Laura Darling

this story will go down in hiss-tory

2024-02-29T17:03:00.000-08:00

Well, do I have an update for you. It's as if the universe knew I needed some blog material.

JUST LAST POST I shared about Matt's childhood corn snake and wrote that "He "escaped his enclosure" and was never seen again. I think about that missing snake every time we go to his mom's house, half-expecting it to sense a reunion and slither out of a vent or something."

Well, a few months ago, my mother-in-law's longtime next door neighbors moved, and her boyfriend bought the house. He's been fixing it up to turn it into a rental property, and would you look at what he found while he was working there this weekend.

Or should I say, WHO he found.

Matt's (dead) corn snake. Missing since the summer of 2000. Steve tore down some drywall in the kitchen and there he was. We laughed about it all weekend.

I asked Matt if he thinks the snake just slithered down the steps and out the front door on this way to the neighbors, and Matt said very matter of factly, "Probably. He had to get out somehow."

Steve also found a snakeskin in the basement, so the snake was alive in the neighbors' house long enough to shed his skin at least once, and make it from the basement to the kitchen. The whole situation is equally as hilarious as it is gross. What are the chances that Matt would lose his pet snake, assume it never to be seen again, but lo and behold it had slithered to the neighbor's house and made a new life for himself, only to be found TWENTY FOUR YEARS LATER when Matt's mom's boyfriend buys the house.

The blog basically writes itself.

After we got this hilarious news, we kept on with our typical Saturday routine of stopping at the club for happy hour.

By the club I mean Sam's Club.

And by happy hour I mean the 4:00 samples.

We hit the jackpot with samples this week. It's not every Saturday they have sugar cookies, popcorn, AND tiny cups of lukewarm vegetable lo mein. And I would know, because we go every Saturday.

After we got our fill of samples, we headed over to get a rotisserie chicken, and all I have to say about that is that anyone who thinks the Taylor Swift tickets were a hot item has clearly never tried to get a rotisserie chicken at Sam's Club on a Saturday afternoon. It's like lions stalking their prey.

We saw the growing crowd of customers as we approached the chicken counter, and Matt and Christopher joined them to wait for a fresh batch. Joey and I decided to make another lap for samples, and when we got back the woman who was standing next to Matt burst out laughing because Joey yelled "DADDY! CHRISTOPHER! We found the best samples! Smoothies and REAL LIVE ORANGES!"

It's not every day you get to see a REAL LIVE ORANGE.

Anyway, we got our chicken and on our way out, we passed an endcap with majorly discounted toys. There was an army set with a jeep, a tank, and an airplane that shoots missiles. It was marked down to the low, low price of $13 and because Matt is a sucker and our children are spoiled, he put it in the cart.

They got it all set up when we got home and the boys spent the evening shooting missiles, or as Joey called them, drill bits. They have less than stellar aim and by dinnertime three drill bits were lost and the fourth was stuck under the oven. After dinner I straightened out a wire clothes hanger and lowered myself to the floor to fish out the missing drill bit aka missile.

As I laid down and shoved the clothes hanger under the oven, I thought, Dear God please don't let there be a snake under here.

I didn't see a snake, but what I did see was almost as frightening. It looked like no one had cleaned under the oven for about three years. Which makes sense because no one has cleaned under the oven for about three years.

I retrieved the missile, as well as a marker, a baby spoon, a few toy dishes from the kitchen set, and about 4168 cheerios. Just as I was about to sit up, I heard Christopher behind me gleefully say "TA-DA!!!" and then I heard crunching.

I told him to open his mouth where I saw he'd found the prize of a piece of dust covered Cap'n Crunch that was quite possibly as old as he is.

Which is gross.

But at least it wasn't a snake.

the ants go marching one by one, hurrah?

2024-02-10T10:44:00.000-08:00

Something that will not surprise you about Matt is that he has been talking about getting an ant farm for years. It's been an unfulfilled dream of his.

Another unfulfilled dream of Matt's is to get some sort of reptile for the boys. Growing up, Matt had two beloved lizards, Ozzie and Harriet. He also had a snake, whose name he cannot remember. He has talked fondly about feeding crickets to the lizards, and- prepare yourself- mice to the snake. Although he admits that after a while, the novelty sort of wears off. Ozzie and Harriet lived good long lives, but I'm sorry to tell you that the unnamed snake didn't have the same fate. He "escaped his enclosure" and was never seen again. I think about that missing snake every time we go to his mom's house, half-expecting it to sense a reunion and slither out of a vent or something.

Anyway, Santa must have put Matt on the nice list this year because what appeared under our Christmas tree this year but our very own Uncle Milton's Giant Ant Farm. The boys didn't understand what they were opening, but I don't think the wrapping paper was even completely off before Matt was placing his order for the ants. We didn't know exactly when they would arrive, because apparently ants can't be shipped when it's too cold, which puzzles me because don't they live outside? In any event, I got this message from Matt a few weeks ago.

Sure enough, later that day we received a package that said LIVE CREATURES OPEN IMMEDIATELY with two test tubes full of ants inside. I can only imagine what the mailman thought. So far we've had ants, ladybugs, and honeybees delivered via US Mail. I honestly wouldn't blame our mail carrier if he asked for a new route.

I asked Matt how much we had to pay for the ants and he said they cost $6.99, but that was really just shipping cost. The actual ants themselves were free with the purchase of the ant farm! What a bargain!

Matt popped those suckers in the fridge to slow them down a bit before the big transfer, while I tried not to think about the fact that we spent at least $50.00 and the better part of the summer and fall attempting to eradicate the ants who invaded our kitchen. And now we were paying $6.99 and providing housing and food for those same ants to live on my kitchen counter.

When the boys got home, the ants were good and tranquilized, Matt said we had to provide food for them so he tossed an apple slice and a few goldish into the container because if a diet of apples and goldfish is good enough for our children, it's good enough for our ants.

He put the boys on the counter so they could get a good view, dumped the ants in, and well, that was the big excitement of the day.

Joey was eager to check on them the next morning. And while they had definitely been busy digging tunnels, Uncle Milton was overselling it a bit when he claimed we could watch ants "dig tunnels, build bridges, move mountains, and so much more!"

There's not more to it, let alone SO MUCH more. They're ants.

And I'm sad to say there is one other claim that Uncle Milton made that I found to be false. And I'm sorry to say, it's this one. "BREAK RESISTANT AND ESCAPE PROOF: A self-locking device that makes it escape-proof and provides easy access for feeding and giving water to the ants."

On Friday evening, the boys were having movie night and I was cleaning up the kitchen. As I wiped the counter near the ant farm, I spotted not one, but two ants, crawling away from the ant farm as fast as their little legs could carry them. I immediately squashed them and the boys came running in.

Matt said "okay, who opened the lid?!" and Joey said "well, it must have been you. Christopher and I can't reach it and Mommy doesn't touch it."

Matt insists it wasn't him, but he's the only one in the family who has had a snake AND ants escape.

So all I have to say is, we're never getting a reptile.

And that's an (ant) hill I'm willing to die on.

and now i'm back, from outer space

2024-02-04T11:32:00.000-08:00

Tap, tap, is this thing on?

I can't believe I haven't written a blog post since 2021. But, I thought I'd pick up where I left off and share a follow up on our bathroom! When I last wrote about it on November 6, 2021, here's what it looked like.

At the time, Joey was newly two years old and we were expecting a new baby that January.

Fast forward to today. Here is a photo of the bathroom this morning. And there's the baby, who is now two years old himself.

Listen, I don't know whether to laugh or cry about this. A few times I have considered just putting up some drywall and turning it into a closet, but then I remind myself that I don't actually want to share a bathroom with three boys for the rest of time.

Since we moved in, we've renovated the entire house. This is the last room. So I know, that in the wise words of Gloria Gaynor, I will survive.

Although perhaps these words of Gloria's are more appropriate for the situation:

It took all the strength I had not to fall apart

Kept trying hard to mend the pieces of my broken heart
And I spent oh-so many nights just feeling sorry for myself

So while the bathroom situation hasn't changed since I last wrote, our family has! Joey was 2 and now he's 4. In my last post I wrote, "Sometimes I have to blink several times and make sure it's really a tiny two year old in dinosaur pants standing in front of me, and not a middle aged boss man," and aside from the fact that he's outgrown his dinosaur pants, that exact same sentiment is true to this day.

In fact, just last night, I was sound asleep when I sensed a presence in my room. I opened my eyes to see Joey standing about three inches from my face, just silently staring at me. I blinked a few times and then said, "Joey? Are you okay?"

He said very matter-of-factly: "Hi Mommy. I need to see you in my room."

Okay, boss.

I shuffled behind him to his room where he told me that he'd come down with a stuffy nose in the middle of the night. He proceeded to explain some sort of complicated situation that involved him walking back and forth to his dresser to get tissues, although he had moved his trashcan next to his bed for easy tissue disposal. But, he was wondering if I had any ideas of where he could put his tissue box so he didn't have to walk across his room every time he needed one, because that was simply unsustainable.

There I had been, snoozing away in the next room, and he was up and about setting up a little infirmary for himself.

Joey doesn't have a bedside table, so I suggested he put a few tissues under his pillow and he loved that idea. I tucked a few under the pillow, gave him a kiss, and went back to bed.

A little while ago, I was putting him down for his nap (yes he's 4.5 and still takes a nap PRAISE THE LORD) and I noticed his pillow was a little bit lopsided. When I straightened it out I saw that he'd really taken my tissue idea and run with it.

So anyway, Joey's great. He loves fishing, trucks, and trains. He started pre-school this year. He's taking a four week karate class which is hilarious and he's starting T-ball in the spring. He chooses chores over playing, and he loves rules -- following rules, making rules, enforcing rules.

And then we have Christopher! He turned two in January. For the first year of his life, I actually felt like I was cheating or missing something because he was the world's best baby. He barely cried, he went with the flow, the sweetness just oozed out of him. He also spit up 475 times a day for the first 9 months of his life. All the clothes I wore during those nine months were completely ruined and my rugs and couches will never truly be the same. But still, absolute easiest baby ever.

And then he turned about 15 months old and we realized we have a bit of a drama queen on our hands. He has a temper and a short fuse, and can fake cry with the best of them. But he's also absolutely as sweet as can be and FUNNY. He loves to get a laugh, even if it means he has to yell "I love poopy butts" in the library, or worse - church- to make Joey giggle. And when he's being mischievous, or trying to get out of trouble, those big blue eyes are a get out of jail free card with. Matt always says when it comes to Christopher, I'm like Larry Krasner, the Philadelphia district attorney who is, let's just say, light on punishment. I can't help it. He's the cutest, sweetest boy. He loves animals, soft things, any and all food, and music, and we think he's just the greatest.

So anyway, that's the update. I have really missed writing this blog, and I've also missed how I viewed the world when I was writing regularly. I was always on the lookout for the funny aspects of mundane, everyday situations, or trying think of ways I could creatively tell a story. So I'm going to get back to it this year. And lucky for me, I live with three people who make me laugh multiple times a day.

Here's a little teaser for the next post.

We got an ant farm.

the day that went off the rails

2021-11-09T18:55:00.002-08:00

Joey was scheduled for an appointment at the allergist at 8:45 this morning. He's allergic to eggs and milk, and the only meat he eats is Tyson dino nuggets, and are they really even meat at all? Basically we are raising a tiny vegan.

Anyway the plan for this appointment was to feed him pudding and see if he reacted, or if he is growing out of his milk allergy. I made the pudding last night, and actually made a second batch for myself because I'm eight months pregnant and it looked delicious. I took the morning off work, and decided that if he passed the test we'd head to Trader Joe's on the way home and buy all kinds of dairy products to celebrate.

Unfortunately, we never made it to the allergist, because the poor guy woke up with the stomach virus. Matt and I told him he could lay on the couch and watch TV all day, which delighted him. We got him settled on the couch and I turned on his favorite show, Stinky and Dirty. It's a cute show about a trash truck (Stinky) and a digger (Dirty) but here's a word to the wise, if you're going to say "Stinky and Dirty" to your Comcast voice remote, make sure to really enunciate "stinky." Because if the remote hears "Kinky and Dirty" you will get more than you bargained for on the results screen.

