Happy Birthday B&B

One year ago today, Bean and I started this blog. After learning about blogs from my friend Wood, I had been toying with the idea of starting my own blog for months. Then, one day, while sitting in my toxic work environment surfing celebrity sites and other blogs, procrastinating and avoiding my worthless work (take a look at my first post to see what I was dealing with), I called up Bean and told her that I wanted to start a blog with her. I thought it would be a fun activity that we could do together that would give us both a creative outlet. Like the perfect little sister, she immediately agreed. In the infancy of our blog, she was the technical expert who figured out all the basic html we needed to tweak the design of our blog, including finding the precise shades of purple that I wanted. We had countless exchanges that went something like this:

Bean: "Do you like this one?"

Buttercup: "Wait a sec, let me open it up. Yeah, kind of, but I like number 675632 better. Can we make it a cross between those two?"

Bean: "What about this?"

Buttercup: "What about that other one?"

Bean: "Hold on, I'm republishing."

Buttercup: "OMG, where did it go???"

In the past year, I've written far more often then she has, in part because she's nearing her last month of pregnancy, and in part because from the beginning I wanted this and needed this more than she did (if she'll allow me to speak for her). Bean's not a tormented soul. She's actually quite well adjusted, and she's amazed me repeatedly during the past two years with how together she is. She's married to a loving husband, expecting a baby, owns her own house in the mountains, has two dogs, works, runs her household, and still manages to find time to send our mom Valentine's Day flowers (from all of us) and to be a wonderful, loving, supportive sister, wife, and daughter. Other than Wood, she's one of the only people I can unselfconsciously crumble in front of when I need a good cry. I'm lucky to have her and I love her very much.

But getting back to me: As you probably know, unlike Bean, I have not felt very together for the past two years. I'm not being hard on myself, and I recognize that in many ways I'm exceptionally together. However, the last two years have been very challenging for me, both personally and professionally. In the midst of all the turmoil, change, and growing of the past year, this blog has provided a safe place where I could share my thoughts, be creative, talk about what I was passionate and pissed about, and reflect upon all that was going on in my life. It's also provided something I never expected, an amazingly supportive community and a network of wonderful friends. Thank you to all of you for being a part of that community.

I hope you like what you find here, because I'm going to be sticking around for Year # 2; a year that's shaping up to be pretty damn good (minus the muggers).