Veins and tails and pork (oh my)
I really do keep intending to show up here more often, but I tend to underestimate the toll that existential dread takes on a person. (Or maybe not any person, but certainly on me.) I have half a dozen in-progress projects littered around the house, and nearly every day I look around at everything I should be doing, all the things I’ve started and failed to finish, and then I… continue not doing them. I wouldn’t recommend it as a solid life philosophy, but it seems to be where I am at the moment.
Conversely, I periodically decide to Do The Thing, spend an inordinate amount of time on said thing, and then realize it was The Wrong Thing. As you might imagine, this doesn’t tend to make me want to Do Another Thing, after, because: ARGH.
Here’s a fun example: A while back I thrifted a pair of pants I really, really like a lot. Like, a lot a lot! And this was a big deal because at the time of thrifting I was still drowning in unexplained weight gain and had very few bottoms that fit (and shopping was a great way to feel bad about my body). When I bought these pants, they were slightly too loose in the waist, and I successfully (if laboriously) managed to take them in so that they fit perfectly. Yay! Eventually I started losing weight and now these pants are too big again, but I love them, so I’ve had them on my sewing pile for months, because I could just take them in some more, if I could just get myself to Do The Thing. Yesterday I decided it was time, and I picked out all the previous stitches and measured and pinned and sewed (and this shouldn’t take long, but for me it does, because I am slow) and then triumphantly tried them on when I was done and… discovered that sure, they fit, but they are now lumpy and weird because my tailoring method works for small alterations but not larger ones. And somehow the combination of this failed project and the current dumpster fire of this country combines to render me a lump on the couch. read more…
Special delivery and the magic protocol
Mostly what I got from the last post was that you weirdoes really want to see Turnip in our mailbox. (I use “weirdoes” affectionately, you understand; obviously we are weirdoes who put her in the box in the first place. Repeatedly.) I am nothing if not willing to subject everyone to pictures of my furry root vegetable, so here you go:
Isn’t she so cute? A pretty little white fluffy thing? In this pic we’ve just gone for a walk, and other than the fact that she loves to dart and weave her way around (Otto swears she’s trying to trip him), she is a model dog when we are out roaming. It’s only in the comfort/safety of her own house that she goes into Anxious Sentry Mode and needs to either be standing on your face or barking All The Damn Time.
I do an excellent job of selling her; it’s a mystery why no one ever wants to take her home when I offer. read more…
The good, the bad, and the fascists
It has been so long since I posted here, I forgot the password. It has been so long since I posted here, I had to read the previous post to 1) figure out what I’d last shared and 2) brace myself for how far back I’d need to go to catch you up. It’s been so long since I posted here, I had a moment (okay; maybe several) of nostalgia for the days when I wrote all the time and my life didn’t feel like a series of complicated situations I’ve neither asked for nor want, but nonetheless probably shouldn’t air publicly because… reasons.
(Let’s ignore the fact that that plenty of people think the entire 20 years of entries here shouldn’t have been aired publicly. Ahem.)
It has been so long since I posted here, back when I wrote that last entry I was blissfully unaware that actually, yes, a democracy CAN go backwards, “that could never happen here” or “that could never happen again” could very well be words to choke on, or that we could find ourselves living in a time when it’s truly embarrassing to be an American. But here we are, living the dream hellscape! Wooooooo!!
Life goes on, of course. But the small measure of existential dread I’ve always lived with has multiplied a thousandfold. So that’s fun. read more…
We came, we saw, we tired
Every couple of years, Otto’s family throws a big family reunion—emphasis on BIG. I come from a family where there is almost no branch you can travel along the family tree and find more than two offspring at any given node. I grew up with one sibling and exactly four cousins (two to each of my parents’ only siblings), and saw them rarely. Otto is one of four, born into a clan of Irish Catholics, so I don’t think you need further explanation. Anyway, Otto has been going to these reunions for years, usually taking one or the other kid along, but I had never been to one before for various scheduling reasons.
This year, it was Time. First of all, I was finally free to go. Second, Monkey is still here with us but moving soon, AND the girls said that if we went, they would come, too. Perfect! (We haven’t all been together since the wedding.) Otto rented a house for the five of us and we began planning our drive, because we are insane. Also because we wanted to bring the dogs. We always want to bring Goose, because Goose is the best and she LOVES car trips, and… uhhh… in our continuing quest to get Turnip to be more of a dog and less of a feral gargoyle, we figured we should bring her, too.
We live in Georgia. The reunion was in Rhode Island. We were facing down a 16-hour trek in both directions, but we were ready! Because Otto loves a long car trip! And Monkey and I love Otto! We carefully plotted out our route, including an overnight stop on the way up in the DC area, and everything looked good for our first Big Trip in a while. read more…
All the things
Apparently the wedding took a little longer to recover from than I’d planned. Ooops! So, uh, hi! Still alive! Mostly! And only a few things have happened since I was last here.
I’m HILARIOUS.
Surely I will forget some stuff, but I will do my darndest to cover the highlights as best I can. Maybe later my husband will come home and say “But what about [insert that super important thing I totally neglected to mention]??” and I’ll say “Oh, yeah!” and actually come back sooner than six months from now. Who knows! Stranger things have happened.
If you’d rather not waste your time, the Spark Notes version is that everyone is fine. Even Turnip! Though she has developed this charming habit (I am lying; it is not even slightly charming) of refusing to eat at mealtimes. I have no idea what that’s about, but basically if we put her dish down (or close her in the crate with it) a while afterwards, she’ll eat. I have since learned that apparently Malteses are notorious for being picky princesses about their food. Seven pounds of neurosis, that one. Anyway.
