Crash?

I don't know how to start this post, I don't even really have a clue what I want to say, but my favorite writer says in times like these, you just take it bird by bird; in other words, just start typing.
I've been in one of those moods lately, filled with lots uncertainty, like I'm deaf and blind, suddenly, trying to make my way day to day without messing everything up. By everything I mean my life, what I think it is supposed to look like.
We are twenty five and have a house and two cars and a kid and two dogs and two good full time jobs. This is what we have been strving for since we got married, four and a half years ago. And it works. It's working now, but it doesn't have any of the glitter it had when we were dreaming it up five years ago. It's comfortable, and I can be content here, but there is a yearning for something different.
It seems there are two yearnings, to desires pulling at the heart: to settle, and to fly. Maybe someday I will feel like I am doing both, settling into something that makes me fly, if that makes any sense.
Our dreams are sensitive, vulnerable things.
"God works all things for the good to those who love Him and are called according to His purposes...."

hello.

I am tired, it's Friday, but I am happy. When Ethan wakes up, I have just enough energy to get him in the stroller and go for a run, as long as I don't thing about anything besides just putting him the stroller.
My nails are a crazy pink color, one of those buys when you are at the store looks so cool and fresh and then when you get it home and on it just looks eighties, or old or something.
I feel old.
I am trying to be healthier, I've slowly drifted very far away from where I used to be, in regards to food, drink, and exercise. It shows. I feel it.
Ethan's screams.

Four Days.

Four days, and I can sleep past four-forty a.m., which means I can take a shower without falling asleep.
Four days, to bathing suits and flipflops and sun baths.
Four days, filled with Joey and Ethan and family--no work!
Four days, to long, drawn out breakfasts where I can re-fill my coffee cup at least three times.
Four days, and I can see Ethan's eyes get big at the sight of an ape, and see him build and scrounge and splash at the ocean.
Four days until the stress of tomorrow and the weariness of today are replaced with carefree in-the-moment-ness.
Four days to long, summer nights outside.
Four days to treats.
Four days, and I am on vacation!

Summer.

On Wednesday we spent the evening at King's Beach. We drove up around five thirty, sat on the beach a while, then drove over to Tahoe City and had the thinnest, most tastiest pizza right on the Truckee River. Then we drove around the Lake so Joey could show me the legs he runs in his races. It was so nice, but still, yesterday was the most relaxing day of the summer for me, August 2, 2008. Two parties, late in the day, after Ethan and I had napped for two and a half hours. The parties were with family and friends from church, and I got to talk and visit the afternoon and evening away, the best part when sunset came and the air got cooler, relaxingly darker, and still. That is summer to me, what I have been waiting for since around January. I still feel relaxed from it.
Also, though Joey was not with me, I realized Ethan is at the independent age now of two and a half, and I am not nearly as "on call" as I used to be. He plays happily by himself or with his friends, and I only have to step in to give him dinner or take him to time-out for whining, or being mean to Andrew.
I also got to hold my friend's baby boy, this big, warm, heavy mound of sweetness dressed in baby blue jammies. He fell asleep, and I could have sat in that swinging chair out on the patio with him for days, looking down at the up-curl of his dark eyelashes.

I can't hold still.

I used to think that once you got to a certain age, say, 17, you pretty much had your life, and all your opinions about things, including war and child birthing, figured out.
But the thing is I have changed the way I look at the world and what I think is right and wrong, it seems like at least five times since the time I thought I was through figuring things out. It makes me restless and uneasy, dizzy almost. Guilty.
It's like I have to take a deep breath and say, "It's alright girl. Jeese. Change is alright. Growth is alright. Stop freaking out."
But it still seems wrong for some reason. Maybe hypocritical, but more so just flighty.
For example I used to think I couldn't drink alcohol. I didn't need it to have a good time and really good Christians had no desire for it. Well, I don't know if Jesus was drinking at that wedding, but HE was supplying the boos. I mean no disrespect, and I understand cultural differences here, but still, wine is wine. And I'm pretty sure, OK, a hundred percent sure, He was drinking wine at the Last Supper. So all I mean to say is I was abstinent not because it was what the bible said; I didn't drink because I grew up thinking that if you drank you were, or would be very soon, an alcoholic.
So that's one thing that has changed. Even still, I am paranoid that I will become an alcoholic, and that Joey maybe already is one. It's ironic and kinda silly but when I drink I have to preach truth to myself, "this is OK, Danae..." even though my sensitive, soft conscious is screaming at me, you bad girl!
Another?
Marriage. Never really wanted it. Wanted lots of boyfriends, lots of dates and attention, but not so much marriage.
Of course that changed (with A LOT of convincing), and Joey is the best friend I could ever hope for. The intimacy I have in marriage is so deep and comforting and warm its presence hangs over the bed when I fall asleep next to him.
Same with children. I didn't want any. Then I wanted five. Now that I have had one, I am good with two, maybe three, if I survive the second without my hair turning gray, my bags under my eyes over taking my face, and my rear sagging down to my knees. And that's not saying anything about my emotional state.
But Ethan in my life is like candy, like a party. The feeling I feel when he laughs or gives me a smooch is the same feeling I got when I saw the Falls do Igacu in Brazil: awe, amazement, wonder. In my living room, everyday. He makes life special.
Care for another?
I was hard core natural childbirth, natural parenting, cloth diapers. I had my baby at home without so much as a Tylenol, even SIX, SIX months after, even though I was in so much pain I couldn't stand for more than ten minutes at a time, because I thought if I took "pain medicine" I would be cheating and couldn't really say I had a natural birth. I was this close to using cloth diapers all the time and glass bottles to hold my breast milk when I couldn't be with him. I lugged around a breast pump for eight months and pumped in a tiny, tiny dark closet at work every two to three hours because I wouldn't think of giving my baby formula. I'd watch people walking by through the light coming in the slits of the wooden door. If I could have figured out those baby wrap things that look like you are in Africa I would have worn it all the time. But I never could figure it out, and Ethan would cry the whole time whenever I tried anyway.
I'm not so much about this anymore. It's a good conviction, but it doesn't work for me. I'm learning you don't have to do everything the hard way to prove yourself, and, once again, that having an epidural, or giving your baby formula, doesn't mean you suck as a mother, or a christian.
I could go on and on. I guess the thing is holding on to Christ; that verse that says He never changes has new meaning to me now.