house heaven

I don't think our house could be any better.

Seriously. I have loved every minute there. I mean, the cat meows constantly and leaves hair everywhere, and there are more spiders/spiderwebs than I'm comfortable with, and one of my roommates alternates between country and metal, which happen to be the two genres of music for which I have zero appreciation.

But those are just trifles -- minor annoyances, little forgettable and forgiveable things. They pale in comparison with the big awesome things.

Things like:

--Our vegetable and herb gardens and raspberry patch, which allowed us to say (until it got so hot that a lot of stuff is done for the season), "Oh, we need a salad for dinner? Let me just head outside and grab lettuce and spinach and raspberries and basil and VOILA magic deliciousness."

--Our front stoop, on which we have beautiful summer-night talks as we watch people walk by from behind the relative privacy of our hedge.

--Our patio, where we grill out ALL THE TIME and have people over and tend to our garden.

--My window box, which (well it's a little dead now, because I missed watering for one day a week ago) makes waking up a joy as the sun streams in and lights up the flowers.

--BOYS WHO CLEAN and enjoy cleaning. I don't think I've swooned harder than when Andrew (who does many swoon-worthy things, it turns out) said, "Yeah, I think I'm gonna organize the fridge this weekend, that's gonna be my project." And he and Remy both talk about how much they love coming home to a clean and orderly home. Everyone does their dishes, and when we cook all together, we clean all together and it gets done so quickly! And they sweep and wipe down the counters and ahhh so nice. They might actually clean more than I do (lolwut?)

--Boys who do yardwork, which I have no inclination to do ... so I'm very thankful that Drew seems to enjoy mowing the lawn at the hottest part of the day. And he does it all pretty with nice straight lines. And then weed-whacks.

--Late-night talks in our kitchen. The kitchen is really the heart of our house, as it should be, and I'm so thankful that it's big and open and lends itself to such warm community. We can perch on the counters and just talk for hours.

--Boys who appreciate my cooking! Not that it's anything fancy -- yet -- but it's so gratifying to throw together the veggies or stir-fry or whatever we're eating and have them make happy faces when they take a bite.

--Late-night Sons of Anarchy in the basement ... yesss. Got them hooked on it and I am so happy. It's  hilarious because Remy (raised a missionary kid and probably the purest-hearted lad I know) will look at the floor during inappropriate scenes, while Andrew laughs uproariously and repeats all the inappropriate lines.

--THE PIANO oh man can't believe it's this far down on the list. I love having a piano. I play and sing all the time. And the boys like it (or tell me they do, at least; hopefully they'd tell me to be quiet if they wanted me to stop).

--Impromptu worship sessions in the living room, that are super chill and comfortable and informal ... just three kids and a guitar, yo.

--Our herb garden, again. Do you KNOW how much I love rosemary? A lot. A lot a lot.

--The little white board in the hallway, where Andrew writes encouraging notes to us. Aw.

--The attitude of encouragement and support in the house, in general. We can't seem to tell each other enough how much we appreciate different things about each other's personalities. It would seem fake if I were an outsider looking in ... but these are two of the most genuine, agenda-less people I've ever met, and I know they always mean what they say.

--Our proximity to the park, so we can walk there and hear Thursday night Music in the Park, or play ultimate Frisbee or just wander around.

--Going on walks through the neighborhood and feeling like a part of the community -- saying "Evening" to neighbors and admiring all the beautiful houses and going to the little tiny park and taking turns on the single swing ... I will never be too old to swing.

--The fact that our house has felt like home since before we even moved in. I don't even miss my pool. I just love the house, and can't get over the fact that we're lucky enough to live there.


It's just above and beyond what I've ever experienced before or could ever anticipate it would be. We have such great, random conversations, and are able to talk about basically everything. I sometimes have a twinge of concern that it's not like, appropriate for me to be a part of such frank talks, as a girl, but I think I'm basically a bro in their minds. And it's so great. I feel truly comfortable with them, and know that we can tackle any subject.

And it really does feel like family, because I can get annoyed or impatient with one of them but shrug it off a moment later, and they don't get offended, and we all just settle back into our rhythm. I didn't realize before how cranky I can be in the morning ... anyone who's reading this post is probably laughing their face off at that statement, because everyone ELSE knows exactly how cranky I am. But these guys love me in spite of it, and are patient with me, and know that I love them despite my tendency to grumble when it's early and I haven't gotten enough sleep.

