The weekend before last we visited my lovely alma mater. It was dreary outside, but Providence was at work – because lots of people that I really wanted to expose the Zerker to were there….

The E in Zerker comes from a very special person.
One of those people you meet and you are blown away.

When I was a wee one of 18 I visited SMWC. The first teacher I met, the first Sister of Providence I met, the first real person of my beloved college was Ellen.

And over the next four years we formed a wonderful bond.

She became my academic advisor, professor, work study supervisor, and most importantly, friend. You know when you go through that phase and you don’t connect with your parents anymore? She was the one mentor I connected to then that I knew woud love me no matter what. I feel like I learned about unconditional love from her.

And through the years we have maintained that friendship.
Of course, we don’t have the time to sit in her office and wax poetically about my latest college girl frustration, we do keep in touch. She was my ‘Sister Companion’ on my journey to become a Providence Associate.

I cannot express how much it means to me that she has made herself so available to me on this journey. She is the definition of why you designate a namesake.

(oh and this summer…she celebrates her Golden Jubilee…50 years devoted to Providence…amazing….)

I am listening to ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ during my commute right now. (I drive to the office three days a week, and it is 45 minutes away…so I ‘read’ my books via my iPod on the way to and from…)
And I know it is so Oprah cliche…but hey, it is making me think, so that is good.

So back to the point…she references how places have a word that defines them, and goes on to say that people have a word that defines them. The word can change with what they are going through, but it should encompass the point of the journey they are on. While she is in Rome she is told by a friend that Rome’s word is ‘Sex.’

So this got me thinking about what my word is right now. My first thought was ‘create,’ but maybe it is ‘kaleidoscope.’

I know that the first year of motherhood can be stressful. I understand that I need to be patient with myself. Over the past few months I have oscillated from deliriously happy to extremely unstable and worried. I know a lot has to do with hormones, but it is also just part of the transition.

I did go back to therapy – because I believe it is my responsibility to work through things rather than just suffering. I will not live like chicken little! The sky is NOT falling!

Still, I do not just wake up one morning and become a different person. It is a process. And at first it was making me kooky, then I suppose I started moving to the next phase. Oh, but I AM becoming a different person. Not entirely someone else…just more than who I was.

I like it.
Actually, I love it.

My job is moving into this new phase where I get to be uber creative. Okay, so it is uber geeky creative – but not in the ‘look-at-this-cool-formula-i-built-in-excel’ or the ‘i-just-spent-35-hours-writing-specs-about-site-security’ or the ‘look-at-my-fancy-SQL-query’…it is a clean slate. It is starting at ground zero and designing something new.
I have spent all of my working life inside a box…a specific platform…going from supporting to training to implementing to managing that platform…but it has always been within that platform. There is creativity there, but mostly creativity with bandaids…doing what we can within the confines of what exists, the path of least resistance…

and now we are making a transition to get away from that box….and it is a paradigm shift for me…but it is fracking cool…

and oh the baby girl…the amazing Zerker…she makes me want to be creative…assuming a new role in life…becoming the momma…means i have to change my view…so if I am changing, I had better know what stays and what goes…

reinvention of self…reclaiming what is me and adding to it…it is awesome.

– I installed Gimp and Inkscape (Free photo editing and illustrating software) and am teaching myself how to use them.
– I played around with scrapblog one weekend (hence the new header for the blog).
– I made a new lanyard for my work ID badge out of girlie ribbon belts.
– I got some cool new shoes (they match my new lanyard – haha).
– I made a notebook by covering the binding of a scrapbook paper tablet with a brown paper bag and am using it to take notes at the office.
– I cut bangs in my hair! I have been thinking about this since december.
– I bought a bass guitar and I am learning to play it so I can play bass when I jam with some friends next month. I am a singer and I have ‘talked’ about getting a bass guitar for ten years. I had guitar lessons in college and used to play in church. My bachelors is in Math and Music…I am not getting any younger. I really want to do it. I think it would be k*ck*ss if I played bass and sang in a band. We will see if the band happens. We WILL jam though, and that will be fun.

All of these mods…I keep feeling like a Kaleidoscope. Like things are switching to a new cool view…they may change again..but I am holding the lense and watching things as they change…it is beautiful.

