Some days I feel as if I am drowning.

At this very moment in my life, I feel okay. Overall, I am a pretty positive, optimistic person. When I get down, it rarely last more than a couple of hours. Even when someone does me wrong, depending on the person, I am usually over it within an hour (my kid) or a few hours or a half a day (the hubby) or a day or so (coworker or friend). I used to hold grudges much longer. But life is short, and I have learned to let things go.

But lately, I have these days, sometimes fortunately only half days, where I feel overcome. This usually happens to me as I am lying awake at night, fretting about something. Mostly it is my kid and various things around that, not the least of which is her going to high school in the fall a bit of a distance from our house. I fret about my job, which is not stable. I fret about the husband's unemployment. After more than a half year without work, he finally starts a job in two weeks, but that brings with it some different anxieties. I fret about my various relationships, from marriage, to parenting, to relatives, to friends.

I worry about myself as a person. A lot. Some days I think I could be a better human being, and then other days I think I let people walk all over me too much. I worry about letting people down. Sometimes I think I could be doing so much more, but I don't know what. Or where. Or how.

I think my feelings of dread, worry, and feeling lost began around the election and have stayed since then. It kind of took a piece of me, sadly. I feel differently than I used to. But I don't seem to know how to get past that. In my liberally conservative views (or is it conservatively liberal), I feel alone at times. I am scared for the country. I (try to) believe the best in people. But sometimes it is so hard. Whether it is seeing litter in my neighborhood and picking it up for the 10th day in a row, or hearing/watching people chant "Build the wall. Go back home."

It seems so simple to me: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But I guess it is not. And I don't get it.

And then I start to question myself.

And I worry.

Yeah, so I feel okay right now. Not great. Certainly not at peace. A bit aimless. Somewhat frustrated. (As an aside, I have not been sleeping well; and as a result, my brain does not seem to be working as well as it used to. My memory has certainly suffered.)

But I will try to keep on keeping on.

And choosing kindness and love.

And going high when they go low. For the most part.

But I will still worry. And struggle.

I am not sure I know how else to live right now. (As another aside, #ThisIsWhatAnxietyFeelsLike has been trending on Twitter. I could say a lot of about that. But just not in 140 chars.)

Let's build something together!

That is one of my favorite slogan's (Or is that a tagline? Over a year removed from a design firm, and I can no longer remember). It belongs to Lowe's, although I am more of a Home Depot gal. But suffice it to say if someone handed me a $5,000 gift card to Home Depot (or Lowe's), I would be ecstatic. If I had $10,000 to spend, you could hear my shouts of joy from miles away. The things I could do with that money. Well, the things I could have Brian do with that money anyway. I love walking around Home Depot and admiring the fancy bathroom sinks and tubs. I look at the lighting and think about where I would put each fixture. I touch textured and colorful tiles and wistfully look at the fancy kitchen cabinets. I admire the various carpet styles and blinds. I look at the fancy front-loading washer and wonder what it must be like to have a steam dryer. I even look longingly at the vacuum cleaners because I can no longer buy a replacement filter for my eight year old mo...

Summer in review

This summer I made it a point to try to take at least one pic of Jordan whenever we went somewhere, which most often was a park. I wanted to capture all the great, fun things we did this summer, knowing that it was probably going to be my last summer not working for quite some time. So here goes. I have expressed my love of Frick Park, particularly Blue Slide Park, in other posts ; it really is one of our favorites. And this summer marked the first one I did not feel the need to follow J around like a little puppy dog. I actually let her run around and explore, though, admittedly, I would panic if more than three minutes went by and I had not seen her. In the pics above, J is at the end of the blue slide, and then hanging several feet above concrete (which scared the crap out of me). We also visited another section of Frick Park, the area on the corner of Braddock and Forbes, a few times. There is not as much to do as Blue Slide, but we go there to mix things up a bit. In the p...

If only I had taken pictures of my detoured drive

When I moved to the Burgh just over 14 years ago, I had a lot of anxiety about getting from "here" to "there." I found the city, which is triangular, and even some of the suburbs quite confusing. On top of that, a lot of the signs were of little help. Clearly they were put up by either natives who had no need for directions or people with a sick sense of humor who thought it would be funny to put signs in random places, leaving off important roads. At some point, I got over that fear of driving to a new building downtown. I don't recall when it happened, but eventually I just figured most of the city out; and when I had to head to a new place, I just drove around, no longer with a feeling of dread, knowing I would eventually get there. But on Sunday morning, that awful, long-ago feeling returned, thanks to the closure of the outbound Fort Pitt Tunnels. I had to pick my mother up from the airport, so there was no avoiding it. (For some reason, my family think...

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