It was really cool -- they both mentioned several times recently that they've "learned so much" from me, which I cannot fathom; learned how to be mean? I dunno. But Andrew told me this week that it's encouraging for them to see me start to get mad or impatient or reactive, but then try to rein it in, and not give myself over to those feelings. He said they pick up on it, and appreciate that I'm working to be a better roommate and a better friend. Weird ... but cool.

I'm learning a lot from them, to be sure. Mostly about the kind of person I want to be -- I want to be genuine, and open, and kind, and unassuming, and to call out all the places I see God working in others. I want to love my friends as well as they love me, and make others feel as welcome as they make me feel.

And there are just the cute moments that I was hoping for, secretly, in living with boys; when they ask my opinion, "as a chick," what they should do with their facial hair or how an outfit looks, or when they muse about what pet names are acceptable when you're in a relationship. I enjoy getting insights into the male brain.

Anyway. It's just going swimmingly, and I am excited to go home at the end of every day, knowing that one of them is probably there and can talk or hang out, and if they're not, that I can sit down at my piano and play to my heart's content until they return.

Love always,
molly

family value

What hurts most about Mark's recent actions is how he treats his family.

We've been his family for 20 years. I grew up fighting with him, snuggling with him on the couch, shouting over chores not completed and laughing about the jokes that went over our parents heads. My parents were the ones who raised him, helped him with homework, yelled at him when he was being a jerk, told him they loved him every night, gave him all the stupid toys and video games he wanted, and tried to teach him to be a good person.

This girl, this manipulative stripper whore bitch, is not his family. Neither is her baby, whom she allegedly cares so much about but whom she easily left in Washington to move to California with Mark on a whim.

And neither is Mark's biological mother.

I am so frustrated and hurt and on the verge of tears when I see how they interact on Facebook. When Mark was in Afghanistan, he and I talked about him visiting Yakima. He was going to come up for a whole weekend, and he was excited about it. He wanted to go to salsa lessons with me and he wanted to go camping and climbing with my friends; we were going to have brother-sister time, just the two of us.

When it came down to it, though, he was too busy driving off to Boise to see the stripperwhore dance for him (which is just SO GROSS I can't even begin to articulate). He thought he would come up here the day he left for California, but refused to leave her behind so he and I could have time together.

But when he drove across the state just to see his half-sister's high school graduation, it was a different story. His birthmom asked if the stripperbitch was coming with him, and he said, "No, she'll do her own thing so we can have family time." And then the stripperbitch told her thank you for being so welcoming.

You know why she's welcoming, you disgusting twat? Because she has no stake in Mark's future. It does not matter to her if he ends up saddled to your diseased stripper ass for the rest of his life, paying for your delinquencies as you screw every member of his platoon while he takes care of your bastard baby.

I'm adopted too, but I have always had it clear that my parents are the ones who raised me, not the ones who had sex and accidentally conceived me. Don't get me wrong; I'm very grateful that I know my birthdad, and my half-siblings; we have a good relationship and my life is richer for that.

But I wouldn't for one second dream of putting them over my parents, or my brother. Especially not after coming back from a deployment in Afghanistan. We spent seven months not knowing if we'd ever see Mark again. Every time I read about a roadside bomb or a deadly explosion, my heart stopped. I cried in my newsroom over and over, had to hide in the back hallway until I got myself under control, until I could calm the overwhelming fear that he would be killed and I would never get to say goodbye. Or that he would come home with a traumatic brain injury, and be there, but be dead inside.

Did the stripperbitch have nightmares like that? Did his half-sister lie awake, night after night, praying that it wouldn't be his foot that triggered an IED? Did his birthmom hope every day that he would call, so she would know he was OK, at least for the time being?

Maybe they did. Maybe I'm not being fair. Maybe they missed him and worried about him and prayed for him, too.

But they are not his family, and their fear for him can never be the same. He didn't know his birthmom & half sister until high school; he didn't know this stupid whore until later.

