not that you asked...

Blog as soapbox

On Monday I was all geared up to sit down and write a post about how I had fallen off the Weight Watchers wagon and have been eating my weight in whatever is lying around that is made of chocolate and/or fried in oil and/or is a carbohydrate and also how it has been so cold and windy (don’t you think windy is just the worst kind of weather?) that I haven’t exercised as much as I usually do and then I thought, well, I suppose I should go ahead and climb onto the scale and see what the actual damage is so I can be PRECISE and EXACTING when I tell the Internet about my gigantic, candy-flavored failure.

Except the scale said I hadn’t gained any weight.

So I (rather lazily) posted a bunch of cute pictures of Asher and then I danced around the house for the duration of his naptime because SOMEHOW I AM CHEATING THE SYSTEM AND STILL COMING OUT ON TOP. I am suddenly in possession of The Miracle Body, and now I am headed out to buy some lottery tickets and a one-way flight to Vegas because I MUST BE THE LUCKIEST PERSON ALIVE.

For the record, this week I have eased off the binging and have only ingested seven (7) oatmeal chocolate chip cookies since Monday. Trust me, the caloric content of these (relatively small) seven cookies PALES IN COMPARISON to what I ate last week, so I’m on the mend. Hands down the hardest thing about Weight Watchers (or any healthy eating plan/lifestyle change, for that matter) continues to be allowing myself to indulge a little without making it a habit. I always have a hard time reeling myself back in, but I am determined to do it. Because I already gave away all my fat clothes.

Honestly, that’s the most exciting thing I’ve got going on. Right now I feel like our lives are in a holding pattern until further notice. Winter is dragging on (AND ON AND ON); the kitchen remodel is a couple of months away; there’s been an Official Decision made about Baby Number Two but nothing to show for it yet. Speaking of which…

After the miscarriage back in November, Dave asked me whether I would share the news of a pregnancy on my website as early as I did the last time. I said then that I thought I would. He said, however, that if it were up to him, he would rather I wait until we made sure everything was going to be fine before saying anything.

I respect Dave’s opinion more than anyone else’s in the entire world, obviously. But his reasoning for not wanting to say anything until we were given the Pregnancy Green Light is that having to tell people that the pregnancy had ended made it very awkward for both him and the people he had to tell it to. And I get that, because it IS a (to quote Tessie) Nervous Tummy situation, but Dave is so private that the only people he had to tell about the miscarriage the last time were his mom and his two best friends.

My own personal thought was that no matter how far along you are in a pregnancy, SOMETHING BAD COULD ALWAYS HAPPEN. It’s just the way things are. You can lose a baby at 8 weeks and you can lose a baby full-term. It’s obviously not as likely, but it can happen. You’re never totally safe. I mean, granted, that’s not exactly the attitude to adopt for Everyday Living or anything, but it is one of the reasons I feel okay about sharing about another pregnancy just as early as I did last time, and the time before that. If I found out I had cancer, I wouldn’t wait until I found out if I was going to survive before writing about it. To me, just because you can’t predict the outcome yet doesn’t mean you should pretend it’s not happening.

Also, I look at this blog as a record of my life, and I love that I can look back at my archives and see what was really happening to me at that moment in time. In 30 years from now, will I look back at my writing and feel awkward or uncomfortable that I had to tell a lot of people that I had a failed pregnancy or will I feel thankful that I took the time to write about it and to work through it and to receive well-meaning, wonderful, supportive comments from friends and complete strangers?

And I realize that last paragraph makes it sound like a failed pregnancy is something to be embarrassed or ashamed of, and that’s another reason why I want to write honestly about it—because I want people to know that it happens, and that no one should feel alone when it happens to them. I don’t think miscarriage should have to be a dirty little secret. I certainly think you have every right to make it a private experience if you want to, but I also think that if you have the strength to get your story out there, it can only do good as far as helping others understand it better.

We want another baby. We feel ready for another baby. And I am sure I want to be honest about the journey we have to take to get there.

He's all growed up

My neighbors? They still suck.

