This year, like every year, has been one filled with ups and downs, events that went down as planned and events that went awry, things that happened for a reason and surprises that revealed themselves at the most opportune times.

Today was perhaps the most perfect Thanksgiving ever. It started by John and I going out last night to the 10pm showing of The Muppets and coming home to finish making Pumpkin Whoopie Pies (thanks to a delicious recipe from Bill the Butcher). Then this morning started by going to CrossFit and doing a team WOD with two of my best CrossFit friends. Participating in today’s WOD was a big deal since I’ve been doing solo workouts and rehabbing my shoulder due to tendonitis and bursitis that I’ve had for a year and a half.

For Thanksgiving dinner, we went to my in-laws’ house. They were the hosts and we dined with them, my sister-in-law, her fiancé, John, my parents, and a family friend. The feast was complimented by laughter and now I’m home on the couch, blogging, while John and I are watching Harry Potter, which is kind of a tradition in this house.

It was the perfect Thanksgiving Day.

Thirty Reasons to be Thankful

In the tradition of last year, here is what I am thankful for this year:

• John – my support, my rock, my heart
• Building strength, physical and psychological
• New friends
• Old friends
• Friends who have moved from professional to personal friends
• Twitter BFFs and blogging buddies
• You, my reader
• My blog
• My new job
• My old job
• Mentors
• My family – my parents, my in-laws, my sisters, my brothers, my nephew
• Going to celebrate my nephew’s first birthday next week.
• Having control over my own schedule
• CrossFit
• My acupuncturist and my chiropractor
• Celebrating hump day
• Being a writer
• Mustaches
• Hipsters and the hipster-way-of-life
• Dancing, just because we can
• Cooking and baking at home
• Cuddling (even though my husband has dropped 50 pounds in the past year thanks to CrossFit, his hipbones are still fun to cuddle with)
• Listening to my gut
• Putting things in motion
• Not settling
• The ability, drive, and ambition to fix things that aren’t right
• Big ideas, implemented
• Do-ers
• Being comfortable in my own skin and appreciating who I am.

That last one is probably the biggest way to summarize all that has happened so far this year. 2011 has been a “building” year – personally, professionally, physically, and psychologically.

Thank you – for reading and being here; lamiki.com would not be what it is without you.

Thank you.

Now, I’m going to do what I told you not to do yesterday and log off to spend time with the first item on this list.

I have a thing with deadlines and rules – if you give one to me, I will make it flex.

Flex? Who refers to missing negotiating deadlines as “flexing”?

Even when I give them to myself, they are always up for negotiation. Take for instance a little letter than landed on my doorstep just before Thanksgiving. Inside it was a form letter filled out by a sweet, sweet little girl who lives in Iowa and I happen to be related to. The letter is as follows:

Schweet! Right away I knew exactly where I was going to take Flat Stanley and what we were going to do. I was going to give my cousin the best Flat Stanley experience, ever! Hands down—THE BEST! And mail him back before or after Christmas? No problem. Lots. Of. Time.

Flat Stanley’s great adventure

Flat Stanley and I ventured around the city on Sunday, January 2nd—after Christmas. We hit all of the hot spots in Seattle and were even going to go see the Fish Guys at Pike Place Market and sweet talk them into a picture, but we couldn’t find parking. That’s okay; it was January in Seattle and Stanley was cold anyway (my aunt told me I could color him after we started on this journey; that would have been good to know).

So we went home after stopping for a fresh cup of good ol’ Seattle coffee, dumped the SD card of images, and promptly forgot to print them out.

Sometimes you need encouragement

That’s when I got the nice little ping for my aunt on Facebook a few weeks later, wondering what happened to their sweet Flat Stanley.

Shit. My nine-year-old-cousin choose me to send Flat Stanley to and all of the good intentions in the world were preventing me from printing out those pictures and sending him back.

Okay, let’s cut myself a little slack here. That and the fact that I don’t have a sweet, top-of-the-line color photo printer. Oh, conveniences! If they just asked me to post an album on Facebook, I would have done it, no problem! Better yet…live Tweet our adventure!

Wait, these are third graders…

So I sent my photos off to a printer, found a card, discovered a unique way to tell our story, and finally gave Stanely that sweater he was shivering over. If he was going back to Iowa after a big adventure in Seattle, the least he could have was a souvenir.

And on the first week of February, after Christmas, I mailed Flat Stanley back to my cousin in Iowa.