Why are we so unimportant to him? Why doesn't he understand that your family should be a priority? Why doesn't he see that this girl is going to ruin his life? I don't say things like that lightly -- Mark has been making stupid decisions all his life, and I've given up the delusion that he'll ever learn common sense, but I have never felt such dread about a situation before. He wants to marry this bitch. I want to pay her to never see him again, and you know what? She'd take it. She is with him because it's convenient right now, not because she reciprocates his inexplicable loyalty.

I'm just so hurt and angry and sad and helpless. He's not listening to our family, and he's not even listening to his best friends, who tell him over and over again that he's making a mistake. What do I do if he marries her? I won't see her -- I can be stubborn, too -- but does that mean giving up my brother? I don't want to do that, either.

And there's really nothing worse than hearing your mom sob over the phone, so upset she can't even get words out. How can he do that? How can he not care that he's causing so much hurt to the people he's supposed to love the most?

Hit men aren't that expensive, really.

Love always,
molly

the big move

I should be going to sleep, since I have to get up for yoga in 5.5 hours, but I'm procrastinating. Like always.

I brought my first load of stuff over to the house tonight. (One of my friends keeps chanting "Bro house!" whenever I talk about it, and that's what it's become in my mind. And that's what it'll be, a little, for the first two months when it's just me, Andrew & Remy ... hm hm hmm it will be interesting.) And I talked with our awesome landlords who have bent over backward to make it work for us and who are just as excited about us moving in as we are.

I just can't wait for us to be moved in and done with all this shit. I'm so tired of processing it, of tiptoeing around people's feelings, of making excuses and having discussions and being thoughtful and considerate. It feels like in ancient Greece, Athens I think, or one of those city-states -- their enemies would be coming down the road, and they'd be like, "Let us have a democratic discussion about what we should do. Socratic circle, anyone?" I am all for processing, and I don't jump into big things carelessly, but c'mon, enough is enough! There has been far too much talking, and caring, and thinking. I have gone out of my mind so many times it's a wonder I know how to get back into it.

So yes. I just want to be in the house. Then I can remember why I wanted to do this in the first place -- why I'm leaving my beautiful, CLEAN apartment with a pool (two pools!) and my own rules for a house with three boys (and another girl, but that won't be til the fall). Whyyyy am I doing that? Giving up my own control and my individual comfort and my quiet space?

Well, because we felt called to live in community. (Did I though, did I really? Did I maybe just get called to live in a bro house and have friends around no matter what, attractive friends at that, who make me feel like I'm part of the "cool kids" group? Yeah, that sounds more like the reason.) We wanted to have a family of people who hold each other accountable and support each other and help each other pursue the life God has in store for us.

But all this stupid discussing and deciding and stalling has taken all the joy out of it for me. Asking over and over again what God's will is has pushed God out of it entirely. That's messed up. I'm ready for that just to be over ... so we can live in the house, and focus on what we set out to do.

I'm so excited when I think about what it's actually going to be like. I mean, yes, there are going to be some big adjustments. I'm going to have to hit people and make them do their dishes and not talk about their junk in front of me. Boys are weird.

But we're going to have nights where we just play music and worship and spend time together, and we're going to have nights where we all just lie down on the floor or the grass outside and talk about nothing for hours on end. And I'm going to get up in the morning and pick fresh raspberries to put on top of my cereal, and we're going to have fires in the cookstove on the back patio at night, and we're going to work in our little vegetable garden and say hi to the neighbors and fall asleep with the windows wide open.

Katie was here this weekend, and it was amazing, and it made me even more excited for the coming year -- for roommates. We lived together for the better part of three years, and we know each other, I think, better than anyone else. Better even than family, in a lot of ways. It's so important to have that — to have friends who know you better than you know yourself, who have seen you struggle and grow and change and find yourself. That kind of history is powerful.

Anyway. Ramble ramble. Need to go to bed. Only three more nights in this apartment after tonight ... holy crap. that's the first time I realized that. This is the longest place I've lived, without moving out for a summer or an internship or anything ... an entire year, a year and about two weeks ... feels so long.

Love always,
molly

some days, y'know

Seriously, why does EVERYONE IN THE WORLD have a boyfriend.

