Every time I pick Harper up from school, I ask her pretty much the same questions on the way home to get a grasp of how her day went. Who was your partner for centers? What’s the letter of the week? Did anyone get in trouble? Who’d you play with outside?

Yesterday, she told me about how a girl was “in the brown house outside and boys were yelling at her. And I went and helped her and yelled STOP DOING THAT to them and they said sorry and she said thank you.”

Could I be any more proud of my girl? She’s already sticking up for friends and it makes me the most proud mama in the universe.

I’M ALIVE!

I think about this blog sometimes. And usually it’s something like, “I like writing. I like being able to read where I’ve been when time goes by. I should update.” But I usually have that thought while I’m in the shower and who the heck blogs in the shower?! Or when I’m driving. Or when I’m at home, on the computer, and I do everything but type my url in the address bar. So, that’s what’s happening.

Life is happening. It’s always happening. I’ll just write like I always write and don’t need to explain absences:

March is always our most hectic month, as a family. I usually have a lot of weddings and Taylor has SXSW and together, everything moves by too fast with not enough time to breathe. Honestly, I only have two weddings so my plate is not really full with work obligations, but Taylor? He has 10 shows, starting tomorrow. A show every day and on some days, more than one on a day. And then the day after sxsw ends, he goes on tour for two weeks. I mean.. COME ON!! When it rains, it pours. He hasn’t been out on the road in awhile (if you don’t count being gone every weekend for over a month being on tour) so I’m going to suck it up but these next few weeks are going to be tiring.

Happy things to focus on:

1. Harper is insanely amazing and so good at being an all around beautiful person to be around the majority of every day. She was born in to being my best friend but I’m really happy to say that as time goes by and she’s growing in to more and more of a person, I’m realizing that she’s the best friend possible and that’s we’re so GOOD at it.

2. The weather is beautiful. This matters when you have a kid so much more than it does when you don’t.

3. Daylight savings is coming and that always perks my mood up.

4. I have so many trips to look forward to!

5. Taylor’s music is going good.

Five is enough.

So that’s where I’m at, today. I’m going to go read a book now.

Honestly, it feels rewarding to say out loud “I AM SCARED” or “I AM NOT DOING MY BEST TODAY” because then it’s easier to start moving toward other things. So for me to sometimes say to friends, “This is rough and I don’t know what our future looks like and that scares me” and then to finally be able to write it down in to a flurry of words (last post), that did and does help.

Taylor’s been gone for.. 16 days so far on this run. This has also been one of the busiest work months of my life so that makes it easier and harder, in different ways. Easier because I am go go go and it makes it hard to miss him to the extent that I know is possible if I were just sitting around. Harder because I have to try to balance Harper and work by myself and call in a lot of favors from family and friends.

We haven’t come to a day since he quit his job where I have thought, “This was a mistake”, and that’s a really important thing for me to realize. Some days when Harper is being extra sassy or not listening, I shut down and get a little angry that he’s gone. But, I think that’s normal and par for the course. After a particularly grueling work weekend and a particularly bad day of Harper using the word NO a lot, I asked her why she was talking to me like that. “Because Dada’s not here.” I wanted to scream and to cry but I think I just curled in to a defeated ball.

But, most days are happier and don’t involve a weird guilt trip from my 3 1/2 year old. Harper is mostly hilarious and always my best friend and can tell when I need an extra hug. We celebrated Halloween a lot this year, going trick or treating at school, going trick or treating at a friend’s school, and going out last night. I’m glad that we have each other and I’m glad that Taylor comes home to us in 6 days.

So, life has been changing. Changing and moving and turning in to something that I wasn’t really ready for but when am I ever going to be ready?

Taylor quit his job. As of a week ago, we are both self employed and working toward fulfilling our dreams.

