I can't believe May is coming to an end! What happened to this month?!

I must say, I've achieved much in the month of May! We built a chicken coop, 4 more garden beds, trimmed the hedges along the front walk, learned how to make kefir, learned how to make sourdough, actually got to harvest some stuff from the garden (radishes and salad greens and kale so far)... The irises have bloomed, the crabapple is making apples, the peonies have bloomed, the rugosa has put out it's first bloom, the honeysuckle bloomed and lost it's buds, the sweet peas have gone crazy, a couple of the clematis and shown their beautiful colors. May in the Midwest is an incredible month of growth and change!

The kids are a month over. It's amazing how that happens. I mean, it happens every month, right? They just seemed to have aged so much this month. Especially Elyas, in that two year old way, he is changing before our eyes. It breaks my heart to think of family being so far away from him and missing all this. I haven't seen my brothers or father since early January, by far the longest time I've been away from them. I wonder if Elyas will remember them next time we see them. Grandpa, yes, thanks to skype and pictures and undying little boy Grandpa-love. But my brothers, we see them so rarely on skype (stop WOWing for long enough to say hi to your only neice and nephew, Adam!). I really love it here in Iowa, especially now experiencing Spring here, and yet being so far from family is not getting any easier with time. At least I am far from family in a place that I love. I imagine if we were far from family in a place that we were quite on happy it would have been worse. Much worse. And it was a completely plausible possibility to get stuck somewhere we weren't happy for a few years.

I will say that moving to Iowa has been good for me in one way: I have to form relationships with others and get out and socialize. Sounds scary, huh? For an introvert, like me, it IS. But I must admit that it has made me a happier person, I think, to have made some actual friends that are MY friends. Not just people I know, but actual friends. I don't think I've had that in a long while, on a real relationship sort of level. And deep down I know it is good for me. I think of something my mother told me once, about how when she lost her mother she also lost her best friend, and honestly that is a thought that has long loomed in my mind. I think she told me that as a sort of nudge to actually make some strong female friends so I would have someone when that inevitability comes. I practically drown in sorrow at the thought of my mom's mortality (stop smoking mom!), so I find some comfort in knowing that I have friends who can be a support network for difficult times. Hopefully it will be enough to frighten off post partum depression the next time we have a baby. Because I don't think I can handle going through that again, feeling so alone. Of course, next time I won't have a husband on the job market at the same time.

Boy, I've rambled tonight. I'm reading Joan Gussow's This Organic Life, which is really a marvelous book, and I'm going to go read some more right now. :)