It's OK. I mean, really, it's OK. I am totally OK with it. Look how weird OK looks in correct AP style ... hm. But seriously. When I sit down and think about it, I mean actually think about it, I'm glad I don't have one. In my current state of being, I can only imagine it would be stressful and hard and just another way to bring out my secretly-crippling insecurities and lack of self-worth. And think of how much time I wouldn't get to spend just lounging in my apartment, by myself, reading or watching Buffy. That time is gold, my friend, and living by myself has taught me to cherish the solitude.

But still. SERIOUSLY. Some days, you know, it just feels like everyone is a couple. And they're bent on making sure you know it. Oh, sitting next to each other at dinner? Of course, we HAVE to clasp each other's hands, and share a cute little smooch every now and then, and put a hand on the other's knee, and laugh with that starry-eyed look that means we're just *sooo* in love. Aw.

Puke.

And I mean, I know. I know that during the exceedingly rare moments in my life (11 pitiful months of my 23 years, to be exact) that I have had a boyfriend myself, I fell into all the same pitfalls. PDA, oh goodness yes. I'm sure many people were made to feel pukey by my very existence.

But sometimes when you're single, it just feels like the world is out to shove it in your face. Then rub it around a little, like cake; maybe smear it in your hair, pat you on the cheek with the frosting in a totally condescending way ... yeah. My singleness is the birthday cake that life has shoved in my face. That's how I feel.

And I don't take this as a serious negative often ... I have great friends, and a great life, and I love where I am right now. But when I have to be around really cutesy couples for extended periods of time, it just starts to wear on me. And then I wonder what exactly it is about my personality that has ensured that I will be FOREVER ALONE.

Perhaps the fact that I blog about my belief that I will be FOREVER ALONE. Yeah, that might be a turn-off.

It's hard, though, in the face of such glaring singleness, to not immediately look inward and wonder, What is wrong with me? Why do all these really gross people have boyfriends — why does the stupid stripper whore that bewitched my brother have a boyfriend — when I don't? What trait of mine makes me somehow less dateable than these aforementioned gross skanky people?? And how do I fix it or hide it or change it so that I become slightly more dateable?

Wrong attitude, I know. "Only God can truly fulfill you!" I know. Giant pity party. Whitegirlproblems. I know.

But still. Some days, I feel chronically unwanted. And it's just not a happy feeling.

Love always,
molly

baby steps

I've learned a lot about myself lately.

Mostly ugly things, which is not a self-pitying declaration but really a statement of fact. Specifically things about my temper. I was an angry little kid and I've grown up to be an angry adult (ish? young adult? 20-something?); the only difference is that I don't have anyone I unleash on very often. That's really only because I don't live with my family anymore. As a kid, my brother and I had knock-down-drag-out fights until we were both way too old to have an excuse. (Incidentally, he's been a douchebag almost the whole time he's been in Washington on leave, ignoring my parents in favor of some stripper 'ho, and I feel that same old violent anger boiling inside me. But now he knows jujitsu and I can't do anything to him.) I got into screaming matches with my parents, which have thankfully become rarer, but they still happen.

And I know, in recent years, it's kind of gotten to be a silly thing; when I was a trainee, I punched John & Erik all the time for being obnoxious little twerps & for intentionally pushing my buttons, and it's become good fodder for teasing. And that's fine. I don't punch anyone in Yakima; haven't gotten to know them well enough yet, I suppose. (I'm moving in with three boys in three weeks, though, and I imagine that'll change pretty soon.) At any rate, it seems it's become endearing — "Oh, Molly, she just gets so worked up over little things" — rather than seen as something serious or damaging.

But despite any outward appearances to the contrary, that temper of mine is still lightning-quick, still present just beneath the surface, ready to come out snarling at a moment's notice. That's how it feels: like an animal of some kind, snarling and snapping, "the jaws that bite and the claws that catch." And, as with all our animal feelings, our baser urges, there's some pleasure in giving into the anger. There's a part of me — a really big part, I think — that wants to wallow or bask in that rage, give myself fully over to my anger, and just refuse to listen to the more moderate voices in my head. This past week, I spent hours upon hours thinking of all the most spiteful things I could say, and as a writer, I knew I could use words as weapons to pinpoint a friend's most vulnerable spots and make her feel worthless and alone. And I relished it. I was looking forward to the moment when I'd get to pull out these carefully practiced hateful speeches, when I'd get to see her face fall in dismay when she learned "the truth" about herself.