Anyway we were about three minutes into the episode when an error message showed up on the screen. Turns out there was a nationwide Comcast internet and tv outage. Now, Matt works for Comcast and I know better than to bite the hand that feeds you and pays the mortgage, but that was not the best timing.

Joey and I went for a walk to get some fresh air and Matt took advantage of the internet outage and the inability to do his actual work, and he went to go to a plumbing store to try to find a part to fix our dishwasher, which broke last night because of course it did. Luckily by the time we got home from our walk the internet was back on. However, the tv was tuned to the Hallmark channel, which was showing a black and white movie. I told Joey "Look! The tv is fixed!" and he took one look at that black and white movie and said, "No Mommy, TB still broken."

The next few hours are kind of a blur but I'm pretty sure they involved doling out small morsels of club crackers and doing laundry. Joey took a good nap and when he woke up I naively thought we might have been lucky enough to get away with a mild case of the stomach bug. And then between the hours of 3:00 and 6:00 pm I found myself making deals with the Lord.

Joey's had the standard childhood sicknesses - RSV, croup, lots of colds, a case of hand, foot, and mouth disease unlike anything you've ever seen, and even a surgery. However, I have met my match with the stomach bug. Yikes.

He was pretty sad that he couldn't eat any dinner, and I tried to sneak mine discreetly so that he wouldn't feel bad that I was eating and he wasn't. But he totally called me out, and said "You have chicken in your mouth." I admitted that I did, and prepared for him to ask for something to eat too, but all he said was "Don't talk with ya dinna in ya mouth."

I know every parent thinks their kid is the smartest, and I'm not saying he is a genius or anything, but I do wonder at least once a day where he learns this stuff. I've never told him not to talk with his mouth full, and clearly I do not lead by example when it comes to that particular area of etiquette.

Sometimes I have to blink several times and make sure it's really a tiny two year old in dinosaur pants standing in front of me, and not a middle aged boss man. That little boss was exhausted by bedtime, and after one round of I've Been Working on the Railroad, he practically ushered me out of his room.

Between the ongoing bathroom renovation project (have I mentioned we are renovating our bathrooms?), the broken dishwasher, and the stomach bug, our house is a complete wreck from top to bottom.

Instead of cleaning it up, I pulled a Scarlett O'Hara and decided "I'll think about that tomorrow. Tomorrow is another day."

And also like Scarlett, I decided "As God is my witness, I swear I'll never go hungry again" and made myself a bowl of chocolate pudding, since we have 47 servings in the fridge.

Maybe I can convince Joey to watch Gone With the Wind tomorrow. The ~~broken~~ black and white version, of course.

our wedding vows should have said "in good times and bathroom renovations"

2021-11-06T19:21:00.004-07:00

Well, we are currently in the midst of renovating our bathrooms. File this under, it would have been easier to move.

(Both bathrooms. There used to be a wall in between.)

I needed a little reassurance that this too shall pass and that I won't be showering at my mom and dad's house forever, so I dusted off the old blog to read through some posts about previous home renovation projects that we have survived.

It seems like the general theme surrounding renovations is that they take much longer than originally expected, and are accompanied with a trip to Urgent Care for a tetanus shot, as evidenced by the two passages I wrote below about our kitchen reno.

----------------------------------------------------

Here I am again to talk about my kitchen. I apologize in advance if you're as sorry about reading kitchen posts as I am writing them. When we started the kitchen renovation it was Labor Day, and we said we'd probably be finished by Thanksgiving, but FOR SURE by Christmas.

Well those same fools are now well past Easter and just hoping things wrap up by Memorial Day.

Matt and I were discussing the ideal vs the actual timeline the other day, and he said, "Well, there were just a few aspects that I didn't expect."

"Like what?" I asked.

"For starters, I didn't expect Christmas to come so quickly."

And this one...

Well, the kitchen is finished. After 8 months. 35 weekends. Hundreds of trips to Lowe's. And 1 trip to Urgent Care for a tetanus shot.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We have two full bathrooms and one half bathroom in our house. We renovated the half bath during the Covid lockdown last year, but have totally ignored the other two bathrooms since we moved in six years ago because they've been holding strong since Eisenhower was president. They've seen 13 total presidential administrations and if it's not broke, don't fix it.

Although some (namely Matt) would argue they were broke. For instance, the master shower door stopped closing two presidents ago and since then I just fashion a makeshift clamp with a wet washcloth to keep it mostly shut while I shower.

Matt's been talking about renovating the bathrooms for a while now, but I was reluctant to give my stamp of approval because all I saw was dollar signs and a big headache. Turns out I was pretty spot on. But what sealed the deal for us to do them now was the fact that Oh Baby Darling #2 is coming in January, and we figured it was better to go through a major bathroom renovation project with one child still in diapers, as opposed to a potty-training/ed toddler and a new baby.

All that to say, Matt promised me that one of the bathrooms would be fully operational at all times, and that he'd take a week of PTO and could easily knock out the hall bathroom in that time.

I'm here to tell you that we are two weeks into this saga and I just repacked my shower bag to schlep to my parents' house for the 14th time. Reminds me of the old days of 2006 in Mifflin Hall when I'd squeak down the hall in my shower shoes with my caddy stocked with more Garnier Fructis products than you can imagine. But instead of getting dressed in my finest outfit from Forever 21 to go drink jungle juice from a questionable Rubbermaid container afterwards, I now come home in my stretchiest maternity pajamas for a wild evening of trying to heat up a dino nugget without setting off the smoke detector and convincing Joey to eat half a molecule of a vegetable.

Also, the promise of maintaining one fully operational bathroom went out the window sometime between 9:00 a.m. last Monday and noon, which is when I looked out the window to see the master bathroom toilet in the dumpster.

I got home with Joey and he saw the old bathtub in the driveway. "HEY!" he yelled, "Daddy moved my tub!"

Last Friday evening, I'd just gotten out of the shower (have I mentioned yet I've been showering at my parents house?) and I had a text from Matt that said "drill through the finger," accompanied by a photo of said finger. I rushed downstairs and my mom said Joey could stay at their house while I went home to assess the injury.

What I saw when I got home was a finger that, well, looked like a drill went into it. I said to Matt, "Well, obviously you need to go to Urgent Care." He didn't even try to fight it and say he'd be fine. He just said, "I guess I'll go get my wallet."

I drove us over there and waited in the car while he ran in, because did you read the part about me wearing my stretchiest maternity pajama pants? It ended up taking TWO HOURS and he got a tetanus shot, a prescription for an antibiotic, and a bandage.

As we drove home he said "It seems like every time I attempt a major project, I get an injury. Changing the brakes in my truck? Sliced my wrist (that particular injury required surgery). Kitchen? Nail gun to the leg. Bathroom? Drill to the finger."

He's had more tetanus shots than anyone I know.

Our neighbor stopped over this morning while Matt was starting day four of tile that he originally thought would take one day. Our neighbor said, "So what's exactly been the slow part? All of it?"

That would be a yes.

And don't get me wrong, Matt is working so hard. He did all the demo by himself and the trash weighed 4220 pounds, and I can't even take credit for one ounce of it. Although I will think twice the next time I complain about taking the trash from the kitchen to the outside trashcan because SMALL POTATOES. And he's been working from 7:30 in the morning until 6:00 at night, barely stopping for lunch. But it's just really easy to watch a few episodes of This Old House and say "Oh I'll be able to knock the tile out in one day, two days tops" and not as easy when you're actually doing it.

I'm trying not to think about the fact that the master bathroom is still completely gutted, the house is filthy and dusty from construction, Christmas is in less than two months, and I'm eight months pregnant and this is what the nursery looks like.

Instead I'm trying to focus on the fact that these are the last two rooms in our house that had yet to be remodeled since we moved in. So, assuming we survive this, we have no more major projects ahead of us.

Today Matt finished tiling the shower, and grouted most of it. I was so excited that I went to the store and bought a shower curtain rod and a shower curtain, and was just about to unearth my shampoo when I googled how long it takes grout to cure.

At this rate, we might be on to our next president before this is finished.

more words than i ever thought i'd write about fish

2021-02-22T17:39:00.008-08:00

Hello. It's Monday, and my hip hurts. I wish I could say it's from all the workouts I've been doing, but the truth is, I think it's because I hopped a little too enthusiastically when Joey and I were listening to the party freeze dance song for the 478th time this past week.

I did get one workout in last week. Well, it wasn't so much a workout as it was a leisurely walk around the neighborhood because the temp hit 48 degrees for one glorious day, and it felt positively tropical. I wore leggings and my snow boots, since the sidewalks were slushy, and while we were walking Matt said to me, "Well, you are just the epitome of fashion."

Except he pronounced epitome as if it rhymed with metronome. But still, I appreciated the sentiment.

Aside from our walk, the other big excitement from last week was that we got new fish, and by some miracle of nature and a bottle of Tetra Safe Start, they're still alive five days later. This was our third attempt at buying fish, from the same store, and the same employee helped us who had helped us a few days before. Matt asked her a question, and she said, "Remind me what kind of fish you already have?"

And Matt said, "Oh, we don't have any fish."

MAYDAY, MAYDAY. SHE REMEMBERED US.

She looked at him with the most quizzical look, but thank goodness she didn't look us and our terrible track record up in the system. We ended up with three tetras and three guppies. Did you know that guppies can give birth every thirty days, and have TWENTY TO FIFTY baby guppies each time? We sure didn't.

Once the fish lived for a few days and we were pretty confident that the water conditions were finally optimal, we headed back to Petsmart to get just a few more because we are gluttons for punishment. Also because that twenty gallon fish tank Matt bought when he was overly optimistic about fishkeeping was looking pretty empty with six tiny fish.

While Matt waited at the fish bowl, Joey and I walked around to see the animals. We have worn out the tile in Petsmart this pandemic, making at least two or three trips a month since about May. It's the perfect place to go, because it's never very crowded, Joey basically thinks he is at the zoo, and I'm not tempted to spend any money.

So the two of us made our usual route from the cats, to the doggy daycare, wound around to the birds, and finished up with the hamsters. By the time we got back to the fish tanks, Matt was watching as tiger barbs were put into a bag for us, "because Joe likes tigers." I know a thing or two about fish, and one of the things I know is that tiger barbs fall into the semi-aggressive category. The employee told us they'd for sure go after our prolific guppies, so she dumped them back in their tank and suggested another variety of tiny little fish.

We got six of the kind she suggested, and as of this writing, we can only find three. We know that one got sucked into the filter, but the other two have disappeared. We can't find them anywhere. We are hoping the tetras ate them, which is a weird thing to say, but better than the alternative, which is that they are lost somewhere on my brand new carpets.

Matt told me the news of the lost fish this morning over breakfast, and we both agreed that we are DONE getting fish. This aquarium is closed, which the exception of the incalculable number of baby guppies headed our way.

And speaking of our new carpets, after breakfast Matt and Joey went downstairs to play, and I followed a few minutes later. When I got into the family room, I noticed what looked like vacuum lines on the carpet. "Wow, did you vacuum?" I asked Matt. "Thanks!"

"No," he said, "I just dragged my feet back and forth on the whole carpet so that it looked like I vacuumed."

He was not kidding. He even demonstrated his method for me.

"What on earth would make you think to do that?" I asked him.

"Well I was sitting here with Joe and realized the carpet is still new enough that it works. It's like our couch. Don't you remember when we first got it, and the material (it's a suede type material) was so new and I wrote 'boob' on the side with my finger?"

I know this will shock you, but I don't have any recollection of Matt writing boob on the side of our couch. I just hope my in-laws didn't see it.

That is really the height of class and sophistication.

Or should I say, the epitome.

animal house

2021-02-15T19:51:00.009-08:00

Well, the last post around here was about Joey being born. We just sent him off to college this weekend, so time sure flies.

Just kidding. But he does turn 18 months old in a few days which means he's no longer my sweet little tiny baby, but instead a toddler who never stops moving and is obsessed with baked beans, his train set, and his grandparents.

