Mess mess mess. This is what Thursday felt like.

Gil and I have this thing with driving. He gets behind the wheel–where I have asked him to be–and I’m immediately tense. Suddenly I’m like a mother with her teenage son, painfully aware of the almost five-year difference in our driving experience (which doesn’t reflect our age difference; he grew up and graduated highschool in a country in which he didn’t have the paperwork to legally drive).

It’s one of our less graceful areas. There’s nothing like near collisions (mostly imagined) to test a relationship.  But with every trip I build a little more confidence in his driving ability, and on every trip he extends grace to me once again for my passenger-seat driving.

Not unlike the rest of our relationship, and not unlike this life in general, it’s a messy process; but I think it’s a good road we’re on.

Today has been a clench-your-fists, make-a-face, curl-up-in-a-ball kind of day–no thanks, I’m sure, to the typical Oregon winter wet gray. Taking an afternoon nap helped, but some days it seems you just have to get through (while trying not to let your funk rub off on your loved ones).

These are the sort of photos you’re likely to see when I reach the end of a day and realize I haven’t taken one–random still lifes around my room.

(Taken in my parents’ backyard.)

I knit these few fumbling rows this afternoon while watching Gil and my family play a board game. I’ve been on quite a knitting kick lately; it helps me concentrate when I’m in class and relax when I’m not.

In case the title didn’t make it clear, I am taking on the possibly insane task of posting a photo for every day of this year. I’m fairly certain I won’t post each photo on the day it was actually taken; I think I will just be doing well if I manage to take a photo every day.

I hope everyone had a satisfying end to 2009, and I wish you all the best in 2010.