That's where I was when I headed to Ghormley this weekend, a place that's supposed to be focused on God and nature and love and childhood and fun. It's hard to be sullen at Ghormley, and I was able to throw myself into playing with the girls in my cabin, but God wasn't content to leave my heart out of the picture. Boy, did I fight it. I sat there Friday night and well into Saturday morning just revisiting all my hateful thoughts, building them up again, not letting myself forget the hurt and anger I felt, which ultimately meant I had to tune out or neatly exempt myself from a lot of what was being said and sung.

I finally let my anger ebb away, more for convenience's sake and because it took too much energy than out of any altruistic realization of my wrongs. I'm still working on that one. The weekend was wonderful, as Ghormley always is, and that friendship is teetering a bit less precariously than it was last week.

But the whole episode just brought me back to an idea Kaetochi and I talked about recently, and something I've been finding in a lot of different places in life: Being mature is just a series of small decisions to not be immature. It's not some big switch that gets pulled when you're 18 that makes you lose any urge to be a jerk to the people around you; it's a conscious, constant effort. And it's hard. This is nothing earth-shattering or new, here, but it's newly-remembered for me. I dealt with this when I did the juice fast, too — the "slow, slow, steady process of self-denial." It's remembering in each moment that you have a choice between caving to those baser urges, which usually hurt you or the people around you, and actively pursuing the high road. God's road.

Where does this leave a stubborn jerk like me? It's more than scary. This realization means that I'm in control of my emotions. Usually, I unconsciously assume that my emotions are somehow independent of my brain, and if they take control over me, I'm just a helpless prisoner. Not so. My emotions can only get the better of me when I let them ... which means that every time my emotions get the better of me, it was deliberate surrender on my part that allowed it to happen.

The good news, I guess, is that God's supposed to help with this ... but the ongoing bad news is that I don't think I really trust him to do that. In words, perhaps, but it doesn't come out in how I live my life. Stubborn, independent, hot-tempered and reveling in it; how's that for a winning combination?

Anyway. I think I lost my point somewhere in there, so I'll stop. Hopefully, this week I'll be able to rein in my temper, for the benefit of all involved.

Love always,
molly

things worth sharing

The last week or so has been a good time for reminiscing, as it often is when I come home. Mark's home now, too, which is a wonderful blessing, but he's not really one for reminiscing.

I've been reading through the Rose Wilder books, the series that follows the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, who wrote Little House on the Prairie. Almost everyone read those books growing up, right? My friend Courtney in Yakima never did, and that just makes me sad. Those books were an integral part of my childhood, with my mom reading them aloud, and then being able to read them myself. The Rose books, too. I'm flying through them, remember how attached I was to the characters when I was little.

We also pulled out some old cassette tapes — the Wee Sing tapes and Discovery Toys tapes and, best of all, the lullaby tapes I used to fall asleep to. "Sleepytime Tunes" and "Lullaby Magic" are the two that I remember the most. Just listening to them sends almost a little shiver through me. They always used to help me sleep, and I remember pulling them out even when I was quite a bit older (still in elementary school) and listening to them. "Wynken, Blynken and Nod" and "Goodnight, My Someone" ... hearing them is so strange, like it's echoing very far back in my memory.

But all this reminiscing has a point, kind of. The twins that I'll soon be living with, Chris & Drew, talk more about families and kids and marriage than anyone my age. It's very weird, these two young guys, who look like they could be frat boys or something, talking about what kind of father they want to be one day. But it's interesting. Chris asked me once what I'll want to pass on from my family to my own kids, and it's a question I keep coming back to. For a long time, I was staunchly opposed to kids, and I still go back and forth on that. I want to be able to be selfish, and travel the world, and not worry about uprooting someone ... plus there's the whole needing-to-find-a-husband thing, and what if my kids come out stupid, and the whole having them thing that would suck majorly and is really the most disgusting thing in the world (yes, I refused to watch the video that day in health class; anyone who says birth is a beautiful thing is a big fat liar, or suffering from memory loss), so the likelihood of me having kids ever is very much up in the air.