So last week we got a postcard in the mail from our homeowners’ association requesting we join them for a meeting to discuss installing locked mailboxes in our development in response to increasing security concerns. Unfortunately, the homeowners’ association is apparently comprised of – how do I put this gently – COMPLETE IDIOTS. Because nowhere on the postcard is a date for this meeting listed. Oh sure, they remembered to include where the meeting would be held, and also at what time, but instead of using their valuable homeowners’ association time to proofread it, they just slapped on some bad Windows clip art and called it a day.

No doubt they’ll send out another round of postcards. One more professionally printed postcard and one 26-cent USPS stamp for every house in the neighborhood, and also one big fat WASTE OF OUR COLLECTIVE MONEY AND RESOURCES because they couldn’t get it right the first time. It is possible that I am more annoyed about this than I should be, but surely you remember who the president of my homeowners’ association is?

A few months ago, the elderly woman I spoke of in that linked post up there was putting her house on the market. She had some questions she needed answered by the homeowners’ association concerning some repairs she had to have done to her home, and so she tried to ask the president. BUT THE WOMAN REFUSES TO ANSWER THE PHONE OR HER DOOR. Even when she’s clearly home. Would you believe – and I swear I am not making this up – that our neighbor had to send the president of the homeowners’ association some forms to sign THROUGH REGISTERED MAIL because she couldn’t manage to get someone who lives FOUR DOORS DOWN FROM HER to have a conversation about it instead? Someone who has been elected by her neighbors and who is supposed to be volunteering her time to serve the people of this community? Are you as enraged about this as I am?

Also, do you have any idea what a great storyline this would be for the new season of Trading Spaces? Wait, am I the only one who pays any attention to Trading Spaces anymore? Except that surely, even if you have not seen an entire episode of the new season of Trading Spaces, you have seen the disaster that currently sits atop Paige Davis’s head and is apparently her new helmet haircut?

Man, how good would it feel to get inside that woman’s house and agree to do every ridiculous thing Hildi suggests in the name of Interior Design, including but not limited to pasting feathers on the ceiling and gluing straw to the walls? Maybe some livestock milling around the dining room? And then, perhaps for the ultimate finishing touch, a big papier-mache car parked inside the living room, blocking all access to the front door. So she would never forget where our relationship started. And also ended.

I’m getting all weepy just thinking about it.

A lot of hypothetical questions

Is it ironic, depressing or just downright pathetic that I spent my Target gift card – a birthday gift from Dave’s parents – on a jar of anti-aging night cream? Honestly, I tried not to. I spent two entire hours in Target on Saturday night looking for something else to splurge on, maybe something trendy in the shoe department or something springy in the juniors’ section or something on clearance in the Global Bazaar section which for some reason my local store shoves way in the back between the old Valentine candy and the garden hoses.

ANTI-AGING NIGHT CREAM. Did I just turn 30? Or 65? I mean, SERIOUSLY. And I’m not knocking the existence of anti-aging creams or the fact that I now need one. Even though, LORD HELP ME, I am old enough to need assistance in the fight against fine lines and sun damage. It’s just, I don’t know… the word “underwhelm” comes to mind. The truth is that I’ve been wanting to get something a little more high tech to smear on every evening, but I’m also a little embarrassed that I wasn’t willing to spend any of my own hard-earned money to get it sooner. No, no, I had to wait until someone gave me a gift card, FOR MY BIRTHDAY, to feel like my face was worth $17.59.

Do you see why I can’t go to Sephora? DO YOU?

The other reason I can’t go in there, besides that I Am Poor, is just the general confusion. WHAT IS ALL OF THAT STUFF FOR? I haven’t the foggiest. I went to a friend’s Mary Kay launch party over the weekend and we were each given this little index card with testers of eye shadow and blush and lipstick and there was a little map to show you how to apply the three different colors of eyeshadow and I KID YOU NOT, I had an easier time with trigonometry and may I tell you that when I took trigonometry? I GOT A D. (Also I got ill every time I had to watch my trigonometry teacher PLUCK HER CHIN HAIRS in between classes, but that’s another story for another time.)