My mom says Matt and I have a crush on him, and we totally do. She also says that one of these days the crush will end, but it hasn't so far. Although tonight he told me to "SHH" when I started to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, so that day might be coming sooner rather than later.

Anyway, since my last post was about Joey's arrival, I thought it was only fitting for my return post to be about the newest addition to our little family.

Or, should I say additions.

Let me explain.

A few weeks ago, Joey spent the day at my parents' house because we were getting new carpeting, and he took quite a liking to my dad's beta fish. I mentioned this to Matt, and we talked about the fish for a day or two, and then that was the end of it.

Or so I thought. Until the Fed Ex truck stopped last week and dropped a twenty gallon fish tank on our doorstep.

I didn't know the theme of our week was about to be, go big or go to Petsmart.

Repeatedly.

Matt excitedly brought the tank inside and told me had the perfect spot for it, on the low console table underneath our television. It was almost like for a moment he forgot that we live with a very curious and determined toddler, who would only need about 3 seconds to throw a toy into the tank and/or splash fish water all over our aforementioned brand new carpet.

So Matt carried the tank up to the upstairs bedroom that he is using as a makeshift pandemic office. He filled the tank with water, and after we picked Joey up from daycare, we took a trip to Petsmart to buy our new family members. We chose eight fish and some fancy tank decor, including bright blue stone, some plants, and a very realistic sunken ship to make the fish feel right at home.

Now, I don't necessarily have a background in marine biology. In fact, I have degree in what my dad calls the very lucrative field of English. But I told Matt he needed to float the fish bag on top of the tank and let them acclimate slowly to the water. Matt doesn't have a background in marine biology either, but he used his computer forensics degree to determine my advice was fake news, and dumped the fish right on in.

We went downstairs and then checked on them before bed. Joey excitedly ran right over to the tank to watch them swim around. Just kidding. He gave the tank half a glance, and then handed Matt the laser level so Matt could shine the laser pointer on the rug and Joey could crawl around chasing it and roar like a dinosaur. Listen. When you have a toddler during a long winter and a global pandemic, you get pretty creative with your pastimes. And that happens to be one of our favorites.

But I looked at the tank while the boys played with the laser and growled, and everything appeared to be going swimmingly. Sadly things changed overnight, because Matt took Joey upstairs to feed the fish the next morning, and walked back downstairs and said, "Well, they're all dead."

HATE TO SAY I TOLD YOU SO.

That afternoon, we made the drive of shame back to Petsmart. We decided that if the same employee was working at the fish tanks, we would just breeze right back out the door and try again another day. But as luck would (or wouldn't) have it, it was a different employee. We got four fish, and when we paid, the cashier asked me if I would like a bag. "No thanks," I told her, "this one will be fine."

Spoiler alert. It was not fine.

Hindsight is a plastic shopping bag.

We headed back home and I held the fish on my lap. I even took their photo as we drove, those little fish were safe with me!

We pulled into the driveway, and Matt got Joey out of his car seat. I stood on the driveway with my fish bag, looking at the snow that had fallen the day before and thinking about how I heard someone say that it was so cold outside the snow was actually squeaky. I thought about other words I would use to describe freezing cold snow, and it was at that moment my English major heart betrayed my marine biology one, because I heard a splash at my feet. I HAD DROPPED THE BAG OF FISH.

Matt immediately jumped into action, which was good because I was kind of shocked and thinking about words I would use to describe cold snow. We managed to scrape three of the poor fish off of the driveway with my Giant keychain bonus card and get them back into the bag, which had popped but had a little water left in it. We couldn't find the fourth fish, and at the moment Matt said, "If he fell into the snow, we are losing time to save him," we saw him under the bottom of my boot.

Well, we saw half of him.

I ran inside (kicked my fish boots off at the door) and dumped the three survivors into a Ziploc bag. Matt took my advice that time, and floated the bag in the tank. We gradually added fish tank water to their bag. We checked the temperature. We sang them lullabies, said a prayer to St. Francis, and went to bed.

Matt headed back up first thing in the morning to check on them. And then came back down with the news, "All three, dead."

Matt immediately ordered a water testing kit from Amazon, because surely the fact that we are amateur fish owners who DROPPED THE FISH ON A FREEZING COLD DRIVEWAY had nothing to do with their demise. When it arrived this weekend he headed up to the tank to test our water. He came back downstairs and said matter of factly, "Well, we have extremely hard water. The fish need it to be 60, and ours measured 180. I think we need to get a whole house water softener. And it just makes sense to replace the water heater at the same time."

That $8.00 water testing kit just cost us just north of two grand.

We should have just gotten a dog, it would have been a fraction of the cost.

My brother, who has had several successful aquariums in his day, suggested that we get a bacteria starter to put in the tank for several days before we add any more fish. So back to Petsmart we went, yet again, to get the bottle of bacteria. I don't know why we had to pay ten dollars for bacteria when I'm pretty sure I could have opened the fridge and found some moldy produce that I bought weeks ago with the best of intentions. But instead we shelled over our cold hard cash and came home and dumped some in.

We figured that had to do the trick. Sadly, when Matt headed upstairs to his office to work this morning, I heard him say, "Oh man, what happened to my fish tank?"

It was so cloudy, it looked like someone had poured a gallon of milk in it. I decided to just hope things worked themselves out, and walked into the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee, where I saw this on the counter. "What's on the blue plate?" I asked Matt.

"Oh that?" he said, "it's just a sugar cake that I'm making for my bees. I think they're about to run out of honey and this will give them the carbs they need to make it through the winter. I have to keep adding layers every few hours so don't touch it."

Did I mention we have also gotten a bee hive?

And people say kids are high maintenance.

oh baby darling

2019-10-15T18:48:00.003-07:00

Well, I'm back and I have a baby.

Joseph Matthew was born on August 21st at 11:23 pm. He was 6 pounds, 14 ounces, 19 1/2 inches long, and absolutely perfect.

Having a baby is funny because the moment the baby is born and they put him in your arms, the nurses start asking you all kinds of questions about him as if you should know the answers. At one point I actually thought to myself, "it really seems like they should be asking his mom these questions" and then it dawned on me that I AM THE MOM.

It was a strange feeling because part of me felt like I had no idea what I was doing, and part of me felt like I had known him forever.

Speaking of strange, babies have a strange life. Joey had a doctor's appointment last Monday, and he was asleep when we left our house. He didn't wake up until we got to the office, and when he did, he screamed his head off. Could you even imagine going to sleep in your house, fully clothed, and waking up completely naked on the scale in your doctor's office? I would cry too.

Joey's birth was fairly uneventful by textbook standards, but as far as my standards, it was arguably the biggest event of my life.

I was due on Saturday, August 17th.

Saturday came and went. No baby.

Sunday came and went. No baby.

You know how people say there are things they want to ask God when they die? The first question on my list would be why did you make pregnancy 40 weeks instead of 38? The very beginning was tough for me, but weeks 14 to 38 were a total breeze (and for that I am SO thankful). However. Weeks 38 to 40 were the absolute longest of my life.

(In case you're curious, the second question I would ask is can you please point me towards the scientist who invented the epidural? I would like to thank them.)

Anyway, Monday came around and I had a doctor's appointment at 4 pm. The doctor basically said take your time packing that bag and scheduled an induction for 8 DAYS LATER.

But, when I was getting ready for bed that night, I noticed my back hurt worse than normal. I didn't think much of it until I noticed that the pain was coming and going, and it was pretty bad. I expected labor pain to be in my stomach area since that's where the baby was located. Up until that moment I was blissfully unaware of the torture that is back labor.

I tried to sleep Monday night but wasn't very successful. After tossing and turning all night, I finally got up at 4 am and laid on the couch. Matt also got up, put on his new shirt that he had been saving for delivery day, called out of work, packed his bag, and made a big batch of french toast. All before the sun rose.

I called the on call doctor, but since the contractions weren't yet 4 minutes apart, the doctor said I couldn't come to the hospital. Monday was brutal. Monday night was even worse and Tuesday was worse yet. I felt like I was going out of my mind. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't stay still. I could hardly eat. Tuesday night I was in absolute agony, so I called my doctor's office when they opened at 9 am Wednesday morning. I asked to speak to a nurse and I think she heard the tears and desperation in my voice because she said in a calming, soothing voice, "Why don't you head on over to triage?"

We were on our way within ten minutes. All along my plan had been to vacuum the house right before we left for the hospital, because everyone knows newborns care deeply about clean carpets, but my beloved Dyson didn't even enter my mind at that point.

We got to triage and it just so happened my favorite doctor was on call. He examined me and made me walk the halls for an hour and when he finally said he was going to admit me, I shed a few tears of sheer relief.

We got all set up in the delivery room and I got an epidural toot suite because I was not trying to be a hero. Our nurse was named Octavia and I LOVED her. She asked me if I was hungry and I said yes, because all I'd had to eat in the last 24 hours was a piece of toast and a turkey corn dog, and oh yeah, about one hour of sleep.

Well, according to Octavia those aren't prime conditions under which to deliver a baby, so she brought me a tray filled to the brim with jello, water ice, and chicken broth and told me to EAT UP AND TAKE A NAP.

Once I got the epidural, I felt exactly NOTHING. It was glorious. Matt went to the pizza place down the road and brought back dinner for himself, and I sipped my broth and we watched the Phillies game and took some cat naps. It was actually kind of fun and relaxing. Until I remembered "Oh yea, I actually have to deliver a baby at some point."

I won't get into the nitty gritty details, but once they broke my water, things started moving quickly.

I had given Matt strict instructions before we arrived at the hospital that I wanted him to stay well north of the border, if you know what I mean. Well, Octavia really threw a wrench into my plans when she said, "Okay Dad, come on down here and hold Mom's leg."

Octavia! Couldn't you station him well north of that area and have him focus on something totally nondescript like my ear or my elbow?

I will never forget the look on Matt's face as his eyes darted between me and Octavia. Who was he supposed to listen to?! In the end he followed Octavia's directions, and that was probably good because, as he said, "Octavia and I basically delivered that baby ourselves."

He's not kidding. Despite running on just a corn dog and some jello, I only pushed for twelve minutes and my doctor didn't even make it to the room for the delivery. An OB resident whose name I don't even know technically delivered Joseph. At least that's what they told me. Part of me thinks they just said on the intercom "Anyone with an M.D. please come to labor and delivery STAT." It could have been a podiatrist for all I knew and I'll tell you what, at that point, I did not care.

The resident was also about 25 years old which felt slightly weird to me. There are two professions where I want the people to be well into their 40s, and preferably in their 50s. And those professions are my OB/GYN and airline pilots.

Anyway after twelve minutes, thanks to a young podiatrist, a corn dog, and an oxygen mask, Joseph was born.

One minute he wasn't there, and the next moment, there he was. The little baby that I dreamed about for the last nine months and in many ways my entire life, and suddenly he was laying on my chest, looking up at me with his big, dark eyes.

It probably sounds cheesy but I loved him the minute I saw him and I love him more every day. I am so excited to get up every morning and take care of him.

Matt was home for two weeks after Joseph was born, and I don't know what I would have done without him. He made sure I ate three meals a day for two weeks. He would take my breakfast order every night and when I woke up in the morning, he would have cooked whatever I asked for. He changed more diapers than I did. We spent hours just staring at Joey and talking about him nonstop. I didn't know you could spend your entire day talking about a baby who pretty much sleeps, but we did. At night we would sit on the couch and watch The Office and pass Joey back and forth, back and forth. It was like a little dream world.

And then Matt had to go back to work.

We had a few rocky days to start as we figured things out. One day I sat on the couch and pretty much one or both of us cried. I had to call my mom with an SOS and she came to save the day and hold a crying baby so I could shower.

But now, almost two months in, we have totally gotten into our groove. I know what Joey likes and doesn't like and he has started smiling and engaging and I just talk to him all day long. It's a great setup because I love to hear myself talk and he is a captive audience.

The three of us have lots of adventures ahead. And if the future is anything like the last 8 weeks, it's going to be pretty great.

if you come over for dinner, i promise not to serve broccoli normandy

2019-06-27T19:44:00.003-07:00

When I was in seventh grade, my class went on a field trip. On the ride back to school, the boys in the back of the bus got a hold of the first aid kit and blew up the rubber gloves like balloons.