But I do like to think about what I would pass on, and recently I've been thinking that the songs and stories of my childhood are the most important legacy I have. All the nursery rhymes, all the folk songs, the "Oh, Susanna"s and the "Old King Cole"s and the "Little old woman who lived in a shoe"s and the "four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie"s and all of those — things that probably most kids today don't know. I think about the girl I mentor in Yakima, and her little brothers, and they just have no way of knowing all those stories that I grew up with.

We listened to those songs over and over again, on tapes in the car, and in little cassette players at home; I listened to storybooks on tape for hours, and we sang the songs all the time. If I am a good writer, it's because I was a reader from a very early age; if I am musical, it's because we always, always had music around growing up. Now, I wasn't raised listening to the Beatles, or anything famous, but we always had songs. And all those old stories — the American tall tales, the Paul Bunyans and John Henrys and Johnny Appleseeds — those are things I would want my kids to know about, too.

In the Rose books, the author talks a lot about how much Rose loves reading, and how much she loves storytelling. Storytelling is something I want to work on. If I ever have kids, I want to have stories that I make up and tell every evening, stories that make their eyes go wide and that they want to hear again and again. Not storybook stories, but stories that I make up all my own — or stories from my own life that they want to listen to. It's just so important, that oral tradition. I still hope to someday have my dad just talk into a recorder for hours on end, telling about growing up on a farm and doing rodeo and all the other bygone-era kind of stories that he's told me in pieces over the years.

If I have kids, I don't want them to be glued to various screens. For one, they will never have video games, even thought they'll probably be implanted in their brains via computer chip by then; I still hold that video games were the worst parenting decision my folks ever made for Mark, and I blame Call of Duty for his ever going into the Marines in the first place.

No, if I have kids, they're going to read. From the day they're born, I'll read them stories; they'll start out with Dick & Jane, like I did, and fairy tales, and Arabian Nights, and Little House on the Prairie, and Nancy Drew, and Beverly Cleary, and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, and Pippi Longstocking, and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and E. Nesbit, and Harry Potter, and everything else that fires up the imagination. And they're going to play outside, pretending to be pirates and bandits and explorers, and they're going to tear up the garden when they play safari, and they'll build forts from old refrigerator boxes and go barefoot all summer long. That way their brains won't be mush from watching TV or playing mindless video games for hours on end, and they'll have good stories to tell their own kids when they're grown up.

In Eight Cousins, Archie quotes someone as saying that "A love of good books is the best safeguard a man can have." Word, Arch. Word.

Love always,
molly

On decisions

So it's been a while.

I think I need to resolve to blog more often. For one, I'm a writer, and what is a writer who doesn't write? Useless. (The fact that I write for a living doesn't exactly exempt me from this; it's like how pleasure-reading falls by the wayside during college, because you're forced to read so much for class. But pleasure-reading is still vitally important, as is pleasure-writing.) (Why is "pleasure" such a bad word these days? Hm.)

 Also, if I write more often, I will (hopefully) avoid the novel-length posts that I end up writing when I go months in between. (Side note: "Hopefully" in its common usage was accepted by the AP last month sometime. Maybe the month before. Don't know how I feel about that ... Its original use, its correct use, was to mean "in a hopeful manner," as in, "She skipped hopefully to the mailbox to see if there was a card for her." But we've taken it to mean "I hope," as in, "Hopefully there's a card in the mailbox." And now we're allowed to do that. I like that language is alive and evolving, I get that, but I also like the rules and am afraid of what could happen if we loosen them. A short story in Mrs. Smith's 9th grade English class will forever haunt me; the sci-fi one about a guy who goes on a "time safari" or something, wanders off the path in the Mesozoic era, crushes a butterfly with his boot, and comes back to his time to find the modern world disastrously changed as a result. And everything is misspelled and awful. If we let language devolve into how normal people carelessly talk, then we'll all be writing in very ugly ways one day. And this is a long aside.)

What's consumed my life for the past month or so is a big decision: I'm moving into a house with friends! Doesn't really seem that big, does it? Well, it's not; when the idea first came up, I had a lot of resistance (I'll have to leave my own apartment! Can't have my bathroom as spotlessly clean as I like it! Can't walk naked from the shower to my bedroom! Giving up the apartment POOL! That kind of thing) but quickly came to realize that the potential benefits outweighed any negatives. And I found a beautiful beautiful historic house in the beautiful beautiful historic neighborhood here, and the owners are wonderful, and they're moving to Hawaii for a year and need someone to basically house-sit. Who better to do that than a group of flexible, 20-something-post-college kids? Perfect. Absolutely perfect.