I think honestly, before I turned 30 I was in denial about the fact that I am getting older and therefore my face doesn’t look like it did 15, 10, or even five years ago. And I’ve had a BABY, the kind that screams for half the night until he turns eight months old, and it took a toll on me. I’ve been STRESSED, is what I’m saying, and my face needs some help. But it didn’t feel right to need that help in my TWENTIES, when I’m supposed to be all young and natural and able to go to the grocery store without foundation on without scaring the checkout guy half to death. (Which will continue to happen, might I add, because Foundation = Extreme Confusion.)

Gah! I just read back over this post and realize I sound like I’m just a few moments shy of struggling into my support hose and heading out to the pharmacy on my Rascal scooter to pick up some Polident and Depends.

So anyway, thanks for all the nice comments you left on that last post. The scan of my prom dress was kind of blurry, but still, I cannot believe that was me. So… puffy! With such bad, dramatically curled-under bangs. On the other hand, I loved how my hair turned out for the wedding and perhaps I am more proud of it than I am of anything else that day because I DID IT MYSELF. I am NEVER happy with my hair when someone else does it; even when I leave the salon after a haircut with my very proficient hairdresser, I go home and touch it up and get it just the way I like it. So I was thrilled that I was able to create the hairstyle that I really wanted. And because I am an anal-retentive planner, I had scheduled out my wedding day to include about 1.5 hours in the early afternoon for Hair/Makeup Application and I was finished with ALL OF IT in less than 15 minutes. I am really not sure which is worse: Having a million things left to do on your wedding day or HAVING NOTHING. At least when you’ve got unfinished tasks you keep yourself busy. I just SAT THERE. Twiddling.

Aaaaaaand… yes. That last paragraph is exactly what I think it is: A paragraph about my wedding hair, which occurred approximately four and a half years ago. You would have rather heard about the chin hairs, wouldn’t you?

It's really hard to condense 16 years of history into one post *NOW WITH PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE*

As a self-proclaimed non-romantic, it amuses me that Dave and I will forever be labeled something as nauseatingly adorable as “high-school sweethearts.”

I suppose TECHNICALLY we can be labeled as such, after all, we did date in high school and the relationship lasted the better part of a year and we even went to prom together and would you believe that although I wore a very elegant, non-slutty, floor-length black dress with a white sash that tied in the back and hung almost to the floor, my completely-new-at-formal-occasions date told me it looked like toilet paper. TOILET PAPER. My prom date told me my dress LOOKED LIKE TOILET PAPER. And my date also DID NOT SEE ANYTHING WRONG WITH TELLING ME THAT.


[Ok, so I can't find a photo of the back of the dress, but here it is in full-frontal glory. Also, was I this puffy in high school? And was Dave REALLY THIS SKINNY? Apparently, YES.

Anyway, so the sash in question tied above the waist and was a chiffon-y material (in all likelihood, POLYESTER) so it was really light and flowy and... I guess tissue-like. But not BATH TISSUE-LIKE, I assure you.]

But wait, back to the beginning. Dave and I met in our church’s youth group when I was 14 and he was 16. We spent a lot of time together because, as was commonplace in the youth groups of yesteryear and possibly the youth groups of today except I am OLD so I don’t actually know, we kind of dated around. A lot. So it was only a matter of time before we ran out of options and had to give each other a shot, and so when we found ourselves single at the same time, he asked me out.

Our first date, in March of 1995, involved dinner at TGIFriday’s, a high school girls’ basketball game (I loathe basketball, the squeaking drives me absolutely insane), and then on the drive home we made a pit stop at Kmart so I could ride the mechanical horse out front for 25 cents. He paid for it all, opened the car door for me and didn’t think I was a complete and total psychopath for wanting to ride a miniature mechanical horse fifteen minutes before I had to be home for curfew on a Friday night. In summary: First date an enormous success.

We dated for almost a year and but broke up a few months before I went 700 miles away to college. It was totally my doing, I had these big, self-important ideas about College and What I Wanted To Do at College and Who I Wanted To Be at College, and the last thing I wanted was to be limited by my high-school boyfriend. I wanted freedom, and I wanted adventure; I wanted to be a 12-hour drive away from everything I was comfortable with and I didn’t want to have to answer to anyone about it. I didn’t want to be the girl who spent entire weekends making long-distance phone calls from her dorm room instead of having fun.