The moral of the story is…

And last week, I received this message from my aunt on Facebook:

If you have to stretch a deadline, it better be worth it.

Do you have a Flat Stanley story?

This month I became a first-time auntie. Being with my sister (who lives on the other side of the country) for the final weeks of her pregnancy, through labor, and helping to welcome her first baby home was one of the most incredible things I witnessed this year. I will never forget her strength and watching her transformed into a mother.

As an auntie, my job was to support her and my brother-in-law. There were some things that I could do, like make sure they were comfortable at home, but when we arrived at the hospital, all I could do was provide moral support while the midwives, doctors, and nurses stepped in.

I don’t know a lot about pregnancy and giving birth. But I do know is how important it is to have a midwife or a doctor to ensure the safe delivery of her baby and her own well-being. And while all expectant mothers make a birth plan, circumstances may change that and access to services skilled health care providers when we need it is something we take for granted in the States.

Many mothers around the world are not as fortunate. According to the United Nations:

• More than 350,000 women die annually from complications during pregnancy or childbirth, almost all of them — 99 per cent — in developing countries.
• The maternal mortality rate is declining only slowly, even though the vast majority of deaths are avoidable.
• Every year, more than 1 million children are left motherless. Children who have lost their mothers are up to 10 times more likely to die prematurely than those who have not.

What breaks my heart is that most maternal deaths could be avoided through access to skilled health care workers, services, equipment, and supplies. This is why improving maternal health is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals the United Nations is dedicated towards achieving in an effort to end poverty by 2015.

Luckily, we can do something to help work towards that goal and change those statistics.

My goal is to adopt a total of 5 mothers and their newborns through Jolkona, the nonprofit I volunteer with.

You can support this campaign by making a full gift of $235 which will support one mother and her child for 3½ years or by making a partial donation for as little as $5.

You will not receive a proof-of-impact for a partial donation. However, if you make a partial gift, let me know and I will put you on a private email list and share with you updates about the mother you supported. To respect the privacy policy Jolkona has for their beneficiaries and partner organizations, I cannot share with you any photos or the name of the mothers and their children. But I can share their stories and tell you about them.

Help me save a life, actually 10 lives. For more information on how to donate, visit my campaign page on Jolkona or learn more by going here.

Will you help me make an impact for the holidays?

Update: Thank you for all of your support! As of January 14, 2011, this campaign was complete and with your help, we exceeded the campaign’s goal and supported 6 mothers and their newborns! Thank you so much for making such an enormous impact!

In every family, there’s one thing that is your “thing” and it’s a right-of-passage to learn how to do it and how to do it well. It’s usually a trade secret and something you can whip out at parties and impress your friends with. Something that is passed down by generations and a mad skill that is like nothing for you when you do it. In my family, this thing is making pies from scratch.

These pies originate where my roots do, from the Midwest. One year when I was in high school, my parents, sister and I spent Christmas with our family on their farm in Iowa. My grandpa wasn’t doing so well, so all the aunts and their families came to spend some quality time together. We turned my grandma’s kitchen into a pie-lover’s dream.

We are pie-making machines

We had three stations: crust, filling, fruit processing. The first few pies went straight into the oven and straight into our mouths. The rest were slid into gallon zip-lock bags and stacked in the deep freeze in the basement, to give Grandma something quick and easy to give Grandpa if he was being finicky. Since that winter, it’s been an unofficial contest between my cousins as to who can mass-produce the most number of pies in one pie-making session. One summer they made something obscene like 15 pies due to a healthy crop of homegrown rhubarb. I can’t compete with that.

But pies are not reserved for holidays alone. They come out whenever the fruit is fresh and guests are to be “wow-ed.” One fall my parents’ apple trees sprouted fruit for the first time in fifteen years. Homemade pies featuring homegrown, organic apples were in order. My friends ate well.  Another time John and I hosted dinner for new friends and I was supposed to make the famed apple pie except that I forgot. No worries, I whipped it out while John was making dinner. Ingredients to baking in 45-minutes flat—that’s one definite way to impress people.

The secret ingredients

There are three main pies in my family: Dutch apple, cherry, and pumpkin.

Apple is best when the fruit comes from homegrown apples, or anything grown in Washington. Once I was swayed to make a pie using bright green Granny Smiths, but I prefer Jonathans or a variety of Braeburn.