Honestly, I’m a ball of emotions and it depends what day of the week it is for how I would answer, “How are you?” Taylor’s been working toward, as hard as he could, being a full time musician and making a living off of his music. And over the past year, it felt like it was getting more and more serious. We’ve been balancing my job and the demands of it along with him being gone most weekends. It’s been tiring. And then talks started happening of trying to go for it, for real. It’s been building since March, the “what if’s?” and the “how do we actually do this?” and the endless conversations that go along with such a huge life change. There’s been crying. For me, there’s been a lot and lot of crying. And honestly, there’s been fighting. Taylor and I regularly do not fight. But him quitting his job and the future being so unknown has been doing crazy things to me, emotionally, and has me more stressed out and worrying than I have been in a long time.

But it all came down to.. making music full time is his dream. And he’s a hard worker. And he’s smart and he would never do anything to put his family in jeopardy. And frankly, this is the time to do it.

So, he quit his job. And he begins his new life of touring demands. And I begin my life of trying to figure out how to make this all make sense.

That’s what’s going on and it’s pretty consuming.

This past week was kind of a blur. Harper’s been in full summer mode for two or three weeks now, meaning zero school. I try to fill up our days with as much as possible so that she a) doesn’t get antsy b) I feel like I’m being a good mom and c) she’s tired at the end of the day. Usually, I’m just tired at the end of the day. We go swimming about 3 times a week, see friends, run errands, and pretty much anything else we can think of. Exhausting. Add to it that Taylor went out of town Friday-Sunday so maybe add some extra exhaustion in there, for good measure.

In a few hours, I’m off to Canada for the rest of the week. One of my sister’s oldest friends asked me to photograph her wedding so it seemed like a perfect opportunity to make my trip for the year to the motherland. Unfortunately, Harper and Taylor aren’t joining me this time. I’m excited to feel the weather, eat some Tim Horton’s, and spend some quality time.

Harper’s getting to the age where about ten minutes after she wakes up she asks me, “Where are we going to go again?” I remember when she was a little baby and we could just sit and relax all day. And nap. Nap a ton. Those were awesome times. But now I have a little firecracker who doesn’t sit still and doesn’t stop talking and while I wouldn’t change it for the freaking world, sometimes I just wanna chill. Anyways, that’s to say, some weekends are long but I think we did a really good job with filling this last one.

Taylor is off every other Friday during the summer, which is super nice. So this past Friday, we decided to go to the Austin Zoo to start our day. The zoo is a rescue one which means that they have a one eyed cat that usually greets us at the door, a dog/wolf hybrid area, the hugest blind pig I’ve ever seen, a lion with a huge tumor, and other sad things. But at the same time, it’s awesome, because you are supporting an organization that saves animals (from backyards! a lion from a backyard!). So we wandered around and by the time we’d seen the whole place, which doesn’t take long because it’s tiny, and began to sweat our behind’s off.. it had been about two hours and we were pooped. Then we had a scrumptious lunch and all took naps. Wonderful! After nap time, we went swimming. Harper and I have been swimming about three times a week this summer because really, it’s too hot to do anything else. Then in the evening, I read, “The Fault in Our Stars” which I loved. I’m on a reading kick and I like it! Just gotta keep it up.

On Saturday, Taylor’s brother was in town. Our local movie theatre, the Alamo Drafthouse, plays kids movies every day of the week in the mornings for free and rotates them out. They were showing, “Babe” at one location so we headed out to make that our morning activity. Harper lasted through the entire movie! She’s got good taste. In the evening, we went to go bowling but it was too busy so we just let Harper play some video games and told her we’d go back another time when it was less busy. Sure enough, Sunday morning, one of the first things she asked was if we could go see if bowling was less busy. She’s smart. So we went for a good family breakfast then went bowling. She scored a 112. Granted, she had bumpers and a little thing that you roll the ball off of.. but still. It’s in her blood.

Sunday night, I went out for Bloody Mary’s and.. cheese with Cara. The cheese was good, but the bloody mary’s were the best. By the time I got home, the house was winding down and I edited the night away while Taylor played video games.

Success!!

I enrolled Harper in her first dance class last week. We talked and talked about it for weeks leading up, how excited she would be to be a ballerina and how wonderful it’d be to dance. We went to the studio to find out information and when Harper found out that we would not be dancing that day, she wouldn’t stop crying until I told her we could go get her dance outfit. So three days later, we went to her first class.

