I'm Not Quitting

Throughout the 12 years since I graduated from college I've held five different professional positions in four different - though related - fields. All required innovative thinking as well as resourceful and productive problem solving (anyone who has ever tried to provide community services on a nonprofit organization's budget understands), but in most cases, the creative work began and grew thanks to collaborative efforts. This worked out well for me because creativity has never been one of my strong suits. I stand proudly behind my planning, organization, and time-management skills (which allowed me to grow existing successes and turn failures around) but acknowledge that I rarely planted the seedling of an idea that eventually grew into a project, event, or program.

Knowing this, I assume you can understand why I write the way I do. I'm not a creative writer. Despite the fact that my high school creative writing class changed my life - for the better - more so than any other high school or college course I ever took, I hated it. I don't write poems, short stories, or novels. I don't develop plots or create characters. I can't imagine and put into words what a sunset looked like or a car accident sounded like or what a protagonist wore when she finally conquered her beast…unless of course I actually saw the sunset or heard the car accident or witnessed the protagonist during her proudest moment. So instead, I write about my life, my experiences. The stories I tell are MY stories, and I tell them well only because I lived them. (And because I have a pretty solid memory for details that don't actually matter, like what I wore on my 6th birthday or what it feels like to step on a buckeye.)

I panic when Will or Hallie asks me to tell them a story (instead of read them a book) before bed because I CAN'T DO IT. I end up telling them stories I already know but changing a detail here or there (a little mermaid named Ariel Muriel lived under the sea with her father, King Triton mother, Queen Brighton, her seven sisters brothers, and a crab named Sebastian lobster named Antonio), or I retell stories my dad told me and my little sister when we were little.

All writers experience slumps. Days, weeks, or even months when the creative juices - which when flowing smoothly inspire page after page of brilliant text - dry up. These slumps cause problems for any writer, but they're especially problematic for someone like me who isn't all that creative to begin with.

And that's where I find myself right now.

My heart is here, but my brain? Not so much. I'm distracted. I lack focus. I can't find the words.

No, seriously. Over the course of 30 minutes I wrote six versions of the extremely short paragraph above before I deleted all of them and left you with those five sentences. Argh.

In the past, three "cures" have worked in combination to pull me out of my writing slumps.

The first - and most frustrating - is time. And because I don't consider "just sit tight and wait for things to improve" an acceptable course of action when faced with a problem, I usually move on down my list of cures pretty quickly.

The second is to keep writing, even if/when I feel like everything I create, along with the laptop computer on which I wrote that nonsense, should be thrown into the fire. My seventh grade language arts teacher required us to free write - to write without stopping, or paying any attention to spelling or grammar, for a set period of time - at least once each week. Though the raw material produced during free writing wasn't useable in its initial format, it often inspired future stories or project/paper topics and helped break down some of the barriers we had to writing. I free write periodically, but because more often than not free writing turns into writing a to-do list, I move on down my list of cures once again.

If all else fails, she can start ghost writing for me.

The third is to read.

When you cannot think, write.
When you cannot speak, write.
When you cannot sleep, write.
When you cannot write, read.*

I love these words.

In the last six weeks I've finished Inferno by Dan Brown, Unwind by Neal Schuster, Maze Runner by James Dashner, and Legend by Marie Lu, and I'm midway through three more books right now. (I often read more than one book at a time so that I can switch back and forth between genres depending on my mood and attention span.) When I can't write, I surround myself with the words of those who can and hope their brilliance rubs off on me.

So I'm not quitting. I'm hanging in there, giving it time, continuing to write, and reading like my life depends on it.

Writers, any slump-cure recommendations?

Readers, any good book recommendations?

Help me!

*My apologies for not giving credit to whoever said this originally - I know it wasn't anonymous, but I can't find the author's name online.

Chasing Roots Around the Interwebs

Though I spend quite a bit of my time writing for Chasing Roots (and trying to keep up our family blog as well), I also contribute regularly to the National American Red Cross blog and MomsEveryday.com. Every couple of months I like to link up to some of the pieces I've written for these sites, and I'd love it if you'd check out not just my posts but the sites in general, as both have a lot of valuable (though completely unrelated) content to share!

Red Cross: Youth Preparedness Week
The 2014 Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service and Youth Preparedness Week (January 20 - 24) have come and gone, but the community service and preparedness information (geared specifically toward youth and young adults) included in this post is still relevant today.

Red Cross: Be Your Own Valentine
Lessen your risk of suffering from an (in many cases) avoidable crisis – such as a heart attack caused by an unhealthy lifestyle, for example – by taking prevention into your own hands. Check out these tips to help strengthen and protect your heart.