Except for the fact that 3 of our 5 are boys, and the other girl has another friend who is adamantly opposed to girls living with boys, and this friend has had an unreasonable amount of influence in the decision. So it's been a very frustrating, drawn-out process of my friend waffling back and forth, torn between what she thinks God is calling her to do and fear that the other girl will think she's casting herself into the pit of Hell. (True story.)

But anyway. That's mostly done now; we signed the lease a week and a half ago, so it's all OURS, starting July 1, and they dropped the rent down so my non-grown-up-job friends can afford it, and we're taking care of the 14-year-old cat Calvin, and there's a raspberry patch and an herb garden and a swing set with a fort and a laundry chute and windows everywhere. Sigh of contentment. Sigh of relief. Sigh of couldn't-we-have-avoided-all-that-frustration-by-just-making-grown-ass-decisions?!

Aaaanyway.

This process was a good learning experience, and a useful heads up; I now know how vastly different I am from my soon-to-be housemates. And I learned that I'm OK with that. Previously, with this group of friends (whom I hold in very high regard), I would have taken that difference to mean that I was somehow wrong; that they had their priorities/personalities straight, and I was being dumb. But nope! I can say that I am very glad to be the decisive, go-getter type of person that I am. Shit would not get done otherwise. So it'll be an interesting year — a perfect experiment, really. The idea-people will maybe learn to be a bit more feet-on-the-ground; I will maybe learn to loosen my grip on "the plan" a little bit; and we'll all learn how to love each other despite painfully grinding differences.

My housemates are the group that's in my profile picture on Facebook, plus 1: Courtney, Remy, Drew, and Drew's twin brother Chris (so, basically, the same picture, just imagine 2 of the guy on the left.) Chris won't be moving in until the end of the summer, after he finishes up an internship in Coeur d'Alene.

Oddly enough, none of our parents had an issue with the mixed-gender concept. My dad says he sees it as the same as a dorm - separate bathrooms, separate bedrooms. We're even going to have separate boys' and girls' floors. His only concern was that I would end up being the housemaid, cleaning up after all of them, but I refuse. I will make them clean ... lovingly. My mom's concern, that may or may not be valid, was "How will you date anyone if you're living in a house full of boys?" The boys themselves laughed at the idea of sitting down to grill a potential date, like 3 angry older brothers at once. The fact that these three boys are probably the only eligible young men in Yakima pretty much evaporates any fear about dating ... not that I do that ever anyway. So it'll be a good year to be good friends.

Back to the writing bit, though. My task last week was to help craft a letter to send to this doubting friend, to try to explain what our mission and vision are so she can get a bit more on board. It's something that I tend to undervalue outside of my job: Yes, I'm a writer, but what good does that do me? I've been a writer for so long (of the crappy middle-school English students, I think I was the slightly-less-crappy one that stood out) that I don't even think about it. Of course I can communicate articulately; can't everyone? Not so, it turns out. So that's been cool/interesting to wrap my head around. It's a gift, one that I can be proud of, and one that is useful outside of my writing-for-a-living thing.

Disclaimer: Blogging does not equal writing.

I would like to write more, though. I tried my hand at a slam poem last month; I like how it turned out, but it will be a long time before I'm able to share it, I think. Long time. It's an odd medium; half personal story, half detached monologue. Even if it's a powerful story, and personal, it would be strange to perform it with the level of emotion it requires each time. Somewhere along the way, it becomes very scripted. But I would like to write more poetry; for the past few years, I only go that route when I'm in the midst of extreme emotional turmoil, and the words just come naturally. Forcing it feels weird. Then again, I don't particularly want to experience any more extreme emotional turmoil.

Our house is quite a musical house; two or three of them play guitar, and two of them sing, and I play piano. I would like to try writing songs with the guitar players. Again, I can do the word thing. Useful. Maybe.

Anyway. Long post. Again. I'll try to write more often, and less lengthily.
Love always,
molly