The best cherry pies come from fruit that’s purchased in bulk at the Amish store near my grandparent’s farm in Iowa. These cherries are tart and processed specifically for making pies. We used to carry them home to Seattle on the airplane, packed in coolers (this was during a time of less stringent airport security), and home to our deep freeze.

The best pumpkin pies come from the insides of Halloween pumpkins we were never allowed to carve. It wasn’t until I was in college and dating John that I carved my first pumpkin; mom wouldn’t let us waste the meat.

Piecrusts are a trade secret. Okay, not really. But they are made of four ingredients: flour, salt, Crisco, and water (though we always leave out the salt). What’s secret is how you mix and cut the dough.

One Thanksgiving I had a pie making party with a friend, we made a pie for my family and a pie for hers. When she brought hers home, her mom was impressed that we made everything including the crust from scratch. Apparently piecrusts are the hardest things to make. That was the first time I realized that what I know how to do—this pie making from scratch—is kind of a big deal.

Bake at 400° for 50 min., or until top is golden brown & apples are tender

I’m thankful to have grown up making pies with my mom so that as an adult, making pies from scratch is a “nonevent.” That’s the thing about having an inherited “thing”—it’s a part of who you are to the point that it’s not a big deal when you do it.

I’m thankful to have this skill, and I’m lucky that it’s a really tasty one too. I’d share the recipe with you, but it’s more impressive if you taste it for yourself.

I’m going to echo the man who lives a life without pants and say that this has been one fucking incredible year, and one that I have so much to be thankful for.

2010 started off on a high note and there have been some amazing things that have gone exactly as I planned them to and others that went the complete opposite. I pride myself as someone who sets goals and achieves them, and everything that I have put in motion has caused ripple effects in parts of my life and others creating an impact that is bigger than I ever imagined it could be. And this year isn’t over yet. To get specific, here’s a short-list of things that I’m thankful for right now (in no particular order):

• Family under one roof for the holidays
• In-laws, and in-law’s in-laws
• Family recipes
• Opportunities that make you take life by the horns
• Friends
• Community
• Getting out of town safely, in one piece
• The opportunity to reach high and achieve goals
• Goal setting
• Goal achieving
• Words and language and all of the baggage definitions mean
• Sharing philosophies over too much wine
Late nights
• Spell check
• Cuddling
• Instant friendships
• Rekindled friendships
• Friendships that’s are true blue and everlasting
• Being taken out of context
• Being asked to do something I’ve always wanted to do by someone who never knew I wanted to do it
• Doing things I kick ass at
• Strength is the new skinny
• Confidence
• Trust and trusting others

Right now my family—my husband, sister, brother-in-law, unborn niece/nephew, and parents—are in the other room watching a movie and I’m blogging, reflecting, and ready to join them.

Gen Y Gives Thanks

For further reading while you wait for the turkey to bake and the pumpkin pie to cool, check out this great series curated by Sharalyn Hartwell called Gen Y Gives Thanks. In this series, Sharalyn features what one millennial blogger is thankful for throughout the month of November. There are some great stories included here from some new and familiar voices around the blogosphere. Plus, yours truly was featured on November 6th.

What are you thankful for?

Photo Credit: MorBCN

Today is my sister’s due date As I write this there are 39 minutes left of Sunday, November 21st Eastern time and baby is still well inside.

“Hold on, baby, hold on.” Every text message and email that my Mom sends is signed that way. My husband and I are already here in New Jersey, but Mom and Dad don’t fly in from Seattle until Wednesday night. We’re playing baby roulette, and according to the midwives and other stories about when first babies come due, the cards are in our favor.

Dear Howeberry,

Today is your due date, but seeing how there are a few minutes left until midnight and your mama is not showing any signs, it seems as though we’ll have to wait another few days until we see you. And that’s okay. Your grandma won’t be here until Wednesday and she’d really like you to wait for her. I’d like you to wait for her, too.

You are the first grandbaby in both of our families and there are so many people who already love you. When your mom first told me that she expecting you it was by phone while I was stuck in horrible traffic.

She asked what my plans were for Thanksgiving. You see it was March and November was not in my immediate plans.

“Um, I don’t know.”

“Well, I was wondering if you wanted to come out here for Thanksgiving and cook a turkey again.”

You see, I had just hosted everyone at my house and cooked my first and apparently the most amazing turkey ever. Plus this was an extremely strange question. Why would I go out to her house and cook her a turkey?

I may have said something like, “Why would I do that?” or nothing at all.