MomsEveryday: Breaking the Rules
Some days I struggle to find the words to express what I feel inside. Other days, thoughts and feelings I didn't know I had spill out of me faster than I can type. Midway through writing a completely different article, this post - about wanting to change, ever so slightly, how I parented my Hallie Claire - appeared on my computer screen and begged to be shared.

MomsEveryday: Bathrobe Bowl
In case you missed it the first time around, check out this post about Will's efforts to use football to drive all of his family members completely insane. (Watch for a follow-up post about Will's efforts to use basketball to drive all of his family members insane. And then, because Will played with his basketball too close to the car-rider line outside of his elementary school and a car ran over it, watch for a second follow-up post about his efforts to use baseball to drive all of his family members insane.)

MomsEveryday: Bertie Bott's Bean Bonanza
Another repeat, but a funny post about 1) Tom's most valuable (non-academic) contribution to society and 2) how not everything we create should be passed on to our kids. Until they head off to college, that is, and then all bets are off.

MomsEveryday: Mom to Mom with Erin
MomsEveryday reformatted their website and now all of my posts can be seen on "Mom to Mom with Erin Ferris". The page has not yet been fully populated with my posts, but eventually everything I've written for MomsEveryday will be available to read from this one location.

Thanks for your support, friends, both here on Chasing Roots and out there in cyberland!

It's (his) Time to Shine

Between September and December, every trip to Target included a lengthy stop in front of the toy department's Disney princess display. It wasn't the costumes, the accessories, or even the dolls themselves that Hallie found so enticing…it was a plastic, purse-shaped, purple karaoke machine of sorts that played songs sung by the newest Disney princess, Sofia.

Months of practice in the Target aisles meant that when Santa delivered Time to Shine on Christmas morning, Hallie Claire already knew just what to do with her new toy.

Sofia music played on repeat every day of our Christmas vacation stay in Nebraska - many who'd never previously heard of Sofia now know all of the words to most of her songs - and now, two months later, Hallie still sing duets with Sofia every day…whenever she's not singing medleys of songs from Frozen or The Sound of Music, of course.

After watching the videos above, my sister, Sara, bought Lily Time to Shine as well. The girls sang quite a few beautiful duets during our visit, but it was another child who unexpectedly had the most fun with Time to Shine...

I love that little boy tremendously, even more so now that I know he'll someday sing musical theater duets with me.

Surprise, Surprise

While I could write a lengthy list of positives associated with living in Texas, I could also put together a list of negatives. Atop that list of negatives - perhaps second only to lizards - is the distance between our family of four and our extended families; my parents live in Wisconsin, my sister and her family live in Illinois, and Tom's family members reside in Nebraska, Tennessee, and Vancouver, Canada.

I attended college 150 miles from my parents' home, and by the end of my first semester I knew that distance to be the perfect separation between a new college student and her parents. I lived close enough that I could easily drive home for a weekend or even a single overnight, and if we both felt up for it, my mom and I could split the three hours driving time and meet halfway for lunch. I lived far enough that I didn't have to worry about my parents showing up on my doorstep unexpectedly and catching me…I don't know…NOT STUDYING.

My parents did actually show up on my doorstep unannounced once during my sophomore year. They knocked on my dorm room door, set an outrageously well-stocked Easter basket on the floor where I couldn't possibly miss it, and then hid down the hallway. Best surprise ever.

I miss my parents - and my sister, her family, and Tom's family - tremendously. We make a valiant effort to get together as often as possible, but plane tickets are expensive and car travel takes days. Not a week goes by that I don't wish we lived close enough for our loved ones to join us for Sunday dinner or to attend Will and Hallie's birthday parties. Close enough to babysit so that Tom and I could go out on a date with the expense of a babysitter, or to just show up on our doorstep unexpectedly.

Last spring my mom planned a trip to visit the kids and me while Tom traveled for work. She'd hoped to arrive in time to walk with Hallie and me to pick Will up from school, but because of traffic she ran a little late (an exact arrival time is tough to pin down when the drive takes two full days) and Hallie and I had to leave without her. The kids and I were halfway home when I saw my mom, a couple of blocks away, rounding the corner toward us. We smiled, waved, and picked up our pace.

Then behind my mom appeared an excited toddler being chased by another adult pushing a stroller. I cried out in shock and elation when I realized that my sister, two-year-old niece Lily, and four-month-old nephew Carter had made the two-day journey with my mom.

It was a wonderful surprise, and I knew that someday I would "return the favor".

Fast forward to last weekend...