When our teacher discovered the glove balloons, she taped them to the chalkboard and told us we all had to stay at school until the offenders came clean. My classmates didn't seem concerned about the prospect of staying past dismissal, but I was not happy because I was lieutenant of the safety patrol, and the rest of the school relied on me and my neon orange safety belt and official lieutenant badge to make it through dismissal.

Fun fact, lieutenant of the safety patrol was the one and only position I've ever run for in my whole life.

That's right. I ran and was elected to be lieutenant of the St. David School safety patrol. Make no mistake, I didn't run for captain. Too much responsibility. Put me second in command and I'm a happy girl.

Anyway, it didn't take long until the culprits came clean and admitted to their role in blowing up the rubber gloves.

I tell that story because I got home from work today, sat down, and could not believe my eyes when I saw the situation south of my knees.

Yikes.

My feet looked just like those rubber glove balloons. Round and puffy with my poor vienna sausage toes sticking off the end. I've never had well defined calves, but everything from my knee to my toes had the same circumference, and the spot where my ankles used to be was replaced with rolls. My feet even jiggled when I walked.

There are a lot of perks to having a best friend experience pregnancy at the same time as you, so I texted Michelle to tell her about my feet because I knew she could empathize. "Send me a pic!" she said. Michelle is a nurse so I figured she would tell me if the situation appeared medically alarming, so I put my pride aside and sent her a photo. She texted back that Jessica Simpson had the worst swollen pregnant feet ever.

I went about my lounging and my phone rang about an hour later. It was Michelle. "No seriously, how bad are your feet really?" she said.

"You saw the pic!" I told her. "

WAIT, THOSE WERE YOUR FEET?" she said.

She thought I had googled a photo of Jessica Simpson's feet and sent that.

Oh no. Nope. Sad to say I'm the proud owner of those giant Flintstone feet.

And that's why for the last three hours I've been sitting in the recliner with two bags of frozen broccoli normandy on my feet.

Well, that's not completely true. I did get up once to go upstairs and when I got there, I launched into a diatribe for poor, unsuspecting Matt about how unfair it is that the electrical outlet on my side of the bed has all of the community items, like the lamp and the sleep number bed and the fan and IT IS SO UNFAIR THAT I HAVE TO UNPLUG SOMETHING IF I WANT TO CHARGE MY PHONE AND WHY AM I IN CHARGE OF ALL THE COMMUNITY ITEMS ON MY SIDE WHEN YOU HAVE NOTHING ON YOUR SIDE BUT YOUR PHONE CHARGER?

I'm going to blame the state of my feet and the electrical outlet outburst on the 90 degree weather and the end of a very long week. I'm so glad that tomorrow is Friday. We don't have any big plans for the weekend, but I think I may go buy an extension cord.

And ice packs.

And some new frozen vegetables.

so sunday wasn't our best day

2019-06-06T17:32:00.000-07:00

People have asked me if I've had any pregnancy cravings yet, and I don't really think I have, but I have been an exceptionally big fan of fruit. Grapes, cherries, apples, and strawberries have been my staples, but I got a watermelon at the store on Sunday afternoon and by last night I had eaten THE ENTIRE WATERMELON.

All by myself.

In three days.

In addition to the watermelon, I also got green bell peppers and white nectarines at the store. When I got to the register, the cashier was a teenage boy, probably about 16 or so. He picked up the nectarines and punched in the number on the sticker. Then he did a double take at the bag filled with red fruit. "Are these really white nectarines?" he asked. "Yep, they are," I said.

"Weird," he shrugged, "they sure don't look white to me."

I explained that the fruit inside is white, hence the name, and I thought about how proud Matt would be because he comes from a long line of men in the produce business. I am not joking. His grandfather made a career of owning his very own produce business, and when he retired Matt's dad ran the business for many years.

While Matt doesn't work in the produce world himself, he carries on the family tradition by intensely analyzing every fruit and vegetable we buy. When we go food shopping together I immediately hightail it straight to dairy so I am not seen with him as he heartily slaps and smacks the melons and sniffs all of the pineapples until he is on the verge of passing out.

Anyway, back to the cashier. He said, "Okay, I trust you." (As if I would try to commit some sort of tricky nectarine switcharoo). "You know, I don't really know much about produce. I don't eat many fruits and vegetables, and my mom does our food shopping."

And then he keyed in the green bell peppers, and looked at me and said with all the seriousness in the world, "What do you think would happen if you got a job naming produce, but you were color blind?"

Listen, I did my very best to keep a straight, serious face, but I'm not sure how successful I was. I managed to tell him I didn't know if that would be a very good job for someone who is colorblind, and he agreed.

It reminded me of the time I was in high school, and I asked my family what would happen if an all boys school decided to perform Annie as their annual musical. That was at LEAST 16 years ago and I have yet to live it down.

Later Sunday evening Matt and I were sitting on the patio. A big storm passed through, but as the skies cleared, I heard the owls hooting with enthusiasm.

"Wow," I said to Matt, "that storm really brought out the owls."

"What?" he said.

"The owls! Don't you hear them all woo woo-ing?"

"Well I hear that sound," he said, "but those are mourning doves."

Well. I have been living an ornithological lie for 30 years. I pulled up a YouTube video hanging onto a sliver of hope that a video of a mourning dove would prove Matt wrong, but it didn't.

After my world was turned upside down, we went inside for some ice cream.

"Wait until you see what kind of concoction I make tonight," Matt said, and then proudly announced "I'm making a neopolitan!"

"But we don't have strawberry ice cream," I said.

"So? My neopolitan is going to be chocolate chip cookie dough, peanut butter cup, and vanilla."

And it was then that Matt learned he too had been living a lie for 30 years, except his was in the dairy department. He thought neopolitan just meant three flavors of ice cream in one bowl. Any three.

I wished we could have invited the grocery store cashier over for a neopolitan and some nectarines. I guarantee the three of us could have solved some major world problems.

Or maybe not.

But I do guarantee Matt would have picked the three best nectarines in the produce section.

anyone want a free chicken?

2019-04-11T19:55:00.000-07:00

Well it's the second time in two weeks that I'm writing a post that centers around the bathroom habits of animals. Rest assured that no one is more disturbed by this turn of events than I am. First it was Pearl, and now, chickens.

Let me back up. A few weeks ago, we got four new baby chicks. They were a day old when we got them and as adorable and tiny and cuddly as anything can possibly be. We played with them for a while, and then got them all settled into their luxury living quarters, aka a big Rubbermaid container in our garage. We plugged in their heat lamp to keep them at a balmy 95 degrees, and shut the door.

I had off the next day so I stayed up a little bit later than usual, and before I headed up to bed at about 11:30, I peeked into the garage to check on the chicks, only to see that their heat lamp had burned out and they were all piled on top of one another, shivering their little tail feathers off.

Naturally, I did what any farmer does in this situation. I went upstairs and woke Matt up, and he drove his F-150 to the 24 hour Walmart just like our forefathers.

In the meantime, I brought the Rubbermaid into the family room. I parked it next to a space heater and filled a container with hot water so they could gather around it.

While the chicks and I had our midnight bonding time, I decided to name them Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy after the Little Women, four of my other favorite chicks.

Eventually Matt came home with a new heat lamp and we turned their Rubbermaid into a sauna once again, but we did decide to leave them in the family room because it's still cold at night here and the garage gets very chilly.

And now two weeks later, the chickens still live in our family room. They are entertaining to watch, and are living up to their names. Meg is firm but calm. Jo is wild and slightly aggressive. Beth hangs back and observes. Amy likes to be the center of attention and I even caught her the other night sleeping with a clothespin on her beak to make it extra pointy.

Just kidding about that last part.

Anyway, I left the house around 8:30 yesterday for some meetings. I got home at about 2:30, and went straight upstairs to my office to finish a few things. I shut 'er down around 4:30, and headed outside to bring in the trashcans since it was trash day. I went downstairs so I could go out through the garage door, and it was the first time I'd gone downstairs, and therefore the first time I'd seen the chicks, all day.

And do you know what greeted me when I walked down the steps?

A sight I won't soon forget.

Jo was sitting OUTSIDE OF THE CONTAINER. And there was chicken poop ALL OVER THE RUG.

That's a guilty looking chicken if I ever saw one.

You can see that we did have chicken wire over the top of the container, but Jo had managed to make her great escape and left of her day of adventure all over our family room rug.

TYPICAL JO.

Do you know how many times baby chicks poop every day? I can tell you, it's A LOT.

I wanted to cry. And I'll be honest, for a few seconds I actually thought about turning around and going upstairs and pretending like I didn't see a thing, and let Farmer Matt discover the situation for himself when he got home.

But I ended up putting Jo back in the box, and then I sprayed the whole carpet with a liberal dose of carpet cleaner, donned some gloves, and scrubbed my heart and my frustrations out.

I got it cleaned up, but I have the day off tomorrow so I am going to do another round of scrubbing just for peace of mind.

I'm trying to find the silver lining here, and I will say that after a long winter of mud and snow and a house renovation, the rug needed a deep cleaning anyway.

And I need chocolate.

obviously matt's going to be the parent who helps with the science homework

2019-04-10T13:22:00.001-07:00

Well here I am to write about something that happened two weeks ago. But if feels like a big deal and in 15 years I might want to look back and remember that day. This blog has come in handy for historical documentation so many times. Just this week Matt pondered how old our chickens were when we put them outside in the coop a few years ago and in just an instant I was able to pull up the blog post I wrote about it and tell him the date.

So anyway, way back on March 29th, we had my anatomy ultrasound.

The ultrasound wasn't until 3:15, but Matt and I both took the entire day off work, and were still up at the crack of dawn because BIG DAY. Matt spread lawn food on the grass, I cleaned the bathrooms, we went to the courthouse so Matt could pick up a permit, we went to the furniture store to pick up our new dining table set, and we went to Ollie's to buy a rug. All before lunchtime. After lunch we just aimlessly wandered around the house and the yard and killed time until the clock fiiiiiiiinally struck 2:40 and we headed for the hospital.

The ultrasound took about 45 minutes and the baby looked perfect, coming in at about 10 ounces and 10 inches.

A perfect 10.

During the ultrasound, the tech asked if we had any questions and here is where Matt and I differ. He asked if the scientific purpose of the gel was to assist with the transmission of the ultrasound waves.

I asked if the umbilical cord connected the baby's belly button to my belly button.

Actually I waited until the tech left the room for a minute to show the doctor the ultrasound results, and I just floated that question out to Matt and THANK GOODNESS I WAITED UNTIL WE WERE ALONE. He said, "Well that is an absolutely ridiculous question."

Also, the answer to it is NO.

The tech came back in, told us the doctor said the baby looks perfect, and we asked her if she could tell us the gender. Based on my question above, it should come as no surprise to you that I have always assumed that I will have a baby girl, because I am a girl. I understand that biologically if that were true, the human race wouldn't be long for this world. But in my head, I always figured, I'm a girl, I'll have a girl.

So imagine my surprise when the tech moved the wand around a little bit, studied the screen, and said, "It looks like you're having a boy!"

A baby boy.

We are thrilled. We told our families and then went out to dinner to celebrate. We also took our first family selfie.

While we were at dinner we talked all about HIM and what our life will look like with a son. We really have zero idea what we're in for but Matt has three brothers and proclaimed confidently that he knows EVERY SINGLE THING there is to know about raising boys. I'm writing that statement down to memorialize it so that I can pull up this blog post when that boy is inconsolable at 4 a.m. or drives the car into the side of the garage or fails music listening class in college, not that either of his parents have ever done those things.

We finished up the baby registry this week, so that was fun. I gave it a final once over this morning and look what I found.

Looks like Matt had been adding some things of his own.

I know he already knows everything about raising boys, but I hope he knows that he won't be able to use that for about 17 years.

show us your books: april edition

2019-04-09T06:31:00.004-07:00

Well just like that it's time again for Show Us Your Books with Steph and Jana. I have four to share this month!

First up is Go Ask Ali by Ali Wentworth.

