal Mart photo studio in Iowa City. 

I saved the case stickers on all the CDs I bought. I either put them into my notebooks or stuck them on my car's dashboard. Don't CDs seem like so long ago? 

I found a few lists in these notebooks that are either comforting or disheartening. Comforting in the knowledge that I really haven't changed much. Disheartening in the fact that I'm still working towards some of these goals (write more letters! make more art! how many times have I written those things in a to-do list?). I really like the last one there: "Figure out what happened to my youthful self confidence."

No, that reading list is NOT too aggressive, not at all, 22 year old self.

I also find it reassuring that even in my chaotic early 20s, I was searching for discipline: "run & attend church regularly." 

Nothing like Joni Mitchell lyrics doodled in a work notebook to perfectly encapsulate what my life was like at age 22. 

And this: a polaroid from my 23rd birthday lunch with my co-workers. 

I think my plan now is to put the lid back on and not open it again for another 7 years. In the meantime, there's at least half a dozen boxes in the attic or my parents basement full of the same kind of stuff. I just can't bring myself to get rid of it, but who knows what will happen to all of it? Will my kids or grandkids want it? I like to think that maybe I'll keep it and donate it all to a thrift shop 50 years from now, and make some vintage-loving girl's head explode. 

my sacrifice this Lent. yeah, I'm a little nervous.

(an old art journal page about my terrible attention span. this is relevant.)

Soooo. Ahem, hrrrhrm. Here's my announcement. (I know that posting this on my blog & announcing it to the world will make this that much harder to slack off on.) 

I'm giving up the internet during the day, while the kids are awake, for Lent. 

Okay, so. . . maybe some people would laugh about this. Maybe you think "what's the big deal, I do that every day?" My friend Renae has given up the internet entirely for Lent before, and I tip my hat to her.

Listen, it's not entirely practical for me to give up the internet full time. I'm not even sure if you can be an active member of society anymore without email, right? Being online to stay in touch with my family, keep track of our calendar, and work on my fledging little etsy shop are all good and productive things that I don't think are necessary to remove from my life. 

But bear with me. Is this a scenario that looks familiar to you?: "Hm, I wonder what the actress from Punky Brewster is up to these days? URGENT QUESTION!! TO IMDB, POST HASTE!! Well, while I'm on the laptop I might as well check facebook and see if that Anthropologie sweater is on sale and and and etc." Then it's 15 minutes later and David's toast is getting cold or the baby is crying or whatever. It's a cycle that repeats a lot during my days at home and I've known for a while that it's just not the best for me or the kids either. 

I've been reading, hearing, and thinking a lot lately about Quiet. And not just in the auditory sense of like, sitting alone on a mountaintop. But also the, "am I able to tune out the internal distracting chatter to really be in touch with myself, and in prayer and communication with God?" kind of way. It's a question I'm hoping will be a lot clearer after the next 40 days. It's difficult to have internal quiet when you're rushing to fill every spare moment with new information. So that's my hope for Lent: eliminating the distractions, focusing on my family, and finding some Quiet. 

walls notebook: patterns and text

I'm so glad to have my Walls notebook. It's a really nice distraction from other projects or a fun break when I just want to doodle a little. 

In all my graphic design studio classes in college, our professors would assign us unreal amounts of prep work. Like 30, 50, 100 sketches or thumbnails at the beginning of every project. Back then I resented it, and in my work life it never really applied, but I've always seen the value in it. When you force yourself to just keep generating ideas, really fun things can happen. So, that's a really long-winded way of saying: look at all these patterns! I want to draw about ten more pages like this. It was really fun. 

I was inspired by a post about Creative Experiments on the blog Daisy Yellow. Tammy recommended drawing the same word in at least 25 different kinds of lettering. So I took it kind of literally and wrote "over and over and over." ;)

And this. These words are from a Taize hymn (this part is based on Psalm 139) that I love and that we sing pretty often in church. I find myself writing out scripture passages or parts of hymns sometimes; working on hand-drawn typography feels like my own form of meditation. Just writing the words and filling them in and letting them sink into the open spaces in my head. 

What are your favorite things to doodle?

country driving

(blurry, overexposed, through the windshield & taken while driving photo. i love it.)

Last Thursday we headed down to central Illinois for a friend's Christmas party / toddler playdate. It was super fun (I'll share more later). But for me, half the fun is getting there and coming back. 

We drive past the suburbs, past the exurbs, past the vaguely ominous industrial area near I-80 and the Des Plaines river. Then the view opens up. When I see the fields and the entire sky, I have a physical reaction; my shoulders drop and my jaw relaxes. My spirit changes too, like all the ugly and cramped up parts of my mind shake themselves out and unfurl into the open space. 