But it was never a clean break.

We still called each other, we still wrote letters, we still made plans to hang out and see each other when we were both home for Christmas break. We still had a connection, a really deep and honest connection. A connection that I think was pretty obvious to the people we had moved on to dating, as both my new boyfriend and his new girlfriend were adamant that we never hang out together. But it was impossible to be home from school and not see Dave; he had been my biggest cheerleader, my biggest fan, my biggest encouragement, my most understanding confidante. He still was. So we saw each other in secret. Well, ok, so we saw each other at the mall. But it was also usually the height of the Christmas shopping season, so everyone was way too busy buying lousy presents for their families to notice our Prohibited Togetherness.

And years passed, and although we never lost touch, we had less and less to say. There were a couple of years where we only saw each other briefly and learned about each other’s lives by questioning mutual friends in passing. And then, without going into too much detail, I’ll just say that there was a brief period of time where Dave got pretty seriously romantically involved with one of my very VERY best friends, and, uh, vice versa. AT THE SAME TIME.

Both of those people stood up with us at our wedding a few years later. THAT IS JUST HOW AWESOME OUR FRIENDS ARE.

Then, in my last semester of college, I got into a car accident and had to earn the last bit of my journalism degree, my internship, close to home, so I could a) live with my parents, and b) BORROW THEIR CAR TO GET THERE. And Dave was living and working here, and we just started casually hanging out again.

I kind of fell in love with him all over again within a few weeks. We were together all the time, meeting for lunch even though we worked 45 miles apart, going out to dinner and to movies, we went camping and to family functions together. But he continued to insist to everyone (his family, his friends, ME) that we were not dating. Internet, I do not have to tell you how awful it feels to be madly, head-over-heels in love with someone who OBVIOUSLY LOVES YOU BACK and yet is trying to remain Focused On His Career because he wants to Make Something Of Himself before he gets sidetracked by A Serious Relationship.

(That’s what he insists on, by the way, that he would not let himself date me because he knew in his heart that it would quickly escalate to marriage.)

So I got frustrated. And then my friend SLASH Dave’s ex-girlfriend called to tell me her roommate in Atlanta was moving out and asked me if I would be interested in moving down there with her and finding a job? And I was all, WHAT IS KEEPING ME HERE IN VIRGINIA? Certainly not a boy! SO I MOVED.

He was begging me to reconsider by the time I was unpacking boxes in my new apartment a couple of weeks later. And because I am stubborn and fiercely independent, I also renewed my lease when it came up six months later, even though by that time we were Officially Dating and also Spending Way Too Much Money With United Airlines. But you know, a girl can only hold off for so long, so after a year of long-distance dating, I moved back home and just a few months later we were engaged.

Clearly this is not one of those swoony, over-the-top, “when we met, I just KNEW he was the one, couldn’t you just VOMIT it’s so perfect” kind of stories. BUT THIS IS HOW I LIKE IT. I would have been very suspicious of that kind of mushy, gushy situation. I love that we have known each other forever, I love that we have mutual friends who remember our dorkier moments from way back when, I love that we met at our church because WOW, if there is one part of my life that I will be forever grateful isn’t complicated, it’s the Theology, Religion and Morals Sector.

And although I have never doubted our decision to be together for the rest of our lives, it certainly didn’t hurt that on my wedding day, I wore another dress with a sash that hung all the way to the floor, and all he said was, “You look beautiful.”

(Yeah. Anything about toilet paper and HELLO! ANNULMENT.)

You can see Dave holding onto the sash here, while I BREAK IT DOWN with his uncles at the reception:




And also, hey, while you were asking for wedding photos (TRUST ME, YOU WERE ASKING) here are a few more of my favorites:









And perhaps my very very favorite:

COULD HE BE ANY LESS INTO HIS NEW WIFE? I DON'T THINK SO.

Hey, you! Over here!

