REAL LIFE: END OF SUMMER MUSINGS

I've always been fond of this little limbo-land time lapse between summer and fall. For so many years, it's signaled renewal much more positively to me than the post-holiday void of January, when the wallet is spare and the diet and gym membership beckon. Like clockwork every September, there's a bustle of activity around back to school and the forming of game plans that lead into the holidays. There's the changing of the wardrobe, the opening of the windows once again, a difference in the way the light washes across the room and a cozy, but spirited energy that I feel only fall can bring.

The inner nerd in me also craves a bit of back-to-productivity. The downtime that comes with summer fun is good for all of us, but I'm happiest when I'm on schedule. Truth be told, my fall calendar is already filled out with things I hope to accomplish before the year officially ends in January - personal goals, plans for my online shop, Bird + Belle and around the house.  I guess I'm not too far away from that kid who was once first out the door with my packed-to-the-gills book-bag on the first day of school after all.

Reflecting a bit, this summer was good to me. We finished our kitchen remodel just before the calendar turned over, spent a lot of time in the pool, threw a couple of good parties and closed it all out with a weeklong vacation by the beach with friends who feel like family.  Before our extended crew arrived, Ryan and I had a few days alone on a mostly empty beach with little Valentino and to me, it was some of the very best days of this year. After 18 years together, we have an easy vacation cadence that we're quick to settle into once we arrive and its a comforting thing to know that we can fall back into sync that easily, especially when the demands of the work week can often take us off track. So the time alone was a good chance to regroup and reconnect with my little family and I'm moving into this next season fueled by that.

Speaking of family... I feel like there is something I've wanted to say for some time, but I've hesitated over relevance to this blog and a reluctancy to disclose something so private. Still, it has impacted my time here, resulting in a year long blog hiatus and all too infrequent posts. So for that reason alone, it feels somewhat remiss to not mention it. For the past 3 years, we've been trying for baby - 3 years this fall in fact. In that one regard, the transition into this new season is a bit of a bittersweet milestone. For much of this time, I've retreated and internalized the frustration, loneliness and anguish that comes with all that, not wanting to make others uncomfortable by discussing it or appear as though I was appealing for sympathy.  My sole goal in raising it now is certainly not to do either of those things, but to sort of release a bit of that internalized struggle out into the wild, to vent the steam in the pot so to speak in a healthy way. I've opened up in other ways recently and I've actually found some catharsis in doing so. I've also realized that one couple's experience with infertility is not someone else's either, so while it's important to recognize that others are going through it too, it can be somewhat difficult to connect through details, something that is oddly isolating on both ends. The reality of that might keep me on the fence from talking about it more here (or maybe it wont - maybe its something that should be talked about to break down all those walls). But I'll just say simply that where I am now with this is that I want to be more open about it as my current reality behind the pretty Instagram pictures and recipe posts. There are scenic seafood boils on the beach, busy remodels and fully decked out parties being had. But there will always be the behind the scenes happenings too and I wouldn't want anybody to misinterpret all that for the real-life human stuff.