As soon as she put on her outfit, I had tears in my eyes.

When did this happen? When did she officially become a little girl? Almost all of her baby features are gone. She’s still got a little chub in her cheeks, but that’s it. And it kills me.

At dance class, she was so excited. When the teacher let all the girls in, she ran right in with out looking back at me. She went right to the X on the floor that the teacher pointed her to and with all the other girls in their tap shoes, starting tapping a foot. I was beaming.

That lasted for about 20 seconds until she realized, I think, that I wasn’t going in with her and she burst in to tears. And she cried for the entire class in her teacher’s arms. It was heartbreaking and I wanted to scoop her up but I also knew that if I did that every time she tried new things and got scared, she’d never follow through on anything. After the class and all of her hyperventilating, she told us that dance class was so fun and that she wanted to go again. Kids are weird.

Today was her second class. We talked about it all week and I tried hyping her up so that she wouldn’t be nervous. As soon as I opened up the door for her to go in, she looked at me with the biggest bottom lip in the world. But I told her to go ahead and I shut the door behind me and watched her through the glass window. For five minutes, she whimpered and looked sad and cried and stuck to her teacher’s legs. But then, just like that, she wiped it off and joined in with the rest of the girls. By the end of the class, she was doing everything that was asked of her (for the most part) and smiling and being the crazy goof that she is. And I couldn’t have been more proud.

This past February, one of my best friend’s, Cara, had just gotten back from a cruise. Within an hour of us catching up over drinks, we decided that we NEEDED to take a trip together and that it NEEDED to be a cruise. The next day, we booked it. A 4 day Carnival cruise with a one day stop in Cozumel. It wasn’t expensive and it would be a good introduction to cruising life for me.

So, 5 months later and this past Thursday, we set off for our cruise.

It’s like they were built specifically with me in mind. The boarding process was not terrible and we were beyond surprised to find that our room was in a corner in a little nook, cut off from noise and actually quite spacious with a nice little balcony. The very first song I heard when we got on was by Justin Timberlake and it was followed by Will Smith. Was I in heaven or what?! We wandered around and tried to get our bearings and ate free icecream. Guys, there is always free icecream. Seriously. We attended the sailing off party where the FUN SQUAD lead such wonderful dances as the Cupid Shuffle and the Wobble. This was my first time ever successfully understanding the Wobble and it ended up being a constant theme for pretty much the entire 4 days. Wobbling is key on a cruise.

The first night the attire for dining was cruise casual. You eat at the same table every night and are served by the same people. We were seated with two strangers, 40ish year old women from Killeen who were not friendly. Cara tried her best to make conversation and was met with little to no enthusiasm every time. The food was meh. A server walked by at the end and offered us shots of.. kaluah/something in little Carnival shot glasses. The two women said that they didn’t drink and Cara is pregnant, so the ladies each bought one and gave it to me. So.. that was nice. I was glad to do them the favor. After dinner, we strolled through the main through floor and took picture after picture after picture.

Every night, they have a ton of different photo set ups with the absolute cheesiest backgrounds. You get posed to a T and you can not deviate even in the least or you are told to fix it. Turns out, I turn my head too much. The next day, you can see your photos and buy an 8×10 for the very reasonable price of $30!! Ay yi yi. So, we took every photo possible and laughed our booties off. Then I made Cara go to a movie trivia game where.. there were 10 other people. 3,000 people on the boat and only 10 wanted to do movie trivia. We still lost. Then we went to the Hollywood Nightclub where.. no one was dancing. But, my favorite time to dance is when the floor is wide open so we shook our booties for an hour or so. The highlight of my night was when the Wobble started playing and I lead the beginning and strangers were pointing at me and smiling.