I’m not supposed to be here, remember? I’m supposed to be Away, visiting family, and honestly, I totally would be except that Asher woke up from his nap on Friday afternoon with a RAGING FEVER; the kind of fever that registered as 102 degrees on the thermometer before I even got it between his two little fiery butt cheeks. He was all flushed and miserable and so, naturally, I opted us out of the six-hour car trip and three subsequent nights of sleeping in a Pack ‘n Play at the foot of my bed, which, as we all know, ends up being NO SLEEP AT ALL. FOR ANYONE.

Which, it turns out, wouldn’t have been much different than what happened the last three nights in his own bed. In other words, I’M PRETTY TIRED. And I’ve spent all our superfluous income for the month on infant Tylenol.

Well, on infant Tylenol and floor-length curtains.



(Don’t they look nice? You have good taste, Internet.)

Also, for Christmas, my parents gave us a gift card loaded with enough money to replace our ancient leaking dishwasher. We went out and spent it on Saturday.



Er… well, I suppose we could ask it to do the dishes. I don’t know if it’ll happen, but there’s no harm in asking.

WORLD'S. LONGEST. POST.

I'm going away for the weekend so this enormous narcissistic mess will have to tide you over until I get back on Tuesday. (Ha! Again with the assumption that you are on PINS and NEEDLES and TENTERHOOKS!) If there are further questions or complaints, please leave them in the comment section and I will get back to you as soon as possible. Thanks! BEEEEEEEEEEP.

How did I get into blogging and do I have any blogging goals? Who did I start reading at the beginning? And (nobody wants to know) but WHO DO I LOVE READING NOW?
I started blogging because I was really bored at work. I had all this free time and nothing to do with it, and I couldn’t just surf all day because I’d get caught and punished and also fired. So I started blogging and I found that I could write posts in Word and make it look like I was doing something productive to everyone who walked by my desk when in fact I was writing a humorous tutorial on storm doors to put on the Internet to amuse total strangers. IT WAS AWESOME.

I do not have blogging goals, but this is because I just do not have goals. Like, at all. Ever. I just... be. Not particularly inspiring, I guess, but true.

The first blog I read was Dooce, and I was so enthralled that I read each and every post she’d ever written, in chronological order. IT BLEW MY MIND, this blogging thing. From there, I got sucked into infertility blogs. I don’t know who got me hooked or who I started reading first, but the daily drama and the amazing writing and the struggles of those women just pulled me in, and for a while about 75 percent of the blogs I read every day were written by women who struggled in some way with infertility.

Nowadays the blogs I read are split pretty evenly between moms and… well, other moms. And sure, there’s a smattering of you other types thrown in there. I’m equal opportunity. If you write well, I will read you. Time permitting, of course, and I don’t have much time these days because I dedicate most of my free moments to covering my head with a pillow and trying to forget that someone whined at me for 16 hours straight.

How did I get such shiny hair?
I have naturally curly hair, so I flatiron it every day. That’s all I can think of that could contribute to the Shiny Hair Phenomenon, because I use don’t use any products that cost more than $3.49 and aren’t available at Target. Sometimes I see my favorite shampoo packaged with a free can of hairspray and I wonder if they’re about to discontinue it so I buy 12 bottles and then I’m stuck with 12 bottles of smelly hairspray that I feel guilty throwing away because it feels SO WASTEFUL and then they never end up discontinuing the shampoo anyway. THEY GET ME EVERY TIME. Also, yes, that is shampoo and conditioner IN ONE. Like updated Pert Plus or something. (Stop making fun.)

I mean, really, you guys, I love the IDEA of awesome hair and skin and makeup products but there is nowhere in the world that I feel more out of place than in Sephora.

So I just stick with this:


BREATHE INTO A PAPER BAG, SEPHORA PEOPLE.

How do I relax after a long day of caring for The World's Whiniest Toddler?
Usually I read through my blogroll and then I spend some quality time shouting at the stupid people on HGTV shows. Occasionally I read, occasionally I take hot baths (never without these), occasionally I leave the house and wander the aisles of Target. ALONE. And I don’t go anywhere near the diaper aisle. Also, as depressing as this is, I rarely buy anything. I find solace just BEING IN TARGET. I don’t even have to purchase anything. It’s almost like church.

