Hello everyone, happy November – this is the part where I apologize for being away for a bit and tell you how sorry and how busy I’ve been and promise that things are back on track, but not today. Today, I’m happy to report that I’ve been so blissfully happy IRL that I totally forgot about my presence online. To tell you the truth, when I started my blog, just over 2 years ago – it was the best thing in my life, on days that were hard, it felt like my happy place, but my blog isn’t the best thing in my life anymore, my life is.

It all started a few weeks ago, on a rainy weekend, as I started to pack up the room I’ve lived in since I was 5, I walked down the creaky stairs that lead into the dining room – in a pattern, memorized to avoid the creaks, to tell my mom that there was something of my dad’s I’d like to have, to take with me, a red and tan, plaid Burberry scarf that I bought him years ago for Christmas. That year, it was all he talked about, how he wished he lived a life where he could just buy a Burberry scarf and not have to think about it – I wish I had told him then, he was living a life where he could just buy a Burberry scarf and not have to think about it.

When Christmas came, the scarf cost $495, I remember because it was the most I had ever spent on anything. But, when my dad opened it on Christmas morning, he said it was the best gift he’d ever gotten. When he got sick he told me how special it was all over again.

When I went looking through his closet, I realized that I couldn’t picture him wearing it, when I found it, I realized why – it still had the tags on it, he never wore it.

Since, I’ve thought a lot about that scarf – I don’t want to live a life with tags on it. I wish he had spilt coffee on that scarf, I wish it smelt like Marlboro Reds and his cologne, I wish he had lost it in Scotland that time him and my mom never went, I wish he had done all the things in this life he talked about, which makes me want to – when I told my mom I’d like to have it, I thought I’d put it in a special box, to keep forever, but instead, I think I’ll wear it, I think I’ll take it to the places he never got to go, I think I’ll live a life so lived-in that someday I forget why I ever went looking for that scarf in the first place.

I mentioned before about living a life at arm’s length, how since my dad got sick I feel really anxious about letting people in, about going out, about how fragile life is, how quickly a life can change, but it seems the more scared you are – the more there is to be scared of.

This past month, Darren and I have started packing, started picking out furniture, and my feet have gone from a little cold to pretty warm – life is scary, jumping is scary, but I’m so ready to be scared and to do it anyway, I’m so ready to take risks – I spend so much time planning the perfect life in my head, but so little time living it – so here’s to being so busy that you forget a blog you started to keep you busy when your mind was busy, here’s to being scared and doing it anyway, and here’s to spending $495 on a scarf, just to make someone happy.