Half way there

Today I found out we are having a little girl.... !!!!!!!!

I'm beyond excited, and thrilled, and terrified. Mothering a girl is a special challenge in so many ways. The world is tough on girls, so I have to help make my little girl tough without losing the wonderful things about being a girl. I have to protect her from the scary things in the world and give her confidence to handle any situation. She has to be a little bit smarter, kinder, better, and a little bit more talented than if she were a boy.

But that's OK. She can do it. And the world is slowly changing for girls. Maybe when she's my age we really will rule the world. Or at least we'll just be that much closer to being on equal footing with men.

Now that we know she's a girl and we know her name (Ruby), we can really start planning her room and picking out the things we need for her. Watch out Anchorage, here come two moms-to-be with a long "to do" list!

Big Alaska Weekend

After several weekends in a row of being completely lame, I decided to shake things up a bit. Early last week I started to get fishing envy. A lot of people I knew to varying degrees had been fishing and dipnetting this summer. I love me some salmon and I love not having to pay for it even more! So I started trolling Facebook and my phone contacts looking for someone to take me with them.

Soon enough I had successfully invited myself on college buddy/former roommate Lorrie's overnight trip to Kenai for some dipnetting fun. I also managed to borrow all the necessary gear from other lawyer's and coworkers.   Then I got my fishing license ($24) and found a resident dipnet card (free, after trips to three different outlets!) and packed the Jeep for an overnight camping trip. My excitement was building all week. I even got Friday afternoon off from work. By 1:30 PM I was on the road with Lorrie, chatting away, enjoying a beautiful sunny day.* The drive down was uneventful and pleasant.

We arrived in town not knowing exactly where to go. So after staking out our campsite we drove around a bit looking for a good place to fish. Within about an hour we found ourselves at the mouth of the Kenai River. We parked ($15) and carried our gear to the water. Then we chilled out in the water for about 30 minutes before Lorrie landed her first red. I was so jealous, thinking there's no way a salmon is just going to swim into my stupid net. But soon enough I caught one too.* It was the best feeling! Lorrie coached me through the process of murdering and butchering the poor thing. Over the next 90 minutes we each caught 2 more, cleaned them, and then packed up to make dinner at camp.

The camping was great.* We grilled one of Lorrie's fillets, I made black rice and veggies, and we drank way too much wine. The next morning I woke up with a killer hangover, but we both rallied and tried to catch more fish. The weather wasn't in our favor though (hot and sunny but with too much wind) so we grabbed breakfast and hangover provisions before driving back to Anchorage. I dropped off Lorrie, unloaded the Jeep, and filleted my fish on the back porch (I'm hardly an expert, but I wound up with about 7 lbs of salmon meat!). Then I cooked up the loose meat I scraped off the fish's ribs into a panang curry with black rice for Leigh's and my dinner. Fabulous.

Sunday morning rolled around way too soon. Early last week Leigh and I committed to going packrafting with my work friend and her boyfriend. I was still exhausted from fishing, drinking, and driving a total of 7 hours in less than 24 hours, but not about to waste a chance to try something new (and not willing to flake out on someone who'd put a lot of effort into planning an outing for us). We met up with our friends around 11:30 and hit the water by 1:00 PM. The first half of the trip was technically challenging, just getting used to the boats. Then we ran into a serious construction area and decided to walk around it and put-in down river. While climbing out of the water to walk downstream both of our friends were attacked by hornets! Once that trauma passed, a young moose wandered into our area and we found bear scat all over the trail. So basically it was a stressful 45 minutes or so.

We worked our way past the construction area with our gear and put in about a 1/2 mile down river. After that the paddling was technical (dodging fallen trees and rocks) but much easier and a lot more fun.* After about 3 hours of constant exercise and stress, Leigh started to fade a bit at this point and said she was extremely cold (which was scary considering her pregnancy), but she rallied and we got safely to our car at the take-out. At the time I was pretty stressed out and worried about Leigh, but looking back I'm really glad I paddled Campbell Creek and tried out packrafting. It was great exercise and fun to spend time with our friends and nobody was [permanently] injured. Needless to say, I'm completely exhausted today.

In other news, we're having homemade, fresh caught salmon cakes for dinner!

* Sorry, no pictures. I am the genius who took my cell phone packrafting only to have it swim in a puddle in the floor of my boat all afternoon. Leigh's phone kept mine company, so we're both without phones. I'm so mad at myself!

Letter to My Teenage Self

Sometimes the bloggers I follow will write these letters. They're usually from women, probably because life is supremely difficult for teenage girls and women tend to realize how much they wish they'd known certain things when they were young. Anyway, I've been thinking about writing one for a while, so here's mine:

Dear Teenage Emily,

I know things started getting tough for you when you turned 13: our parents got divorced, our body started developing at a ridiculous rate, we stopped eating for a while, and then our mother moved us to another part of the state to live with her boyfriend who didn't want us around. All of those things sucked, but I have to be honest and tell you that it's only going to get worse for a while. Hang in there, it'll start to get better when you're 19.

The truth is that our parents getting divorced was a good thing and long overdue. Our dad was miserable. Our mom didn't love her family and wanted out, we were just too young to understand that sometimes you have to destroy something to save its best components. You'll eventually learn that our mom is very emotionally unstable, so all those awful things she says and does to us are not your fault. Other people notice it too, but it's too hard for them to say or do anything to help. The sad truth is that our limited, selfish mother will only teach us two things in life: how to be independent (because she was never there for us) and how not to treat people, especially your own kids. Just hang on tight till you get out of there and then never look back. And stick to our dad as much as you can because he's a good one.

