Guess Who’s Back? / Meet the Latest “Edition” to the Family!

This blog post was sponsored by Filling the Frame Photography.

Hello Precious Readers!

It’s been quite some time… almost TWO YEARS! I can’t believe it!

Here’s the short version:

Nope, I didn’t die. Kid is healthy, and so are all of us.

No, I didn’t forget you. (How could I? You’re who got me started!)

No, I haven’t given up writing.

Here’s the (somewhat) longer version:

Nope, I didn’t die. Kid is healthy, and so are all of us.
After my last blog post, life became quite hectic for Pilot and myself. I was at my third trimester, Pilot and I had moved to a new home, we were expecting the birth of our son, the adjustment to becoming first time parents, my book rights were reverted back to me, and then Covid-19 happened. Pregnancy was extremely difficult for me, and made the newborn phase for all of us quite tiresome. More on this in the future.

Nope, I didn’t forget you.
There is a lot going on in the world at this time. I won’t condense what happened to me and my family in one post. Instead, I’m going back to basics. I’m using this blog to help me warm up back to writing a little each day. Becoming a first time parent was quite overwhelming and, frankly, I wasn’t able to find the time to write due to exhaustion. (But more on that later.)

This blog post, on April 10th, 2021 is a promise of a monthly blog post to you, Precious Reader, but mostly to myself. That I haven’t lost the writing bug, and proof that is truly my life’s purpose to bring words to the world that, hopefully, make you smile, make you think, and most importantly, laugh your asses off.

No, I haven’t given up writing.
Like most of you, Pilot and I are hunkering down and working from home. This means that life adjustments were made to find a way to create an at-home office for Pilot while we lived inside of it. This has prevented office space for me as items were moved to various rooms, desk surfaces became priority real estate in our small apartment for things like dinner, and the fact that I am now a full-time Stay At Home Mom (SAHM), his work has priority over my needs for technology in exchange for a roof over our heads and food on the table.

While I haven’t given up on writing, it became a lesser priority in 2019-present day to preserve my sanity. This blog post is my tiptoeing back into the writing world. My publisher and I are no longer under contract, and the rights to my Roxy Summers Mystery series were reverted back to me. I’ve been sitting on my books for several months due to motherhood, and also trying to decide what next steps there are for me. I’m greatly considering a career change that will allow me more time to write books.

For those who follow me on social media you already know what’s been going on. For those who don’t follow me on social media, here’s a quick breakdown:

Pregnancy was tough. Our birth story isn’t a happy one, even though it ends with a healthy toddler and healthy parents (now). More on that in the near future.

After George Floyd’s death, I became quite vocal in support of the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

Our family was on the receiving end of an attempted hate crime in June 2020. When we reported it to the police, the officer tried to intimidate me from reporting, and also tried to turn Pilot against me during the filing since he’s White. More on that in the near future.

I received several death threats on social media simply for not being a White person, and for defending Black Lives. This caused me to take down any photos of my child, my family, and friends, except for Pilot. He is a public figure in his own right and doesn’t care that his face appears on my social media. My child’s face will always be blocked, even on this post.

Covid-19 hit the world.

In more recent times there has been a steady increase of active harassment and violence against the Asian and Pacific Islander community, of which I am a part of.

Our family and friends have dealt with a lot of personal losses since 2019, including some of my own family. Since 2019-present: Seven people in our family’s life contracted Covid-19, two of which were on ventilators and weren’t sure if they would make it. Despite some deaths in the family, those who contracted Covid-19, gratefully, survived it.

I’m literally getting my Covid-19 vaccination today. I’m receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccination. One and done, Precious Readers.

The Present

As I’m sure most of you are in a similar situation, Pilot and I have spent the last 21 months discussing how to make our lives recession-proof, which morphed into “plague-proof.” We have been incredibly grateful that Pilot has continued to stay fully employed at his job, and reached his three-year milestone last November. I’m so proud of him. He found a job that brings him so much joy, despite not having seen any members of his team face-to-face in over a year. I’m grateful we already had a plan in place for me to become a SAHM prior to the pandemic, so it wasn’t as much of a disruption to our lives as it may have deeply impacted yours.

If you, or a loved one, is suffering the affects of Covid-19 in any capacity: as a pandemic that is affecting your job, your ability to find and keep shelter, your mental health, your physical health, the life of a loved one, the loss(es) of a loved one, I highly encourage you to reach out for help with your local community resources, if you can. Or find someone in your life who is able to find resources for you.

On January 1, 2021, Pilot and I decided we needed activities in which to look forward in participating. They didn’t have to be anything that put us at risk, or our child’s health at risk. We believe in science, we believe in masking up, we believe in social distancing. One of those activities was an outdoor photo session.

