Today I rode my bike.

It's been 3 years since I've ridden my bike.


Since the last time I rode my bike, I had a baby. I moved to Germany. I moved again in Germany. I returned to the US, moved across the country to Kansas.  I hurt my back. I  moved again. To Minnesota, my home.


In the last year, I have ridden the rollercoaster ride of recovery from injury, experienced, for the first time, anxiety and depression. . . traces of which remained up until tonight, when my 5 year old said, "Please Mommy? Come on, that lady who helped your back get better [my PT] said a REALLY LONG time ago that you could ride your bike."


That's true. Like 7 months ago.  Not that a Minnesota winter makes anyone want to jump on a bike, but besides that, I was scared.  Like I have been so scared of so many things.  But after an emotional week, after a day with prayer after prayer, I really wanted to get back on my bike.


So I did.  It brought tears to my eyes, smiles to the faces of my family.  For the first time as a family of four, we rode around our neighborhood, with Elsa flying down the street without training wheels.  Me feeling freedom from some of the shackles of fear that have been weighing me down for way too long.


I don't know that this is the answer, the end of my struggle, but I do know that today, I rode my bike.

Halloween 2012

I know it was 2 weeks ago already, but I can't let Halloween go by without a few pictures.  Remember last Halloween? We had just had a new baby, moved to Germany, and threw together a last-minute Halloween celebration.  This year, there was no holding back.  I got my Halloween on, big time. 

 

Cowgirl by day . .



Bo Peep by night

 

 

 

 

Boo!

In a small town

At this time last year, I thought I lived in a small town.  I was in Wolfenbüttel, Germany, population 40,000.  I had never lived in such a small place and, having come directly from Boston, my mind was convulsing with the shock of the big-to-small adjustment.  Never mind that this "small town" was connected by bus and rail to Braunschweig (pop. 150,000) just 10 minutes up the track, had at least 7 bakeries within 10 minutes walk, a giant grocery store, and castle across the street.  It was small, and it was different.

Little did I know that less than a year later I would find myself living in a small town in Kansas, population 11,000.  There are no great bakeries, our giant grocery store is Walmart, and needless to say, we don't look at a castle out our front window.

I had never been to Kansas until we rumbled into town with our giant Penske truck.  This is the 5th place in a row I've moved into sight-unseen.  We arrived on July 30, in the midst of one of the worst droughts and heat waves this area has seen in years.  It was 103 degrees on move-in day.  I sat at Dairy Queen that afternoon with my family, trying to cool off, silently cursing the fact that I was sitting in a Dairy Queen in Kansas.

Since that day I have had my fair share of  moments of horror.  There are no beaches, no swimming lakes, and the only place to get decent cilantro or tofu is Walmart.  The restaurant scene is grim-- I may need to seek therapy to deal with my memories of one of them.  There is no curbside recycling, and the county recycling center is manned by an old man in bib overalls who points out every mistake I make in my sorting. I have to drive 35 miles to take my kids to the pediatrician, and occasionally get stuck on the highway behind a truck pulling a double-wide.  Some days I feel like everyone here could be Cousin Eddie from "Christmas Vacation" (who, my brother pointed out, is from Kansas).

I feel a sort of burden to be THAT person who, being forced to leave her city lifestyle, is won over by the charms of small town life on the edge of the prairie and spends the rest of her life raising goats and writing her memoires.  I just don't think I'm going to be that person . . . yet.  Although the moments of horror have mellowed into a general feeling of acceptance and adjustment, I'm far from being swept off my feet. 

But hey! Enough of that. Remember these two?

I'm back

It only took me 3 months and a lot of separation anxiety from "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolfenbüttel", but I am slowly transitioning this blog to follow our new life in Kansas.  Oh, I know it's a stretch after 9 months of European adventures, but stick with me. We'll find something.

What I did during summer vacation.

Where do I even start?

I am writing today, August 29, to start bringing this blog back to life to chronicle the next adventure: life in Kansas.  I have been MIA for 2 months, and now you will see why. 

We left Germany 2 months ago, which in reality feels like about 2 years.  Our carseats were lost then found. Jet lag was awful. Seeing friends and being back in Boston was great. Elsa ate 4 bowls of Cheerios in our first 8 hours back in the country.  Clara got sick, and we spent the 4th of July in the ER to get diagnosed with pink eye. She got better, I got pink eye. We spent 7 beautiful days of homelessness renting a cottage on Cape Cod, soaking up the ocean before moving to landlocked Kansas.

