"One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: To rise above the little things." John Burroughs

1)What did you do this year that you'd never done before?

Quit my job.

2) Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I didn’t keep any of my new year’s resolutions last year. This year I want to in 2012 I hope to venture out of the United States, lose 15 pounds and get my driver’s license.

3) Did anyone close to you give birth?
No.

4) Did anyone close to you die?
No.

5) What countries did you visit?
I stayed in the US this year.

6) What would you like to have next year that you lacked this year?
My master’s degree.

7) What date from this year will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
There were no life altering moments this year, which can be a really good thing, in many cases.

8) What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Getting through it, mainly surviving an ungodly amount of all nighters for school

9) What was your biggest failure?
Giving into the delicious despair of my quarter life crisis.

10) Did you suffer illness or injury?
Nothing serious, although I did get the stomach flu and the snotty kind of flu in the same month and for the first time in years.

11) What was the best thing you bought?
My Canon 7D, plane tickets to New York and my Leaky Con 2012 pass.

12) Whose behavior merited celebration?
Le Hubs because he put up with my impulsive pouty ridiculousness.

13) Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
My own.

14) Where did most of your money go?
Bills, per usual.

15) What did you get really, really, really excited about?
My trip to Colorado, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan.

16) What song will always remind you of this year?
Party Rock Anthem by LMFAO


17) Compared to this time last year, you are:
More content.

18) What do you wish you'd done more of?
Reading.

19) What do you wish you'd done less of?
Drinking

20) How did you spending Christmas?
Nursing the flu but enjoying my family and watching Harper rip into everyone’s gifts.


21) Did you fall in love this year?
Most days.

22) What was your favorite TV program?
How I Met Your Mother

23) Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
I still don’t hate anyone.

24) That was the best book you read?
Incredibly Close and Extremely Loud

25) What was your greatest musical discovery?
Adele

26) What did you want and get?
A new camera

27) What did you want and not get?
A trip to Europe

29) What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
This year I turned 24. We went to dinner, my dad surprised me by showing up on my porch.

30) What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Not having to work.

31) How would you describe your personal fashion concept this year?
Adventurous.

32) What kept you sane?
Reading.

33) Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Hmm, probably Darren Criss

34) What political issue stirred you the most?
Human and animal rights.

35) Who did you miss?
My grandmother

36) Who was the best new person you met?
My new friend, Lis.

37) Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned this year:
Life is about calculated risk and I’m not very good at math.

There's something like a line of gold thread running through a man's words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years...

...gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself. -John Gregory Brown

June 13, 2009: the Father Daughter dance at my wedding

Today is my dad's 50th birthday. He is a wonderful man whose unwavering love and support has allowed me to experience and accomplish so much. He is patient and kind, humble, talented, loving, very funny, and affectionate. He has raised my brother and me with a grace I can only hope to emulate in my own parenting venture.

My dad never managed to teach me how to waltz even though he's tried. I've watched him spin my mom around their living room, counting out loud for my benefit many, many times. Instead he always lets me stand on his feet when we dance together so I look like I know what I'm doing. I cried through my entire daughter dance, with my head on his shoulder, my feet on top of his as we counted one, two, three, four. He sang the words of Cheek to Cheek in my ear.

Last year, my birthday was terrible. No one showed up to my party, Guy and I were fighting over something really stupid. I was tired, Harper was teething. I just wanted it to be over. And then a little after 10pm my doorbell rang and my dad was standing on the other side of the door, with flowers and a watercolor painting of Tom and Jerry. I was shocked; hours earlier we had spoken on the phone and he had flippantly mentioned he was on his way. I thought he was joking, sure he was headed home in the opposite direction and then here he was, having spent more than a full day at work and then driving 2 1/2 hours to hug me on my birthday. I was speechless, I forgot to let him in off the porch. He came in, hugged me, drank a diet coke and headed home, like it was just the next block over instead of three hours away.

And of course there is Lake Michigan in a Jar, but that story is for another day.

And so Papa Bear, on this your birthday, I thank God that I get to be yours. All my love, Rachel

"Forever, for what you have tamed." - The Little Prince

There is music playing behind a closed door. I know some of the words and it makes me wonder how much brain capacity I use remembering lyrics to songs I used to love but have forgotten about.

