I'm stuck on windows and I have been for some time. I feel the whole project hangs on wether I get the windows right. You want to let in every bit of light you can but you don't want to feel like someone might be watching you in your glass house every time the sun sets. I've bored friends to tears each time I have pulled the plans out and drilled them for opinions on window size and placement. The trouble is you can't really know something in two dimensions.

Like many of us in Missoula, land of the long dark inverted winter, I really struggle with Seasonal Affective Disorder: I'm tired, unmotivated, a little grouchy perhaps… but mostly really tired. Five o'clock comes around and I'm thinking bedtime, like I'm half-hibernating already. The thing that helps the most with this I've found is being outdoors and in natural light as much as humanly possible during those short winter days. Going skiing, skating, cross country skiing whatever it takes to get oxygen to the brain and Vitamin D in the blood. So I'm prepared to spend a small fortune on windows.

On paper I've been through many different styles but I'm still not confident. Now that the house has begun to take shape, I feel better but still not totally sure. Here we are on the cusp of winter and I don't dare order these windows before I see every window hole in place. Yes you want light, you want views, but you also want walls for art, furniture and privacy ...

I wrote this back on November 5th, two solid months ago now, and never posted it. Not only was I unable to order windows, I was even unable to write about them. I felt completely frozen and unable to act. However, It wasn't just the windows, looking back I realize now that whole time was littered with decisions and tasks I felt unable to make or do. Unable to make those appointments, unable to make certain financial decisions, unable to fill out that living will we started, unable to write. Maybe the best part of this process of building is the tearing down that happens internally. You realize a lot about yourself; your skills and your limitations. A skill: I usually know exactly what I want. A challenge: If I get too overloaded I FREEZE. I completely shut down and shut out. 2015 it turns out was The Year of The Overload.

A lot was going on in November/December. It is our busiest time at Noteworthy. November is spent planning and implementing the Holiday Window Display, getting organized and prepping for our single biggest sales month of the year.

I traveled a lot. The kids and I went to my sister's in New Mexico, where we met for the first time my beautiful and sweet nephew, who was adopted from Uganda and joined his two siblings who were adopted the year before. It has been amazing, beautiful and life-changing for all of us. Like three births happening consecutively, the joy is immense and intense. It rocks your definition of family and everything you think you know about love.

At the same time, my last grandparent passed away at the age of 98, which in a way is both joyful, with gratitude for long life, and deeply sad, for the missed opportunities and the reminder that time stops for no one. In hindsight it is easy to see that our parents and grandparents are like bookends they keep us from feeling we might topple over at any moment and it is also so much more apparent when they are gone, the thread of similarity that runs throughout the lineage.

Catherine "Pinkie" Garver, May 31, 1917 - Oct 14, 2015

My grandmother who we called Pinkie, was born in in Neligh, Nebraska in 1917, went to college in the 30s and went on to marry my grandfather who was the manager of the Ambassador Hotel in Chicago, a celebrity hot spot in the 40s and 50s. She raised my dad and his siblings there among the hotel guests whom she was obliged to entertain. She loved fashion and became an avid jitterbug dancer. I feel lucky now that she took the time to write book about her life because sadly I never had those conversations with her. What I remember most about her are the impressions she left on my senses: her powdery smell and the particularly soft skin of her hands. In the days just before Christmas, we travelled to San Diego, where we gathered most of her family together and celebrated her life and all the life she left behind; 2 sons, a daughter, 11 grandchildren, and 20 great grandchildren. At her committal a small hummingbird flitted around, I hope it was Pinkie taking one last dance.

Catherine "Pinkie" Garver at the Ambassdor Hotel with Bob Hope and Alfred Hitchcock, Chicago late 1950s.

We finally did order our windows. Just before Christmas my builder did what any good builder does when time is of the essence, he went ahead and ordered the darn things. We went with Marvin, aluminum clad in black and they are due to arrive in a few short weeks. And though I'm still not "sure", I realize in the scope of things it doesn't really matter. What matters in the end, that was driven home so hard in the fall of 2015, is the family that will go inside the house and the extended family that will visit us there. And the way the light from these windows will fall on and light up the still small faces of our children ... that is what will make this house truly amazing and perfect.