Day 2 was a sea day. We woke up and ate bagels on our balcony and then set off for the main pool area to sit in the scorching sun with hundreds of other people while listening to crazy loud music and witnessing the rare contest or two. I read Nora Ephron’s, “Heartburn” and loved it. Went down a water slide. Ate a tuna sandwich. So good. Then we napped.. which was beautiful. Night two was FORMAL ATTIRE so we got dressed up and had another awkward dinner with strangers. From there, we took every picture available. Then we changed in to more comfortable clothing and hit the slot machines. Within 2 minutes on the .2 machine, I’d won $80. I was beyond enthusiastic! I cashed out immediately and was feeling good. We then sat around and watched the little band in the casino area and during their breaks, did the group dances (Macarena, anyone?). When the night club opened, we went and danced. For hours. I love dancing.

Day 3 was our port day in Cozumel. We took a taxi and headed for a little restaurant resort where we rented lounge chairs, I drank the best bloody mary’s of my life, and relaxed for the day. We swam in the ocean and climbed huge inflatable slides and even paddle boarded. It was all very glorious. We got back to the boat and relaxed and then dressed for dinner. We decided to skip out on awkwardness and I just ate a tuna sandwich instead. I think I ate 6 tuna sandwiches on the cruise. From there, we went to the casino and didn’t win anything. We sat and listened to the house band play the same music they’d played the previous 2 nights. I told Cara I wanted a picture with them. On a break, the bass player walked by and Cara called him over for a picture. Then he sat down and told me how he’d noticed me the night before, how I was a great dancer, etc. etc. We excused ourselves and went dancing. About two hours later, I heard the DJ say, “Here’s a shout out for Leah Muse from Austin, TX!” I looked up and the bassist was standing beside the DJ, just watching me and smiling. Ay yi yi. I think we wobbled five times this day.

Day 4 was another sea day. Relaxed in the quieter part of the boat, in the shade, and read. At one point, I realized that a man was playing his own music loudly over the speakers. I couldn’t tune it out so I went over and asked him to turn it down, please. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Why?!” His disdain for me was insane. He turned it down ONE click and when I packed up for the day an hour later, he watched me with the happiest smile on his face. He wins. That night, we danced. We wobbled. We did more slot machines. We celebrated our beautiful cruise life and got suckered in to buying two of our cheesiest portraits.

So basically cruise = dancing for hours every night, relaxing during the day, naps, endless icecream, cheesy portraits, and the best people watching ever.

I’m ready for my next one.

Last weekend was one of the most surreal weekends of my life.

Austin held it’s first Austin Television Festival. I read about it online a few months earlier and reached out to the organizers to see if they were in need of a photographer. The stars aligned! My two passions collided and combined and I found myself surrounded by people that want to talk about TV at length and I was able to take pictures of people I love. I mean, crazy.

The Friday night found me photographing the opening night “Industry” party. This is where I start name dropping. I was sitting outside waiting for the night to begin and there were only 2 others sitting behind me at another table. The voice sounded familiar and as I turned around to check if it was Judy Greer I realized.. it was. I’m of the notion that if you love someone, you tell them, so I yelled to her that I loved her. She then invited me over to her table and we talked and she was flipping lovely and so was her husband. By the end of the night, she had asked for my number. The next day, she texted me to see what my plans were. Seriously. The power of being friendly to strangers will never not surprise me.

Shortly after, I met Mae Whitman (Parenthood, also Arrested Development) and regaled her with the story of how we had met 6 years earlier on South Congress. She was so lovely and just.. it was cool for me. She performed with her boyfriend, Landon Pigg, and it was so cute and intimate and awesome.

I made a friend with a volunteer, Michael, and he told me that my camera must have special powers because of how many friends I was making. It sounds like I’m patting my own back and.. I sort of am. I went away for a weekend by myself and ended up making friends and having lots of conversations. If you had told me 5 years ago that I’d do something like that, I would have thought you were crazy.

Met Jason Ritter. Think I was probably creepy because of how much I love him on Parenthood. Children’s Hospital people were there and hilarious. Cougartown/Scrubs people were lovely. SO MUCH FUN! I put down my camera after a few hours and spent the rest of the evening until the early hours just a schmoozing. “The Todd” from Scrubs pulled me by my hips on to his lap for a picture, then pushed me off. Bizarre. I had conversations with the creators of “Awake” and “The Unusuals” with out even knowing it. Michael B. Jordan asked me if, and I quote, I “like black clubs” and wanted to go to one.

