AfricanKelli

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I like having journals around — to collect prayers, notes, and odd observations. Sometimes they are filled with grocery lists. Pretty much all of them end up unfinished because I get distracted with the bright and shiny of a new journal!

New year, new paper, new start. A few I created this week as gifts for friends:

For Bruce, who is traveling regularly to Africa, doing amazing work. I used an old almanac to include geography text on the back:

A birthday gift with a bit of Heather Bailey flare.

For Dana, a PhD student in Forestry and birthday girl. I finally had a chance to use this patch, which I’d been holding on to for years in my sewing box:

It scratched a creative spot in my brain to use different materials — sewing cardstock, vintage trim, fabric, paint, stamps, hot glue. I’m trying to make more time to for this type of play; doing so simply makes me happier and more patient.

~K

There is a life I want to lead, a person I want to be, and there is reality. The two seem to be growing farther apart, which has my inner perfectionist freaking out and ripping things off the walls. So to speak.

Part of this blue weather can be explained on my recent dose of Phoenix sun. In Arizona, my calendar is full. I’m surrounded by friends who love me enough to shake me when I’m being ridiculous. And of course this time of year, the weather was glorious. Nelson pranced around the park as if to say, “DUDE! NO SNOW!”

He’s eloquent that way.

This holiday was miserable for my family. Truly, painfully miserable. My grandparents aren’t doing well and the stress of their on-going health issues made my parents sorrowful and despondent. Seeing my dad this sad shakes me. Knowing there isn’t a damn thing I can do fills me with useless, bitter rage. My mom’s sadness comes out as frustration. Pair all of this heavy emotion with a freak winter storm that kept my parents holed up in a cheap motel en route to Tucson, delaying their arrival by more than a day, and you can imagine how fun Santa’s arrival was.

The person I want to be would have wrapped my arms around my parents and told them how very sorry I am they are at this point in life. That watching their parents age and be sick must be so hard. That their sadness was my sadness and it was a pity our time together — one of two times a year we typically see each other — would not be ruined by the circumstances.

The person I am moped and played martyr. Once again, the only grandchild to show up for the holiday for either set of grandparents. Once again, the responsible one. Once again, the one who doesn’t run away from the sorrow of the situation, but doesn’t know how to deal with it anymore than anyone else. Because I’m not unbiased. I too am watching those I love slowly, painfully decline. I don’t know how to comfort my parents any more than I know how to help myself.

I do know the ways I have been trying to cope aren’t working. There is much to change in 2012.

~k

2011 will always be known as the year of Willie Nelson Mandela. Granted, there were a few other monsters crossed off the bucket list, but none of those wake me up each morning with a smile and a wagging pom pom tail screaming, “TODAY IS GOING TO BE THE BEST DAY EVER! CAN I GO OUTSIDE NOW?”

A few of my favorite photos from the year, including too many of the prized pup:

A year that begins in Africa can be nothing short of magical; 2011 didn’t disappoint.

Holy crikes. That’s how you do a year right. Thank you 2011! (I hear your younger sister 2012 brings great promise.)

~K

Spending a few days in the South working at a project site.

Be back soon, y’all.

xo,

K

Denver 30 was an attempt to step back from my blog for a bit and have more time for other things. For one, I’ve been taking a writing class for the last two months that wrapped this week. It was taught by Nick Arvin, who has published a successful novel, a book of short stories and has a second novel coming out in March. As a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, you’d think he’d be a cocky, leather elbow tweed coat jerk. And you’d be entirely wrong. He is a soft-spoken, kind and generous man who led our little class through a handful of other novels with thoughtful discussion and encouragement on our own projects. I was taken by his humble presence.

There has been a sweater knitting class too. Work travel. Thanksgiving. Ignite Boulder.  And oh, that little holiday in three weeks I spend six months planning for.

Denver 30 — all 110 photos of this lovely city — was an attempt to honor my father. He, who I idolize, isn’t such a fan of what I share on the interwebs. As an an intensely private, quiet man, I’d guess he’s fairly shocked to be in in someway responsible for creating a loud-mouth, all knowing, non-stop attention sponge of a daughter.

I’ve read in several memoirs that in your early 30s, people find a self-confident swagger and stride they could have only dreamed of, say, that pimply year of high school when jeans were never quite long enough to cover awkward limbs akimbo. Or maybe that was just last year, which had decidedly clearer skin, but ankles still in full view.

To my father’s credit, I did spend November considering thoughtfully about the blog. And yet, the plan backfired. The introspection brought me to a tail-feather shaking realization that frankly, you just can’t please everyone.

Let the blog trolls do their anonymous cowardly acts of malice. Let the crowds roll their eyes at my love of Christmas — the carols, the Excel spreadsheet planning of gifts, expenses and mailing calendar, the decorations and the pure joy I find in celebrating. Let the fashionistas laugh at the fact I still have a hard time finding jeans that cover all of my socks. Let the nutritionists scorn my autopsy, which will surely show veins coursing equal parts chardonnay and Diet Coke. Let those without pets snicker how a pound pup could complete change my life for the better.

Instead, I have some gifts to wrap, a soda to guzzle, carols to sing gleefully off key and a very happy Willie Nelson Mandela to snuggle.

Shake your tail feathers, Chickens.

~K