Tablife busynesses

September is busy for the Tabs, you guys. We have a record number of weddings on our roster, so we've been spending our every weekday waking hour mesmerized by computer screens and our weekends beholding lots of pretty weddings. We shot an especially sweet one last Saturday. 

Sometimes we'll zone out of the computer glare long enough to realize that it's been a few days since we stepped outside and we need some air. 

I'm learning, slowly, that to step outside my front door while living in Chicago is to step into a swirl of controversial political activity. Whether it's our governor being thrown in jail or our mayor making the whole city angry or our cops getting convicted for murder or our teachers going on strike or the gangs killing each other, or, or...it just never ends. I keep waiting for a peaceful week in this city and I haven't seen one yet. The rhythm and the wind don't stop. I'm trying to get used to this part.

And yet, for all her faults and wounds, Chicago still dazzles me. She is adored by her cantankerous people. She's too pretty to break up with. 

So. We have the constant motion of our work and the restless energy of our city to keep up with, which is more than enough to think about...and then there's me and my condition. Me and my baby. Already changing our lives in every way. 

I finally started keeping a health journal so I can keep track of the varied array of symptoms and side effects I have every day, because the changes are so close and quick that Tim and I both live in a constant state of confusion over what's happening and how to fix me. Nausea, headaches, exhaustion together with insomnia, extreme hunger, sore joints, heartburn, forgetfulness, swollen blood vessels, frayed emotions. It's all there each day and, praise God, it's all normal. Nothing about it is predictable, and nothing is out of the ordinary at the same time. It is hard, but it is beautiful and good at the same time. Even as I sit here quietly right now, my heart is pounding so hard I can hear it and feel the drum beating throughout my whole body. It has more work to do than normal. The baby bounces and turns and kicks my belly visibly out in dramatic motions that shake my shirt. I pass the mirror on my way into the shower and am shocked to see bright blue lines tracing highways under my skin, expertly navigating an extra 50% of my normal blood supply through me and to the baby. It's all incredible, and I have never been more thankful for my health or positively sure that my body is fearfully and wonderfully made, and a divine creator's power alone is effortlessly building another body deep inside mine and this new person already has a soul and life purpose for the outside world. 

I'm sure of that, and I'm sure of how bad my feet hurt.

Tim has been an incredible source of strength for me. I am not carrying this baby alone, ever. The man is a saint. He rubs my feet and washes endless dishes and when I'm restlessly trying to get comfortable next to him at 4am he reaches his hand over and says: "you've had a hard night, babe." I never have to fight for justification.

And for goodness sake, he goes and gets me things. Is it not the most annoying thing in the world when someone asks you to go get them something? A glass of water from the kitchen? The laundry from the dryer (which is down 4 flights of steps in the basement of our building)? Dinner from the takeout place? A very specific piece of clothing from the basket of clean laundry that he washed and I have yet to fold? Can you just get that for me, babe? He always says yes, letting me save my energy for the important things. He's amazing.

And whenever I have the energy, I try really hard to be amazing back to him. I was domestic in the kitchen and productive in the office today. It felt really good. Life is good. 

a post about AC units

This summer has been rough on our love affair with our apartment. Remember our perfect apartment?

When we were deciding to live here, I spent not one second contemplating the fact that it didn't have central air. It just didn't occur to me. It was winter, and this place had beautiful light pouring in from huge windows in every room and offered free radiator heat. Free heat! In Chicago! We were going to save thousands.

And we probably did. From February to May, life here was so comfortable and our monthly bills are a fraction of what we used to pay to heat and cool a townhouse. But then, summer set in early and weather records starting getting broken with the heat. Right around the same time, I started to get sick. At 5 weeks pregnant, I was nauseated and depleted of energy and started getting very sensitive to temperature and odor, and then we had a couple of 100 degree days.

It was a bad mix.

We went out and bought an air conditioning unit, and it was $150, which is fine for one AC unit, but we weren't going to buy any more at that price. Tim installed it in our bedroom and for the whole month of June, I spent my days and nights in that room working on my laptop and napping and vomiting and generally being pregnant. Tim toughed it out in the office (where we used to spend all of our working hours together) until he could stand it no longer and bought another $150 AC unit to give him some relief. Those two little units allowed us to work and sleep, but didn't improve much else at home. Call me cheap, but I wasn't willing to spend any more than $300 on improving a situation in an an apartment that we might not even live in next year. It would have cost us another $600 to outfit the rest of the rooms in our apartment with new AC units, and that was neither appealing nor in the budget.

Leaving the protective igloo of our air conditioned bedroom to run an errand or even go to the bathroom brought on a wave of heat, which brought on a wave of nausea, and I was so miserable. Those beautiful big windows in every room ushered in the full heat of the sun, and being on the top floor only increased the temperature as heat wafted up through the floorboards. Turning on the oven to cook dinner brought the kitchen to over 110 degrees, so we ate sandwiches. I left windows open to try to catch a breeze, and with it came extra dust that coated the floors. By the end of July, I was talking about moving out.