Sara planned to hold Carter's first birthday party on the Saturday before President's Day, which incidentally was a day off of school for Will and Hallie and therefore gave us a three-day weekend. I worked with my mom to buy plane tickets, coordinate airport pick-ups/drop-offs, and book hotel rooms (we would have stayed with my sister, but if you recall, her house blew away), all without anyone except our spouses knowing. Well, Tom didn't really know what was going on either.

On Valentine's Day evening (nothing like traveling with a few hundred of your closest friends to really bring out the romance in a relationship), Tom and I loaded the kids in the car, told them we were going on an adventure, and headed to the airport.

Our first flight - College Station to Dallas - was delayed, which meant we had very little time to get from one flight to the next in Dallas. We literally ran through the airport like the family in Home Alone, which Will found so fabulously fun that he sang Run, Run, Rudolph as he led the way through the crowds. Our second flight was scheduled to leave at 8:20pm, and we made it to the gate just as boarding should have begun at 8:00pm. Except that right as we reached the counter, the screen changed from "on time" to "delayed".

THREE HOURS later we finally boarded our second plane, and two hours after that - at 1:15am - we landed in Illinois. My dad picked us up at the airport and we drove through the ice and snow to our hotel, where I finally rolled over and went to sleep at 2:58am. I don't DO 2:58am anymore, people.

Hallie fell asleep in my arms about an hour before we boarded the second flight. After 20 or so minutes of her sweating and drooling and snotting all over me, I passed her off to Tom, who eventually carried her onto the flight, buckled her up, tucked her in, unbuckled her, carried her off the flight, and took her to my dad's waiting car. She didn't wake up until she was buckled into her carseat, and needless to say, she was confused. As we pulled out of the airport parking lot, she suddenly yelled, "stop! We forgot to get on the second plane!" She had absolutely no idea that we'd left Dallas and flown all the way to Illinois.

The trip wiped us out, but we survived. (My sister's surprise trip to see us was kind of like an episode of Survivor as well...have you ever driven across the country with a potty-training toddler who suffers from severe motion sickness and a breast-feeding infant? The combination doesn't exactly lend itself to a top-down, wind-in-your-hair, radio-blasting kind of road trip.) We rose on Saturday morning at our regular weekday wake-up time (damn you, circadian rhythms), showered, ate breakfast, and drove to my sister's house.

My dad went in first, and then a minute or two later we snuck up to the door and Will gave it a good pounding. As I'd hoped, it was a wonderful surprise. They had no idea we were coming, a feat made possible only because I didn't tell Will and Hallie - who periodically talks to Lily on the phone - ahead of time about our trip.

We helped prepare for the party, celebrated with Carter, played games, watched the Olympics, gave Carter his first hair cut, took FULL advantage of our hotel's continental breakfasts, went swimming, went to see Frozen (again), played in the gym at Sara's elementary school, and just enjoyed each other's company. Our Monday morning 5am wake-up call came much too early.

Thankfully, our flights home left and arrived on time. We spent the remainder of the day catching up on sleep and dreaming about a way for us to somehow stay here in Texas but live closer to the moms, dads, grandmas, grandpas, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins we love so much.

Happy birthday, President Carter!

Three Years of Protest

Just a month after we moved to Texas, our Green Bay Packers won the Super Bowl. We took the victory as a sign from the football universe that we were supposed to live in Texas instead of in Wisconsin - it wasn't, after all, the first time one of our teams achieved greater success without us cheering them on from the stands.

The following year (two years ago) we expected the Packers to return to the Super Bowl, so when they lost their first playoff game to the New York Giants we were crushed. On Super Bowl Sunday, the kids and I wore our Packer shirts in protest.

Last year, more of the same. The Packers won their Wild Card playoff game, but lost the following week to the San Francisco 49ers. For the second time, the kids and I wore our Packers shirts in protest on Super Bowl Sunday. I don't know about you, but I think they look not only older, but also meaner, than they did the year before.

This year the Packers barely made the playoffs and lost their Wild Card playoff game to, once again, the San Francisco 49ers. (Side note: is it weird that when the 49ers cross my mind I still think of Joe Montana as their quarterback?) And once again, the kids and I supported our team on Super Bowl Sunday. They definitely look meaner this year.

I love this tradition, especially because it serves as a reminder of how much the kids grow (in size and apparently in meanness as well) from one year to the next. Both Will and Hallie have rocked the same Packers gear since we first moved to Texas - when they were four years and 20 months old respectively - and while their shirts started off a little large, they now look comically small. I think I'll continue putting these two shirts on them until doing so is physically impossible.

As much as I enjoy football season, I felt ready for it to end on Super Bowl Sunday. Farewell football, hello March Madness! (I won the Ferris Family March Madness Bracket Competition last year, and I'm aiming for a repeat victory this year.)

