right now

I've spent so much of my life wishing and willing for it to be in the next big stage.

Another year and I'll get a later bedtime like my big brother...
Just a couple more years and I'll be able to drive...
14-months until I move out on my own...
This summer I'll move halfway across the country...
Two more classes of grad school and then I can make some real money...
Our wedding is just 6-months away...
Soon we'll have the keys to our new (to us) house...
T-minus 365 days until we launch (work stuff)...
A year Almost 7 years from now we'll have a baby...

So much time was wasted waiting for the next big event.  I know I missed so much of what was right in front of me because until the next big thing happened, I was in hyperfocus goal mode to just get through this one. more. thing.

I didn't stop living, of course, but my mind was never fully present in the right now.  I could only have my fun in short bursts because I had to get my scatterball of a mess head back to my fantasy world where all the big stuff was complete and I was finally able to enjoy it all.

After 12 and 11 years with the same employer, MJ and I both said good-bye.  Our year has been filled with uncertainties and changes in both our families...illnesses, job loss, financial strain, location changes, fighting addiction, psych wards, nursing homes, group homes, accidents...  Seriously, it has been a rough year.

There are likely more changes in our year to come.  Maybe some schooling.  Maybe a move.  Maybe a whole lot of next big stages on the horizon.  And yet my mind isn't racing trying to accomplish it all without enjoying what is right here.

Right now.

On this playground.  Seeing the world with the excitement that comes from finding an abandoned sparkly purple necklace on the slide.

Or running up and down a ramp at the swimming pool over and over and over...

It is right here.  With crooked pigtails, crazy curls, and upside down teddy bear kisses.

It is in the discovery of finding water beads on blades of grass.

It is stuck in a never ending game of making silly faces just to see what will come back my way.

There is always dog hair on my floors and an abandoned load of laundry being refreshed in the drier one more time.  I really need a haircut and my email inbox will likely never be caught up again.  I have so much planning and research and implementing to do for our next life stages on the horizon, but I know it will all eventually get done.  I'll live that day when it gets here.

Today I am in my right now...and it is just where I need to be.

toddler liquor store visit and other disasters

MJ had a birthday a couple weeks ago.  It was his 39th, so of course I had to welcome him to his 40th year in style.  Yes, your 39th birthday is the start of your 40th year of life.  You're welcome, in case you haven't thought of it that way before.  I pretty much hated my brother for pointing this out to me on my 39th.  He's still jealous that I got a Big Wheel for my 5th birthday and he was too old for his own and too big to ride mine.  Check out this poor quality circa 1978 iphone picture of a picture.  Dude, I rocked that Big Wheel and he has every reason to still be jealous*.

So back to my task at hand.  FOCUS, B, FOCUS!  I needed to do something for MJ's birthday.  For anything artistic, creative, and fun, I turn to Pinterest and its endless idea smorgasbord of awesomeness.  This is how it all went down.

I saw some pretty cool Superman cakes on Pinterest and thought it would be fun to make one for MJ.  I can make a mean pumpkin ginger cupcake or zucchini-carrot muffin, but fondant and fancy shaped cakes are out of my league.  I knew I wasn't going to get:

But I had hopes of at least getting a round very downscaled version of something like:

After gathering and washing miscellaneous mixing bowls, spatulas, and measuring cups from Firecracker's toy stash I was ready to go.  My newly googled decadent chocolate cake recipe called for three 9-inch cake pans, of which I only had one.  This is probably where I should have just stopped.  My next Google search told me that it was fine to use my springform pans instead.  Of course, my springform pans are different diameters, but no big deal.  I'll just cut off the excess...I have seen an episode or 2 of Cake Boss, people.

Okay, on to the cake.  Firecracker was VERY interested now.  I did have HER bowls and whatnot gadgets after all.  "Up.  Up.  Up.  Help.  Ptttttt (Please).  Help.  Up.  Ptttttt."  Her persistence, cuteness, and incessant noise won me over.  I attempted to now measure ingredients with a toddler on my hip helping.  All of my measurements were suddenly -ish, as in 2-ish cups.  Sugar and flour also now coated my counter, floor, and toddler.