At once endearing and hilarious, thoughtful and far-fetched, this third collection offers Ali at her wisest and wittiest as she delivers tips, pointers, and quips on a host of life’s conundrums and sticky situations, including the funny, sometimes embarrassing yet unforgettable situations that have shaped her inimitable world view as a wife, mother, actress, comedian, and all around bon vivant. Thoroughly entertaining, Go Ask Ali is packed with thoughts and musings from "the girlfriend you want to have a glass of wine with, the one who makes you laugh because she sees the funny and the absurd in everything"

I read Ali Wentorth's book Happily Ali After last year, and I HOWLED with laughter. This one was fine, but wasn't nearly as laugh out loud funny. She does have a funny take on things, which I love. Ali Wentworth is married to George Stephanopoulos and whether or not you agree with his political opinions, he sounds like a great husband. A lot of comedians use their marriage and their spouse as the butt of mean-spirited jokes which I think is a real bummer. Even when Ali is writing funny stories about her husband or her marriage, it's good-natured and respectful, and I really enjoyed that. And that's not fake news.

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Next up, One Day In December.

Laurie is pretty sure love at first sight doesn't exist anywhere but the movies. But then, through a misted-up bus window one snowy December day, she sees a man who she knows instantly is the one. Their eyes meet, there's a moment of pure magic...and then her bus drives away.

Certain they're fated to find each other again, Laurie spends a year scanning every bus stop and cafe in London for him. But she doesn't find him, not when it matters anyway. Instead they "reunite" at a Christmas party, when her best friend Sarah giddily introduces her new boyfriend to Laurie. It's Jack, the man from the bus. It would be.

What follows for Laurie, Sarah and Jack is ten years of friendship, heartbreak, missed opportunities, roads not taken, and destinies reconsidered. One Day in December is a joyous, heartwarming and immensely moving love story to escape into and a reminder that fate takes inexplicable turns along the route to happiness.

I have been on the library waiting list for so long that I'd forgotten I even requested this book until I got the text message that it was ready for pick-up. I started one night after dinner and before I knew it I was up way past my bedtime weighing the pros and cons of staying up until I finished the entire thing. I ended up reading it over the course of a few days, but I was constantly looking for ten minutes here or there where I could get a chapter or two in. I got totally sucked into the story from the very beginning, and I really liked the characters. I didn't always agree with the decisions that they made, and it sure made me glad my love life was never even close to being this complicated, but I'd recommend it for sure.

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The third book of the month was Upstairs at the White House: My Life with the First Ladies.

J. B. West, chief usher of the White House, directed the operations and maintenance of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue—and coordinated its daily life—at the request of the president and his family. He directed state functions; planned parties, weddings and funerals, gardens and playgrounds, and extensive renovations; and, with a large staff, supervised every activity in the presidential home. For twenty-eight years, first as assistant to the chief usher, then as chief usher, he witnessed national crises and triumphs, and interacted daily with six consecutive presidents and first ladies, as well as their parents, children and grandchildren, and houseguests—including friends, relatives, and heads of state.

This was my favorite book this month. Sarah recommended it years ago and I've been waiting and waiting for my library system to get it and they finally did. It's written by the man who was chief usher at the White House from 1941 to 1969. I LOVED it. He writes about the first ladies, and shares little stories about them, their quirks, personalities, and their interactions with staff and the presidents. He goes into detail about preparing for state dinners, and changing the White House over when administrations changed, about hosting guests in the residence and the first ladies' favorite hobbies and foods, and their involvement in the daily workings of the White House and the presidency. It was fascinating. It wasn't at all political, as the author said, he didn't respect one person or party more than another, he respected the office of the President of the United States. I feel like an insider now on the inner workings of the White House. Highly recommend this one!

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The final book I read was The Elephant in the Room,

The government definition of obesity is a body mass index of 30 or more. My BMI is 60.7. My shirts are size XXXXXXL, which the big-and-tall stores shorten to 6X. I’m 6-foot-1, or 73 inches tall. My waist is 60 inches around. I’m nearly a sphere.

Those are the numbers. This is how it feels…

So begins The Elephant in the Room, Tommy Tomlinson’s remarkably intimate and insightful memoir of his life as a fat man. When he was almost fifty years old, Tomlinson weighed an astonishing—and dangerous—460 pounds, at risk for heart disease, diabetes, and stroke, unable to climb a flight of stairs without having to catch his breath, or travel on an airplane without buying two seats. Raised in a family that loved food, he had been aware of the problem for years, seeing doctors and trying diets from the time he was a preteen. But nothing worked, and every time he tried to make a change, it didn’t go the way he planned—in fact, he wasn’t sure that he really wanted to change.

In The Elephant in the Room, Tomlinson chronicles his lifelong battle with weight in a voice that combines the urgency of Roxane Gay’s Hunger with the intimacy of Rick Bragg’s All Over but the Shoutin’. He also hits the road to meet other members of the plus-sized tribe in an attempt to understand how, as a nation, we got to this point. From buying a FitBit and setting exercise goals to contemplating the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas, America’s “capital of food porn,” and modifying his own diet, Tomlinson brings us along on a candid and sometimes brutal look at the everyday experience of being constantly aware of your size. Over the course of the book, he confronts these issues head-on and chronicles the practical steps he has to take—big and small—to lose weight by the end.

I picked this up after I read about it on Michelle's blog. It's written by a columnist who has struggled with obesity his entire life. While his isn't a struggle I've had personal experience with, I found his story compelling. I LOVED his writing style. It was easy to read but he wrote with a lot of emotion and his writing was so genuine, honest, and vulnerable. He loves his family so much and wrote about them all so kindly. Michelle said she felt a lot of compassion when she read this and wanted to hug him, and I concur.

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That's it for me this month! I love to read everyone's book posts with my library website open in another tab so I can make my requests! What do you recommend?

i feel like these two photos sum up my philosophy on excercise

2019-03-29T19:00:00.000-07:00

I opened my email today to find this, an email from the Map My Run app congratulating me on having the app for four years.

Well, the promise of seeing all that I've accomplished was too great a temptation to ignore. So I kept scrolling down to see my stats. Get ready...

8 workouts.

In four years.

An average of 2.5 miles once every six months.

And I know the app is called Map My Run but I most certainly assure you that I did not run one time during any of those many workouts. If they had an app called Map My Neighborhood Stroll, I would have downloaded that.

I can't wait to see where I'll be in four more years! For now, I'm off to make a bowl of ice cream. I think the walk to the kitchen is at least 45 steps. I should map that run.

when nature calls in the middle of petsmart. alternately titled: i am never getting a dog

2019-03-27T19:40:00.004-07:00

It's been a while since I've mentioned my mom and dad's dog, Pearl.

Pearl is two now. She is like a dog from a movie with a personality I really cannot accurately describe in words, but let's just say that when I imagine what goes on in Pearl's mind, it is ALL IN CAPITAL LETTERS WITH LOTS OF EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!!

Pearl is an English Springer Spaniel. She's a beautiful dog, super smart and very strong.

I feel like I'm writing her profile for a dating website. She likes long walks on the beach and romantic comedies.

Pearl also has anxiety and when I fed her dinner tonight I had to squeeze five drops of hemp oil onto her Purina. She loves to find treasures. She almost always brings a treasure home from a walk. She's not picky. It could be a napkin, a glove, a plastic bag, a rock. Whatever she can find on the sidewalk. One time my parents let her out into the backyard and she proudly pranced back to the door with a frozen rabbit in her mouth.

Pearl is crazy about my mom. But she is OBSESSED with my dad. He works from home so the two of them spend a lot of time together, and she wants to be on top of him at all times. Literally. I was at their house one time and he couldn't even tie his shoes because she was sitting on his feet.

She isn't supposed to go upstairs, but if she knows someone is up there and she is downstairs, her heart breaks and she lets you know it. There was a time when my mom, in order to go upstairs in peace, put Pearl in the kitchen and then walked out the garage door so Pearl would think she was leaving the house. And then she walked around the house, came back in the front door, which was out of Pearl's line of vision, and snuck upstairs.

My mom is sick today, and my dad was out of town for work. My mom dropped Pearl off at doggy day camp this morning and I offered to go pick her up this afternoon. Pearl LOVES doggy day camp. She loves it so much that she was banned from puppy playtime for about a year because, get this, TOO FRIENDLY. She didn't pick up on the social cues the other dogs gave when they didn't want to play with her anymore. They would try to send the message that they weren't interested in playing but NEVERTHELESS, SHE PERSISTED. And then nevertheless she got sent to solitary confinement until she could mature.

She was recently allowed to rejoin puppy playtime and so far she's managed to control herself.

When I got to Petsmart to pick Pearl up, the woman working said "Have you ever seen her in action during playtime?" I told I hadn't and she said, "She's really matured a lot. We had to pull her out for a while but she's gotten a lot better. Although she does get time outs eventually."

And at that moment I heard the sound of a dog slamming itself against the door, and turns out it was Pearl. She was ALL CAPS SO EXCITED!!!!

I don't know if she thinks she's going on some grand adventure as opposed to home, but she gets so excited to go anywhere. She practically strangles herself on her leash. One time my dad dropped her off at doggy daycamp and they didn't want to let her in because they said it sounded like she had kennel cough. My dad tried to tell them it was just that she was straining herself on her leash, and then took her to the vet for the official diagnosis of strained larynx due to excessive leash excitement.

Anyway, the man escorting Pearl handed over the reins (or leash, but really, she needs reins) and said, "She had a great day. No time outs. Three urinations. No bowel movements."

For a second I thought I time traveled ahead a year and was picking my actual child up from daycare as opposed to old Pearl from Petsmart.

As I led her to the door, she smelled every single shelf we passed, jumped on two people, and then.

Then.

Then we got about fifteen feet from the front door. Right in front of the registers, where there were two lines of people staring straight at us.

And nature called.

Pearl squatted right down to do her business. And by business, I mean we could now put the bowel movement count for the day at one. Also, I don't want to get too graphic here, but she's not a stationary squatter. No. She walks and goes, leaving a smelly trail in her wake.

I. Was. Mortified.

I had to ask the cashier if she had anything I could use to clean up and she handed me a plastic bag and roll of paper towels. While I knelt down to clean it up, Pearl was back to her normal looney toon self, running circles around me and bouncing amongst her many piles of...evidence.

I got it cleaned up, and one of us had our tail between our legs as we walked out of that store and here's a hint, IT WASN'T PEARL.

So, the moral of the story is that I hope Pearl's new family finds her as charming as we did.

Just kidding. I brought her home, fed her dinner, squeezed her hemp oil on her dinner to help with her stress and anxiety and really considered taking some for myself.

A small glimpse of guilt.

I really could have used it because I drove to my own house expecting peace and calmness, only to find Matt on the back stoop with a chicken submerged in a five gallon bucket of warm water as he tried to alleviate her situation of being egg bound.

Please don't ask me for details on that. I can't even talk about it.

And guess what's coming to our house tomorrow? Four baby chicks.

Just call me the reluctant Dr. Doolittle.

show us your books - march

2019-03-11T19:45:00.001-07:00

Well since I've finally returned from falling off the face of the earth, I'm excited to share book posts with Steph and Jana again!

The first book I read was Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult. I've been on the waiting list for a long time and it was finally my turn. I was hooked immediately and this was most definitely a page-turner, and extremely thought-provoking. As a paralegal I find stories about trials and courtrooms fascinating, so I loved this book for that aspect as well.

Ruth Jefferson is a labor and delivery nurse at a Connecticut hospital with more than twenty years’ experience. During her shift, Ruth begins a routine checkup on a newborn, only to be told a few minutes later that she’s been reassigned to another patient. The parents are white supremacists and don’t want Ruth, who is African American, to touch their child. The hospital complies with their request, but the next day, the baby goes into cardiac distress while Ruth is alone in the nursery. Does she obey orders or does she intervene?

Ruth hesitates before performing CPR and, as a result, is charged with a serious crime. Kennedy McQuarrie, a white public defender, takes her case but gives unexpected advice: Kennedy insists that mentioning race in the courtroom is not a winning strategy. Conflicted by Kennedy’s counsel, Ruth tries to keep life as normal as possible for her family—especially her teenage son—as the case becomes a media sensation. As the trial moves forward, Ruth and Kennedy must gain each other’s trust, and come to see that what they’ve been taught their whole lives about others—and themselves—might be wrong.