(I said ALMOST.)

What is my favorite cocktail?
My father-in-law’s pomegranate martini. They’re delicious and also complimentary as long as you have a baby to loan him for a few hours.

How am I maintaining my THIRTY POUND weight loss?
I am no longer tracking my POINTS through Weight Watchers, but I have kept around 30 pounds off since somewhere around October. In all honesty, as cliché as this sounds, I made a lifestyle change. (Sephora people! Your paper bag will now double as a barf receptacle!) WW taught me exactly how much I should be eating, which had always been a big floaty mystery before. I made that a habit and now I have my own little way of living. I eat pretty much the same thing every day for breakfast and lunch. THIS IS HOW I LIKE IT, and also how I make sure I can have whatever I want for dinner. Well, I mean, not WHATEVER I want, but whatever I want within reason. I eat a small breakfast and a small lunch, and then I cook dinner and I don’t worry too much about what is in it as long as I’m not eating a head-sized portion. And I continue to exercise every day. I also haven’t consumed ice cream in six months, but you didn’t want to know that, did you? Don’t worry, whenever I get pregnant? I WILL TOTALLY MAKE UP FOR IT.

What do I feed The World's Whiniest Toddler?
I am actually much pickier about what I feed Asher than he is about what he eats. This is because I hate fixing him things that he rejects. So he eats a lot of the same foods day in and day out. If I make something for dinner for Dave and myself that produces leftovers, I try to give him a little bit the next day to see if he might like it. Usually he does not. I am ok with this.

My biggest problem lately is that Asher does not care to sit in his high chair long enough to eat enough to fill him up. I compromise by making him sit until I can’t take any more whining, and then I put a few bites of whatever’s left on his tray into a bowl which I put in the living room with his toys. He usually wanders back to it and finishes it off. I am ok with this, too.

I am ok with most anything, actually, now that someone isn’t throwing each and every morsel of food he is given directly into the dog’s gaping maw right after he looks at me and shakes his head “no.” [Phrase “gaping maw” inserted specifically for the pleasure of Dr. Maureen.]

The best post on Toddler Foods is this one at Whoorl. Even though you’ll read through it and say, “Well, DUH.” So what. It helped me.

Am I still spending half our household income at Target each month?
No. Mostly because Asher is only patient enough to sit in the cart while I gather the essentials and then he starts screaming and I lose my nerve in the middle of the clothing section and run panicked for the checkout line. Also because Dave promised me we could renovate the kitchen this year, like, RENOVATE the kitchen and tear down walls and get new cabinets and appliances and a countertop without grimy gouges in it and we can patch the giant hole where the mice are getting in and PEOPLE, I will do anything to make that happen, even if it means I never wear a poorly constructed Mossimo sweater ever again.

Truthfully, I make very few trips to Target anymore during which I throw something that I don’t absolutely NEED into the cart. In the last few months I have bought myself one pair of $10 flats and a tube of lip gloss. THAT IS ALL. Oh, also one throw pillow but that fell under the Bedroom Makeover For My Birthday category, so it doesn’t count.

Having an impatient toddler is the best budget enforcer of all. My only goals when I go shopping are 1) get in, and 2) GET OUT FAST. I am no longer a woman of leisure anywhere I go. I am a woman with a Ticking Toddler Time Bomb.

Did I buy lots of awesome music when you all gave me suggestions or did I wuss out?
I have everything I want to buy written down and I even have an iTunes gift card with which to do it. I just have to make the time to do it, and then I will present to you My New, Very Awesome Playlist. (I did buy the entire Amy Winehouse album, though. You were all very insistent on that.) (Oh, and also CORRECT.)

What am I doing in that picture at the top of this page?
Well, I’m sitting in a chair. Because they ran out of barstools and I was tired of standing. You mean you couldn’t get that from the picture? (Also, I think I’m drinking a Bass. MMMMMM, BASS.)