The next morning, I woke up after.. little sleep and edited the pictures from the night before. Then from 9am-5pm, I took pictures at panels. Scott Wolf introduced a new anime he’s a part of. I saw some serious sci-fi writers (Jane Espenson, Ben Edlund, Jose Molina, Richard Hatem) then ran to see some serious creators (Kevin Biegel, Liz Tigelaar, Mark Schwahn, Noah Hawley, Kyle Killen). Then it was time for one of my most anticipated moments, a Friday Night Lights reunion. Holy crap. Jason Katims, Michael B. Jordan, Alicia Witt, Scott Porter, Gaius Charles (Smash), Louanne Stephens (Grandma Saracen), Matt Lauria.. I almost exploded. I was at the very front and center for everything since I was photographing and it was a little unreal being so close to my favorite show of all time. They were all so humble and grateful for their experience on the show and I’m not going to play it cool, I was tearing up behind my camera.

From there, I took off to the Children’s Hospital/NTSF:SD:SUV:: panel. Instead of answering questions and doing.. what every other panel did, they just took over the stage and went crazy. Ken Marino was especially hilarious but they all had me laughing until I was crying with general absurdity. Rob Cordry, Paul Scheer, Erin Hayes, David Wain, etc. etc. At this point I should mention that it was about 3PM and everyone was hung over/already drunk. Just crazy.

Ran from laughing my butt off to a TBS panel with Cougartown people (Bill Lawrence, Ian Gomez, Brian Van Holt) and from a new show, Sullivan and Sons. After two seconds I realized that I was taking pictures of Peter Billingsley aka Ralphie from a Christmas Story. Woa. After the panel, I took a little breather in the bar and found myself in a circle, two seats away from Ralphie. These are the moments where I was texting Taylor how weird my life was. It was also at this point that I got invited to go to dinner with Cougartown/Scrubs people. More on that in a second.

Photographed a Bill Lawrence and friends panel. I don’t think I ever blogged about it, but back in January I went to a Cougartown event and talked with Kevin Biegel (co-creator) and Ian Gomez (Javier from Felicity!!) and “made friends”. Or made friends enough to have them remember me. So after this panel, I went to dinner with.. (namedropping) Bill Lawrence, Ian Gomez, Brian Van Holt, Kevin Biegel, and Neil Flynn (the janitor from Scrubs). So the five of them plus me. Hello. Do you understand this? I don’t even understand it. We went to Uchico which is where the most recent winner of Top Chef is the head chef. I ate everything that was put in front of me and could not tell you what any of it was. I tried to play it cool and not geek out at what an unusual experience I was having, trying to keep it internal. But really.

Really. WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT!!!!!!!!! A moment. Stayed out too late. Had so much fun. So weird.

The next morning, I was eating breakfast by my lonesome when Jason Katims walks in to the room and sits at my table. I was a little starstruck several times during the weekend but for some reason, Jason Katims made me unable to really speak. Mind you, I was already running on very little sleep but I could not figure out how to be a real person to him. He was super lovely and low key and A MAD GENIUS but I managed to tell him how Parenthood and Friday Night Lights are my two favorite shows of all time. Gosh. I was probably ridiculous. I excused myself after a little while but saw him again shortly in his panel. Can I say so surreal again? SO SURREAL.

Photographed his panel. Photographed an actor’s panel. Photographed actors playing music. Photographed a Parenthood Panel. Exhaustion.

By the time I got home on Sunday, I was so overwhelmed by my weekend and my lack of sleep and my experience that all I could do when I tried to tell Taylor about it was CRY. JUST WEEP.

So, that happened.

Two things that are really making my Saturday morning feel great:

1. You guys. I really thought no one read this anymore so it has been reassuring and lovely and downright surprising to see some of you pop up to say, “I’m still here!” It’s making me feel all warm and gooey inside. I really appreciate you.

2. This proposal video. Harper and I have now watched it about four times and although my crying is slowing down, I bawled like a ridiculous mess the first time around. Love is good.