I love meeting friends for lunch, I love the quick download/upload of life things and thoughts and frustrations and struggles, both trying to pack in the most important pieces into an hour-long break. Although this doesn’t happen as often as I would like due to schedules and kids and work and distance and all the things, if you and I were to meet up for lunch, this is what I would tell you.

1. I will be downright giddy about how much I love my new job. No, but for real. This has been a total game changer for me and the happiness and light-heartedness from having a healthy work balance is invading every other part of my previously grumpy life. I feel like I can breathe again! I know I’ve talked about this a few times here in the last couple weeks, but it’s just SO DIFFERENT and SO MUCH BETTER than where I was!
2. I’ll tell you that for the first time in over a decade I finally have a job at church, something to do other than sit by myself on the back row. I will be working with the young women, ages 16-18, and I cannot IMAGINE a job that is better for me. I’m only a few weeks in, but I can already tell this is exactly where I need to be.
3. I’ll probably gush a little bit about my new “Plan Out Your Life, Harriet! (Or At Least The Week)” plans that are centered on a spiral bound calendar-notebook planner book (that I bought on clearance, because, of course). I have a full month calendar view, plus a double spread for each week with a couple of categories I can fill in, one for appointments, one for my daily housekeeping To Do lists, and one to schedule out my other goals like writing and exercise. I have really loved getting a better handle on when I need to do what to stay on track with my priorities, it’s amazing how much easier and more effective this is for me with a paper and pen version over an app.
4. I’ll ask you what you are reading, and then tell you about the last book I read and loved, which is “A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War” by Joseph Loconte, which talks about how J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were WWI veterans AND bffs, and how they used their experiences in the horrific trenches in France to influence their writing, specifically, the ancient wars of Middle Earth and Bilbo and Frodo’s quest; and the world of Narnia with great evil and goodness in each character. This was SO fascinating and made me want to re-read the Lord of the Rings books AND the Narnia series.
5. Depending on how our conversation goes, I may get brave and tell you that for the last several months Mr. Blue Eyes and I have been going to couple’s counseling, and it has been so hard and so worth it in every way. We have been married for five years, but those five years have been unconventional in every possible way, living in different states for the majority of our marriage, dealing with court battles to have more contact with his kids, moving stresses, new job stresses (between the two of us we’ve had 5 jobs in 5 years)…it has been a roller coaster. A few months ago we reached the point where we both knew we needed some outside and professional help and we have both been trying to learn how to be a better spouse and a more healthy and well-rounded person, friend, and sweetheart.
6. I doubt I’d make it long without squeeing about this next thing: as a five-year anniversary present to each other we decided to go on our first real vacation since our honeymoon. We’ve been on trips to see family (NOT the same as a vacation), and we’ve been on many long weekend adventures, but an actual week-long vacation just the two of us? Yeah, it’s been a long time coming. This spring we are going to BELIZE and GUATEMALA and I am so very excited about the whole thing. We’ve got almost everything booked, just doing a little more research on one of the ancient Maya ruins we want to explore. The first half of our trip will be spent on a tiny little island off the coast of Belize, it’s so teeny that cars/trucks are not even allowed, just bicycles and golf carts and fish tacos and beachy sunsets viewed from a hammock. It will be so dreamy! The second half will be spent in the jungle in Guatemala with howler monkeys and ancient ruins and possibly some time in a canoe!? Ya’ll, I am ridiculously excited about this adventure!!

PS. The lunch pic up at the top is from a delicious lunch at Serial Grillers, a delightfully macabre food truck turned brick-and-mortar restaurant in Tucson. You can order a Sweeney Todd, a Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or a Jason (meaty OR vegetarian!). Recommended!

I love meeting a friend for lunch and spending an hour speed-chatting and catching each other up on our lives. One of my favorite lunch times in recent memory was meeting Lou for lunch in Chicago, after not having met for YEARS we picked up like it had only been a couple of months. In exactly one hour we covered a tremendous amount of ground, real life stuff that neither of would mention on our blogs or social media feeds. It was glorious. This post–with a little bit of censoring–is what I would talk about if you and I went to lunch, guards down, masks off, real-talk.

I would tell you how much I miss Salt Lake, the mountains, the actual winter, and dear friends and family who are there. Yes, technology and electronic communication makes it easy to stay in touch, but not as easy to stop by for a silly string war with my niece, or to curl up on a friend’s couch and stay up talking until late into the night. And I just cannot find a replacement for soaring granite-topped mountains covered in snow rising from the valley floor like guardians. Stubby outcroppings of desert rock just don’t do it for me.

I would tell you that I am lonely. I work from home and while I enjoy my job (and IM my co-workers most of the day), I don’t have a network of friends here yet (or, really, a single friend), and at my church I’ve been asked to teach a room full of 5-year-olds. In my opinion, this is about the worst job ever. I don’t particularly like 5-year-olds, and certainly not en mass. I have zero adult interaction at church, it’s like I’ve been banished to the kids’ table and I do not like it.

I would probably talk your ear off about how excited I am to attempt a desert vegetable garden. Granted, the planting season here begins in FEBRUARY, so that is a big adjustment in my thinking. This last weekend Blue Eyes and I spent hours working in our backyard. He was finishing up the sprinkling system while I pulled weeds and trimmed trees and spiky fern thingies and tried to plan out garden boxes. We are going to the Home and Garden show next weekend and I’m probably more excited about it than is normal.

I would probably go more in detail about my role as a stepmom and the frustrations, anxieties, and very little joy that comes along with it. It is a ridiculously thankless job. Not that I’m expecting hand-written thank you notes from an 11-year-old or 13-year-old for making them dinner, nothing like that. Half the time I don’t even expect a verbal “thank you.” It’s the rest of the thanklessness that is hard. As a parent, you get these moments of joy and unconditional love for your child on the regular; I don’t have that. Ever. I am not “allowed” to develop that kind of relationship with my kids (and yes, I’d tell you the rest of the details about all of that).

I would tell you that part of my not-so-subliminal effort to make friends and put down some sort of roots here in the desert is by signing up for classes and courses. I’ve been looking at (but have yet to take the plunge) courses in Spanish, vegetable gardening, painting, and landscape design. I think it’s lucky that I moved to Arizona during their mild season, winter is when people get out and do things because it’s 60 degrees and blue skies. Come summer (my standard “get out and do things!” season), people tend to hunker down next to the AC and pray for the hellish heat to pass.

Hmmm…it seems I’m kind of a depressing lunch date. Hopefully in a couple of months I will find a better routine and some People (yes, capitalized) and come out of my shell a bit. Until then, what would you tell me if we went to lunch?

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