I know a lot of people find the midwestern landscape bleak. And I can see that, for sure. There's not a lot to look at. But isn't that nice? The emptiness is soothing to me. This is the landscape and geography that's folded up and stuck deep in my childhood heart. Gentle parabolas of powerlines. Funny old farmhouses and dilapidated barns. Grain bins, railroad tracks, cattle. I haven't lived in a rural area in many many years, but these things are still my visual markers of Home. 

The wintertime colors are soothing too. Desaturated greys, browns, greens. All the natural world soft, subdued, faded, and waiting. And I don't mind that the sun isn't out, the kids nap better on grey days anyway. 

We had a quiet ride. I didn't turn the radio on. No NPR, no podcasts, not even one of my carefully curated Christmas playlists. Just me and my thoughts; the wind against the car, David's little low-volume DVD player showing episodes of Thomas; Norah's soft baby noises and little rattly toys. And the scenery adds to the quiet, too. Quiet car, quiet colors, quiet sky, quiet mind. I always feel so much gentler and more thoughtful after a ride in the country. 

happy advent

Fra Angelico, The Annunciation

It's finally time. Finally time to break out the sparkly lights. To cue up Handel's Messiah, Johnny Cash's Personal Christmas Collection, and Sufjan Stevens Songs for Christmas (all three of which are my favorite Christmas albums, all three of which make me cry every year without fail). Time for coffee and gingerbread cookies for breakfast, without a trace of guilt. 

But technically. . . it's not really Christmas now. It's Advent. A time to wait, and think, and hope. I'm kind of a curmudgeon in some ways. Every year I get more and more anxious about money and materialism and gift giving and what all that means. Every year I'm more and more convinced that it's not about presents or music or even Candy Cane Joe-Joes, as delicious as they may be. And don't get me wrong, I'm not discouraging any sugarplum visions. I currently have full virtual shopping carts littered all over the internet. There will most likely be more than one gift under the tree marked "To: Me, From: Me." And between the three cookie-eating members of our family, we've already gone through a whole box of those Joe-Joe's.

But I want to make sure that it's more than that too. More than just wordly things. I want Advent and Christmas for our family to mean growth, kindness, and peace. To be about waiting for the baby Jesus in the manger. And being like Mary who "treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart." So that's my hope for this Advent season. 

easy vs. hard

Some things are just plain easy. Drinking coffee in the morning. Thinking about a weekly meal plan. Zerbert-ing a fat baby tummy. Taking pictures of leaves. Happy things. 

Some things start easy. . . but end up being harder. Sitting on the couch (because you know, at some point you do have to get up OFF the couch.) Making all those meals on the meal plan. And here's my big one: Handling everything yourself and never asking for help. 

And some things, the best things, seem hard but end up making everything easier. Making a ton of food at once so you don't have to cook all week long. Going out for a walk instead of sitting on the couch. Sticking to a routine. And humbling yourself to admit that you need help. . . and then asking for it.

You have to cross over the hard part to get to the easy part. And obviously by "you" in that sentence, I really mean "I." That's where I'm at this week. 

real life. fall 2011.

This is what my life looks like: 

I mentioned the other day on twitter that I've been working hard at real life lately. Real life = keeping both kids in solid routines, cooking a lot, reading stories and playing, trying to maintain a tidy house. It sounds so easy, doesn't it? But it's not for me, somehow. For a while now I've felt so confused about why I have a hard time managing a household. It seems to come so easily for some women, but I've learned that I really have to work at it. It's worth it, completely, but it takes work. 

It's easy for me to daydream all day and get absent-minded and end the day wondering what filled our hours. And listen: as someone whose natural inclination is toward intensely solitary pursuits (reading novels, long walks alone listening to mopey music, etc), parenting 2 small children can be a challenge. The constant questions of a 2 and a half year old. The baby crying. The bowls of cheerios spilled on the floor. And oh dear, just the thought of dressing 2 small people in winter clothes and herding/wrangling them into the car is exhausting to me. 

But I'm applying myself to it. Getting things done and staying ahead. Staying focused on the kids, the house, myself, right now. And it feels a thousand times more satisfying than you'd think. 

Typing this out it all sounds so incredibly boring and awful; I mean, it's not mind-blowingly original content here for me to say: Look at me! I got laundry done! We read David's favorite Dr. Seuss book 2 dozen times! I made honey mustard chicken with rice for dinner! But: that's my real life. And I'm really happy with it.