Let me explain. In my childhood, my parent’s didn’t really believe in the use of cameras. There are few photographs of my childhood, of my parents, or of our family. Pilot may be a talented and skillful photo/videographer, but he’s an aviation and real estate photo/videographer. He cannot take a portrait photo to save his life. I want our child to be able to see the memories we’ve built together. If we over-document our child, it’s because I’m a forgetful person and want to recall our lives together while Baby Bacher grows. Funnily enough, I came across a random Facebook Marketplace ad asking for “models.” I didn’t really think much of it, until I read the description.

Kalie and Devon, the owners of Filling the Frame Photography were looking for regular people of all genders, races, sizes, backgrounds, etc. who wanted a confidence boost, all to expand their portfolio. It would be done outdoors and/or socially distanced in a safe environment. This was intriguing, and I reached out. Surprisingly (to me) they were excited to work with us.

Pilot and I haven’t had a professional photo of our immediate family since our wedding over 10 years ago. (Our anniversary is next month! Squee!) We had never had a professional photo taken of Baby Bacher. Here was our opportunity!

Wehn we arrived, I was provided a dress to wear for the photos. While I was humorously far too short for it, she liked Pilot’s teal sweater and Baby Bacher’s outfit, so we kept a “blue” theme. I haven’t felt that fancy for a professional photo since my wedding and high school Proms. (Okay, being from conservative, Christian, private schooling, it wasn’t called “Prom.” It was called “a banquet, followed by a non-school sponsored, musical, aerobic activity.” Which, frankly, sounds far more creepy than simply calling it a dance. But, since some denominations of Christianity don’t like dancing, it has to be called the sterile, depressing name that it was.)

I did my own makeup, but my hair is not quite how I wanted it. You want to know why? It started hailing during our photo session. I wish I was kidding. You see my exposed arms? I was freezing! We were getting pelted with rain, and then hail started slicing down. Little pinpricks were smacking us on the head. Apparently nature had other plans as to how that session would go.

We worked only with Kalie, and she was one of the warmest people I’d ever met. Despite Pilot’s many talents, he absolutely hates being the subject of a camera. He freezes and the situation turns into one of the early scenes of Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Kalie got him to completely relax on camera, kept Baby Bacher calm and entertained, and even managed to get a few solo shots of our little buddy.

We are so grateful to Kalie for her time and the opportunity to work with her. The experience was literally one of the brightest spots of entertainment in our lives in almost 2 years. As you can tell by the photos, it was fun, relaxed, super easy to be in the moment, and preserved images of us as a first-time family with so much joy. I will be forever grateful for these awesome photos provided by Kalie’s hard work. If you live in Western Washington, I highly recommend Filling the Frame Photography for yourself, you and a loved one, your family, your pet, whatever. We will definitely be hiring her again.

The Future

A quick moment of seriousness: Essentially, this is a blog about my journey of being an author, and I hope it to remain as such. At times, political issues may arise in the future as they affect my life and how I currently live it now. If someone leaves any comment of hateful speech against me or another person, I will delete those comments and those people will be banned. Anyone who writes comments against the science around the virus Covid-19 will be deleted and those people will be banned. While I am a Christian, I believe in wearing a mask, getting vaccinated, and social distancing until this pandemic becomes a paragraph in a history book and is no longer physically present as a threat in our world.

Boiled down: I have a zero tolerance policy on hate speech, racism, anti-science, and threats.

And now, back to our regular programming…

Be on the lookout of your inboxes, Precious Reader. I am committing to writing monthly blog posts for myself and you. It will contain stories about our pregnancy, Baby Bacher’s birth, our lives, career starts and stops, and everything mentioned here. I’m looking forward to getting acquainted with you again, and I hope you’ll enjoy restarting this writing journey with me. I’ve missed you, and I hope you’re happy to hear from us as well.

Sending you love, blessings, and comfort.

– KB

i run from hate, i run from prejudice, i run from pessimists

“Wow, I’m really good at lying to myself.”

– Katherine Bacher

Oh dear.

I may have made some serious miscalculations for myself. As with most people, I’m afraid I haven’t quite stuck to my guns with my New Year’s Resolutions. Hopefully those of you out on the Interwebs have fared far better than I.

Precious Readers, I have failed you. Which is worse than failing myself. Although they’re only separated by a 1/8 tick. I feel worse about disappointing you than lying to myself. Let’s face it, lying to ourselves always makes one feel better in the short-term. Earning your disappointment or disapproval… yikes.