 

 

In the span of 7 days, Clara got 4 new teeth, started crawling, waving, pointing, signing, and feeding herself.

We stayed with friends. Elsa spent half the night throwing up the night before I started a new job. I started a new job. 3 days later we loaded a truck. We left Boston with everything we own, for the first time in 8 years. I forgot to say goodbye until we had already passed Fenway, and then I wanted to cry.  But I was driving. We stopped in upstate NY, then on to Erie, PA . . .

Happy to be out of the car!

 and on to Cleveland . . .



                                                                 Yep. That's our ride.
.
to New Buffalo, MI . . .

. . . to Milwaukee, where we blew a tire and got two new ones (why not blow a tire while we're at it?), and finally to Minnesota, where we stayed in one place for 6 whole days before we made the inevitable trip to Kansas. As we drove to our new town, we were passed by a truck full of pigs and all I could see were 5 snouts sticking out through the bars of the trailer. I wanted to turn around. When we crawled into our own bed the night we moved in, we realized that our new house was the 12th place we had stayed in the month of July.  Elsa asked, "How many nights are we staying in this house Mommy?"

And here we are, in Kansas. 

The Rainbow Connection

I have been thinking about rainbows a lot since January. 

I was always told that rainbows were supposed to be a sign of hope and promise.  During the dark, rainy, and emotionally draining months of late winter and early spring, I needed signs of hope and promise. 

Our adventure here in Germany was always intended to be temporary, ending in June, with the thought and hope that we would be transitioning somewhere new, somewhere over the rainbow that would be the promised land of an academic job.  Of course we knew that there would be a possibility that this wouldn't happen, given the abyssmal state of the academic history job market, but we just didn't think that would be where we'd find ourselves.  And then, after months of interviews, hopes, frustrations, emotional rollercoasters, tears, that's where we found ourselves. Skunked. Bitter. No plan. Sick of picking up the pieces and moving on.  There were good days where I could see how this process was good for us in some ways . . . but then there were the other days, when it seemed too big to handle.  Did I mention tears? Oh there were tears.

Somewhere in there, I started thinking about rainbows . . . listening to "Rainbow Connection" sung by Kermit the Frog (and only the Kermit version would do it for me) on repeat.  This little symbol and the tremendous moral support I got from family and friends were the only things that kept me grounded and sane.  My friend Maureen has been sending me sheets of rainbow stickers in regular installments since February . . . some I give to Elsa and let her stick them on anything and everything, and some I just keep, to look at and just stick on something randomly when I have one of those days. 

So that's where we have been, with everything coming to a head around mid-April.  Which is why I sort of disappeared for a bit . . . suddenly we had to face the fact that we needed to put together a plan, quickly. So we did.

And then.

Just when we least expected it, at the last minute, just like the rainbow chasers always say it will, something happened.  Erik was offered a job, he accepted, and we are putting on our ruby slippers and moving to Kansas for a year. 

I had grand visions of what it would be like the day this happened . . . I pictured screams, making an emergency run to buy fancy champagne, tears of joy . . . but mostly we were just stunned. Relieved, happy, terrified, and stunned.  Since then, corks have definitely been popped and the reality of it all has set in as we make plans to move forward with yet another adventure . . . with some trepidation of course.  And a few nightmares about tornadoes.

Only after several weeks of sitting on this news did I realize that it all comes back to rainbows.  What is the most famous rainbow song of all? Of course. Somewhere Over the Rainbow.  Where does Dorothy sing this? Of course. Kansas.  It may not have been how I pictured my pot of gold, but who knows. 

Ad astra per aspera- "To the stars with difficulty"
-Kansas State Motto

9 Months!

I know . . . I missed 7 and 8 and now I'm late for 9, but only by a few days. There have been just a few things going on . . . but . . .
Happy 9 months Clara! I'm in denial that we are 3/4 through her first year already, but my little baby is getting big. And squirmy.

In the past 3 months, Clara has been to Paris, Munich and Austria, and Belgium. Where will she go this month?
Home. To the U.S.A., where she hasn't been since this picture was taken:

It's been a wild ride, Fräulein.