I think about how it would feel to be a felt tip pen. Would I write poetry or blank checks or obituaries or numbers or birth certificates? I ask myself questions I will never be able to answer. How many pages have I read? Where will I be when I die? Will I know? Will I be alone? How long would it take me to lose fifty pounds if I just stopped eating? What will my child know that I never even had the option to learn? How many times have I swept a floor, slipped my shoes on, fallen asleep on accident?

My husband is home, all the lights are on, there is a fake Christmas tree in the front window. Only the top half is decorated. The air smells like pine and smoke and the sulfur of a match tip. I wish it was cold, that is would snow, that I could sit and watch frost crystalize on the windows.

I want to kiss my husband, but I don’t because he looks at me like he would just rather sleep. I wonder how many times I have whispered "I love you’s" into the crook of his neck. I want to know if he believes me when I say it or if thinks it’s like playing back an answering machine message , every day for seven years. I want him to know it is not a prompted knee bounce, a marital reflex test. He is not a doctor, and I am not a patient. He is just a man, who walks around in his underwear and starts conversations with “I was listening to NPR and …” . I am just a woman, who is still learning what it means to be and cannot sleep with my feet underneath the covers. I don’t ask him if he knows love tumbles out when I open my mouth to breathe.

I don’t want him to know I’ve been crying while he drove the baby around in calculated circles, coaxing her eyes to close, tiny hand fisted into the warm fleece of her pajamas. I let my eyes drop shut; I pretend I am tired. I am not waiting for him, simply for sleep. I do not want him to know that I need him and I don’t know why.

He asks me what I am writing and I tell him "I don’t know". He says "I love you". I confuse him but in a good way. He rubs my feet and I say "thank you" because I don’t know what else to say. My throat aches from all the sobs I have trapped there. I have words written on my feet in permanent marker that will come off with tomorrow’s shower. He reads them but does not ask. I have nothing to tell. "You can go to bed," I say. He has work in 4 hours. I will be while he sleeps and then he will be while I sleep. Some days we are the sun and the moon, only existing when the other is out of reach.

My daughter is sleeping because it is very early or very late. I want to know what she dreams of. Her whimpers wake me sometimes, her eyelids flutter and I imagine that her blue eyes are open and she is looking at me. I hold her against the comma of my body, each night a reminder that babies don’t keep. She is long and thin like her father. Her head nestles just below my chin and her feet rest on my knees. Someday she will look down on me. Guilt rises in the back of my throat like bile. I whisper to her “You are not keeping me from anything; you are everything”.

On good days, she throws herself at me, arms open, her small pink mouth quirked with joy. She embraces me with her whole body, her arms are around my neck, one foot hooks onto my belt buckle, while the other slips gracefully into my front pocket. She has a runny nose. She presses a warm kiss to my lips and tips her head back to laugh. She does not worry if she feels too much. I envy her freedom, her ability to give as she wishes.

My dog has stolen all the blankets. He is old and blind. Sometimes he is crazy. I think about all the things he has lost and let him keep the covers, balled under him a stark white juxtaposed against his unruly black coat.

I want to know what it would be like to be a ; . A pause, a breath, a rest, a promise. Something else is coming. You'll have to wait and see.

"I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year." -Charles Dickens

Harper,
Yesterday, I woke up covered in books, with you leaning into my side, reading me How the Grinch Stole Christmas, dressed in your dinosaur footie pajamas acting as if you've been the one reading me books since the day you were born, instead of the other way around.

Last year at this time, you were static and now you are a dynamic, and such a little person. So far you have broken two Christmas ornaments, actually make that three and there are still two weeks until Christmas. But, when we turned the Christmas lights on you said oh wow and that makes all the broken ornaments in the world worth it. This year, Santa freaked you out but by the time we were done snapping the pictures you had gone from terrified to pissed off, to waving jovially as we walked off, tears still wet on your face.

You eat the middle out of cucumbers and feed the rest to the dogs. You give back rubs and foot rubs when you are feeling particularly sweet. You wave goodbye, but not hello. You and daddy like to spin around the living room and blow each other kisses and hide behind your hands, playing Pikachu. I'm writing this all down because I'm terrified that I will forget.