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Next up was another library wait list book, Where the Crawdads Sing. I think I'm the last person in the world to read it and I loved it just as much as I hoped it would. Thanks to a snow day and a late night I read this one in 48 hours. First of all, the writing was absolutely beautiful. It was almost poetic. The descriptions of the back bays and marshes where the story is set were so vivid that it was almost like the setting was it's very own character in the story. And the story was fantastic. I had a few theories bout the ending but the actual ending threw me for a loop! This book also also features a trial, which my legal mind loved.

For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life--until the unthinkable happens.

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I also read The Woman in Cabin 10. Sometimes I'm in the mood for a good thriller, and this hit the spot. Although I went into it thinking it was going to be about a cabin in the woods, and it was about a cabin on a cruise ship, I still enjoyed it. It didn't hold a candle to the writing in Crawdads, but it passed time on a rainy weekend just fine. Again, I was SHOCKED at the ending. I need to just stop trying to guess how books will end.

Lo Blacklock, a journalist who writes for a travel magazine, has just been given the assignment of a lifetime: a week on a luxury cruise with only a handful of cabins. The sky is clear, the waters calm, and the veneered, select guests jovial as the exclusive cruise ship, the Aurora, begins her voyage in the picturesque North Sea. At first, Lo’s stay is nothing but pleasant: the cabins are plush, the dinner parties are sparkling, and the guests are elegant. But as the week wears on, frigid winds whip the deck, gray skies fall, and Lo witnesses what she can only describe as a dark and terrifying nightmare: a woman being thrown overboard. The problem? All passengers remain accounted for—and so, the ship sails on as if nothing has happened, despite Lo’s desperate attempts to convey that something (or someone) has gone terribly, terribly wrong…

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And because the first three books I read were on the more intense side of things, I decided to even things out a bit with an Elin Hilderbrand. If you're looking to read a fantastic book that will change your life, don't pick this up. If you're looking to read a light novel set on Nantucket (of course) with several love stories, a wedding that almost isn't, a widower, a secret relationship, an affair, high school sweethearts, a perfect couple, and a groomsman going into anaphalctic shock at the rehearsal dinner from a previously undiscovered shellfish allergy (don't worry he's fine) then this is the book for you.

The Carmichaels and the Grahams have gathered on Nantucket for a happy occasion: a wedding that will unite their two families. Plans are being made according to the wishes of the bride's late mother, who left behind The Notebook: specific instructions for every detail of her youngest daughter's future nuptials. Everything should be falling into place for the beautiful event -- but in reality, things are falling apart.

While the couple-to-be are quite happy, their loved ones find their lives crumbling. In the days leading up to the wedding, love will be questioned, scandals will arise, and hearts will be broken and healed. Elin Hilderbrand takes readers on a touching journey in Beautiful Day -- into the heart of marriage, what it means to be faithful, and how we choose to honor our commitments.

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What did your read this month? I'm always looking for suggestions to add to my library request list!

all i'm saying is, the dining room better be finished by august

2019-03-01T09:38:00.003-08:00

For eight years, I've written hundreds of posts on this blog about absolutely nothing. I thought maybe I'd finally run out of ways to make my mundane life seems humorous and worth writing and reading about, and that it might be time to hanging up the proverbial blogging hat.

And then things got interesting around here and I finally have some material again.

We are in the midst of another home renovation, this time the dining room. The progress is, not fast. Matt and I are one week away from our fifth wedding anniversary, and if we don't make it, it will be because of this dining room.

We have four baby chicks arriving on March 26th.

And oh yeah, I'm having a baby.

Oh baby Darling is set to arrive on or about August 17th. I know you're not supposed to share your birthday wishes, but when I blew out my 30th birthday candles on August 18th, I wished this would be the year, and now I'm due the day before I turn 31.

So that's really been the main thing that been keeping me preoccupied and/or asleep for the last three months. I'm easing back into this blogging thing, so instead of paragraphs and a narrative structure, let's go with bullet points:

- For the better part of December, and all of January, the smell, thought, or sight of most food made me nauseous. I don't think I will ever eat the following foods again: chicken breast, fried onions, stir-fry, cranberry juice, and eggs. Which is unfortunate because did you read that part above about how we are getting four new chickens? The MVP of those weeks was toast with peanut butter and banana. Sometimes it was the only thing I ate for days. Since thinking about eating made me sick, I wouldn't eat, and then being hungry would make me feel sick. Reading made me sick, showering made me sick, sewing made me sick, even driving sometimes made me sick and if a truck that smelled strongly of exhaust passed by me, FORGET IT. There were lots of mornings that I got out of bed, showered, and got right back in bed thinking WHY WOULD ANYONE EVER WANT A SECOND CHILD?

I think that part is beyond me now because with the exception of the aforementioned list, here is my current motto about food: BRING IT ON.

Also, it's hard to believe that I only felt crummy for maybe two months tops, because it felt like years. Longest two months of my life. To women who are sick for nine whole months, I don't know how you survive.

- I still take a nap almost every evening. This is how my Fitbit looks.

- I went to the doctor last week and she asked if I had any questions. I had two, but I only asked one (which was how dangerous is lunch meat REALLY?). I don't want her to think I am vain so I skipped my second question, which was, "When does the pregnancy glow arrive?" because I have never looked worse in my entire life. One day my hair is coarse and wiry, and the next it looks like I've doused it with olive oil. My lips are dry and cracking no matter how much water I drink and Aquaphor I use. And my skin. Oh Lord, my skin. My complexion would never have won any awards, but it's never been worse than it has recently. Last weekend my three year old niece asked me why I have so many boo boos on my face. I've heard girls steal your beauty and if that's the case, this baby is a girl and she's going to be Miss America, because I look like nine miles of bad road.

- Is there an old wives tale about which gender steals your brain? Because mine has teamed up with my beauty and taken a hike. The other day I went to the Dunkin' Donuts drive thru, ordered my food, got to the window, and when the man told me my total I realized I had nothing with me. No purse. No wallet. No change in my pockets. All I had was my good looks and as I've mentioned, THOSE AREN'T SO GOOD ANYMORE. Other things I've forgotten to do: turn of the gas stove burner, turn off the space heater, pay my Macy's bill, take my insurance card with me when I left the pharmacy, and turn my car off before I walk away from it. More than once.

- I've also been slacking on the household chores, and God bless Matt for not even saying anything when I went to put away laundry and realized he had been fresh out of clean undies for who knows how long, and he said, "It's no problem, I just turned my old pairs inside out and wore them again." I wish I could say that's the first time in our married life that's happened, but it's not. But at least this time I have an excuse.

- The other day I googled "how do you care for a newborn?" because it occurred to me that's something we are going to have to do in a few months. Does someone tell you how often to feed them? And bathe them? And change them? And what temperature should their bedroom be? And how you're supposed to leave the house amidst the whole feeding/napping schedule? I got overwhelmed with the results and figure I'll just call my mom.

- Matt's been googling too, but his searches are far more scientific and not really about things I want to spend lots of time discussing. Don't talk to me about a water birth. I want to be on a bed pumped up with as many drugs as they'll give me. Matt also asks me questions as if I am a baby expert. I immediately google the question and then nonchalantly respond like OF COURSE I have the knowledge stored in my head of when babies can start eating applesauce, and why they can breathe in fluid right now, but once they're born, can't breathe underwater.

- So far I'm still wearing all my normal clothes, but I'll be honest, I wrestled myself into a pair of dress pants today and I didn't think the buttons were going to hang on until 4:00, but they soldiered on. Matt said he hoped the hydraulic pressure didn't affect the shape of the baby's head. THANKS FOR GIVING ME SOMETHING ELSE TO WORRY ABOUT MATT.

- In all honesty, we don't feel that worried or anxious about this whole thing. Which is unusual because normally, if there's something to worry about, I'll worry. And even if there's not something to worry about, I'll worry. We're just happy. I read the baby's little ears can start to hear this week. I am glad that what he or she has probably heard so far has been a lot of laughter. I hope it makes him or her funny, because I love funny people. And they've also heard some bad singing (I swear I sound just like Carrie Underwood in my head). I'll just have to make sure that from now on, I whisper when I nag about the speed of the dining room progress.

i guess i shouldn't throw stones at goose flutes, since i'm sitting in a glass house wearing ankle suspenders

2018-11-17T07:01:00.002-08:00

Well, hello.

Happy Friday.

I'm in my PJs, enjoying a fire, and listening to the melodic notes of a goose flute.

If you think that last part is a joke, you must be new around here.

The Amazon truck pulled up around dinnertime. I didn't know we were expecting a package until Matt said, "Oh awesome! I bet that's the goose flute I overnighted!"

On the off chance you're not currently in the market for a goose flute, the going price for one is about twenty dollars. Since Amazon requires a $35 minimum for one day delivery, Matt needed to add an item to the order, so naturally he bought something else we really need.

A Canada Hammer goose call.

In case your husband doesn't spend Friday evenings practicing all manner of goose calls, let me tell you, they're not quiet. In fact, Matt just said, "Do you think the neighbors can hear me?"

I think the Canadian goose IN CANADA can probably hear you.

There's nothing like hunting season.

Since our Friday night goings-on aren't all that exciting, I'll share a local weather report. Yesterday, NOVEMBER FIFTEENTH, we got our first winter storm, which consisted of a few inches of snow, topped off by ice, all falling on untreated roadways which quickly transformed into skating rinks.

My office closed early and I got on the road at 1:30. I live 14 miles from the office and it took me nearly 3 hours to get home. I wasn't too happy about sitting in my car for that long, but I'll admit that I sure was happy to be sitting in a new SUV with four wheel drive as opposed to Old Blue.

I was also happy about the heated seats.

The defroster, however, threw me for a loop. About 45 minutes into the drive, or more appropriately, the sit, my windshield started fogging up. I figured it was because I was releasing so much hot air between my singing and talking (I called everyone on my favorites list. Some of them three times-sorry mom). So I turned the defroster to cold and cranked the AC up, which only did a mediocre job of clearing the windshield, and I was freezing. Finally I called home (again) and asked my dad what temp the defroster should be on. "HOT!" he said. "You're trying to melt the snow!"

Sure enough, right he was. As soon as I turned it to warm, the window cleared right up. And I stopped shivering.

Today's commute was much better. I made it home in 1/6 of the time it took yesterday, and I was smiling when I walked in the door and kicked off my snowy boots right inside the front door. That's when Matt said, "WHAT are you wearing?!"

I fought the skinny jeans trend for a long time, because I hate when the ankles of my pants get pushed up as I slide my feet into tall boots. So, I came up with solution. I wear normal ankle socks, and cover them with a pair of knee highs to secure my ankles in place. Basically, I've created ankle suspenders. Patent pending.

Anyway, that was the style that I wore today.

I texted my mom and Emily about it because a few years ago, the three of us we were out and we unexpectedly went shoe shopping. I tried on a pair of shoes and happened to be sporting my ankle suspenders (patent pending) in the middle of DSW. If Emily could have chosen one moment in her life to disappear out of sheer embarrassment, I think it would have been then.

I wasn't going to let Matt's fashion judgment ruin a good day. Not only was it a dream commute, but at work I went to an Adoption Day celebration. I don't share much about work on here because I believe in the separation of work and blog, but I work in the child protective services/foster care/adoption field and the truth is, the majority of days are filled with pretty sad stuff. It can sometimes feel like weeks or months go by without seeing a happy ending to a case.

But today, nine children were adopted from the foster care system by five families. And those children aren't brand new, perfect tiny babies. They're kids of all ages who have complicated histories and trauma and deep hurts and scars, but now they also have moms and dads and families. Forever. I'll never forget the first Adoption Day I went to several years ago, and an older boy was adopted. He said his main reason for wanting to be adopted wasn't so that he could have a mom and a dad, but so that someday, his future children would have grandparents.

