Dec 13, 2018 | Holidays, Uncategorized |
No one has ever accused me of being hard to buy for, but just in case, I’ve compiled a list of my top ten Christmas desires. The price range is varied so there will be something for every budget.
1. Hair that stays a nice shade of dark brown. It brings me great sorrow to report that the gray and white hairs on my head are rapidly multiplying. I have highlights on top but all the offending hairs underneath shine like Rudolph’s nose when my hair is up. I’d like hair that stays the right color until I am of an appropriate age for it to change.
2. Everywhere I look I see “blessed not stressed” and “too blessed to be stressed” shirts. The sentiment is great but it’s not realistic. I realize how blessed I am, BUT I AM ALSO STRESSED. Thus, I present to you my patent pending sweatshirt design.
]\\\\\\\\\\ (<— Lucy the cats contribution to this post)
3. For slightly round midsections (aka baby weight that never disappears) to come into style.
4. A floor with hidden compartments underneath so we could hide all the toys out of sight.
5. Dunkin Donuts delivery service
6. An hour long nap each day. Or longer! I’m not picky.
7. For a fresh breakfast to appear for me in the morning. I’m not even asking for EVERY morning, just Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. I think that’s very reasonable.
8. A chauffeur to drive Annabelle to her various activities. Driving to school and beyond is something I did not look forward to in parenting and it’s turning out to be just as soul time-sucking as I thought it would be. I’d also like said chauffeur to be free.
9. I am so thankful for my washing machine and dryer (#blessed) but I’d like a few changes in the laundry department. I’d like underwear and doubled shirts to be separated before going in the hamper. The same goes for socks. Please unroll socks so I don’t need a facemask and salad tongs to separate them.
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| The current laundry situation at my house. |
10. For everyone in the world to chew and swallow quietly. People at the international space station shouldn’t hear you eating an apple.
Dec 9, 2018 | Uncategorized |
Back when we were living in Tennessee, we made an unusual discovery one Saturday.
Something had pooped on our stairs. Not the outside stairs. Not the deck stairs. The stairs inside the house.
We didn’t own a pet. Annabelle was months old so obviously, it wasn’t her. Needless to say, but I’ll say it anyway, it was not me or Christopher. The babysitter said she hadn’t let any animals in. We never figured out the culprit, but I choose to believe it was a cat. I can’t bear to think about a stray squirrel in our house.
This evening we had another unfortunate situation with an animal using my laundry basket as a bathroom. Unlike last time, we can narrow it down to one of these cute faces.
We went to the mall for a jacket and came back with kittens.
We’d like to get a rabbit or dog but we can’t have either in our current home. We’ve discussed getting a cat for a while but it never seemed like the right time. We are frequent window shoppers at the pet store and when we were there today they had a litter of kittens. Christopher instantly started campaigning that today be The Day. I had several reservations.
1. How much work would they be?
2. What do we do with them when we travel?
3. I’m not much of a cat person. I’d prefer them in a perpetual kitten stage but news flash! that’s not a thing.
4. What if we ended up with a snooty, prissy cat who did nothing but stare at us while sitting in the windowsill? What kind of pet is that? Cats are like kids. You never know what kind of personality they’ll have.
5. I’d prefer a rabbit.
Christopher wore me down convinced me that there is no time like the present and while we’re at it, let’s get two kittens! Because they’re cheap and need a friend! And they’re so cute! And he wanted the orange one but he’d let us pick out the other. So that’s how we ended up buying kittens today. Considering how many times I’ve asked if we can permanently borrow someone’s baby only to have him shot the idea down, I think I was very generous to agree to his idea.
As I carried the box of kittens out of the mall I had instant buyers regret. Maybe we hadn’t thought it through enough. What if it was a curtain climber? What if they got out of the house when we were leaving for school? What if they ruin my precious throw pillows? When I was five, we had a cat for two weeks. I adored Snowball. I remember falling asleep with him. I snuggled him. I was devastated when we got rid of him. Mom had just had the twins and the cat that to me was a dream come true was to her a menace to her household. Snowball would climb up the curtains and run along the curtain rod. He constantly got out of the house and we’d have to chase him down. He scratched everything. It was too much. All these years later I understood why Mom decided to get rid of Snowball and I had just agreed to take my family down that same path.
Then we got to the car and I took the first kitten out of the box. I was like the Grinch. My heart grew three sizes.