We were cursed with a weird figure: very short, big boobs, a stalky build, and a round face. The best thing you can do for yourself is get a breast reduction (which we do at age 20, do it sooner, trust me) and learn about nutrition and exercise. I know our mom spends a lot of time putting us down for being chubby, but that's not entirely our fault either: turns out we can't properly metabolize sugar, white flour, cholesterol, and other refined foods. We don't' learn this till we're 26. So we tend to get fat easily and stay that way. Learn to eat right and exercise a ton and you'll feel a lot better about yourself. Also, when you first go to college watch your weight carefully. That turned out to be our fattest few years and they're still haunting us today. Maybe giving you a forewarning will keep us from having body dismorphia into our late 20's. Maybe not, but it's always best to try to be healthy.

Just a few tips to help you have a more satisfying adolescents: Don't follow Leigh to Longwood. I know you feel weird living with someone else's family because our mom moved away without us and I know it's really hard trying to live with our dad again after so many years apart, but stick it out and get that advanced diploma. Leigh is a good one, she'll wait for you to finish high school and she'll support your dreams throughout college and forevermore.

Graduate with your class (I know it sounds lame, but you'll appreciate it later) and just go straight to Hollins because you'll love it there and it will be the best thing you've ever done for yourself. Minor in a foreign language. Study abroad and say fuck it about the money because our generation is going to drown in student debt no matter what we do to pinch pennies in college. After college, DO NOT GO TO LAW SCHOOL. You're better off joining the Peace Corps or traveling as an ESL teacher for a few years or working for a non-profit doing something you love. You don't know this yet, but these things make us happy and will make us the person we really want to be. Law school won't make us happy, will put us in debt, and will ultimately disappoint us because it WILL NOT lead to a fat paycheck or even a guaranteed exciting career. If you must, go to law school later or, better yet, go to grad school in Europe where it's cheaper and we can learn other soft skills that will lead to better job prospects, in the US or abroad.

No matter what you do, hang onto Leigh. You don't know this yet but she's our best friend and will be the rock we lean on for the rest of our life. She's the one who makes us feel normal and extraordinary all at the same time. She will support our dreams, even the stupid ones, and will follow us anywhere we lead her just to see us happy. So even though things are going to be really hard sometimes (or terrible or hopeless or desperate), keep that relationship strong and you will make it to the other side a better person and you will have someone who appreciates everything you've been through because she was right there beside you the whole time.

Here's the bottom line: we are smart, resourceful, and sincere; and we dream big and make things happen for ourselves. Most of all, we are loved. You'll find later that we actually make friends pretty easily because, while we are busy feeling a little insecure and ordinary compared to the amazing people we meet, those amazing people are excited to hear our stories and get to know us better. Just keep doing your thing and you will be just fine.

Much Love,
27-Year-Old Emily

PS: When you and Leigh are in Merida, Mexico for Christmas in 2006, DO NOT follow that nice man to his family's crafts shop to buy a hammock. I know you're bad at math, but 2400 pesos is $240 and you DO NOT need a $240 hammock no matter how pretty or sturdy it is. JUST WALK AWAY. 

Looking Forward in "Maybes"

My job search hasn't budged in weeks. It got really exciting there for about 3 weeks, then all went quiet. Leigh is doing her very best to keep my spirits up. Every day I'm resigning myself to more possible truths about my life in 7 weeks, when my clerkship officially ends: 1) I will probably be unemployed, 2) it might be for a while, it might not be for too long, 3) money will be tight, but I'll do my best to keep us afloat, and 4) it's not the end of the world. That last one is the hardest to remind myself of, but it's true, and what's even more true is that I've been really lucky so far when compared to a lot of other professionals my age.

Since I'm semi-obsessed with the Foreign Service, I tend to read a lot of FSO blogs and articles. There's a discussion going on right now about "having it all" and being a woman in a high powered position or government service.  The first article was written by a Princeton professor who worked at a high level in the State Department for a while and found it impossible to be a "very important person" and have kids and a husband who works in another city. My reaction was something along the lines of "of course that was hard and of course some aspects of her life started to deteriorate!" But I'm not going to judge the author. It's her life and she should try to achieve as many of her dreams as possible. In that vein, today I read the response article in The Atlantic, which basically said we have to determine what "having it all" means to us and then "own" our choices. There's also a great blog post I read today that points out that all of our choices mean compromising something, but that's OK too. 

These ideas get me thinking about a lot of things: my career prospects and dreams, my growing family, and generally what's important to me. I want it all, but my version of "ALL" is unique to me and my family. We want a couple of kids, jobs we enjoy for the most part, and the chance to have a lot of unique experiences together (i.e. travel a lot). For more practical purposes, we want to pay off our debt (mostly student loans), build our savings, and live simply. As you can see, for us having it all is very, very different than being everyone's boss, sending our kids to Harvard, and escaping to a million dollar beach house on weekends. 

In a perfect world this would mean I would find a great job in the next six weeks, work hard and become excellent at what I do, then reassess based on the opportunities that come my way. At that point we'd have two kids and Leigh could choose to stay home or continue working. We would have enough money to live comfortably and save for retirement and enough time off from work for family time and travel. It sounds modest, but the truth is that this is a pretty tall order for our generation. We're lucky to have a decent job, let alone build savings or pay off debt. Those of us who are traveling a lot or having other unique experiences are either in school, taking low-paying contract jobs, or living off our parents. Sad, but true. 

I just hope that my decision to move my little family to Alaska to start our careers in a not dying economy turns out to be a good choice. To achieve that all I need is an opportunity- a good job that pays well and is permanent. After that, the "having it all" part is up to me and I'm up for the challenge.