Where, oh where…

…do we go from here?

We find ourselves, once again, a family with a Mission but without a Place to manifest it.

We find ourselves, once again, relying on the kindness of our parents, their open hearts and home.

We find ourselves, once again, in the Bay Area for an As-Yet-Undetermined length of time.

I am heartbroken. I feel desperate to find the place where we belong. Our desires are simple, but this world is complicated.

And so we bake cookies:

Yes, that dough is the color of charcoal. I took a basic sesame tahini shortbread ala Mollie Katzen (the Sesame Stars from Vegetable Heaven), and used black sesame tahini and my new favorite gluten-free flour mix and YUM happened.

Many are in the freezer, waiting for relatives we will see around Christmastime. A few are on reserve to leave out for the gnomes. It was Joy, it was Delicious, and at times it was Serious Business, this cookie-making.

The hardest part was waiting for the cookie sheet to be free for the next round of cutting shapes…

I am working hard to breathe in Hope and breathe out Anxiety so that I might enjoy this holiday season. It is the first in four years that we have not been 3000 miles away from all the grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins, etc. I need to celebrate this, but my mind is consumed with where where where are we going to go next and how are we going to get there…

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It’s 1AM…do you know where your business cards are?

Finally dry and stacked, I was thankful to drag my bleary self to bed last night this morning. Tonight I’m in for a marathon pom-pom making session, tagging and inventory, tomorrow I ship and then I cross my fingers and hope for the best.

If you’re headed to Stitches East, we’re at Booth #318, IndieSpun! I wish I could be there in person with the gals, but alas, there are several things keeping me west-bound this time around.

To get me through these late nights, my brain dances around visions of reunion…every moment of wee-hour effort will help us get closer.

There was a sweet yet brief visit for C’s birthday. A surprise trip down being, of course, a good excuse to experiment with a gluten-free version of my favorite brownie recipe in lieu of a more traditional cake. We are not cake people. The Little Guy sifted through the vast and magical candle drawer and chose a few to his liking:

It was a bit dense, as g-f tends to be…but otherwise quite lovely. This was before I discovered that the Whole carries coconut flour, so there will be some further exploration in the realm of the Perfect G-F Brownie.

I miss this smile in my daily life more than anything:

It’s all the little things that are missing and they add up to one Big Heartache. A moment to share a thought, an idea, a worry. A stolen hug or a knowing glance. Communication without words.

And for them it’s even more important to be in each other’s physical space.

Time to distract myself with Busy.

In less than two weeks, a renter will be moving into the farmhouse. OUR house. The place where my son went from little blob of baby jelly to walking, talking, thinking small person, the place where I started my business, learned how to can veggies and make jam, the place where we buried my furry best friend…I don’t know if I can handle this. It seemed like we needed, more than anything else, to get out of there. Townshend was a very lonely town for me…Crispin always gone and no neighbors on the same page or even reading the same book as I…driving, always driving to go somewhere else, anywhere else. And now I miss everything about it, the great old barn and my gigantic studio with lime green walls…even the slate floor that broke every time we walked across it and the traffic and the lumpy bumpy backyard. Especially now that we are living with another family (who are awesome, btw), I miss quiet mornings, just the three of us. It only ever happened on the weekends, but I ache for those mornings. I know I felt so trapped there, but it’s hard to remember that right now. I just wish I knew if we’ve made the right decision. I wish I felt confident that things are going to be better for us because we’ve made this decision. I wish I wasn’t up at 1AM typing this through a sea of tears, but I cannot seem to let myself come to a place of acceptance. What’s done is done and there is no going back, so somehow I need to find a way to shelve this and think about the Spring and fixing up the cabin…get excited about it all somehow. There are seeds to order and fresh snow in the morning. So many things to look forward to in the coming months if I can just let this go. 

Happier things in the morning.
I have photos to share of the goods that went West for Stitches.

My boy said "I love you SO much" today. Then he said, "Mama, you’re hugging me too hard." 
Goodness.