I was a smitten kitten.
They are so cute. SO CUTE.
I brought the following names to the table:
Ross and Rachel
Luke and Lorelai
Albert and Victoria
Fred and Ginger
George and Barbara
Jim and Pam
Johnny and June
Philip and Elizabeth
Christopher suggested:
Odin and Frigga (Thor’s parents)
Arthur and Molly (a couple from Harry Potter)
Others names I don’t remember but made me roll my eyes
Linus and Lucy
We agreed on two- Fred and Ginger and Linus and Lucy. I was really going for Fred and Ginger but Linus and Lucy won.
So far they’ve spent a considerable amount of time wrestling, hiding under beds and in the bathroom, and exploring. They took naps snuggled in our arms. We refer to Linus as Christopher’s cat because he was head of the whole buying operation and really wanted the orange cat. He’s more skittish (aka a scaredy cat) and into arching his back. He bats at Lucy and picks fights. Lucy is the girls cat and she’s more into cuddling and sitting on AB’s bed while Linus cowers underneath.
OMG I JUST WROTE A WHOLE PARAGRAPH ABOUT CATS. I’M TURNING INTO A CRAZY CAT LADY.
Nov 29, 2018 | Uncategorized |
I have traveled many miles and crisscrossed many timezones since I last posted. We went on a week-long Disney cruise to the Bahamas with Christopher’s family. It would take 46 posts to recap the trip in the longwinded way I often do, so I’m going to post a few key pictures instead. Long story short, I’m currently searching Zillow for island homes in our budget.
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| Exploring Key West in the rain. |
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Every night our housekeeping man Greyson, made towel animals.
Annabelle liked to play with them and by the end of the week, she had quite the collection. |
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| I don’t know why we still live in Georgia when there are places like this in the world. |
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Here we have one of the few minutes Princess Sesame carried her own dress.
For the rest of the time, she requested I, her lowly servant, carry the train for her. |
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| “I know Elsa and Anna. I’ve already meeted them at my house.” |
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| Sweet cousins! |
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Bippity Boppity Boutique. I teared up watching her get made over.
She looked so big and I kept picturing her getting done up for her wedding. |
Nov 14, 2018 | Friends & Fun, Uncategorized |
A little piece of home flew in to visit us last week. My sweet friend Autumn arrived with her lavender hair and avocado print shirts.
I never know where to bring guests when they visit. Sometimes I wonder if I just don’t know the good spots, but turns out there aren’t many local attractions. Members of my family tend to find places I never heard of so I shouldn’t have been surprised when Autumn arrived with a list of places to explore. Our first stop was billed as “one of Georgia’s seven natural wonders.” The website said it was a courtyard with terraces, waterfalls and “exotic flora.” We arrived to find the whole place shut down and orange netting around half of it. Autumn suggested climbing over the gate but I am no breaker of the law. We looked at the swamp and strange trees instead. Annabelle was not a fan.
Autumn’s next stop was a “prehistoric sand dune.” The gps took us on a 20 minutes drive that looped back to right by the closed garden. The sand dune with a history dating back to the early 1800’s was nothing more than a pile of dirt with a ‘no trespassing’ sign. I can’t believe someone made a website for it. These people need to redefine their definition of interesting.
By this point, Annabelle had had enough of sightseeing flops. She was coughing, getting a fever and saying she needed to go home. I told her we’d go to the playground since she’d been asking for weeks. Autumn put the address in the gps which proceeded to send us down a dead end dirt road. The next attempt told us to turn into a cemetery. I’ll be honest. I was not my best self at this point. I had a headache and wanted to lay down but needed to give Autumn something to see, even if it was a playground. I took over the navigation and got us out of the wrong side of town. AB miraculously perked up when her feet hit the ground at the park. Funny how 45 minutes earlier she had been moaning and groaning about how she was homesick but a quick trip down the slide fixed all her problems.