WHY DO BABIES NEED TEETH ANYWAY IF GETTING THEM IS GOING TO BE SUCH A NIGHTMARE?
I DON’T KNOW. I will say, when it was warmer, I could pop Asher into his stroller and give him one of these filled with ice and he was a happy—and completely saturated—teething baby. He also enjoyed this thing for a while. Otherwise, like all other things Childhood, I declare teething to be a crapshoot.

How did Dave and I meet and fall in love?
A post I’ll save for Valentine’s Day, even though we don’t celebrate it and our story might be one of the most unromantic stories of all time. Although, I don’t know, maybe you think a first date at TGIFriday’s is awesome? Especially when your date is telling you all about how he wanted to learn to play the bassoon but ended up with the oboe instead?

I don’t know about you, but there are no two more depressing instruments in the entire world than the bassoon and the oboe. My husband, he EXUDES charisma.

What about Hambone? Doesn't he matter anymore? DOESN'T HE DESERVE READER HUGS? Also, has he eaten off Asher's legs yet or what?
Poor Hambone. He is fat, and underappreciated, and also TERRIFIED of Asher. But he does not exist totally under the radar, because hey! We actually noticed when his eye was goopy and we took him to the vet the SAME DAY and he had pinkeye and we got it treated and everything.

Mostly Hambone would just like Asher to disappear FOREVER. Unless he is going to feed him Goldfish for the rest of his natural life, which, in that case, he will just stay right here, thank you very much.







What have I read lately and would I recommend it to you?
What is the What by Dave Eggers is amazing and horrifying and humbling and downright incredible. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruene was inventive and original. Halfway through Snow Falling on Cedars I figured out that I’d read it before (still couldn’t remember the ending though, so I had to keep going) but it was very “meh” so now I know why I tried to forget it after the first time. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See was a true joy, even though there were some parts that made hold my breath in disbelief and/or horror. Love in the Time of Cholera was not at all what I expected it to be, but it was beautiful. Really, the only dud in the pack lately has been The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai and the honest truth is that I started reading it during a very sleep-deprived week so I didn’t give it the attention it deserved. I’ll probably try it again soon because everyone seems to think it is incredible. I will tell you that it does not seem all that incredible on three hours of sleep. Too many big words. Hard to sound some of them out. I’m just saying.

Do I still hate my neighbors? Are they still idiots?
Yes. And yes. I wish I had more to tell, but this winter has been really mild, so I haven’t had an opportunity to let them shovel out their parking spaces and head off to work so that I can park there in sweet, sweet retaliation.

And finally, DUDE, you still owe us the wetsuit THIS IS NOT A QUESTION BUT A DEMAND.
Sigh. I know. And I promise to deliver.

Scrounging

Yesterday the boy took a perfect three-hour nap and I spent about 75 percent of it sitting here at the computer looking at a big blank screen and that irritating little blinking cursor. I haven’t felt much inspiration lately, and the little bit that I manage to scrape up I have been dedicating to my contractually obligated posts at Parents.com.

So, I don’t know... I was wondering if there was anything you wanted to hear from me. I always vowed not to do this; to make it sound like you’re all out there waiting on pins and needles for me to SAY SOMETHING WITTY, but maybe it will lead to a little inspiration breakthrough for me. I like to write here; I NEED to write here to keep myself sane, but sometimes I still need a little jumpstart.

Is there a post I never followed up with that you were wondering about? Did you ever want to ask a question or maybe you DID ask a question and I never answered it? Did you want to hear a story about anything in particular? Maybe you want me to help you dress yourself or maybe you want to know what I am cooking for dinner or maybe you want more crappy photography or maybe you just want to see more books from my childhood collection… I would love to know. Emails and comments appreciated, as always.

Also, if you don’t mind, would you mind weighing in on my curtain situation? I plan on buying these (in the pewter/steel combination), but I am not sure what length. Here’s a picture of the window in our room:



What do you think, floor length or windowsill length? I think windowsill length is more casual (I like casual for this room) but then again, those are pretty expensive curtains and maybe floor length would be more versatile when we move and want to use them in another home. Although I also wonder if floor length curtains would be a little too overwhelming back there since it is such a small space.