To which, your mama replied, “Because I might have something to show you in, say nine months.”

Nine months? Like what a kitchen remodel—oh wait… And then it clicked: you were that “something” she wanted to show me.

At the time you were about 6 or 7 weeks old and the size of a blueberry. That’s how you got your nickname, Howeberry, because you were the size of a little Howe-berry.

I have no idea if the name will stick. I’ve thought up all sorts of nicknames for you over the past few months, none of which I’ve shared with your mama because we still don’t know if you’re a boy or a girl yet. What we do know is that you’ll arrive with a full set of hair, a nose like your mom, and probably a smile like your dad. I really hope you get your mom’s eyes, because they’re Pratt eyes and are absolutely beautiful when she smiles.

I have known your mama for my entire life. She’s one of the most important people in it. Ever since she became pregnant she has changed. She’s the happiest I’ve seen in her entire life. She has this glow that carries across in photographs. And she’s confident like I’ve never seen before.

I hope that when you arrive and as you grow up you keep making her happy, because that’s all that I want for my big sister. I want to see her glowing in that way every single day.

There are so many people in this world who already love you, and I cannot wait to see the person that you become and the kind of parents your mama and your daddy turn into. And I’ll be here with uncle John to spoil you as much as we can. You’re the first grandbaby in the family, on both sides, and we are all so excited to meet you.

But hold on, baby, hold on.

With more love than you’ll know,
Auntie Laura

Update: Lucius James (aka Howeberry) was born on Saturday, December 4th at 10:45pm and I already can’t remember what life was like before he was in our family.

I have a tickle in my throat that goes down my lungs and into my belly. Make me laugh and I will cough, convulsively. It will sound like I’m hyperventilating because I am. The more air I give myself the worse it is. Air is like this toxic love affair—I know I need it but the more I have, the more it hurts.

My neighbor in seat 23E cringes each time I open my mouth. She is a woman who has snake-like qualities, is long, lean, and impeccable peripheral vision. She has one eye on the mass-market paperback novel she purchased at the Hudson News stand before boarding and the other eye watching me, surreptitiously. While one eye paces the words, the other watches me breathe. She’s constantly cringing and I doubt it’s because the plot is so engaging.

Sickness. I have no idea if I’m contagious, but 23E sure thinks I am. I wonder if it would have put her at more at ease if I boarded the plane wearing a SARS mask; probably not.

She may be a decent woman and not worth all this commentary. When she sat down and stored her lovely brand name tote bag, I smiled and she smiled back. There was all the potential in the world for us to be best friends a 6-hour transcontinental flight could accommodate, except that I coughed, and all promises for a future together shattered like a glass souvenir in checked baggage.

There’s a businessman wearing a crisp white button-up shirt. As long as his WIFI works and his PowerPoint loads at a cruising altitude of 30,000 feet, he will not pay attention to my coughs. The cabin is quiet. Even though it was an afternoon flight, half of the passengers are passed out, snuggling with people they’re supposed to or unconsciously snuggling with those they’re not.

There are parents with mostly-well-behaved kids doing art projects across the aisle. They’ve packed a cooler full of food to feed many hungry children. I have not asked if they’re going or coming, and I have no idea what they’re doing with a glue stick. And they have a giant stuffed shark that just popped out of nowhere.

I need to sneeze, but I’m worried 23E will lose it.

Time stands still at this altitude. We’re halfway through our flight and it’s dark outside my window. The reflection of the moon is pacing us through a reflection on the wing of the 737. The businessman is finishing up his deliverable, the snake lady is flipping another page, my headphones are blasting my favorite bands and I’m one beer shy of creativity. Other than my own internal monologue this flight is uneventful.

I’m on my way to Jersey, the New one, to spend a few weeks with my sister, brother-in-law, and family that will arrive in stages. She’s expecting the first baby in our family on Sunday the 21st, but my new niece/nephew is guaranteed to be late. I’ll be cooking the Thanksgiving turkey and I am excited beyond belief.

Photo Credit: ecstaticist

Editor’s Note: This is a work of fictionalized observation, mostly.

I am always anxious and nervous when I travel. Even if it’s a weekend trip, less than 4 hours by car away from home, I can’t help staying up all night, tying up loose ends and packing.

