Home, James.

What is that from? All my life my family has said, "Home, James" when it was time to go home. Tyler's real name is James, though I never call him that. But it works out.

We're home. My, it's good to be here. Upon arrival, we slept for three hours, I texted in my sleep (oops). I was thinking we would get home and I'd go to yoga at 9 am, an hour and a half after driving for 12 hours straight. It didn't happen. We felt hung over all day. Like, walking to the kitchen from the living room was severely taxing. I moaned a lot. I drove the last hour and a half of the trip, and I still am amazed at Tyler's selfless ability to drive through the night. I tried to stay up with him. One second, drumming and head banging to The Avett Brothers, the next minute head bobbing to sleep. ROUGH. It was rough.

Tyler has encouraged me to do 10 minutes of cardio on the bike in the mornings - sprinting every minute. I've done it the last two days. It's nice to feel tired from working out. Yoga is good, but I don't push myself like I used to. Gosh, I look back at 5 months ago. I'll be there again someday. This yoga training is going to crush me, but it will be good.

I got to talk with my friend Lauren yesterday. She's good for me. A lot of things have been popping up the last few months - things from high school and college. I've always wanted to see a counselor, but it takes effort. I normally don't do things unless they fall in my lap, because I'm lazy. I think I want to see a counselor because it will be good for me (as it would be for anyone, because we all have issues), but also because I know once you have kids $60-$90 goes toward something else, like diapers or anything besides paying to talk to someone for an hour. I think I need it though. When I was finishing my degree in Social Work, we had to do a 5 minute counseling session with a partner... on video. Barf. I counseled her. She counseled me. When she counseled me... I ended up crying. We had even practiced! After it was over, my professor was like, "Shannon, I've asked you several times... please go see a counselor." The other time she told me to see one was when I had a dream my dad died the night before, and I cried through the entire class. I couldn't stop. Good heavens.

Anyway. Tyler has been losing weight lately. A year ago he was about 12 pounds heavier. Needless to say, he looks very good and we have to buy him new pants. Sometimes when I see a skinny person, I get so excited to be skinny. Really dumb people say, "Oh, your body will NEVER be the same!" And to them I say, "I have sisters that have had four kids each and they look better than ever, so stop being such a shit bag!" Yesterday I had a woman ask how far along I was and then she told me she had a one-year-old. I said, "Aw, how exciting." She was none too thrilled. Made me feel like I needed to give her my condolences. People, stop being so not encouraging. Listen to your words.

I can't tell you how lovely it is to be home and not have to go to work. Three months, and this will be my life, plus a child. Three months. Three months. Three months.

In Colorado, the car shop basically told us to sell our car for parts and buy plane tickets home. I looked - we'd had to have spent nearly a grand to get home via plane. In situations like that, I find it much easier to just say, "We will be taken care of. It's just money," and take a really, really deep breath. But then the car guy was like, "If it were me, I'd wait till dusk and drive through the night with the AC off." We made it, no problem. In the meantime, they changed two censors that they thought didn't fix the problem, so they refunded us $500. We took the car to our mechanic yesterday and he said the car is fixed. Also, Tyler got a big fat scholariship for this semester in the midst of all the car stuff.

Things tend to balance out. Just be alive when they do.

My sister wrote a post about frustrating situations and asking yourself, "What is Jesus doing?" It was good for me to read. I think I usually ask myself, "How can I be better so this doesn't happen again?" And then I make a dumb list that says, "wake up earlier, drink more water, work out, meditate, read books, take a shower in the morning instead of at night." And here I am. Obviously that list has worked really well so far.

Well. I'll leave you with that.