I was so mad at the situation. How could my life be made so difficult by the absence of one modern invention? Tim and I both grew up without air conditioning (albeit, in a cooler climate) and we survived. I hated the feeling that buying more really expensive stuff would make me happy, and had resentment that being pregnant was turning an irritating situation into an unbearable one just because of hormones and the fact that my body was changing outside of my control and couldn't take the heat. The absolute worst part of all this, the part that made it all plainly sad and unlivable, was that when Tim would reach for a hug, I couldn't return the affection without an inward grimace. He's just a big, warm man, and I was forever overheated and pukey.

And then last week, salvation came. We saw our downstairs neighbors packing up and moving out. Soon their kitchen window, which we had to walk by in order to get to our car, was bare and displayed a totally empty apartment save for 4 AC units grouped on the tile floor. We acted immediately by leaving a note on their door asking if we could PLEASE buy those units from them? And they called back and said yes, we could have all four for $100.

I don't have a moral to this story. Life in my home is livable and enjoyable again, and it's because of stuff. I don't know where we'll put them in the winter when we need to seal our windows again, and I don't know if we'll be able to recuperate any of the money we spent on these when we eventually move out, but I can cook a meal in my oven and eat at the kitchen table with my husband and hug him for a long time without having to pull away. So.

25

A quarter of a century, I am. Every birthday is so special. I've somehow been blessed enough to go to sleep at the end of every March 10th feeling loved by the people around me, and this year it happened again.

On Friday night our core group of friends celebrated Gabrielle's birthday. Since mine was on Saturday she pulled me up to stand with her during the singing and blow out candles with her. 

This picture totally outs a bad habit of mine. Does anyone else pick at their fingers when they get nervous? Am I alone in this primal habit? 

Moving on.

On Saturday I woke up and opened packages my parents and sister sent to me. Packages! What a thrill. Just like that time when I was in 5th grade and Mom sent a batch of cookies to me while I was at camp.   Then I ate a donut for breakfast. Happy birthday to me. 

By then Oak Park was starting to heat up for the St. Patrick's Day Parade: streets blocked off, drunken shenanigans at Starbucks at 9am and such. I have to be honest here and admit that I really don't like St. Patrick's Day. It's probably my least favorite holiday along with Halloween. I hope we can still be friends now that you know that. I like other holidays. Probably every single other holiday. 

Tanget?

So after the donut we drove into the city for a much more peaceful ambiance. The weather was clear and beautiful and Tim's surprise lunch for me was at the Hancock Tower Signature Room. The view was breathtaking which means that I couldn't breathe for a second when we stepped off the elevator at the 95th floor of the building where OPRAH ALSO LIVES. She was probably there, somewhere on a floor below us, lounging in her vast lounging rooms with her cocker spaniels. 

The Signature Room is surprisingly affordable and family friendly, and I really liked that about it. All kinds of people were there, including families with little kids who were positively giddy about being so high up. It was a great atmosphere.

I love that Chicago is not landlocked. I feel better when I can see an end to the land and an expanse of water.

My husband. He still feels like my new boyfriend. He's the best guy and I'm so excited to be his girl.

After that we rode the elevator back down 95 floors to the ground level and wandered into the North Face. I've been wanting a new coat that's not my standard black, and I also wanted to wait till Winter was over so I could get it on the cheap. After much agonizing I picked up a white outer shell windbreaker that was on sale and realized I could take my tried and true 4 year old black insulator jacket and zip it into the inside of the white outer shell for a warm winter coat option, or wear the shell alone as for a Spring windbreaker. It was the perfect birthday present and I handed it to Tim and he took it to the counter and bought it and then I put it on for the rest of the day.

Then we went to the Old Town to meander a bit before stepping into A New Leaf, which is basically a cave of botanical wonders. Tim wanted me to pick out a bouquet of flowers to take home because he's sweet like that.

And then we spent the rest of the day at home. Tim played and sang me a beautiful rendition of "Happy Birthday" and we snuggled and ate guacamole.

It was a perfect spontaneous day. 

It's good to be 25. I'm finally feeling like I know a thing or two. I also felt like that at 18, and then I went to college and realized I didn't know anything. I suppose I feel the smartest when I'm not in school.
The end.

January recap + first impressions of Oak Park

Well. where did January go?
We got on a plane to leave France on January 10th and landed directly into a whirlwind of activity that has only recently settled down. Moving mostly looked like this:

I thought we'd be able to make a quick job of it, but I was wrong. As soon as we got back to the States,  the busyness of high booking season swamped us. For a solid week, I did nothing but email with potential new clients and arrange meetings to talk to them about shooting their weddings.  

Friends and neighbors who may ever consider hiring a wedding photographer: don't wait until the second week of January! This is when EVERYONE else starts their wedding vendor search for the coming year and dates fill up so fast.  Also, September is apparently the new June when it comes to prime wedding dates. I am sad to be missing two very dear friend's weddings this year because we already had their dates booked, but we're also feeling extraordinarily blessed to have a full year of work ahead of us. 

More on that later. 