The lense is my marriage. The lense is my daughter. The lense is my vocation.
And it shifts and it brings different colors. Not everything is easy, but it IS beautiful.

I keep thinking of this song:
My life has been a tapestry of rich and royal hue
An everlasting vision of the everchanging view
A wondrous woven magic in bits of blue and gold
A tapestry to feel and see, impossible to hold
Tapestry – Carole King

And I made this with Gimp….

Better late than never….I have been wanting to take part in Mel’s Show and Tell for a while and I finally thought of something!

This past Saturday was Ring Day at SMWC. I left pieces of my heart at the woods. The Woods Ring is symbol of the bond between all of the women, from generation to generation that have been educated at Saint Mary of the Woods.

I found a post of the Ring Song on youtube from Saturday:

The Ring Song is an amalgamation of Tara’s Theme, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening and The Bells of Saint Mary’s. It might sound strange to non-woodsies (that is what students from the woods are called) but it pulls at the heart strings of all Woodsies….It is sang at every wedding and every major event at the woods.
The ring is lovely, dark and deep….it is gold (and now I hear white gold is optional) and onyx with an SMW emblem.

My ring is tattered (NOT PICTURED ABOVE), it is loved, it is a connection to the people who helped me become me…it is a connection forever to anyone I meet that also wears the ring…
We also joke that it is a symbol of the guiding forces of the world…er… providence…

Ah….but we jest!

To all my woodsies out there – Be strong! Wear your ring with pride!

The Ring Song

Whose Woods these are, I think I know.
Her love will always be with us below.
Her ring we take, of us a part,
Encircling fingers young ’round her heart.
I pledge to her, a ring to keep,
Like Woods is lovely, dark and deep.
And I have promises and miles to go.
And I have promises and miles to go.

The bells of Saint Mary’s I hear they are calling,
The young loves, the true loves that come from the sea.
And so my beloved, when red leaves are falling,
the love bells shall ring out, ring out for you and me.

I am amazed at how much she has grown. She is cooing. Not laughing yet, but she is close and it is so cute…

Our first week back to work went well. One night I even had DH pick her up and I hung out with a few friends for a little bit. I decided I won’t do that too often, because once I left I just wanted to be home, and the drive home took too long.

Today has been wonderful. We woke up with the Zerker, then we have just been hanging out all day. No rush, no stress, just wonders. I hope we win the powerball so we can do this every day for the rest our lives. LOL!

Oh and she is rising from the ashes too…
(As you can see she wasn’t really in the mood for pictures when we got back from church on Ash Wednesday…)

My blog is moving! I mentioned that I will be moving to a new blog once the Zerker is here. I think it is time. I will be working on the layout and officially transitioning very soon…Keep an eye out if you want to follow along.

Today the Zerker is christened. My brother is in town from DC to be the God Father. (He is actually my godfather too!) And, my sister will be the god mother.

I am not going to tell you that these days are easy…:) Ugh! Sometimes I am pushed to the point of frustration, but it only seems to happen between 3 and 4am, other than that I am cool. It is also a tough time for DH – who really has no previous experience with babies – and doesn’t quite understand that it is normal to not always know what she wants and to not always be able to get her to sleep at 4am right away.

She turned three weeks yesterday! She was pronounced healthy at her doc appt on Thursday, where she weighed 7lbs 14 ozs (almost a pound up from her birth weight).

I do feel like she and I are bonding more every day. I swear she would talk to me if she could, her eyes just look like they are trying to tell me something. My milk does not seem to be doing that well despite fenugreek and attempting to pump. I know I don’t pump as often as I should – it is really hard to find the time after supplementing and trying to get her back to sleep or not crying. She is not one of those perfectly content babies that never cries. Sometimes she is quiet and attentive and looking back with that soulful expression. And I DO think she smiles sometimes. I don’t care if other people call it gas…

Everyday that goes by I get closer to going back to work. Ugh. Trying not to think about it….

I did get a bonus this week from work! Woo hoo! It meant that DH agreed that I could order the er.go.baby.car.rier! Yay! We have been waiting and trying to save as much as possible in this economic climate.

In honor of the Zerker’s baptism – some talking heads…