That evening Autumn and I went out on the town. We poured over menus on several websites and made a list of who had the best appetizers. We made a game plan- appetizers and a drink at one restaurant than a second round of appetizers at a follow-up restaurant where we would also get dessert. In the 28 years of our friendship, it was one of our best plans and it went perfectly. We ate our weight in fried pickles and onion rings. We shared macaroni and cheese and potato skins. We talked about makeup, education and why some of our childhood friends ended up like they did. Only the most well rounded of conversations for us! We went to the next place but were too full to order more appetizers so we talked and people watched for hours. On the way home, we had to stop to put air in the tire. All the teens of the town were hanging out at the gas station. They were piled in trucks and standing around in little groups. As if the sand dune fail hadn’t been proof enough that not much goes on here, those dudes sealed the deal. We were the crotchety old women wondering why the youths of small-town America weren’t at home, tucked into their beds at such a late hour. We weren’t crotchety old ladies when we got home at 12:30 and put line dancing tutorials on youtube and danced in the living room. We might be bad with directions but we can do the Watermelon Crawl and isn’t that really more important, anyway?
Oct 27, 2018 | Sesame, Uncategorized |
Update from the weather desk- it hit 57 degrees this morning. FIFTY-SEVEN.
The locals are calling it a cold front and bundling up. I call it normal weather for October.
You’d think the cool air would mean my brain is fresh and unfried but I’ve completely forgotten what I was going to blog about.
I blame the lack of brain cells on Annabelle. For the last 15 nights (but who’s counting?) she has woken up during the night. For most of those nights, she’s sobbed and yelled and generally made a scene about going to bed because she’s scared and can’t stop her “bad thoughts about the Grinch and the selfish giant.” We saw a Halloween figurine in Cracker Barrel and she said, “My brain is going to add that to the list of bad thoughts.” After the many hours it takes for her to fall asleep, she’ll wake up sobbing and scared around midnight, then 2 o’clock. Hours will pass before she’ll fall asleep again. I can’t sleep when she’s not sleeping so I lost hours of sleep too. It’s like having a newborn again. In the Army, Christopher did training where they played tapes of children crying for hours so he became immune and will sleep through most of it until I kick his legs and wake him up. It’s been a beautiful time of family bonding. Things are finally headed in the right direction. We’ve talked to her about praying or singing when she’s scared and I’ll hear her doing both over the monitor to calm herself. We’ve figured out a routine that makes her feel safer. She finally slept through the night last night and while I’m still not fully recovered, things are looking up.
Due to the above-mentioned sleep issues, we’ve been sleeping in a little. We need to leave for school at 8:30 but yesterday I didn’t wake up until 8:13. I flew out of bed like it was on fire. I NEVER leave the house without mascara or earrings but I didn’t have time for either. I felt like I was going in public naked but desperate times call for desperate measures. We squealed into the school parking lot only 2 minutes late. I don’t know if I’ll be in the running for Mom of the Year because we made it, or if I’m out of the race because we were late.
We switched Sesame to a new school at the beginning of the month. There were many conversations about whether to leave her where she was or switch her. The school she was at was very into desk work and the school across the street was more play-based which I like. She’ll have 13+ years ahead of her for deskwork. I want her to learn through play while she can. Had I toured both of them at the beginning of the year I would have picked the new school, but I was so afraid of leaving and hurting the original teacher’s feelings. I liked them as people but I didn’t like the curriculum. I felt like a traitor leaving for a school within eyesight of the first school.
Short story unnecessarily long, we went on a field trip with the new school on Tuesday. It was to a pumpkin patch and AB kept repeating that she was glad we went to a pumpkin patch the Saturday before so she was able to “practice pumpkining and know what to do.” I drove us but the children coming from school on the bus were supposed to arrive at 9:30. They were 20 minutes late which made me feel so much better about my 2-minute tardiness.
There’s not a colored tree to be seen in our neck of the woods but there are pumpkins of every shade. Annabelle interrupted the man giving a speech on the lifecycle of pumpkins to say that she doesn’t like to eat the inside of pumpkins, only the seeds. The strings are too gross. But she likes the seeds. We cooked them with butter and cooked them in the oven and then Mom ate some. But the inside is yucky.
Another day, another goat to feed.
Maybe if she had a goat to snuggle with she’d go back to being a good sleeper.
Oct 23, 2018 | Uncategorized, What's going on |
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| Never met a goat she didn’t love. |
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THEY HAD A PEN FULL OF BUNNIES WE COULD WALK AROUND IN.
I WAS IN HEAVEN.
Notice AB’s hand on my shoulder. She has to be touching me at all times. |
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| Two of my favorite things- a bunny and my baby. |
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You’ll be shocked to learn that the white pumpkin with carefully placed silver glitter was not made by Christopher.
I know everyone had him pegged as a glitzy guy. |