November is Adoption Awareness Month. Not everyone is meant to adopt! But there are over 100,000 kids in the US right now waiting to be adopted (and hundreds of thousands more in foster care), and if you have an extra case of diapers at home, I guarantee your local children and youth services agency could use them. An extra few dollars could sign a child in foster care up for the soccer team. Or buy them their very own brand new winter jacket. Or a toy from their Christmas wish list. And for kids who really do sometimes come into foster care with nothing but the clothes on their backs, what might seem like something small to you and me, can have a huge impact on their life.

Okay. This got serious so I should share that November is also National Peanut Butter Lovers Month and National Fondue Month, so please celebrate those accordingly!

Finally, if November isn't National Pretty Sunset Month, it should be. I saw this as I walked out of the office tonight. It was a good ending to a good day.

hi mom!

2018-11-14T20:07:00.000-08:00

I was out with my mom this weekend and she said she faithfully clicks over to my blog every morning hoping to see a new post, and gets so sad when she sees the same old post that's been there since October 23rd.

But since I've got to keep my status as the favorite child, here I am!

A new store opened in our area a few weeks ago called Home Sense. I'd heard that it was like "Home Goods on steroids" and I love nothing more than a huge store full of discount home decor, so we decided to make a trip out on Saturday. For the last few years, my mom has done 99.9% of the driving when we go out together, but since I have a new reliable vehicle, I drove this weekend.

When my brother and I learned to drive we would always laugh because my mom used to press an imaginary brake pedal while she sat in the passenger seat, and would sometimes even hold onto the handle on the roof if we made a particularly hasty maneuver. Oh, we were so wise and knowledgeable at sixteen. Our silly mother! Imagine! Being nervous about a completely inexperienced child behind the wheel of a vehicle!

Of all the hypothetical future parenting tasks to worry about, here are my two biggest fears: teaching a child to ride a bike and drive a car. I've already assigned those two jobs to Matt, along with any and all math homework. Give me anything that can be done on solid ground and/or with a calculator. If it has wheels or involves an equation with one or more variable, oh Laura Darling, OUT.

My dad was the one who taught me to ride a bike, which, from what I understand, was quite a challenge because I had a tendency to simply take my feet off of the pedals mid-ride. My dad pretty much taught me to ride a bike with six words. Those words were "KEEP YOUR FEET ON THE PEDALS!"

As it turns out, those words were good advice for me not only when it came to mastering a two-wheeler, but life in general. When things look like they might go off track or what's coming from the other way is a little overwhelming, just keep your feet on the pedals.

I don't remember my dad teaching my brother to ride a bike, but I do remember being in the car while he taught Phil to drive a car. And I remember he used three words for that, and said them three times in a row. Those words were "Stop the car. Stop the car. STOP THE CAR!!!"

It's almost like my dad gave the perfect advice that each of us would need for the rest of our lives. To confirm this theory, I asked my sister what piece of dad's advice she remembered most, and she said "Easy --- Put a hat on, the barometer is falling."

Theory confirmed.

But it certainly wasn't just my dad who gave advice.

We didn't have a dishwasher at our house until I was in high school.

Until then, we used disposable EVERYTHING.

Just kidding. We hand washed.

We also had side salads with dinner every single night in little wooden salad bowls that couldn't go in the dishwasher when we got one. When my brother and I would do the dishes, my mom would motion with both hands and remind us, "Don't put the salad bowls in the dishwasher."

Eventually she would just do the hand motion and we would say "We know! Don't put the salad bowls in the dishwasher!"

As time went on, the directive kind of took on a general meaning of do the right thing/act like I expect/don't let me down. Now, years later, if mom does that hand motion or says "Don't put the salad bowls in the dishwasher," we all know exactly what she's really saying.

While it's not necessarily advice, another thing my mom always says is "There is always hope." No matter the circumstances or situation, there is always hope.

Maybe that's what I was thinking when I kept taking my feet off the pedals and hoping for the best.

Or what my mom is thinking every morning when she opens my blog.

what do a car, a hunting trip, and minneapolis have in common? absolutely nothing.

2018-10-23T19:25:00.004-07:00

1 - I have the day off tomorrow and I am joining Matt on an early morning pheasant hunting trip. I'm not going to be hunting, just walking along, providing commentary, and hoping we stop for breakfast afterwards. We just got our outfits (gear? outerwear?) ready and while I don't have to wear camo (or as I call it, a leaf suit), tomorrow will be the day we find out if neon orange is my color. I don't think Dick Cheney is in Pennsylvania right now, but I still don't want to be sadly mistaken by another hunter as a bird so whether or not neon orange is flattering, I'll be wearing it.

The game commission stocks pheasant sometime between Tuesday and Friday. Tomorrow is Wednesday so there will either be 300 birds, or zero. Tonight Matt said, "I hope they stocked today, or else it's just going to be a long, cold walk in the woods with you and my shotgun."

Which sounds like the beginning of a country song.

_____________________________________

2 - On Sunday afternoon I had a meal planning extravaganza and then I went to Aldi and filled my cart to the brim. I got in line, loaded all of my food on the belt, and at the very moment the cashier told me the total, I realized I didn't have my wallet with me. Or my purse. The only money I had was the quarter I had to pay to rent the cart.

I panicked for a moment, and then told the cashier shamefully that I didn't have my wallet. She thought I meant that I left it in the car, and said, "No problem, just run out to your car and get it." And even though I knew full well it wasn't in my car, I SAID OKAY AND WENT ALONG WITH IT.

And I walked out to my car for what I knew would be a fruitless search, I figured I had two options. I could either drive home, pretend it didn't happen, and never show my face at that Aldi again, or walk back in and admit that my wallet was in my purse.

In my kitchen.

In my house.

Ultimately I chose the latter because my future grocery budget depends on Aldi's low prices. The cashier was so nice and when I returned home with my wallet 20 minutes later, she told me they had even put my cart in the cooler to keep my cheese and yogurt cold.

Three cheers for Aldi.

_____________________________________

3 - Every so often I offer to Matt that if he just says the word, I will happily become a stay at home wife. I try to tempt him with promises of a spotless, tidy home and elaborate dinners and consistently clean laundry. So far he hasn't taken me up on my offer, but he happens to be off this week and I am

changing my tune about who should be the stay at home spouse.

It's been amazing. He has woken up early, made a huge pot of coffee, cooked bacon and eggs and homemade waffles for me before I leave for work. This morning he did all of that AND spread fertilizer over the lawn AND talked to our neighbor Rob before I was even out of my pajamas. He goes to the dry cleaner and runs errands and makes delicious dinners and I kid you not, I just sat down on the couch to write this blog post and he walked in with this freshly made brownie.

Life is good.

_____________________________________

4 - I got a new car. I have mixed feelings about this because if my life was a television show, Old Blue would win the Emmy for best supporting actress every year and it was sad to say goodbye. There is no way I can tell this story in less than a thousand words so for now I'll just say my new car a Hyundai Santa Fe and I know there are tons of cars out there that are more luxurious and powerful and have all kinds of bells and whistles, but I happen to feel like the fanciest, luckiest lady in the world when I drive my new Hyundai.

_____________________________________

5 - I visited Emily in Minnesota last weekend. We both flew into Minneapolis for the weekend and spent four days traversing the Mall of America, downtown Minneapolis, drinking all the coffee and talking non-stop. This event also requires a post of its own but I'm proud to say I was still able to zip both my carry-on and my jeans after a weekend at the Mall of America.

And that's all for today, folks.

i'm back and i'm just as mediocre as ever

2018-09-13T18:56:00.000-07:00

I started writing a long post but then I read it back to myself and it was the most boring thing I've ever read. And that's saying something because I used to read the St. David School directory every single night from about ages 8 through 13 while I ate a bowl of ice cream before bed. I'm not kidding. I had the names, parents' names, emergency contacts, and addresses for every kid in our school memorized.

Sometimes I would even take it up to my bedroom to study it. And then my mom would need to call a parent from school and because it was 1998 she didn't have the phone numbers programmed in the home phone and I can hear her voice in my head right now saying "Laura! Where the directory?!"

Anyway, I deleted the whole post and decided to steal an idea from Michelle and share the last 5 photos on my phone:

-1-

I got this text from Matt as I was leaving my mom and dad's house on Saturday afternoon. A cut that he thought could be cured with some band-aids and Neosporin on Saturday afternoon ended up to be a trip to Urgent Care for four stitches in his wrist and a two week prescription for an antibiotic by Sunday.

-2-

We had to go to Virginia for a funeral on Tuesday night, and due to Matt's aforementioned wrist injury, I drove. Here is a charming aspect of Matt's personality: he cannot keep his unsolicited comments (of which there are MANY) to himself when I am behind the wheel of my very own car with my very own driver's license that I have had for sixteen years with no issue. I drive too fast. I drive too slow. I change lanes without looking long enough. I look too long before I change lanes. I spend too much time looking in my rear view mirror. I stay next to other cars for too long. I brake too hard. I don't brake hard enough. I ease up on the gas when I pass. I don't give it enough gas when I pass. By the time we got on I-95 I had HAD IT with the Goldilocks in my passenger seat.

We finally arrived (safely, I might add, my compliments to the driver) to our hotel at about 10:30. I'll just put it out there, we had a reservation at the Hawthorn Suites in Sterling, Virginia. Travelers beware. I'm pretty sure we witnessed a drug deal while we were waiting to check in, and when we got to our room, the air conditioner didn't work. It was also a non-smoking room which smelled like an ashtray and my face started itching the moment we walked in. ANYWAY after a ton of back and forth with the manager, who told us we couldn't check out and he also couldn't give us our money back or fix the air conditioner or give us another room because they were sold out, we informed him we would be fighting the charge on our credit card and leaving.

We might not have high standards, but we have SOME standards.

Or maybe we don't, because as we walked back to the car, I said to Matt, "Well, I guess it's a good thing I've watched some YouTube videos lately on how to sleep in your car."

He just looked at me, and I knew, we would not be sleeping in the car tonight with Matt on the case.

Which is good because I probably would have done it wrong anyway JUST KIDDING.

There was a Hyatt Place right down the road, so Matt ran in to see if they had any rooms and they did! Except they were sold out of king beds so we got a room with two doubles. By then it was past 11:00 and neither of us were in great moods so separate beds were probably for the best.

Although Matt could not have been more thrilled with the Hyatt Place. It was like a thirty year old man's version of Eloise in the Plaza. He drank the free lemon water in the lobby by the cupful. He rode the elevator. He took the stairs. He used the front door and the side door, spent over an hour at the breakfast buffet, and even checked out the outdoor swimming pool facility even though it's been closed for the season. He sat on the couch and at the desk and stuck a candy bar in the fridge to keep it cold. We were there for 10 hours and Matt got every single penny's worth.

-3-

Kohl's has been having great sales lately and I officially bought my first kimono. I wore it today and felt just adorable. I took this photo to send to my sister and then I totally forgot I took it until I opened my phone just now. So, I hope you're reading this Emily! I got a kimono! And there's my vacuum! I don't know why I look surprised!

-4-

Admittedly this photo is from a few weeks ago but I love it. I saw Annie and Jack again this weekend because they came to stay at my parents. I hung out there for a while and we went to the food store, and I had a major change of heart about a topic I've felt strongly about in the past. And that is those tiny kid sized carts at the grocery store, more specifically kids using them on the weekend when the store is crowded.

It's always kind of bugged me in the past because it turns out small children are terrible cart drivers (takes one to know one) but Annie got one this weekend, and it will go down as one of my top ten moments of the year. She had the TIME OF HER LIFE. I don't know that I've ever seen her so happy. And you better believe she got in some people's way, but who the heck cares? A lot of parents grocery shop on the weekends, and why should their kids not use those little carts because of grumpy people like me? So, long live happy kids and tiny shopping carts on Saturdays.

-5-

Matt's best friend turned thirty last weekend and we went to a surprise birthday brunch for him. I had to laugh because the two of them talked about stocks and 401ks and mortgages and so much grown up stuff, and then Matt snuck up on Bob from behind and put a temporary tattoo of Bob's face right in the middle of his forehead. Some things never change. You can't make old friends.

mirty and mixty

2018-08-20T19:42:00.001-07:00

Well, I had in my head that tomorrow was the second Tuesday of the month and therefore, Show Us Your Books day. I was all set to write about what I have been reading, and even stayed up late last night trying to finish "Educated" so that I could share my thoughts. I felt like I was cramming for a final.