Not as an excuse, but to give you an idea of where my head is at, the following has occurred in the last four months:

1.  I got roped into a MAJOR PROJECT at work that required almost 100% of my attention. This included many late nights, long hours, time away from Pilot, etc. Let’s just say the entire month is a caffeine-and-carb-riddled blur of a mess where I managed to single-handedly complete a massive shipping of product generated from my job out to the masses of our clients all over the nation. I think there was a grand total of maybe 5 hours worth of conversation and eye contact spent with Pilot in that entire month. Combined.  So thankful February isn’t a “real” month.  That might just have de-wired my brain.

2.  A co-worker passed away. Due to the nature of this individual’s situation, the family he left behind, and the infamous way he created notoriety for himself before departing from this earth, I will not go into further details. Unfortunately he leaves a young child behind, and although I empathize with that child, I did luck out in having significantly more years with my own father before he passed.

3.  A dear, dear friend of mine – we’ll call her Azalea* – passed away. Her service is still being scheduled for next month. I worked with her at my previous employment and we became very good friends. She suffered from colon cancer for the last 3 years of her life, multiple bouts of chemo and radiation. When I last spoke to her, she was on an oxygen tank. She was a wife, mother, grandmother and my friend.

Azalea’s passing earlier this April has really hit me hard, and I’m ashamed to say I had quite a few meltdowns at home last week.

Let’s face it. I’ll probably have a few more.

She was more than just a co-worker to me. She was family. It brought up old feelings of losing my dad and grandma (both of whom I lost in 2007), all over again. Feelings of which I buried super, super deeply.

I hate stuff resurfacing like that. It’s like a bad carpet stain. You think it’s out of the way. When you least expect it, it pops right up again clear as day and you wonder how the hell all of the efforts you put into “out of sight, out of mind,” it’s always right below where you can see it. Lurking.

That’s right. Lurking. I’m beefing up on my verbs today.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m approaching the big 30 this year. Maybe it’s a mid-mid-life crisis, but these recent events made me realize I need to start making a LOT of changes in my life.

Foremost in my mind: Stop living to please other people.

My dear, Precious Readers, you are in the presence of a wuss. A big-

Well, not “big.” I’m not huge or anything. I’m… well… let’s just say there’s a lot to love. I have pretty wrists, decent-sized boobs for an Asian, and good hair, does that count?

-what was I saying? Oh, right.

I’m a cowardly, shy, “flight”-reactive wuss when it comes to going for my dreams.

Growing up, most of my life was pretty much planned out for me. I wasn’t a “rebel”-

Although, my parents have mentioned that I had quite the smart mouth. Maybe “smart mouth” + writer’s brain go hand-in-hand?

-I was a good girl. I ate my vegetables, brushed my (good) hair, minded my P’s and Q’s. Fared decently in school, didn’t get into trouble. Heck, I volunteered countless hours at children’s day camps, retirement homes and nursing homes.

From the womb to the tomb.

I’ve spent my whole life trying to perfect a lifestyle to meet others’ idea of success and accomplishment. To be brutally honest, leaving my last job and starting this blog are probably some of the most rebellious things I’ve ever done.

Although, I am a roller coaster junkie. Is that rebellious?

These recent events have made me ask some tough questions. Like, “Why am I so afraid?” I need to start living for me before the next 30 go by like the wind. I’ve spent a large portion of my 20’s depressed, and I think it’s mostly due to the fact at my incredible ability to deflect and ignore what’s actually important to me.

The reason? It’s simple, my Precious Readers. Fear.

It’s not difficult to figure out. Seriously. It’s 100% Fear.

Fear of disappointing those I love.

Fear of failure.

Feeling unworthy/undeserving of my true dreams; that my parents are right, and “an artsy job” will not pay the bills and I’ll end up homeless.

Although I’d never sell my laptop. There’s free wi-fi everywhere. I’d make do. I can’t live without access to my books (and yes, I have TONS of real books, too), cat videos and online cooking channels. YouTube** and Kindle** are my late-night best friends.

I’m sure most of those who are in my Daily Life and Real Life will tell me I’m crazy.

Well… crazier.

I don’t care anymore.

I’m sick of caring about what people tell me to care about.

I want to care about the things that keep circling around in my head over and over, to which I respond with the word “someday.” I’m tired of “someday.”

Someday can kiss my ass. It’s already kicked it for 30 years.

It may take me a while to accomplish my bucket list life goals, but I have faith that God will give me the strength to truly move forward, stop being afraid about what other people think.

Also, that He’ll boot me on the butt when I’m getting lazy about it, ensuring I at least try with everything that I have.

I hope this post encourages you to go after what you think your purpose is.

It’s too short, people. Life is just too damn short.

*This name has been changed to protect the privacy of the individual and their family.

**Not endorsed by YouTube or Kindle. Any statements made about these two applications are the opinion of my own free will and not a reflection of those company’s points of view.