You think you nose is a place to keep your finger when you don't need it. You pet the vacuum because you were scared of it so we told you it was our fourth dog. You pretend to help me drink my tea and say yum after every pretend sip. You hate brushing your teeth but will comb your hair all day long. You love dance parties. We've been groovin' to Christmas music for the past month but your favorite song right now is the Glee rendition of Last Friday Night by Katy Perry.You play with glowsticks in the bathtub and try to drink the soapy water. You make me love you more everyday.

"You anchor me back down" - Mindy Gledhill

"I read your blog". Four words, thirteen letters, a single flash of realization. I am a selfish person. Not in the stingy sort of way, where I hoard material items or don't want to pay taxes or give money to charity. No, in the worst kind of way, the kind where you don't even realize you are throwing someone under the bus until its said and done and they are whispering it softly in your ear, not accusing you, just reminding you that they are there. And this time it was my husband, who thought if even for a fleeting moment that I would do things differently if given the choice. And there he was wrapped around me, telling me its ok to want things that aren't this. That aren't a Friday night smooshed onto the too small square of our queen bed, vying for room to spread out because our daughter is climbing over us all and Cooper is curled up on a pillow, the other two beasts using one of my socks, as a tug of war rope. The steady thump his heart beat against my back and the baby's breath ghosting across my neck, warm in the cold before we turn the heater on, her arms slung around my neck. No, my dear boy, I would choose to do this a hundred times if I could.

And so it's possible that Johnathan Safran Foer said it best when he said "Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living." but it doesn't mean that I wouldn't choose to live this life again, even with the gravity of a hundred other unlived lives pushing down on me. Learning to accept that things are different doesn't mean that I can't see that this is better, it just means it isn't what I expected. Please , please, please know that I will always choose this. Choose you. Choose us. Choose three ill behaved canines and a little girl who can already outwit us both.

"I wish you bluebirds in the spring, to give your heart a song to sing And then a kiss, but more than this I wish you love" -Rachel Yamagata

"The stars died so you could be here today." -Lawrence Krauss

Lately I've been up, so many late nights where its just me and some music and the sounds of my own thoughts bouncing against my thick skull. The baby is sleeping although she isn't really a baby anymore. My husband is snoring because he's getting over a cold and the three dogs are tucked away for the night on the other side of the wall and it hits me that I have a husband, a baby, three dogs, a house, credit card bills. When did this happen?

I look at the world and its obvious how lucky I am. I have food in my fridge, the heater is ticking away on the wall and at night I sleep between my husband, who works hard so I can continue my education and my daughter, whose laugh breaks my heart into a million pieces every single day. And yet, when I'm alone my mind constantly finds that empty spot where the memories of everything I promised myself I would do should be. The year I was going to live in France writing a novel, the dream of being a travel writer for National Geographic, learning to play the guitar, the month long backpacking trip through through India, the 5 floor walkup studio I was going to have in New York, the people I'll never meet and the mistake I'll never make.

I've always done everything right, at least on the grand scale. I started dating Guy as a senior in high school. I graduated high school with honors, I never sneaked out, I never got drunk. I graduated college with honors and I worked two jobs through college to save money. I cried when I got my first C. I never tried pot. I married my husband 2 weeks after I graduated . I've never had my heartbroken. I applied for graduate school, I was accepted to graduate school, I got pregnant 5 months after I got married. I started grad school, I had Harper. I started staying up late just so I could pee by myself. I am graduating grad school with honors in May. I've never not turned in an assignment. I have never lived alone. I can't remember who I am anymore, except that I am the person who has never done anything she said she would.

I'm appalled by my own selfishness, to live a charmed life, and finding myself wishing that it was otherwise. On nights like this when the cold wraps around me like a wet blanket, I can't shake the feeling that everything is spelled out for me. Tomorrow I will wake up and I'll make breakfast. Every two hours I will change a diaper. I will watch two episode of Sesame Street or the entirety of Toy Story. While Harper naps, I will catch up on some emails and study French. When she wakes up we will go to the park and if they weather is nice we will walk to the farmer's market to pick something up for dinner. We'll watch reruns of How I Met Your Mother and I'll wish that it was my life instead of a television show. Maybe we'll open a bottle of wine and when midnight rolls around we'll quietly crawl into bed and listen to the cars drive by the window, tangled up in each other and the familiar syncopation of our breathing. Rinse repeat. For a girl who always thought fate would deal me an extraordinary hand, ordinary is nearly too much to bear.