With 3 cakes finally in the oven it was time to get the frosting going.  Upon realizing that I had no heavy whipping cream, I contemplated cleaning, dressing, and loading my flour and sugar covered toddler (who was nearing naptime) into the car to drive to the grocery store.  Back to google I go instead, where I learn that I can just whip butter and milk together for a whipping cream substitute.  Awesome.

After 20-minutes of splattering milk on every surface in my kitchen, I resorted to my typical headstrong-I-will-make-this-work baking judgement and started adding powdered sugar to see if it would help thicken things.  I added the recipe's full measured amount of powdered sugar.  Milk was still splattering so I just dumped a bunch more powdered sugar in to see what would happen...because I obviously have more determination and stubbornness than baking smarts.  It was a separated mess of chunkiness if you must know.

The cakes were now done.  My attempts to "cool on wire racks" were met with 2 cakes falling apart.  Whatever.  They will be the bottom layers.  It's all covered in frosting anyway.  Who cares.  The cake tasted awesome though, I must say.

I made peace with my milk and butter losses and found an optional frosting recipe which called for 2 boxes of cream cheese.  I only had 1.  Of course, I only had 1.  I read a comment from the recipe's "most helpful commenter" who varied the recipe and only used 1 box of cream cheese.  Worked for her.  Great.

I made, separated, and colored the frosting red, yellow, and blue.  Then I smashed and shaped together placed the first cake layer on my cake plate.  I frosted it red.  I placed the second cake layer on the red frosting.  Lather. Rinse.  Repeat.  But with yellow frosting.  Lather. Rinse. Repeat with third layer.  I attempted to cut around the stacked cake with a serrated knife to make it look round-ish or at least somewhat nice-ish since the layers were different diameters and basically a complete disaster.  It didn't go so well, but good enough.  It will be covered in frosting, remember?

I added the blue frosting and began to spread it over the top and sides.  It didn't take long to realize that I didn't have enough frosting.  That became the least of my problems when part of mish mashed smashed together cake fell into a lopsided disaster.

Of course, I've been at this too long so I walked away hoping to find it looking better on my return.

Pinterest Fail.

I then considered eating all the evidence.  I'm the one who really likes chocolate cake anyway.  He'd rather just have beer.  Wait a second...

Abandon (not throw out, as we don't even joke about wasting chocolate around here) the cake.  Well, okay, I did throw on some red sprinkles as a little lipstick on my pig if you will.

Back at Pinterest I set my sights on Option B.  It called for 39 beers of which I had 0.  I knew there was no butter/milk or 1 box of cream cheese substitutes so we WOULD have to leave the house for this one.

As I waited for the toddler to wake up, I cleaned the kitchen...counters, cabinets doors, floors, contents of emptied baking cupboard that I thought would be fine on the counter while I baked.  I may have done a quick search for a local cake decorating baking class...because I am stubborn enough to do this again and again.

I then drove to the liquor store.  On a Wednesday afternoon.  With a toddler in tow.  To buy four 12-packs of beer.  I tried to make a bad joke about needing all the beer just to get through the day after Firecracker screamed in the store.  Joke went right over the cashier's head.  I'm guessing they don't get many toddlers in their store midweek mid-afternoon ever.  I also think he thought I was serious.  Parenting Awesomeness 101.  A+.  I've got this.

After collecting random ribbons, toys, and gear leftover from previous parties and setting up a two fault tolerant baby gate system (complete with the evil and terrifying vacuum cleaner) to keep my balloon obsessed mastiffs at bay, I went to work while Firecracker napped again.

Moose trying to figure out how to get to the balloons...

This is what MJ came home to:

"39 Beers for 39 Years"  And is that the disaster cake I see in the background?

Yes, his foot isn't touching.  It took every ounce of patience I had just to get him to hold those f-ing numbers.

MJ, of course, emailed out pictures of both cakes because that is just how we roll around here.

Toddlers in liquor stores and cake shaming extreme.  It doesn't get much better than this.