High Five for Friday (2.21.14)

1. Will can finally display his Tae Kwon Do trophies, medals, and belts!

I knew I wanted to "show off" Will's Tae Kwon Do hardware, but I couldn't find a three-in-one display (a shelf for trophies, hooks for medals, and slots for belts) anywhere. Thankfully, Grandpa came through for me and both designed and built this gorgeous piece.

It took Tom and me a month and a half, but we finally hung it up on the wall a couple of weeks ago. I LOVE it, and more importantly, so does Will.

2. My "make a wish" necklace broke off!

My sister gave me a "make a wish" necklace for Christmas. The key-shaped charm (though a couple friends of mine thought the key looked like something else - check out the pictures below and decide for yourself) hung from a string, rather than a cord or a chain, thus guaranteeing that the necklace would eventually wear thin, break, and fall off.

This, however, is the point: when you put the necklace on, you make a wish, and when the necklace falls off, your wish comes true.

I donned my necklace and made my wish shortly after I received it in the mail (mid-January), and it fell off a few days ago. Now I'm just waiting to see if my wish comes true...

3. It's finally warm enough for ice cream!

Well, frozen yogurt, but whatever. I took the kids to Spoons twice last weekend (cookies and cream frozen yogurt topped with strawberries and miniature chocolate chips = my go-to order, which I consider pseudo-healthy because it includes fruit), and on the way home I discovered that a through-road - one that will allow us to safely ride our bikes the three or so miles to Spoons - opened up since the last time we'd been there. I see many a weekend bike ride for frozen yogurt in our family's future…

4. Hallie and Tom graced the cover (of the Lifestyle section) of our local newspaper!

Tom took Hallie on a date to the children's museum's annual Daddy Daughter Dance, where they crafted corsages, dined on chicken nuggets and cupcakes, and danced the night away. Apparently their dancing really stood out, because the newspaper photographer on hand at the event captured multiple photos of the two of them cutting a rug.

The photo in the newspaper.

The original photo.

LOVE.

5. Brian Williams and Lester Holt, rapping.

Thank you, Jimmy Fallon, for kicking off your tenure as host of The Tonight Show with a bang. More specifically, thank you for this video montage of Brian Williams and Lestor Holt working their way through Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight".

Happy Friday, friends!

Linking up with High Five for Friday!

An Ekena Thank You (Guest Post)

Just over three months ago my sister and her family lost nearly everything - their home, their cars, and almost all of their belongings - when a tornado ripped through their town of Washington, Illinois. I used Chasing Roots to share information about the disaster and Sara's family's well-being, as well as to launch a number of financial and in-kind relief and recovery efforts. The tremendous outpouring of support from across the globe overwhelmed me, and buoyed Sara and Jeff when they were otherwise sinking.

Today's post is a message from Sara to all of you who read about their struggle and then called, emailed, prayed, donated, and/or spread the word.

Throughout the last few months our family received hundreds of generous donations. We worked diligently to document each financial and in-kind contribution, and have done our best to thank everyone who contributed in one way or another.

Along the way, however, many donations arrived on our doorstep without cards or were given anonymously…which made sending thank you notes a bit challenging. So today, we'd like to extend our deepest and most sincere thanks to everyone - especially those of you who we have been unable to reach thus far - who stood by us during our darkest hour. Although our lives were turned upside-down, we survived because your love and support lifted us up. Thank you for your care, your concern, and your generosity. We are blessed.

On a different but related note, I thought you might like an update on our family.

On the home front, we have been working with our insurance company and are finally close to agreeing on a "number". We met with a structural engineer and our builder, and are ready to move forward on our new house using the same footprint but a slightly adjusted interior layout. If all goes according to plan, we will break ground in March and (fingers crossed) finish building in September.

The most tedious and stressful part of all this, at least right now, is itemizing every single lost possession. The process makes me ache, but we are making progress.

As far as the four of us are concerned, we have settled into our new home. We absolutely adore and love living with the family who opened their doors to us. Carter and Lily have adjusted quite well, all things considered; they love having "playmates" right upstairs and are making progress with their creative sleeping arrangements.

Thank you again for your support as we rebuild our home and our lives,

Sara, Jeff, Lily, and Carter Ekena

Found in the rubble.

Read Sara and Jeff's story by clicking on the links below.

Help.
Ekena Family Updates
The Third Day
The Most Thankful of Thursdays
As the Week Comes to a Close…
The Odds are in Johnny Football's Favor
Find the Silver Lining
What are the Odds?!
One Step Closer
One Last Thanksgiving Request
Washington Strong
Washington Strong(er)
Wake Up Wisconsin