It’s one of those things there should be a book about.  In the hospital, they show you how to get a good latch and change a diaper, but they don’t say boo about the challenges you’ll be met with as you and your little one venture out to the local park.

First off there are the basic questions.  Are you a dirty hippie if you let your kid take their shoes off in the sandbox?  What about discarded sand toys?  If you forget your bucket, are they fair game to let your little play with?

But moving on…your kid starts chasing another around the swing set, and BOOM – you’ve got a new parent to chat up.  But when the kiddos click, what is your obligation to reach out for a play date?  Do you have one?  Are you psychotic if you do it?   Will you look like a loon if you offer up a phone number or email address so that you kids can continue to connect?  What about a Mom you click with?  Or a Dad?  How do you take that park meeting to the next level?  And should you?

To be clear, I have no answers here.  I’m kind of hoping you guys can enlighten me.  It’s happened a few times now where Dee and I will meet a lovely Mama daughter duo at the park and I feel my palms start to sweat like I’ve been cornered by my Jr. High crush.

To date, I’ve exchanged names with a couple of Moms, but never taken it further – hoping that perhaps we’ll bump into each other again.  No such luck.  But I’m a WAHM with limited childcare (thank moses for Grandmas!).  My kid has NO FRIENDS.  Okay she has two friends, who we are eternally grateful for, but beyond that, I feel like I’m failing her big time.  {I know, I know…it’s time for some Mommy and Me. We do do a music class, so she’s not a complete recluse.}

So yesterday, Dee and I are at the park and she finally gets up the nerve to approach “that purple gril” who she’s been eying across the park.  And turns out the little girl’s Mom is lovely, we were chatting easily by the time Dee climbed up into the swing next to her new friend.

…And then she says it:  “So, do you guys live around here?”  We do, and the conversation turns to other parks in the area, and which ones we frequent.  We exchange names.  And I’m still on my Alt Summit high where it’s totally normal to slip someone your business card, so OMG I did just that.  “Well, let me give you my email if you ever want to meet up at XXX park.”  She seemed receptive, but I couldn’t help feeling like a total dingus as I handed over a card with my social media addictions scrawled all over it.  I mean…the damn thing heralds my twitter handle and says “wordsmith / gal friday” on it.  W.T.F.?

So am I a freak?  Do you think she’ll call?  Do you think she would have called but then she got curious and came to my blog and saw this post and now she definitely won’t? 

I think I need a drink.

{The stunning ALT welcome box.}

Utah in January is becoming a bit of a thing for us.  Well…last year and this year, but still – two visits to the same town with the same friends in a year? IT’S A THING.

{Those are Cariann’s shoes, but I might steal them.}

Anyway – As I write this, I’m sitting alone in the beautiful Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City, missing out on a session on how not to look like an asshole while blogging, which I could probably use, but instead I’m sitting in my hotel room in my favorite T-Shirt, with a bottle of nail polish (OPI Glitzerland) and a Starbucks, enjoying the most luxurious activity of all…having time to sit and write in silence.

There are 500 women in this hotel…all of them gorgeous.  All of them stylish.  All of them smart, and talented, and just…well…enviable.  And then there’s me with my leaky eye corners and my unwaxed eyebrows.  {But red lipstick makes me feel saucy even if my attempt at a smokey eye leaves me looking like a hungover tranny, so I’m doing pretty good.}  It’s actually not as intimidating as it sounds, because everyone is also incredibly interested in meeting one another, and loving on each others blogs and books and brands and whatnots and there’s an incredible feeling of all boats rising together here.

{The coolest look book ever, via Epiphanie Bags}

One of my favorite parts of ALT are the non-bloggers who make their way to the Grand America to meet and collaborate with those of us who spill our minds out through our fingertips on the daily.  Here with me?  Paul and Cariann of Cargoh who are two of my favorite people on this planet, and Jamie from BO.LT – creator of my fastest growing internet addiction.

{Uh, also: The Grand America houses one of the most insane toy stores I’ve ever seen.}

If you’re on Instagram, hopefully you saw the amazing loot my Cargoh buddies gave out to all the attendees at lunch today, because it was a labor of love and just freaking awesome of them – and their sellers -  to do, and also awesome to see everyone admiring the hard work of the little marketplace that could.

Ahhh…and I miss my baby Dee so badly.  Being away for four days is an emotional horror show, but always a much needed break.  And ALT is like a super-powered recharge for my creative-ness before diving in to a new year.  And then there’s the 24 hours we’ll spend at The Sundance Film Festival, which we swore never to do again after last years cluster-cuss, but alas, I was born a screenwriter and I love movies, so even my own memory of frozen toes and nearly having to cut a bitch for a spot in line can’t keep me away.

Anyway friends and lurkers, I hope you’re having an awesome week.  Scott and I are more relaxed than we’ve been since…oh…september?  So, thank you, Utah, for that.

Oh, and lastly: Cool or Crazy?

{Shirt and vest by Leyendecker Los Angeles}

Every year, I say it and I hear it: I can’t believe Christmas has come and gone already.

But this year, while August crept up on me without a freaking sound ~ the past four months have dragged on for like…an eternity.   Oh, what a long strange trip it’s been, Internet.

There are stories I tell you.  Those are my stories.  The ones I have all the proper permissions for.  And then there are the stories I’m not at liberty to share.  Some of those are also my stories.  But in those stories, I play a varied role.  In some, I am the supporting cast – there to hold up the protagonist, to provide comic relief, and to lend an ear, a shoulder, a hand.  In some of them I am neither hero nor supporting cast.  In some stories, I am something else entirely.

There are stories I share, and stories I don’t.  There are stories I tell myself, and stories I won’t even recognize as stories until the epilogue comes much, much later.  Some stories help us grow, and some stories become like shrapnel, a painful little reminder lodged in the flesh of happy memories.

But each story has a chance to become a lesson. And the most important thing I’ve learned this year is that it’s all too easy for the stories we tell in this new performance art of a life too-connected to take the focus away from the now, the present, the here.  It’s all too easy for a whole year to slip by in the blink of an eye.

Scott and I have been talking a lot lately about resolutions and what twists and turns the story of our life together will hold.  If we’re going to make them, what they should be, how we fell short in our own minds this year, and how we’d like to do better.  And I do.  This year, I want to do everything better.  But more than better, I want to do everything intentionally. Too often lately, life is so hectic, I forget to pay attention to the wonderful parts of my every day.

I want to enjoy every moment of my year.  I want to live intentionally, and love intentionally, and work intentionally.  I want to make, and savor the five minute phone calls with friends when Delilah falls asleep in the car and I can finally focus on the person on that other end. I want to luxuriate longer in the cooking of a meal for my family, or the giving of a hug to my child. I want to listen to my parents stories without wondering if I left my cell phone in the car.  I want to enjoy the joy of the writers I get to syndicate just a little more.  I want to smooth out that rough idea out just a little longer with the brilliant women I get to call friends and colleagues on this big bad internet.  And I want to fall back in love with the journey that is my career.  I want to step back and be grateful for the promise and possibility that awaits me on the other side of every studio executive’s door, every producer’s office, every set of director’s notes, rather that irritably, anxiously, gunning for the future.

The pace of the world we live in throws me for a loop on  a regular basis.  I get caught up in the inertia of it all too easily and forget to often that life is something we create, not something that happens to us.

Also, Lindsey shared this video with me a couple of days ago and I thought it was pretty funny.

Hope you and yours had a wonderful holiday.