*My mom still has my Big Wheel and I cannot wait for Firecracker to ride it in the presence of her uncle.

ICLW and catch up kind of stuff

ICLW + haven't blogged in forever = catch up post time.

Let's see.  I used to be an infertility blogger discussing IVF protocols along with my malfunctioning lady bits (aka the ovaries of destruction and uterus of doom).  All of that stuff didn't work out so well.  I then mostly blogged about depression, anger, and all the ugliness that infertility bestowed.  It was a hot mess and there was not a lick of grace to be found.  Be grateful if you didn't read my writing in those days.  Next up was wanting to adopt with a hubby who did not.  That lasted a couple years.  I mostly didn't blog about it, but spent my time adventuring and living and coming to terms with not parenting by a whole lot of avoidance and alcohol (good party social kind of alcohol).  Hubby changed his mind about adoption somewhere along the way and I started up this blog to document the process...except I didn't.

Just a couple months after turning in our profiles, we were chosen by our daughter's birth mom to parent and our daughter arrived 2-weeks later.  She is now 16-months old and because I basically suck as a blogger, I haven't even given her a name here yet.  I guess now is as good a time as any.  Her personality is filled with over-the-top-social butterfly tendencies mixed with a need to study and dismantle EVERYTHING.  She has 2 gears which consist of "GO. GO FASTER. WOO HOO!! GO! EXPLORE! GO! GO! GO!" and "Near comatose exhaustion".  She has 1 sound level and on a loudness scale of 1 to 10, I'd rank her as a 14. In a nutshell, she is a little firecracker.  So Firecracker it is.

Our adoption started off closed.  It was not by our choice.  The only part of our profile that was in larger, bold font was a statement about wanting an open adoption.  We understood Firecracker's birth mom's reasoning for not wanting contact and told her in no uncertain terms that we would ALWAYS welcome her into our lives with open arms...2-hours, 2-weeks, or 12 years from now.  When Firecracker was almost 6-months old, her birth mom contacted us.  Our relationship has grown quite a bit over the past (almost) year and while it is not without its bumps and bruises, we are family.  We love her fiercely and unconditionally and over-protectively.  We're still navigating the open adoption waters and trying to figure out how it all works, but we hope whatever we are doing benefits both her and Firecracker in the long run.  We are simply the vessels of contact between the 2 of them for now until they can establish a relationship of their own.  I'm sure I'll have lots more to say about all of this stuff in posts to come.

Hmmm, what else???

I think I used to go somewhere every weekday and do something while I was there.  I might have even been something (not important, mind you, but rather something with a career type title).  I tossed it all to the wayside and joined the ranks of stay-at-home-momdom.  I'm sure I'll discuss some more of this at some juncture, but for now let's just say it is working out for our family and I'm pretty happy to say the least.  MJ changed jobs too, but his still involves a monetary compensation.

Oh, and we still have all 3 of our dogs.  The German Shorthaired Pointer is now over 15.  According to this dog age calculator, she was equivalent to 96 years old when she was 13.  The calculator doesn't work for either 14 or 15 for her breed.  I think they call that dead dog walking syndrome.  She is still just as much a pain in the ass as she was the day we rescued her from the pound.  The mastiffs grew.  A. LOT.  Moose is a 181-lb 3.5 year old.  He is obsessed with balloons and would still crawl inside our skin to get just a little bit closer to us if he could.  Paris is a petite 179-lb almost 3-year old.  She is much shorter than Moose and is on a vet recommended diet.  I'm pretty sure she thinks we are torturing her.  She is in love with Firecracker and is the most gentle of giants with her.  Moose is too, but we think it is the shared social butterfly nature that connects the 2 of them.

Of course, there is more to catch up on, but this is a start.  One of my final big projects at that place I used to go every day consisted of authoring over 700 pages of text and detail documented diagrams and photos on a billion+ dollar piece of equipment.   I've blocked most of it out to ward off the leftover anxiety it left behind, but I think I accomplished it in around a 4-month time frame.  And now 2 posts in the same month makes me feel like an overachiever.  Movin' on up, my friends.  Movin' on up.