Rob and I are flying to Virginia today (for the last time until the wedding!) to get our marriage license, and for me to attend a lovely bridal shower that my mom's sweet friends were kind enough to throw in my honor.

This really has been the most amazing year of celebrations and champagne toasts, and I feel so lucky that after an engagement party, a couple of super-fun photo shoots, a fantastic bachelorette weekend, and now this spring bridal shower that I've been looking forward to for months, I still get to top it all off a month from now by marrying the best guy I know.

What's everyone else up to this weekend, and how's the weather where you are?

The third thing is right now.

I've written about the past--those days--more often than perhaps I need to, but it's because it keeps changing. There's always something new to add to the list of things that were, because of today. Now.

The Croque John Paul at Modern Times, and that coffee they make in big French presses all day; the Farmer's Market in St. Paul that still seems so far away but will be here again on warm Saturday mornings before we know it. A Friday evening or a Saturday morning at Spyhouse, with almond milk lattes or the most delicious iced coffee I've ever had. And of course, a Bloody Mary and a burger at The Happy Gnome, where our favorite server comments on how we're early one weekend when we show up on Friday instead of our usual Saturday.

The faux-fur blanket we sleep beneath every night, and our couch set up next to that bookshelf I love so much. The two corners of our apartment that are already filling up with wedding gifts stacked upon each other. The flowers I've been picking up at either Rainbow or Trader Joe's every week, and how perfect they look on our coffee table with a book and a cup of tea in the afternoon.

Those walks around Lake Normandale, and the morning runs I take around our neighborhood when it's nice out (or when it's raining). The sound of my tea kettle whistling away in the kitchen for me to make my coffee while I sit at my computer.

We've managed to make a home here together, even so far from everyone we know and love. It feels really good, these experiences that are not yet memories. And it's all right now.

This post is in response to the following prompt: "What is the third thing? There is you and there is writing. But you can't write about writing...You and writing must gaze out at a third thing...What is there in this world?" (From Old Friend from Far Away, page 42). If you've written a response of your own, please share it below in the comments!

P.S. Visit this post for future prompts.

This morning I woke up ready to get some work done. 

I sat down at the computer and plugged in my camera's memory card reader--it's a normal thing and I do it often. But for some reason, nothing went right. I'm really not much of a computer person so it was just the most frustrating thing, to have this little cord that works every other day just up and abandon me. I bundled up and walked to the Target down the street for a new one (did you know that it was 20 degrees and snowy this morning in Minneapolis? Happy April!), only to come home to find that this one isn't working either. In unplugging and re-plugging and uninstalling and downloading the drivers, I found myself in tears. It's sad because in the grand scheme of things, this is So Not A Big Deal. But sometimes you just need to feel pathetic and cry into your almond butter and sliced bananas.

I constantly teeter between feeling really confident in my blogging/business and wondering if I'm wasting everyone's time or not. Like waking up and writing things for this blog is a silly way to spend a day.

When I do have a paying project to share, and things go wrong, I can't figure out if I'm upset because I failed in some way, or because deep down I wonder if anyone will even notice. When I am productive, I've written several blog posts or recipes and taken pictures and there are people out there who perform brain surgery. When I put it into that context, my job often feels more like a "job."

I love this blog, though, because it is such a connecting force in my life, and I get emails from wonderful people and become friends with you guys when I would have never known you in a different world where Twitter didn't exist. So I'll continue, even when I lose it over some photos I can't get off my camera and it makes me feel like the world's biggest narcissist.