Unfortunately, it turns out tomorrow is actually the third Tuesday, not the second, so, whoops. Meet you back here in September to talk books!

In other news, and in case anyone is wondering, (no one is wondering) Old Blue passed inspection on round two. I picked her up and did the drive of shame back home the day she failed due to her front brakes and rotors being completely shot.

Matt bought new brakes and rotors and headed outside bright and early the next morning to change them. He had asked me if I had noticed any unusual noises while driving and I said no, but when he went out to change them, he pulled my car into the street and backed it into the driveway. He came back into the kitchen and said "Come outside, I will show you what bad brakes sound like so you know for the future."

He pulled the car forward in the driveway and when he applied the brakes he said, "Do you hear that noise?" as we listened to a sound I can only describe as slow, airy pressure.

"Oh that noise? Yeah," I said, "I've been hearing that for months."

Turns out this was a case of the boy who cried wolf, or the girl who cried strange car noise.

And the husband who dismissed the complaint until said car failed inspection.

Anyway, Matt changed the brakes and rotors in my car. And then he mowed the lawn, put some finished touches on a concrete step he poured himself, and then came inside and made a cheesecake from scratch for my mom's birthday dinner. We had my parents and my uncle for dinner on Saturday night. We kept it easy and just did cheese steaks (which Matt cooked because he is a SHOWOFF) and we had such a nice time.

I have been working on my mom's present for months and months. I won't share her age but it rhymes with "mixty" so I thought I would make her a special gift. I made her a cross stitch, and each stitch represents a day on her life, and the color corresponds to the high temperature that day. For example, the nineties are red, the eighties are orange, the seventies are peach, etc. I used the archives on the Weather Underground website to find the temperatures, and worked on a year at a time. It took me eight months and I've been burning the midnight oil the last few weeks to finish it. I considered quitting somewhere around 1981, but I stuck with it and I am so glad I did.

I think she loved it.

This past weekend was my birthday and Matt and I went to the beach. We both left work at lunch on Friday so we were at the beach house by 3:30. Matt decided to take a bike ride and I headed for the ocean. I was all by myself in my beach chair with my feet in the sand, reading my book by 4:00 Friday afternoon. I cannot even tell you the last time I felt so relaxed. I was so happy I could have cried.

I won't share how old I turned either, but it rhymes with "mirty" and I had some mixed feelings about it if I'm being honest. But, we went out to dinner on Saturday night and I ordered a pina colada and the waitress carded me. When she saw my license she was shocked that it was my mirthieth birthday. Or at least she pretended to be shocked.

Either way, she got a good tip.

And I got another jar of Olay Regenerist.

unfortunately this blog post took an unexpected turn

2018-08-10T06:25:00.001-07:00

Well, I'm here to report that no car windows have broken this week, but my car Old Blue is currently at the mechanic for her annual inspection and I am about as nervous as I could be. It's ridiculous really. I just hope she passes. I hope they are nice to her. I parked on a hill so I hope they remember to release the parking brake before driving her into the garage. I hope they know sometimes the turn signal skips a beat but it always gets back into rhythm after a few seconds.

It's that time of year when all of these moms are talking about dropping their kids off to school and how a little piece of their heart is walking away from them and through those school doors and I'm over here thinking

(PAUSE. HOLD PLEASE. THIS IS A TEST OF THE EMERGENCY ALERT SYSTEM.)

As I was typing the sentence above, my phone rang and it was the mechanic calling to tell me that Old Blue needs front brakes and rotors to pass inspection.

I called Matt to give him the news. He wondered aloud when he last changed my brakes. Since I just so happened to have my blog open, I searched the word "brakes" and found that they were changed in March of 2013 because I had written a blog post about it.

Every cent I've made off of this blog is now worth it.

That would be zero cents.

(throwback photo!)

Anyway. I dropped the car off after work yesterday. I had to stop at the grocery store first and bought a few things, including a lemon. It had been a long day on top of a long week and when I got to the self-checkout and it was time to pay for my lemon, I clicked the "unpackaged produce button" on the self-checkout screen, then the "vegetable" button, and then the "L-N" button.

I couldn't believe it, but it seemed that they had forgotten to add lemon to the options for L vegetables. I scrolled and scrolled, and not a lemon to be found.

There were leeks. Several varieties of lettuce. Something called a loquat.

But no lemon.

I stared at the screen for so long that the supervising cashier came over to assist me, and when I told her there was no option for lemon, she said, "That's because you're in the vegetable section. A lemon is a fruit."

Of course a lemon is a fruit. I know that. But here is my proposal for grocery stores far and wide. Put all produce in the same category. Just lump it all together. By the time I get to the self-checkout screen, I usually don't have enough brain power left to remember what produce is a fruit, and what is a vegetable, and that some stores call sweet potatoes yams, and I don't know 47 varieties of onions, I know yellow and red. I don't know the difference between white and yellow, or what constitutes a sweet onion, or a vidalia, and that a tomato is technically a fruit but is commonly accepted as a vegetable and is therefore in the vegetable category.

Let's get back to basics.

I got myself checked out so it all worked out in the end, and now the only lemon I have to worry about is my car.

Just kidding. My car isn't a lemon, it's just getting old.

But with all of these lemons in my life, maybe I should make lemonade as the old saying goes. I certainly know where to find the sugar in the grocery store.

well nothing is set in stone, and it's all gone out the window

2018-08-07T05:43:00.000-07:00

When we moved into this house, our back steps were covered in old, rotting wood. We removed the wood when we moved in, and underneath were concrete steps that weren't perfect, but were fine.

Earlier this summer Matt noticed that the bottom step was separating from the rest of the stairs, and they were all sloped towards the house which meant that when it rained, water was seeping into the foundation. We proceeded to have 4372 conversations about what to do about these steps, including many technical details about water flow and slope and the mechanics of stairs and many other things I don't necessarily understand.

All I know is that at one point Matt threw out the idea of removing the whole staircase, and then instead of putting in a new one, creating a "gently rolling hill" out the back door and down to the patio/lawn. I told my mom that idea and she said, "Did you remind him that he has a mother-in-lawn, and she isn't going to be rolling out the door and down to the patio?"

So, back to the drawing board.

In the end Matt decided to caulk the cracks and just replace the bottom base step. A few weeks ago he took a sledgehammer to it, and then meticulously built a base for the new bottom step while I said encouraging things like, "Don't you think we should just hire someone?"

You know how people say you never use math in real life? They've never lived at our house.

Matt dubbed this weekend concrete weekend. He watched a bunch of YouTube tutorials about how to pour concrete, and then hit Home Depot as it opened on Saturday and came home with a concrete mixer and the last of eighteen eighty pound bags of concrete. He'd been buying it at little at time so he didn't overload the bed of his truck, because for those of you playing along with the math at home, that's 1440 pounds of concrete.

(I just said to Matt, "How much concrete did the step take? Eighty pounds?")

I knew there were eights involved.

Here's what you need to know about concrete mixing. It is no easy task. Especially when it is 85 degrees and 97% humidity and you have no shade, and oh, you've never done it before.

After a few hours the base was poured. The concrete mixer had to go back to Home Depot but the concrete needed to be "floated." I drove the mixer back to HD in Matt's truck while he stayed back and floated. Matt has an old F-150 and while I do love being up high, it is really large and much heavier than my tiny Ford Focus, which can stop on a dime.

Especially when you're hauling a concrete mixer in the back.

Anyway I got it there and home and parked in the road because ain't nobody got time to park that big old boat in the driveway. We were going to grill for dinner but decided at the last minute to go out. We couldn't decided what restaurant to go to so we settled on my personal favorite, Bertucci's. I have very sophisticated culinary taste.

As we pulled into the Bertucci's parking lot, I pressed the button to close my window and heard what can only be described as the terrible sound of glass falling and a loud crunch. We parked and Matt inspected at the window and quickly determined that some sort of internal mechanism was busted.

That's a technical term.

We enjoyed our dinner along with added suspense of whether or not someone was going to steal our car, then drove home with the wind in our hair.

I asked Matt if he wanted to cover the window in plastic overnight but he said no. I had a terrible coughing fit around 5:00 this morning and went downstairs to get a drink of water. When I got back to bed Matt asked me if it was raining. I said no, but I guess he didn't believe me because he peeked out the window, and then I could not believe what he said. Matt does not curse, ever.

If he is really, really, REALLY mad he says "rat's patootie."

But what came out of his mouth at 5:00 this morning would make a sailor blush. He leaped out of bed only to return a minute later and report back that it wasn't raining, it was just condensation on the window.

He watched some more YouTube tutorials and then removed the door panel of his truck, only to discover the window regulator was all knotted. Or something. All I know is that it needed a new regulator and now it has one.

This weekend was brought to you by YouTube tutorials.

And math.

august is my birthday month, but i'm only turning 30, not 87

2018-08-02T20:22:00.000-07:00

I talk to my friend Rose almost every weekday. She is a stay at home mom with four kids, three of whom are under age 4, so we pretty much talk for ten or fifteen minutes here and there, and when we do she has to spell half of her words because she always has an audience with miniature, impressionable, and nosy ears.

We talked a few days ago while Rose was on her way to the podiatrist for her first appointment. I've been to the podiatrist myself a time or twelve (shout-out to my orthotics!) so I told her what to expect and then to keep me posted on what the doctor said.

Rose called me twice yesterday and I missed her calls because I was with my niece and nephew in New Jersey, so I called her back this morning. We caught up on the last few days and then hung up so I could get back to work and she could pick the kids up from story time. About fifteen minutes later my phone rang again, and it was Rose.

I answered and she said, "I completely forgot to tell you how my podiatrist appointment went!"

So she filled me in, and then told me she had to go to the store after the appointment to get some new sneakers. She went to a little local shoe store, and asked the woman working there for some recommendations on sturdy, sensible shoes, and the woman was no help at all!

And then she went to the produce market and put a ton of onions and apples and peppers and potatoes in her cart, and the guy at the checkout counter asked her if she wanted a bag.

OF COURSE SHE WANTED A BAG! IS SHE JUST SUPPOSED TO CARRY ALL OF THAT WITH HER TWO BARE HANDS?

We lamented that customer service just ain't what it used to be and then talked about the recipes she was going to make with all of the onions and peppers.

I told her I have a produce problem of my own, which is the fact that I have an overabundance of zucchini. I mentioned I planned to make a recipe where you slice the zucchini into very thin strips, but it's tricky to do with a knife, but the vegetable peeler is too thin. Rose said, "Oh you need one of those WIDE MOUTHED vegetable peelers" and we both burst out laughing.

Because we met when we were 22, we were both starting our new paralegal jobs at the same time and our desks were next to each other. We were basically babies and knew nothing about anything, but we walked around that courthouse like we had been there for years. We would also cover for one another in the courtroom periodically so that the other could go reapply her lip gloss. We were very serious.

About makeup.

And I could never have predicted the day I met Rose, that together we would talk about our boyfriends who became our fiances who became our husbands, and go to each other's bachelorette parties and weddings and kids' birthday parties, and have our own birthday dinners and fall bonfires and "please tell me you can meet for coffee tomorrows" and talk to each other about the most mundane things in life, and also the really hard things that you can only talk to a best friend about.

My 22 year old, perfectly lip glossed self would not have predicted that that seven years later Rose and I would be having a serious conversation about vegetable peelers.

Anyway Rose laughed and said that when she was a little girl, she remembers sitting under her grandmother's kitchen table eavesdropping while her grandmother and her best friend sat at the table and talked. One day she heard them discussing the best kind of strawberry for a particular recipe, and she vividly remembers saying to herself that she would never get so old that she would have conversations about produce.

And then in the span of 15 minutes, the two of us talked about the podiatrist, poor customer service, zucchini recipes, and vegetable peelers.

And we're only 29.

Imagine what we will talk about at 80.

Whatever it is, I can assure you we will be doing it wearing sturdy, sensible shoes.