So here’s the thing, I’m going on a trip to see my sister. Granted it’s 2000 miles away from home, but this is not a business trip at all. She lives in somewhere, New Jersey, not nowhere, New Jersey. We’ll be staying at home, cooking, etc., All I need to pack are comfy clothes (the same 5-outfits or so that I wear everyday) and my Timbuk2 bag full of my computer, a few files, and more-than-one old school journal, some pens, and cords. Oh, and probably a book. That’s all I really need, and yet I have so much more.

That’s all. And yet I’ll still be up all night before my night, packing.

This has me thinking about how much “stuff” one really needs. How much physical and emotional stuff one carries around with them (physically and mentally).

I recently watched this video to promote Sam Davidson’s new book, 50 Things Your Life Doesn’t Need, and I wonder, how much does a person really need? What is one thing that your, or I for that matter, could live without?

50 Things Your Life Doesn’t Need from Point House Films on Vimeo.

Photo Credit: rent-a-moose

Sundays are days of rest. Days when we sleep in, giggle each other awake, and crawl to get pancakes and do things regular people do, like go grocery shopping, do laundry, and clean.

As we waved to our neighbor this afternoon while carrying 80 pounds of cat litter into the house, he asked if the race season was over. The race season is something that devours the majority of our weekends and “spare” time. My husband shouted, “Yep, now we have more time to take care of the house!” Our neighbor laughed. God, I’m sure he hates the fact that our yard looks like Jurassic Park. And when he walks his dog, he cautiously looks over our fence, scouting for Velociraptors.

Today we were domestic, and it felt good. We even hosted a group of friends and played board games over lasagna and wine. These are friends who have known my husband for our entire life together, and they all have or are having babies.

Lately, when someone I know learns that I have a husband, it surprises them. I’m not sure why as I have some very sparkly diamonds that I wear on a very specific finger and don’t hide. After their shock wanes, their next question is, “Do you have—” or “When are you having kids?” It’s as though by telling them that I am legally attached to a man means that the next logical step is to take over the world, one teeny-tiny baby at a time. Otherwise what’s the point of getting married in the first place, right?

This opens a can of worms and sparks internal dialogue. What I really want to ask them, but never do, is “Why do you want to know?”

There are a few reasons why they’ve jumped to ask me this question:

1. They are curious about my life and genuinely care about me
2. They only believe people are married to have kids
3. They think married people who don’t have kids are weird and hate kids
4. They think married people are weird, period.

Thinking more about the situation, this question is generally asked when I’m in the “getting to know you phase” with someone. Therefore, people who fall into the #1 category will generally not ask this question because they care and they know that the question of to procreate or not procreate (not practice, mind you) is a personal question, because it is.

The reason why a person asks this question tells more about the place that person is in their life and what their own views are, than it does about me.

Photo Credit: Krug6

The Mighty Mazda after literally taking a "bite" out of an Oldsmobile (for the record, the insurance company ruled in favor of the Mazda)

The best car in the world is a 1989 Mazda 323 SE, 5-speed manual, with a 1.6 liter engine and it’s share of 100,000 miles. It was discovered in the suburbs, parked in a ditch, with a “for sale” sign awkwardly taped to the window. It had a sun-faded hood and plastic chrome hub caps that sparkled in the July sun. It had four doors and a trunk that was deep enough to sneak multiple teenagers into a drive-in movie. It was the perfect first car, purchased with hard-earned cash, split 50/50 with my sister.

Our first upgrade was the radio, or lack-of. We opted for a period-correct Mazda radio that was rescued from the dash of a dead 323 in a junk yard (may it rest in peace). The radio featured a tape deck, a rarity in the era of CDs and the birth of the iPod. The tape deck perpetuated the illusion of coolness that every high schooler strives for. That is, unless one surpasses that status by racing.

The Mighty Mazda, as it was christened, was fast. And by fast that is to say it sounded fast but was not. The stock exhaust did nothing but give the facade of speed. There was no tachometer. You had to shift according to the roar of the engine, which came in handy when focused on the finish and not the gauge.

In the car overflowing with teenage ego, I’d pull up to a red light, sneak a peak at the driver in the car next to me, wait for the green and floor-it. Believe it or not, the 105 horsepower would usually launch the 323 across the intersection and secure a victory. A victory, of course, that was made possible by the fact that the other car didn’t know he was a competitor.

I was 16 and ripe with ambition. The Mighty Mazda helped me escape heartache and discover strength. It fueled innocent shenanigans and the most random road trips. It kept me out of trouble and was the hub of my existence. The 323 had a personality of its own, one that only a new driver and her first car will ever know.

What was your first car?