Here’s what you missed over the last six months! read more…
Picture rainbow confetti everywhere
I popped up long enough, last month, to tell you that I have So Many Wedding Planning Stories and also to tell you about Monkey graduating from college, and then I disappeared (again! I am nothing if not predictable in my slacker-ness!) because it turns out that the last month before a wedding is ABSOLUTE BONKERS INSANITY no matter how well you thought you planned. Those last four weeks, I kept saying “After this task, I’m done!” and I believed it, too, every single time. But I wasn’t actually done until the wedding day itself, because there was always someone who needed me to verify something or give them money or verify something WHILE giving them money, or something that needed to be wrapped in jute (ruuuuuuustic!), or boxes of Very Important Items that needed to be transported somewhere, or… you get the idea.
Weddings, it turns out, are a lot of work.
Usually this is the part where I tell you about the fifty different things that went wrong, but I am here to report, scout’s honor, that the wedding itself was perfect. PERFECT. Like, could not have gone better in my wildest dreams. I have never seen my oldest child so happy and radiant. I have never seen my youngest child—I hope you’re sitting down—rush out onto the dance floor and actually dance and mingle and laugh and act like they’ve done it a hundred times before. I could talk about it for forever and still not cover everything that made it amazing, so suffice it to say: MAH BAYBEE GOT MARRIED and it was magical.
But DON’T YOU WORRY, because plenty of the stuff that happened BEFORE the wedding was… not. So, um, let me just get right into it. read more…
What a(nother) long strange trip it’s been
I have about six million things I’ve been meaning to update y’all on—most of them wedding-related, because HOOBOY planning a wedding is not for the faint of heart or sober, and I happen to be both—but they will have to wait just a wee bit longer. (Those tidbits will be worth the wait, I think. If I had a nickel for every time someone said to me “ONLY YOU, MIR!”… well, I’d have a whole lot of nickels. Not enough to pay for the wedding, you understand, but a LOT.)
Nope, today is not for that, because today I have finally gathered my thoughts (as much as they are ever gathered, anyway) on the end of an era. I don’t write here very often, anymore, and I certainly don’t talk about my kids as much as I used to, but I know there are still a few folks here from the Way Back Times who remember when this whole thing started. I’ve been writing here for almost twenty years. My kids were preschoolers when this site was born. In the same way that you don’t notice your own child growing taller, because you see them every day, much of what has happened over the last two decades seems gradual and normal, because I was watching it, and IN IT, the whole time. (Some of it felt like it took forever, but we’re not going to talk about that right now. Tralala!) And then every now and then, I have one of those weird flashes of WHOA WAIT WHAT because I blinked and suddenly everything changed.
This is all preamble to saying that both of my kids have been adults for a while, now. I know this. Intellectually, this is not a surprise. But. BUT. Last week we hit a milestone that was a loooooong time coming. read more…
Insanity (a love story)
A person might think—had they, say, never met me—that after the saga of the cupcake stands I might have, I don’t know, learned my lesson about “simple” DIY projects. In the end, did I really save any money? (Maybe just a little.) Did I really save any money if we put even the bare minimum value on my time as a factor? (Definitely not.) Was the hassle worth the outcome? (Ask me after the wedding, I guess.) Did I learn that making things myself is always going to take more materials, time, and know-how than I probably have on hand? (Listen, I am starting to feel personally attacked, and I would appreciate it if you would just go back to admiring the stands because they came out great, and let’s just not discuss it.) Tl;dr: No, I learned nothing. NOTHING.
The cupcake stands were completed just in time for me to work on the centerpieces, which I had (of course) figured I could make cheaply/easily and to the exact specs the brides desire, and wouldn’t that make more sense than 1) real flowers (which are finicky, and die, and are expensive) or 2) renting from the venue (which is already costing us… uhhhh, I feel woozy, let’s not talk about it… and everydamnthing you might want other than a door and a floor costs extra)?
Sooooooo. Lemme tell you about the centerpieces. (Which aren’t even DONE.) read more…
Scrambled
Look at me, writing again before a hundred days have passed! I don’t know what has come over me! I think it might be that someone reminded me that I used to write endlessly about the dumb stuff I used to do. And I was all “HA! Used to?? I still do a lot of dumb stuff!”
And now—after decades of earnestly training myself to pay LESS attention to the stupid things I do—I find myself reviewing the past day or week and thinking, “Wow, I am really just not getting any smarter. How unfortunate for those around me.”
So here I am, ready to tell you a story because I believe if you can’t be a good example, you should at least serve as a terrible warning.
In order to fully set the scene and explain how this happened, I have to make a confession which pains me a bit. Intellectually I know this is nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about, but I’m capable of being both of those things about almost everything, plus I live with an impressive level of mental illness about money (see also: the spending of on anything which isn’t a complete necessity), so just… let me have my delicate feelings, I guess. read more…
My great and terrible summer
Hello! The other day someone came to the blog’s Facebook page and yelled at me. Well, that’s not exactly true; they left a very concerned message asking for an update and if I’m okay, and it happened to be in all caps. So when I responded, I said “Please don’t yell at me!” (I am delicate and have tender, easily-hurt feelings) and the commenter hastened to apologize for the accidental caps lock.
This of course prompted me to check when I’d last updated, because surely it hadn’t been that long, and…. yes it was. Months. I left you hanging for the entire summer. Whoops! Sorry about that.
The short version: Everyone is fine and life is chugging along.
The long version: Wellllllll it’s been an interesting summer. Some good, some bad, mostly ridiculous, because it’s me. I will do my best to catch y’all up. read more…