What you need to understand right now is that we lived in that chaos pictured above for about 10 days longer than originally planned because clients and meetings trump packing and moving. And I only had one tantrum about it.

I've picked up a few easy transition skills due to my nomadic tendencies, and this is one pictured above is a favorite. The first belongings I bring to a new house are always very dear to me. It helps me form an attachment to my new home and feel like it's my safe place. This is the "Je t'aime" (I love you) print I got for Tim for his 25th birthday last April and it also served double duty as decoration at our wedding. I know I'm long overdue on telling those stories, but just love me and forgive me. I'll get back into it soon! 

Tim, iPhoning on the office floor before furniture got there. Do you know how dangerous it is to iPhone this way? If you get too relaxed, you're liable to drop your iPhone onto your face, which HURTS and you can guess how I know this to be true. I still do it this way, though. Tim too. We like to live on the edge. 

Snow and 20 degree temps doesn't stop us from asking 6 of our closest to haul our shtuff up to the 3rd floor. Look at these troopers. 

Just look at them I tell you! Amanda (in the red scarf) is 8 months pregnant here--not that you could tell because she's still looking so fine-- and she even helped haul in boxes and load up my new kitchen.

Side note: when Tim got dressed that morning, he specifically said he wanted to wear his yellow hoodie because Peter always wears his own identical yellow hoodie when he has to do manual labor and then they'd match. That's what best grown men friends do I guess? 

Seriously--our friends worked so hard to help us get settled. They got all cold and sweaty and bruised and sore just so we can live comfortably in our new apartment. That was such a gift. 

Our first breakfast in our new apartment. We take breakfast pretty seriously, if you can't tell. 

The view from our new office. 

We are seriously loving Oak Park. It's the perfect blend of city and suburb. We can walk to a grocery store or walk to the El stop and take the train downtown. The architecture is amazing and keeps me so inspired. It's quiet. It's old. It's diverse. It's almost perfect. 

One of the most refreshing aspects of it for me has to do with race relations and city planning. I lived in Kansas City for 5 years before coming here, and as much as I loved that town, it was hard to deal with the after-effects of racist city planning that took place in the early 1900's. Even now, Kansas City people and neighborhoods are very monochromatic and there is little overlap and interdependence between the black and white communities.  Every day as I went from school to work to church, I passed back and forth between two opposing worlds that had such a hard time intertwining. I thought this was normal in the MidWest, but Chicago is proving otherwise to me now.

Especially Oak Park. It turns out that while Kansas City was tightening their hold on segregated neighborhoods, Oak Park was making concerted efforts to integrate the community and enforce fair housing regulations. I can really feel this missing tension when I walk around the Lake Street shopping district, meet my apartment neighbors, or sit in a pew at a neighborhood church on Sundays.  People look each other in their different colored eyes and smile around here, and it's made a wonderful impression on me. 

Have a wonderful Monday, you dear people.

we're moving!

And now for a post where I don't overthink my life too much and just tell you what's new:
We're moving in January. In Chicago, also known as the Windy City, where the wind chill is known to cut through layers of wool and leather, straight down to souls, and makes eyes water not just because it's a physiological reflex, but because being outside in that weather just makes you sad. It's going to be great!

The first time I came to visit Tim in Chicago, we spent a Sunday afternoon at a dear family friend's home in Oak Park. As we were driving through this neighborhood, the old architecture turned me into a rubber neck and I suddenly piped up: "Where are we right now?!".
"My mom grew up here," Tim answered.
That's a valuable statement for a guy who was raised in France and didn't come to the states to live until he was 18. This neighborhood has rich history for him. I find this so fascinating; my mother-in-law grew up marinated in the culture of Oak Park, then moved to France, fell in love, and raised her children there. Without even realizing it, she must have continued to live and teach cultural norms specific to Oak Park to her children, and when Tim decided to go to college in Chicago and encountered his mom's old neighborhood, he felt like a certain amount of "home" was there too.  I loved it.

Tim's parents own the place we live in now and we've been renting from them. It's been great, but now that Tim's brother and sister in law are expecting a little one, they need these three bedrooms and finished basement more than we do, and we want to be closer to the city for work anyway. The first place we looked was Oak Park. After seeing a couple of duds and getting discouraged, I got a call back from a building management company that had advertised an apartment with lots of windows. We went to see it, and fell in fast, optimistic, googly eyed love. We do that a lot.

This is the building; a concave structure with the ethereal light of heaven shining down into everyone's homes and hearts.

This is that wind I was telling you about. Flattering, no?

There was a problem: we saw the apartment at the beginning of November and couldn't move in until end of January. We knew it would be gone by then, so I called up the building manager and expressed my undying love and affection for her apartment and begged her to please call us in January if another one came open. She must have found my begging to be charming because she replied that they might hold it for us if we put in an application fast enough. So we did and we were approved. We decided to go see the apartment again and think realistically about living without a dishwasher or in-unit laundry, on the third floor without an elevator. It turns out that modern inventions can't trump natural light and deep, deep closets or free radiator heat.

This is our new place: