It's a weird thing, having everyone back at home again. And not just because I will periodically look around and yell "Who ARE all you people? Don't you have adult lives to pursue elsewhere??" There's some driveway Jenga to be done with everyone's cars here. There are more dishes (OMG SO MANY DISHES) lying around. It's both louder (at times) and quieter (at times; turns out that young adults like to nap an awful lot) than I expected. The dogs are delighted. Otto is... resigned, I'd say. And once again I've taken out the step basket that lives on the stairs so that I can toss things into it...
First: Thank you all for the kind responses to my last post. It warms my cold, dead heart to know there are so many folks out there who were, in a way, walking along with me for so many years while we ushered my oldest through All The Scary Things all the way to (theoretical) adulthood. It's lovely to have a virtual army on call. (One especially generous longtime reader---and I am not suggesting anyone should feel they should do the same, or that it wasn't a huge surprise---actually contacted me about getting an incredible gift to Chickie. While the gift itself is awesome and much...
Would you believe that my first entry here on ye olde blog was written when my oldest was six years old, tiny and sassy and chirpy and endlessly chatty, and on Saturday that little bird of a girl graduated from college, tall and lovely and grown and measured and oh, lord (this is no time for humility, right?), loaded down with cords and medals and other symbols of how she rocked the last three and a half years like the utter boss she is? Would you believe that for years I prayed every day, multiple times a day, that she would just make it through one more day, please, God, I don't know if I...
I wanted to share a picture of Chickadee's shoes on her first day of the semester, because for those of you who've stuck around for a long time, shoe pictures and the first day of school are a tradition 'round here, and this would've been a very significant picture, because... it will be the last one (at least for a good long while, anyway). Because---I hope you're sitting down, people who started reading here when my darling Chickie-pie was 6 years old and sassy beyond her years---my once tiny and chirpy firstborn is graduating from college in just a few months. Graduating. From. College....
You may or may not recall that every few years my father and stepmother gather up their collective children and grandchildren and take us all somewhere to sit around eating ourselves silly and telling embarrassing stories about the past. It's magical. My little nuclear family missed the last trip (which was three years ago) for Reasons and so this is our first time all together in five years. In preparation I went back and read my posts from the very first trip, which was a cruise, so it was fresh in my mind that when the cousins first met, Gerber had just turned one, Banana was a painfully...
Hello! Sorry it's been so long. In my defense, I was busy dying. I mean, OKAY, not DYING dying, just dying a little bit. Dying in the "dear God, I have woken up with a massive headache every day this week" and the "do I have a cold? a sinus infection? BUBONIC PLAGUE IN MY NOSE??" sense, which is to say: it's springtime in the south! The whole world is covered in a grainy yellow coating, my eyes are itchy, etc. Everyone is making the same joke about how meth dealers are trying to turn their product back into Sudafed, and we all laugh every single time, because what else can you do? Well, I...
Before I begin, let me just say 1) I didn't mean to leave you hanging on that last post, I swear, and 2) THANK YOU for all the nice comments and emails. February/March (Farch, as one commenter called it, which I shall use forevermore) is hard on a lot of us, huh? I'm really glad it's almost April. Also I am (finally) feeling somewhat better, so do not fret. But that is not why I am here today. OH HO HO HO, no. I am here today to tell you the story of why for-profit health insurance companies do not work and why when politicians start wringing their hands about how EXPENSIVE universal...
Hey, Mir, how's your week been? OH WELL I HOPE YOU HAVE SOME TIME TO SPEND! Pull up a chair! Grab a cup of tea, and maybe a few benzodiazepines. Whatever. Let's start last Saturday, because why not? Monkey has had a cold which has morphed into a sinus infection, and Otto has remained healthy because 1) Otto never gets sick and 2) Otto is rarely actually home, and I spent most of my spare time since the first sniffle washing my hands every ten seconds. Because I would NOT get sick, damnit! I have no time! And this time, I would escape it! So: SATURDAY Otto and I puttered around the house for...
I go thrifting on a pretty regular basis. Sometimes I'm looking for something specific (e.g.: lo, I have partaken of too much ice cream, and require new pants), sometimes I'm just looking. [Sidebar/shameless plug: I'm finally putting some of this thrifting to good use by selling stuff on Poshmark. Here's my closet, and if you're new to Poshmark and put wantnotdotnet as your invite code, you get $5 of credit and so do I.] Usually I just look at clothes and shoes, but sometimes I look at other things. Anyway. A while back I was doing my regular Goodwill rounds and I found a wicker planter...
